Forty-seven years ago, after Egypt successfully and decisively brought to an end a fratricidal armed confrontation between the Jordanian army and the Palestine Liberation Army by hosting an emergency Arab summit called for by late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, and after Egypt erected, in record time, one of the most advanced air defence systems along the Suez Canal front, to neutralise the air superiority of the Israeli Air Force, TV screens, minutes before 10 o’clock in the evening, went black and viewers began listening to verses from the Holy Quran, a sign that sinister news would be announced, soon. At 10, on 28 September 1970, then vice-president Anwar Al-Sadat appeared on our TV sets. Before uttering a single word, Egyptians surmised what he would announce: the earth-shaking news of the death of president Gamal Abdel- Nasser.
Minutes later, streets all over Egypt were thronged by millions of Egyptians mourning the historic figure that had led a revolution on 23 July 1952, and had steered Egypt on a path of unprecedented modernisation that encompassed everything from the political to the economic to the social to the cultural, let alone the field of foreign policy. On the streets of Cairo, tens of thousands of ordinary Egyptians flocked to the residence of president Nasser, covering long distances, in disbelief that the historic figure that led Egypt for 18 years departed from the scene, suddenly. They had wanted to lead the war against Israel and liberate Sinai from the Israeli occupation that dated back the June aggression of 1967.
From 28 September to 2 October, the date of the official and popular funeral, time stood still. The funeral itself was unprecedented in the history of Egypt, and the nearest one, worldwide, was Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral in the late 1940s. No one in the country wondered what would be next. Not because the question was of no interest, but rather, they had taken for granted that whoever Nasser’s successor would be, he would stick to the main policies followed in the years past, domestically, regionally and internationally. And that he would continue the war against Israel till the total liberation of Sinai. They believed that the power structures of the July Revolution would remain untouched.
To ensure a smooth transition of power, and assure the political stability of the country preparing itself for a decisive war when the Egyptian military would be ready to storm the Suez Canal, Sadat was chosen to succeed president Nasser. Most Egyptians had not received the decision well. They had a premonition that picking him for the presidential office, particularly after a towering figure like Nasser, was not the right decision. There were others among the Free Officers movement who could have been picked, even after they left their posts, among them Abdel-Latif Al-Bagdhadi, a former vice-president, or Zakariya Mohieddin, a former prime minister.
In his acceptance speech before the National Assembly, of which he had been the speaker for some years before his appointment as vice-president in 1969, Sadat vowed to follow the path taken by Nasser. He left no doubt in the minds of all those listening to him, inside and outside of Egypt, that he would respect Nasser’s legacy. After all, both of them came from the Free Officers movement that had toppled the Egyptian monarchy in 1952.
Less than a year after the acceptance speech, president Sadat launched what he called the “rectification revolution” of 15 May 1971, in which he got rid of all his peers in the Revolutionary Command Council of 1952, and in the Higher Executive Committee of the ruling political organisation. It is said that Nasser inaugurated one-man rule in the country despite the fact that he ruled by consensus through various levers of power. But if there is any one to accuse of introducing one-man rule, it is president Sadat after 1971. From that date onwards, and till his assassination on 6 October 1981 by the very political forces he unleashed after 1971, he remained the sole ruler of the country, even in the presence of political parties he had allowed to emerge in 1976. He once told our former ambassador to Washington, the late Ashraf Ghorbal, that he was the one who introduced democracy into Egypt, and that allowed him to govern unchecked. Sadat once said that his version of democracy had “claws”, whatever that meant.
Concomitantly with the palace coup of May 1971, Sadat faced the progressives, the leftists and all those who defended the July Revolution, particularly on campuses all over Egypt. These represented a force to reckon with and so there should be a way to neutralise them, forever. The only force that could make a difference, and had a chance to be listened to on the streets, was what would be later labelled “political Islam”, spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood whose exiled leaders in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf flocked back to Egypt. In the meantime, he allowed the militant students of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya to grow in numbers and influence in the universities, to fight their colleagues of a different political ideology. The universities became scenes of pitched battles between the two camps, and slowly and gradually, not only the campuses but society as a whole became gripped in this face-off between the forces of progress and the forces of extremism and fundamentalism. Religiously-inspired terrorism goes back to the Sadat era. It has become a scourge that has afflicted Egypt ever since. Sadat chose a counterproductive and destructive way to gain in legitimacy, different from that of Nasser. His choices cost Egypt tremendously.
Once the October War was over, Sadat’s Egypt continued to break with the Nasser era in the field of foreign policy. After the signing of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 26 March 1979, Egypt cut loose from its Arab alliances and chose to throw its lot in the American orbit. As a result, new power centres emerged within the Arab world that have been competing ever since. To make matters worse, Israel is still building settlements in the West Bank and is still occupying the Syrian Golan Heights. The promise of a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East has remained elusive.
According to the personal memoirs of Mahmoud Riad, Egypt’s former foreign minister during the Israeli aggression of 1967, the United States had approached Egypt in 1968 and offered the restitution of Sinai, totally, to Egypt, in return for Egyptian disengagement from the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as the Palestinian problem. When outlined to President Nasser, he declined, stressing that Sinai would be liberated by force. He added that Egypt could not possibly regain Sinai and leave other Arab territories under Israeli occupation. What was implicit in Nasser’s position was that Egypt is always stronger with active engagement with Arab powers, and much weaker and less free and independent if it decides to live within its frontiers.
During the last 47 years, Egypt has dramatically changed course from that followed under president Nasser. This change of course entailed new political alliances within Egypt and outside that have not delivered. On the contrary, these domestic and foreign alliances have made Egypt weak economically, dependent on American and foreign assistance with mushrooming domestic and foreign debts that have reached the astronomical figure of four trillion Egyptian pounds. Also, the role of Egypt as balancer and the Arab and regional countervailing power against regional behemoths Israel, Turkey and Iran, has been disastrously curtailed to the strategic disadvantage of Egyptian national and vital interests.
In commemorating the 47th anniversary of the departure of president Gamal Abdel- Nasser, it behooves us to reflect on the distances covered since, and draw the proper conclusions to steer Egypt on the path of the ideals of good governance that inspired president Nasser.
Undoubtedly, president Nasser will remain a source of inspiration for many generations to come, despite fierce and ruthless attacks that have been unleashed to target his person and his heritage. Such attacks, masterminded by the Egyptian right and extreme right (the latter embodied by political Islam), and the two in alliance, aim to keep Egypt in the throes of crony capitalism that has led Egypt nowhere.
And before concluding, I would like to emphasise that the popular demonstrations that erupted 10 June 1967 after president Nasser announced on TV that he would step down were not orchestrated by the government, nor by the Socialist Union. At the time, I was a young commanding officer in the Socialist Youth Organisation. We had been mobilised on the streets of Cairo, and everywhere in Egypt, carrying weapons to defend the country against any possible Israeli advance towards the capital. We were taken by surprise by the outpouring of popular support to president Nasser. I write this testimony because a former foreign minister has just published his personal memoirs in which he claimed that these demonstrations were premeditated — a claim that runs counter to the facts as I personally witnessed them.
Rest in peace, dear president Nasser. You will always be in our hearts.
*The writer is former assistant to the foreign minister.
*This Article was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: