addition, Nasser’s brand of nationalism always displayed, in his rhetoric as well as in his decisions, a systematic hostility towards everything which was non-native to Egyptian society.
My intention here is not to pass an ethical judgement, even if I have one and it strikes me as legitimate to form one. I am thinking especially of the example that Nasser could have set for those who came after him. He was a model for the Arab world as well as for the whole Muslim world and Africa. As a result, everything he said and did had an educational value for hundreds of millions of people of all conditions across these countries. Few leaders reach such a summit, and only the best of them are conscious of the heavy responsibility that comes with this privilege, especially when it is a case of tracing the path for a new or renascent nation.
An eloquent example from our own time is that of Nelson Mandela. Borne on a powerful wave of support, with an aura of glamour conferred by his long years of imprisonment, he was in a position to call the shots. His people scrutinised his every word and gesture. If he had voiced bitterness, settled scores with his jailers, punished everyone who supported or tolerated apartheid, no one could have blamed him. If he had wanted to remain president of his country until his dying breath and governed autocratically, no one could have stopped him. But he was careful to give very different signals quite explicitly. He did not just pardon his persecutors, he made a point of visiting the widow of former prime minister Verwoerd, one of the architects of segregation, to tell her that the past was over and that she too had a place in the new South Africa. The message was clear: I, Mandela, who suffered persecution under a racist regime and who did more than anyone else to put an end to this abomination, made a point, even though I am president, of going to sit under the roof of the man who had me thrown in prison, to drink tea with his wife. So none of my supporters should feel they have a right to raise the stakes for militancy or revenge.
Symbols are potent, and when they come from someone so eminent, so respected and admired, they can sometimes alter the course of history.
For a number of years, Nasser found himself in such a position. If he had wanted to, if his political culture and his temperament had inclined him in that direction, he could have moved Egypt and the whole of his region towards greater democracy and greater respect for individual freedom, and doubtless towards peace and development.
It is easy to forget today that in the early decades of the twentieth century, major Arab and Muslim countries had a lively parliamentary culture, a free press and relatively open elections, enthusiastically supported by the people. That was the case not only in Turkey or Lebanon, but also in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran, so it was not inevitable that they would all succumb to tyrannical or authoritarian regimes.
When he came to power in a country with a very imperfect democratic life, Nasser could have reformed the system, making it accessible to other strata of society, establishing a state in which the rule of law prevailed, putting an end to corruption, nepotism and foreign interference. The population, all classes and shades of opinion together, would probably have followed him down that path. He chose instead to abolish the system entirely and set up a single-party regime, on the pretext that the nation had to be rallied round the objectives of the revolution and that any dissent or division would open a breach for his enemies to exploit.
Of course, history cannot be remade. Having come to power in a bold surprise attack, the young Egyptian colonel — a devoted patriot and an honest man, gifted with intelligence and charisma but without great historical or moral sense — followed his inclination, which matched the spirit of the times. In the early 1950s, conventional wisdom strongly urged him to act in the way he did. Egypt had for several generations been haunted by English machinations, and Nasser was rightly convinced that he had to be extremely firm and vigilant, as otherwise the British would not hesitate to contrive a way to reclaim the prize that had been taken from his people.
The spectacle of the world in the aftermath of the July 1952 coup d’etat would only have confirmed Nasser in this view. Everyone was looking at Iran, where prime minister Mossadegh, a Swiss-trained lawyer who was as patriotic as Nasser but a supporter of pluralist democracy, was tussling with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. This company paid tiny amounts to the Iranian state, determining them itself as it saw fit. Mossadegh claimed half their revenues for his country. When he received a flat refusal, he got parliament to vote through the nationalisation of the company. The British response was devastatingly effective. They imposed a world embargo on Iranian oil, which no one dared buy. Very soon the country was running out of all resources and its economy was suffocating. In the first year following the Egyptian revolution, the world watched as Mossadegh was brought to his knees and finally fell from power in August 1953. The shah, who had briefly been in voluntary exile, returned in force and stayed for the next twenty-five years.
It was that same summer that Egypt’s Free Officers decided to depose the infant king, abandoning any desire to establish a constitutional monarchy and creating an authoritarian republic instead.
In assessing the factors which could have influenced a decision or sparked a conflict, it is never possible to draw a straight line from cause to effect. Many different elements come into play in attempting to understand Nasser’s choices, determining the direction the Egyptian revolution took and also in large measure the march of Arab nationalism towards the peaks and then towards the precipice. Besides the far from negligible personal factor, we should also bear in mind various developments which occurred during these years, some directly linked to the Cold War, others to the breakup of Europe’s old colonial empires and the emergence of a nationalistic support for the Third World, which was generally anti-Western and attracted to the Soviet model of a single party and a planned economy.
In theory, Nasser could have decided to take a different course. In reality, given the temper of the times and the balance of power, that would have been difficult — and risky.
Chapter 5
In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, Nasser became the idol of the wider Arab world, because he dared to throw down the gauntlet to the colonial European powers and emerged victorious from the confrontation.
In July of that year, during a rally in Alexandria to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the revolution, he unexpectedly declared, in a speech broadcast live, the nationalisation of the Franco-British Suez Canal Company, a symbol of the foreign stranglehold on his country. This speech left his audience delirious, and the rest of the world reeling. London and Paris were irate and spoke of piracy and acts of war, and warned of the risks of disturbing international trade.
Overnight, the 38-year-old Egyptian colonel was propelled to the centre of the international stage. The entire world seemed to divide into his supporters and critics. In one camp were the peoples of the Third World, the Non- Aligned Movement, the Soviet bloc, as well as the growing sector of Western opinion that wished to draw a line under the colonial era, either for reasons of principle or of cost. In the other camp were Great Britain, France and Israel; so too, though more discreetly, were certain conservative Arab leaders who feared the destabilising influence of Nasser in their own countries; among them was the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri es-Said, who advised his British counterpart, Anthony Eden, to ‘Hit him! — Hit him now, and hit him hard!’ Fresh in everyone’s memory was the fate inflicted on Mossadegh. It seemed inconceivable that the Egyptian leader would not be penalised in the same way, so that the West would retain control of this important seaway and at the same time set an example.
A decision was indeed taken to hit him hard. At the end of October, a two-part operation was set in motion: the Israelis initiated a land offensive in Sinai, and British and French commandos parachuted into the zone around the canal. Militarily, Nasser was beaten, but politically he was about to score a triumph, thanks in particular to a historic coincidence which neither he nor his enemies had foreseen.
On the very day on which Paris and London delivered an ultimatum to Cairo in advance of their attack, a new Hungarian government led by Imre Nagy declared its return to pluralist democracy, thereby openly rebelling against Moscow’s hegemony. That occurred on Tuesday, 30 October 1956. In the days that followed, the two dramas unfolded in parallel: while the Royal Air Force was bombing Cairo Airport, and French and British parachutists were dropping from the skies above Port Said, Soviet tanks were bloodily trying to crush student demonstrators in
