It had not been a good few years for the UAR. Defeat by Israel; humiliation internationally, and now Islamist disturbances internally. Unfortunately, the situation was about to go from bad to, somehow, even worse.

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Iraq Explodes

It happened almost out of nowhere. The UAR knew it might happen of course; and they had their suspicions, but the tight, insular circles in the mosques were not something they could really do anything about. Equipment was flowing over the empty Saudi desert and from Kuwait; fueled by Saudi clerics and tacit endorsement if not support by Israel (where the Grand Mufti continued to intone about the need for jihad against the UAR's godless communist government) and the United Kingdom which watched Saudi and Iranian support flow through Kuwait; the two great enemies of the UAR.

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After Friday prayers, the massed public did not disperse as usual. This was nothing new; often they ended with calls to protest, or people would simply linger and join in jeering soldiers and throwing rocks at them out of sheer inertia and peer pressure. What was new was when they started assaulting police stations. In not a few cases, the police came out to openly support the uprising. Military bases, too, came under assault; and the soldiers in most cases were either too demoralized to fight back or actively joined the rebels.

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Within hours, most of Southern Iraq was under de facto rebel control--roads, already somewhat questionable when the rural areas were even more dominated by Islamism than the great cities; essentially impassable to the government; garrisons surrounded and often surrendering without a fight. Even Baghdad largely fell to the Shia; a great humiliation for the government, even though it ruled from Aleppo.

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The palaces, rail yards, and telephone switchboards were all in rebel hands as the airwaves blasted the news that the Islamic Revolution had begun and Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has proclaimed the beginning of the Islamic Revolution; along with Abd al-Aziz al-Badri, leading the Sunni side of the revolts. Sunni territories of the UAR have also seen protests as well; though nothing like the well-coordinated uprisings in Shia Iraq, which looked almost more like a coup than a revolution. And speaking of coups....

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Corrective Movement

It had not been a good few years for Hafez al-Assad. They had tried to sideline him, alright; but he had his ways of getting back at the National Command Council. With the present situation what it was--the fact that he had passed on key information from sources inside the UAR government to his friends in Jerusalem had contributed substantially to that--there were plenty of opportunities for even a sidelined general to come back, as long as he still had a few friends left and favors to come in. In a place as paralyzed as the UAR, it wasn't hard to find enough people willing to come along.

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He recruited from those on the way out; the Aflaqites, the Alawites. Abdul Salam Arif, ousted after the nuclear debacle. Officers interested in a quick promotion. He did more or less everything short of openly canvassing the barracks around Aleppo; and he might have tried that too. Organizing a movement that, when the time was right, could oust the National Command Council. When it was distracted... say, with an Islamic Revolution.

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Perhaps the UAR's government shouldn't have been so concerned with the unrest on their relative periphery when the T-55s surrounded the capital at Aleppo and arrested Hawrani and Jadid, along with the rest of the National Command Council. When the radios started blaring--the ones the UAR still controlled--that the government had fallen, that the military had taken control under Assad and that a state of emergency had been declared--things only got worse. Most of the army and air force in Syria and Jordan maintained order; but in Iraq, even the Sunni areas began to saw the military disintegrating; firing a few shots and running off, terrified of what was coming.

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Meanwhile Hafez al-Assad has seemingly embraced the Islamic Revolution--or at least he doesn't see any sign that he's strong enough to oust it. With his own credentials questionable as an Alawite, his first act as emergency leader was to attend prayers at a Sunni mosque--practically unheard of. He has also banned the communist party for being atheists [and, of course, political competitors] and has announced his intent to negotiate with Khomeini and Abd al-Aziz al-Badri as to the character of the future UAR as a "more Islamic state, which rejects the godless atheism of the left", suggesting the establishment of an Islamic Republic, adoption of Sharia law, and appointment of clerics to the head of state as all options he is considering.

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Crude map of control; control over Jordan mostly theoretical