An essay in universal history

22. THE RISE OF PAN-ARAB NATIONALISM

The origins of Pan-Arab nationalism in the modern world may be traced to King Hussein of the Hejaz, whose Pan-Arabism, according to Peter Mansfield, was “haphazard and rudimentary and derived strongly from his personal and family ambitions. His claim to be king of the Arabs was recognized by no more than a few. In the exultant but brief period when [his son] Amir Feisal was established as king of Syria, he attempted to keep the pan-Arab alive. ‘We are one people,’ he said in May 1919, ‘living in the region which is bounded by the sea to the east, the south, and the west, and by the Taurus mountains to the north.’ Most significantly, he was also fond of saying ‘We are Arabs before being Muslims, and Muhammed is an Arab before being a prophet.’ This was the germ of a secular Arab nationalism. But within a year Feisal was expelled from Syria and, although the British installed him in Iraq, the Arab peoples of whom he spoke were divided by new national frontiers.

“In the years following the First World War, therefore, there were two contrary trends among the eastern Arabs. One of these trends was the development of territorial nationalism in the new nation-states as they became involved in a struggle for full independence from Britain and France. This required the creation of a national identity, and it was sustained by the ambitions and rivalries of the national leaders. The House of Saud was hostile and suspicious towards the Hashemites, and there was rivalry between the Hashemites of Iraq and Transjordan.
“The opposing trend was the aspiration towards Arab unity based on the feeling, to which all Arabs subscribed to some extent, that they had been artificially divided in order to weaken them and keep them under Western tutelage. Unity was necessary for Arab self-protection and renaissance. The growing awareness that the Zionists, with the help of the West, aimed to seize as much of Arab Palestine as they could was the strongest factor in mobilizing Arab opinion, which was frustrated but not restrained by the fact that so little that was effective could be done to help the Palestinian Arabs.
“Islam was and remains a uniquely potent element in Arab nationalism. Muslim militants, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, maintained that nationalism and Islam were incompatible since all Muslims of all races from China to Morocco were members of the same great Islamic nation or umma. Pan-Arab intellectuals attempted to demonstrate to the contrary that Arabism and Islam are mutually inclusive. As Abdul Rahman Azzam, the Arab League’s first secretary-general, said in a lecture in 1943, the ideals of Islam were the same as those of modern Arab nationalism and of the Arab nation which aimed to take its rightful place in the world and resume the mission which Muhammad had inaugurated. But the debate was largely artificial… The House of Saud, keepers of the holy places of Islam, have never had any problem about reconciling their Arab and Islamic aspirations…”²⁸¹
The Arab nation that stood out as something of an exception among the others was Egypt, partly there was no consensus that they were in fact Arabs, partly because they had had a long and famous history under the Pharaohs long before the Arabs burst out of the Arabian desert, and partly because they had a significant Christian minority (both Greek Orthodox and Monophysite Copts).
Even when Egypt’s constitutional monarchy under King Farouk acquired special importance during the Second World War because of the hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers based there, the Egyptians themselves were reluctant to see their country as the focus of Arab unity. Thus “in December 1942 Nuri al-Said put forward a scheme for the unification of Sytia, Lebanon, Palestine and Transjordan with ‘semit-autonomy’ for the Jews in Palestine, as a first step towards Arab unity. Egypt was not included. Another scheme, which was proposed by King Ibn Saud’s friend and adviser the British Arabist H. St. John Philby, was for the Saudi monarch to head an Arab federation with an autonomous Jewish state in Palestine. This found favour with the Gentile Zionist Winston Churchill and the Zionist leadership. Again, Egypt was excluded. However, despite Ibn Saud’s high prestige, which caused both Churchill and Roosevelt to imagine him as ‘king of the Arabs’, all such schemes were impractical because of the enmity between the Saudies and the Hashemites – neither would ever accept the others’ leadership.
“However, the British Foreign Office was in favour of closer ties between the Arab states, provided that Western interests could be maintained. A major factor was the hope that it could be easier to solve the Palestine problem within a borader Arab framework. From May 1941 onwards, Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, made repeated statements that Britain favoured any scheme that commanded general approval among the Arabs for strengthening the cultural, economic and political ties between the Arab states. Britain now accepted that Egypt – the site of the Miidle East Supply Centre and focus of the Allied war effort in the region would make the best headquarters for any Western-sponsored Arab federation. Moreover, the Wafd government led by Nahas, in wartime alliance with Britain, had begun to be attracted by the concept of an Egyptian-led Arab union. King Farouk was equally determined that Egypt should not be left out. Reluctantly Nuri al-Said and other Arab leaders came to accept the inevitable: there was no alternative to Egypt. The last act of the Wafd government before it was driven out of office in October 1944 was to sign the Protocol of Alexandria with the six other independent Arab states which led to the foundation of the Arab Leabue in the following year…”²⁸²
Ironically, the first real Arab Union - by Gamal Abdul Nasser, an Egyptian soldier who thirsted for his country’s liberation from British domination – was achieved at the expense, not only of most of the whole of Britain’s empire “east of Suez”, but in spite of the determined opposition of Anthony Eden, the former champion of Arab unity…
It happened as follows. During the war, writes Simon Sebag Montefiore, “hoping for a Nazi victory to overthrow British rule in Egypt, [Nasser] and [his friend] Amer worked to put together a group of like-minded officers. Faced with the UN plan to partition Palestine between Jewish and Arab states, Nasser was tempted to fight on the Arab side and finally got his chance when King Farouk of Egypt, obese, incompetent and debauched, joined the other countries of the Arab League in an attack on the nascent state of Israel. The Egyptians, including Nasser, advanced into the Negev but the young officer witnessed the ineptitude of the king and his officers as well as the lack of equipment and absence of proper preparation.
“By August 1948, Nasser was the deputy commander of Egyptian units surrounded by the Israelis in the so-called Falluja Pocket. It was a formative experience: Nasser was humiliated by the disastrous war effort and on his return he formed with his friend Amer and others the Association of Free Officers. Nasser consulted with the Muslim Brotherhood, but concluded early on that their Islamic programme clashed with his own Arab nationalism. The Free Officers selected General Muhammed Neguib to be their front man.
“When Nasser heard in May 1952 that Farouk was planning to arrest the Free Officers, he launched an almost bloodless coup d’état, allowing the king to depart from Alexandria in his yacht with full honours. The revolutionaries were unsure whether to create a democracy or a military regime. Since Nasser was only a lieutenant-colonel, Neguib became president of the new Egyptian Republic, but real power was in the hands of the Revolutionary Command Council, which was effectively controlled by Nasser in his role as deputy chairman.
“In 1954, as Nasser pushed land reforms and demanded that the alarmed British should leave the Suez Canal, he clashed with the more moderate Neguib. But he asserted his confidence by taking real power as prime minister. Nasser’s passionate and elegant oratory was already captivating Egyptian audiences. In October, as Nasser addressed a large crowd in Alexandria, a young Muslim Brother tried to assassinate him, but Nasser defiantly and courageously continued his speech…
“On his return to Cairo, Neguib was deposed. Nasser became the unrivalled president, a position he retained for the next fifteen turbulent years. He appointed his crony Amer commander-in-chief of the army before lauching a massive crackdown on communists and, above all, the Muslim Brotherhood. He arrested 20,000 of their members and had their leader and ideologue Sayyid Quth executed.
“Henceforth Nasser, with his tall good looks and superb oratory, was immensely popular, but it was his embrace of pan-Arabist nationalism that excited not just Egyptians but the entire Arab world, which was emerging from a century of foreign domination. Nonetheless, he ruled an effective one-party state with the aid of a growing and brutal secret police, backed by an ever more corrupt and oligarchical military junta who swiftly became rich (though he himself had no interest in material matters).
“Nasser committed himself to the non-aligned movement, emerging as its leader alongside Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia and Nehru of India. In 1956 Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal, outraging British Prime Minister Anthony Eden who, facing the decline of British imperial power, now saw Nasser as a new Hitler. The British responded by putting together a secret deal with the French and the Israelis to attack and destroy Nasser. The Israelis would invade Sinai, the Anglo-French would then ‘intervene’…”²⁸³
The result was a disaster, largely because the Americans, as always hostile to European colonialism, pulled the rug from under the feet of the British and French. And, surprisingly in view of later developments - of the Israelis too. ²⁸⁴ There was no subterfuge about this: the Americans were very clearly and consistently against the operation from the beginning.
But it started well. As Norman Stone writes, “The Israelis staged a very clever operation, carried out with panache. Four Mustangs, flying only twelve feet from the ground, cut Egyptian telephone connections, and a few hundred paratroops secured the essential desert pass. By 5 November the Israelis were on the Canal, occupying also, the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba from which their shipping had been banned. It no doubt helped that, on 31 October, the British bombed Egyptian air bases. The day before, Eden had told the House of Commons that the Israelis and Egyptians would be told to stop while an Anglo-French force occupied the Canal Zone. He even tried to claim that this was not ‘war’, but ‘armed conflict’, and of all absurdities suspended deliveries of arms to Tel Aviv. Almost at once, problems emerged. The dollar reserves were declining, and in any case mobilization was a very slow business: the British had put resources into nuclear weaponry, and had run down the effectiveness both of their army and of their navy. They could not get troops to the Suez area inside a month, and though they did have troops at a base in Libya, they shrank from using these, for fear of offending wider opinion. In fact, the Chiefs of Staff object to an immediate action, threatening resignation: they were just not ready. A British force did eventually leave from Malta and Cyprus – bases both too far distant, given that speed was so essential: the world, confronted by the fact on the ground of an immediate occupation, might have accepted it (as Dulles [the American foreign secretary] later said, ‘Had they done it quickly, we’d have accepted it’ and Eisenhower shook his head: ‘I’ve just never seen Great Powers make such a complete mess’). Four days’ delay occurred, while British and American diplomats had a public wrangle. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Mountbatten, showed his usual instinct for the possible, and was only narrowly stopped from resigning as he sensed the unfolding fiasco. The Americans became incensed at being told such obvious lies by men whom they imagined they could absolutely trust, and as the Anglo-French force steamed forth, the American fleet in the area disrupted its radio communications and used submarines to shadow it. Then disaster went ahead. The Canal was blocked by the Egyptians, and oil imports dwindled, prices rising. Junior Foreign Office people threatened mass resignation. The Americans at the United Nations denounced the expedition, and that body produced a resolution in which all countries but a faithful few condemned the British and French: Eden even received a letter from Moscow 5 November, vaguely threatening retaliation, just as the paratroops at last landed. That was bluster, but a further move was not bluster. The pound sterling was an artificially strong currency, and now the Americans refused to support the pound. It fell – reserves dropping by $50m in the first two days of November, and by 5 per cent of the total in the first week. At that rate, there would be none left by the early weeks of 1957. The end was humiliating, as the American Secretary of State gold the United Nations that he could not support his allies. Just as he said so, the landings at Port Said finally occurred on 5 Novembe, but by then it was far too late, and a ceasefire had to follow by the evening of the next day. The broken Eden retired ill to the house on Jamaica where Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond books – one imperial fantasy meeting another. The conclusion at once drawn in London was that never again would the Atlantic link be risked…”²⁸⁵
There were major consequences for the French also. They had joined in the assault on Nasser largely because he was stirring up Arab nationalism in their Algerian and North African colonies. Now they faced a full-scale insurrection in Algeria, which was only brought to an end eight years later, when a new president, De Gaulle, using a new constitution, recognized Algeria’s independence, leading to the exodus of one million French settlers. The war in Algeria had cost 30,000 French lives (the war in Vietnam, which ended in a similar way in 1954, had cost 90,000 lives).
And so, Nasser had at any rate played a significant part in the break-up of the British and French colonial empires. He continued his attempts to create a single Arab nation-state in the Middle Wast. There was an Egyptian-Syrian union, but it did not last.
What lasted, and served to unite the Arabs, was hatred for Israel. In 1967 Nasser started the Six-Day War against Israel, but was humiliatingly defeated. Now he turned to the Soviets for help…
Alexander Shulman writes: “Nasser often approached the leadership of the USSR requesting that they send Soviet armies to save his country. In December, 1969 Nasser made a secret visit to Moscow for a personal meeting with L. Brezhnev.
“Nasser besought Brezhnev to send to Egypt regular Soviet forces with for air defence and aviation. At a session of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the USSR together with the commanders of the Armed Forces it was decided to satisfy his request…
“The operation to create a group of Soviet armies for Egypt composed of 32,000 military personnel received the name ‘Kavkaz’. It was led by Marshal P.F. Batitsky. In the first days of March, 1970 the armies with their military hardware set off from the port of Nikolaev in an atmosphere of complete secrecy. The men were dressed in civil clothing and had no documents of any kind. A very strict command was given to shoot without hesitation anyone who ‘tried to jump overboard’.”
In July, 1970 the Israeli Armed Forces engaged in battle with Soviet airmen over Suez. In the course of the battle five Soviet MIGs were downed… Undismayed, the Soviets became even more committed to helping their Arab allies…²⁸⁶