Amin Maalouf - Disordered World

Nasser’s nationalist tide seemed to be well on the way to overwhelming the entire Arab world from the ocean to the Gulf, and at high speed. Never had the theory of the domino effect worked so quickly. Every monarchy was shaken and on the point of falling, especially that of King Hussein, who seemed to be facing an identical fate to that of his unfortunate Iraqi cousin.

Washington and London consulted each other on the morning of 14 July and agreed on an immediate response. The very next day, American marines landed on Lebanese beaches; two days later, British commandos arrived in Jordan. It was a way of telling Nasser that if he went one step further, he would enter into direct military conflict with the West.

This response had the desired effect. The nationalist wave ebbed. In Lebanon, the rebellion lost momentum and President Chamoun was able to serve the rest of his term. In Jordan, King Hussein was not ousted; various threats still lay ahead for him — military rebellions, attacks on his person and on those close to him — but by surviving this first attack, he was able to save his throne.

Nasser was to suffer two further serious reversals. In Iraq, an internal struggle soon began among the architects of the coup, between those who wanted to align themselves with Cairo and those who wanted to keep their distance. Nasser’s friends were beaten and ousted. Rather than joining the United Arab Republic, the strong man of the new regime, General Abdel-Karim Kassem, presented himself as the champion of a specifically Iraqi revolution and clearly anchored on the left. He thereby became Nasser’s sworn enemy overnight and a struggle to the death between the two men began. On 7 October 1959, in central Baghdad, Kassem’s armoured car was riddled with bullets. Kassem got away with only scratches; his attacker, who was wounded in the leg, managed to escape across the border to seek refuge in Syria. He was a 22-year-old militant nationalist by the name of Saddam Hussein.

Nasser’s other failure would turn out to be yet more devastating. At dawn on 28 September 1961, a military coup took place in Damascus. The restoration of Syrian independence and the end of the union with Cairo were declared. Arab nationalists denounced this ‘separatist’ act and accused those involved in the putsch of being puppets of colonialism, Zionism, reactionary forces and the oil-producing monarchies. But no one was unaware at the time that the Syrian population was finding it more and more difficult to tolerate Egyptian control, not least because it was exercised through the secret services. Like Baghdad, Damascus is one of the historical capitals of the Muslim world; Baghdad was the seat of the Abassid caliphate, while Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad caliphate. Both were willing to be a sister to Cairo, but not her servant. Such feelings were widespread throughout the population, especially among the urban bourgeoisie and landowners, whom Nasser’s nationalisations had ruined.

The Egyptian leader’s star seemed irredeemably tarnished. His popularity might have remained intact among the masses in most Arab countries, but his enemies, both in the region and in the West, breathed more easily, believing that the initial nationalist wave was now no more than a memory.

But all of a sudden, the wave broke again, this time stronger and wider than before. During the summer of 1962, an independent Algeria elected as its leader Ahmed Ben Bella, a fervent admirer of Nasser. In September, Free Officers, inspired by the example of Egypt, overthrew the most reactionary monarchy of all, that of the imams in Yemen. A Yemeni republic was declared, to which Nasser promised every assistance. Soon thousands of Egyptian soldiers were arriving in the south of the Arabic peninsula, causing the oil-producing kingdoms to tremble.

On 8 February 1963, Arab nationalist officers seized power in Baghdad. Kassem was summarily executed and his body displayed on television. The new head of state was Colonel Abdessalam Aref, one of Nasser’s faithful allies. A month later, on 8 March, a similar coup d’état took place in Damascus, in which the end of separatism was declared, along with the aim of recreating a union with Egypt and Iraq, perhaps also Yemen and Algeria, and even, in the future, Lebanon, Libya, Kuwait, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and so on.

Suddenly, within a few months, Nasser’s dream of Arabic unity seemed revived, and more vigorous than ever. Iraq and Syria’s new leaders went to Cairo to negotiate the terms of a new union, a project which was solemnly announced on 17 April 1963. Thus, a powerful Arab state was about to be born, uniting the three great imperial capitals, Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus. Arab nationalism seemed to be on the verge of an unprecedented historical triumph. Its supporters were delirious, and its enemies alarmed. Neither group could have imagined then how close the denouement was.

The new ebb in support for Nasser turned out to be as rapid as the original surge had been. In the weeks following the agreement about the new union, it became known that the Cairo negotiations had in fact gone very badly. The Syrian and Iraqi leaders, who all belonged to the pan-Arabic Ba’ath (‘resurrection’) party, wanted a partnership in which Nasser was the head of the new state, but which gave them the real power on the ground. Remembering the mistakes made during the first attempt at a union, they did not want their countries to be governed by some viceroy subservient to the Egyptian leader. Nasser, for his part, had no desire to be the nominal president of a state dominated by these Ba’athists for whom he had neither trust nor sympathy. They may have been the architects of the two coups, but it was Nasser who was the standard bearer of Arab unity; it was in him that the people saw their aspirations reflected, and him alone whom they desired as their leader. It was not long before this disagreement degenerated into a violent trial of strength. In Baghdad, the confrontation went provisionally in favour of the Egyptian president, but when Nasser’s supporters in Syria rose up against the Ba’athists, the rebellion was violently suppressed and the death toll ran into hundreds.

In Yemen, the royalists, aided by Saudi Arabia, furiously opposed the new republican regime and succeeded in hampering the efforts of the Egyptian expeditionary force. Their mission turned to disaster militarily, financially and also morally when some of the soldiers involved started behaving not as liberators but as occupiers, and even looters.

Another blow for Nasser came in June 1965, when his friend Ben Bella was overthrown in a military coup; Algeria’s new president, Houari Boumediene, was quick to distance himself from Cairo.

The backlash was on a massive scale. Even beyond the Arab world, the Egyptian president lost some of his closest allies. The Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah, an advocate of African unity and a fervent admirer of Nasser — so much so that he had given his son the first name Gamal — was overthrown in February 1966 by a military coup. Then it was the turn of the Indonesian Sukarno, a standard-bearer in the Non-Aligned Movement; on 11 March 1966, he was forced to cede power to the pro-American General Suharto.

Finally, as if to complete Nasser’s isolation, his last faithful ally among the Arab leaders, the Iraqi president Abdessalam Aref, died on 13 April 1966 in circumstances which have never been fully explained. He was visiting the south of the country near Bassora when his helicopter malfunctioned and went out of control. Suddenly the door opened and the president fell out; his head hit the ground and he was killed instantly.

This bizarre accident could not have come at a worse moment for Nasser, who more than ever needed trustworthy allies, since the political landscape of the region was beginning to be populated with movements and individuals which were challenging his authority, such as the Ba’ath party or Fatah, a newcomer on the scene.