The one who could unite the Arabs
“Gamal Abdul Nasser and after” by Professors Doctors Qalb-i-Abid and Massarrat Abid recalls an era when the Egyptian President Nasser emerged as the undisputed voice of hundreds of millions of the otherwise fractured Arab world. The Arab unity has remained an elusive dream. Can it ever be achieved? Is it practically possible? The authors try to explore both the questions.
If there is a leader, who has the will and vision as well as charisma and sincerity of purpose, the Arabs can be united but only to an extent. For example, Syria formed a union and Yemen set a federation with Nasser. Gaddafi of Libya begged for a similar merger and Jordan, too, toyed with this idea. Yasser Arafat, the late leader of the Palestinians adored him. And most important of all, the Arab street loved and believed in what Nasser said, eulogizing him as the “Lion of the Arabs”. Why did the Arabs covet these attributes in Nasser? Simply because in their early history, they had seen how their leaders had established grand empires in Spain, Africa, Arabia and Turkey that extended to the heart of Europe in Vienna. With the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the Arabs came under the yoke of the British and French colonists. This subjugation resulted in decades of humiliation whereby in their own lands their status was reduced from being masters to slaves. With the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 and by winning the war against the combined military might of the British, French and Israelis, Nasser had regained the lost self-respect of the Arabs. By all definitions, it was a grand achievement.
Sadly, instead of rallying round him, some of the Arab leaders, particularly of Saudi Arabia and Jordan played in the hands of the western powers. The authors have shown how the then Saudi government tried to bribe Syria’s interior minister Colonel Sarraj to first break the Union with Egypt and later to assassinate Nasser. The role of the Iraqi leadership was equally dubious because it agreed to join the US sponsored military pact CENTO with headquarters in Baghdad. To undermine Nasser’s efforts to boost Egyptian agro-based economy by building the High Aswan Dam, the Americans unilaterally withdrew the financial commitment that they had already made for building the dam, thus pushing Nasser into the Soviet embrace, who stepped forward to foot the project to gain a foothold in the Middle East.
Those who think that Nasser was anti-American or a socialist are deficient in history because he was just an Arab nationalist, who believed in pan-Arabism as an article of faith. Both the learned authors are right in pointing out that it was this aggressive pan-Arabism that involved Egypt in several unnecessary conflicts not only with the pro-American Arab regimes but also with Israel. All those resources that should have been spent for his people’s development were frittered away in reckless military adventures. For example, he got involved in the Lebanese civil war. Later on, he tried to overthrow King Hussein’s government in Jordan. In addition, he got embroiled in a civil war in Yemen against Saudi Arabia which dragged on for five years resulting in the employment of 70,000 troops of which 10,000 lost their lives. As if all this was not enough, he began to help the Algerian revolutionaries in their independence movement which brought him in direct conflict with France.
Nasser’s charisma began to wane after Egypt’s defeat at the hands of Israel in the 1967 war and within a few years, he died. Even in his death, he remained a controversial figure. He had many supporters (he has the distinction of having the biggest funeral in the history of the Arab world) but his detractors abound as well. They criticize him for his nationalization program; for pursuing an aggressive foreign policy; for fighting unnecessary wars; and for opposing the US and the western bloc. Such critics are found in every under-developed country because they blindly believe that a country can only prosper by siding with the West and by adopting the capitalist economic system.
But Nasser had lived by his dreams. Though he came of lower-middle class, the son of a postman, poverty had not deprived him of the virtues of pride, courage and independence in thought and action. These virtues are noble yet not tolerated by the Western powers if found in the ruler of a backward country because these clash with their vested interests.
His time witnessed the peak of the Cold War and the world was divided into two hostile blocs. Russians’ closeness with Nasser provided them with a pivot in the oil-rich strategic Mideast and with leaders of Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, etc. lining up behind him; there were chances of a socialist upsurge which Eisenhower’s Doctrine of Containment could never afford. As CIA got into gear, the Muslim Brotherhood made sixteen life attempts at Nasser that culminated in the execution of Brotherhood’s leader, Syed Qutub. Today, history has made full circle as not only the ‘militant’ Brotherhood has emerged as the biggest party in the Egyptian legislature, its leader Muhammad Mursi has been elected as the president and the radical movement as a whole is projected as ‘moderate’ by the US. Moreover, after Nasser’s death, President Sadat not only expelled the Russians but under the US influence, shook hands with the Israelis at the Camp David. No wonder, Egypt remained the most trusted Arab ally of Israel and the recipient of an American largesse of well over $1 billion per year – the second highest amount of yearly assistance given by the White House to any country in the world other than Israel.
About a year back, Hassanain Heikal, who served as Nasser’s Information Minister and now conducts a popular show on the ‘Aljazeera’ ruffled the hornet’s nest when he claimed that Nasser did not die a natural death but was poisoned in the coffee that was served to him by Sadat. We do not know the veracity of such outlandish claim but what we do know is that post-Nasser, the Palestinians became orphans. The authors have given details of the Palestinian issue and how it has been dictated by Israel. Similarly, post- Nasser, the Arab world turned into a lucrative ground for the Western neo-imperialists with no one to hold them together and stand up to Israel.
The timing of this book could not have been better because only a leader of Nasser’s caliber can save the Arabs in the storm that is gathering in the Gulf. Yet, the horizon remains bleak. Ahmadinejad is the only glimmer but he being a Persian is a different story for the Arab ‘asabiya’; so much for Muslim brotherhood and unity.
The writer is an academic and journalist. He can be reached at qizilbash2000@yahoo
