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Lessons of a failed intervention

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Lessons of a failed intervention


By Mahir Ali
ON a midsummer’s day 50 years ago, the new president of Egypt was scheduled to make a speech in Alexandria. Only a handful of Egyptians had any inkling of the bombshell Gamal Abdel Nasser intended to drop during his discourse: namely that the North African country was assuming control of the company — hitherto dominated by French and British interests — responsible for operating the Suez Canal.

The canal, which links the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, had been constructed in the previous century, under colonial rule, by Egyptian workers who laboured in conditions not far removed from slavery. An estimated 120,000 of them had perished while working on the 120-mile artificial waterway, whose construction was overseen by a French company managed by Ferdinand de Lesseps.

On July 26, 1956, a small Egyptian task force had been ordered to listen to Nasser’s speech on the radio. The trigger for action was the president’s mention of de Lesseps. Just to make sure no one missed the reference, Nasser wove the Frenchman into his speech not once but thrice.

The takeover of the Suez Canal company proceeded smoothly enough. The three groups of Egyptians tasked with enforcing it went to the company’s headquarters and announced it had been nationalised. They also told the mainly French and British employees that they had nothing to worry about: their jobs were secure. The strategy didn’t work in the medium term: either of their own volition or under pressure from their governments, the foreign managers, engineers and navigators deserted the Suez and Egypt had to come up with its own work force. It succeeded. The bulk of profits from the extremely lucrative Suez Canal operations no longer ended up in Paris and London.

Nasser’s nationalisation of the canal provoked two kinds of reactions. The Arab world, which had hitherto been wary of the colonels who had overthrown Egypt’s effete, pro-western monarchy in 1952, was electrified by the unanticipated body-blow against neo-colonialism. France and Britain were mortified. The idea of Arabs managing their own interests was anathema to both colonial powers.

The crucial third component of the axis was the young state of Israel, not yet half as powerful as it would become in the decade that followed, but eager nonetheless to spearhead aggression against its neighbours. Granted, the neighbours were none too friendly towards Israel either: the nationalists among them viewed it as an imperialist construct, and Israel’s role in the Suez fiasco would serve only to confirm that impression.

In the tripartite conspiracy to effect regime change in Cairo and reclaim the Suez Canal, France and Israel were as thick as thieves while Britain was a relative outsider, involved in the mission primarily because of its Conservative prime minister, Anthony Eden, who saw in Nasser a reincarnation of Hitler. Or Mussolini. Not many people knew it at the time, but Eden was a sick man on heavy medication; and to combat the side-effects of the medicines, he took more drugs. Some historians suspect this chemical cocktail interfered with his intellectual capacities and rendered him incapable of recognising the folly of his actions, against the advice of most civil servants as well as the intelligence agencies. Eden wasn’t, however, by any means the only British politician to harbour delusions of grandeur about the dwindling British empire.

Until then, as far as the British establishment was concerned, Israel was the likeliest target of a military intervention in the Middle East, primarily because of its raids into Jordan (with Ariel Sharon as the driving force). Suddenly, Israel was an ally, albeit a secret one. The plan was for Israel to invade Sinai, whereupon Britain and France would wade into the fray, ostensibly to separate the belligerents and secure the Suez. The idea was to install a friendlier regime in Cairo, although — as in the case of Iraq nearly half a century later — the western powers had not worked out in any great detail what they would do after the invasion.

Initially, things went according to plan for the aggressors. But only for a while. Eden had failed to convince the US president, Dwight Eisenhower, of the threat posed by Nasser. The US was not in the loop as far as the invasion plan was concerned, and Eisenhower was livid when he found out. The US and the Soviet Union both threw their weight behind a ceasefire call, and the war ground to a halt eight days after it had been launched in late October 1956.

Nasser, having survived, was immediately catapulted to the status of an Arab hero and although his dream of a pan-Arab state was never fulfilled, he remained the most potent symbol of Arab nationalism until the day he died — even after the six-day disaster of 1967, when mass mobilisations across Egypt compelled him to rescind his resignation.

In the shorter term, a little more than a year after Suez, Nasser inaugurated the short-lived United Arab Republic with Syria. Some months later, Iraqi army officers overthrew their country’s pro-British monarchy in a bloody coup, killing King Faisal II and Prime Minister Nuri Said. (Ironically, two years earlier, Eden had been hosting a dinner for Nuri Said on the night Nasser announced his decision to nationalise the Suez; the Iraqi’s advice to his host was “to hit him [Nasser] hard”.) Five years later, the relatively progressive Iraqi regime of Abdul Karim Qassem was in turn overthrown in a coup reputedly supported by the US and spearheaded by the Ba’athists, whose ranks included a brutal young thug by the name of Saddam Hussein al-Takriti.

The Jordanian monarchy barely survived in the face of nationalist pressures: British troops had to shore up King Hussein and his coterie. Lebanon’s pro-western government, meanwhile, was compelled to rely for its survival on US marines.

Britain and France reacted to their Suez humiliation in very different ways. The French prime minister, Guy Mollet, was holding talks with West Germany’s chancellor Konrad Adenauer when Eden called to say he was bowing to US pressure by agreeing to a ceasefire. Adenauer reportedly launched a long anti-American tirade, telling Mollet, “We have no time to waste: Europe will be your revenge.” France eased out of Nato’s military command structure and has maintained a relatively independent foreign policy ever since. Britain, on the other hand, realising at long last that it was no longer a global power, allied itself firmly with the US — a “special relationship” that may have reached its apogee with the deadly Blair-Bush combination.

Israel chose the same path, although it wasn’t until a decade later that its alliance with the US acquired lethal aspects. As borne out by the current aggression against Lebanon, things have now come to such a pass that when Israel behaves like a fascist bully, the US can no longer bring itself to dish out even the mildest form of censure. Instead, it speeds up arms deliveries. And the British prime minister does not dare to dissent significantly from the party line laid down by Washington.

The Suez anniversary has prompted comparisons between Tony Blair and Eden, given that the latter, too, lied to the British public and to parliament in order to cover up the truth about a sordid Middle Eastern misadventure, which he undertook in the face of considerable domestic opposition. There may be some wishful thinking involved in highlighting this parallel, given that Eden was compelled to make way for Harold Macmillan within weeks of the Suez affair — even though written proof of the extent of his involvement in the conspiracy didn’t emerge until decades later.

For all that, given Blair’s determined appeasement of the US and now Israel, it may make more sense to place him in the same category as Neville Chamberlain. A clearer sense of historical realities — in the context of the overall colonial experience, not just Suez — may have deterred him from blundering into Iraq alongside the Americans. He appears, instead, to have fallen for the revisionist myth that British imperialist was, on the whole, a positive experience for those who bore its brunt.

One of the many ironies of the confrontation between the West and Arab nationalism — which continued, in various guises, well into the 1970s — was that many of the nationalists were as vociferously opposed to Islamist trends as the West is today. Nasser, for instance, looked upon the nascent Muslim Brotherhood as a cancerous growth. His preferred response, unfortunately, was ruthless repression, which involved gross violations of human rights and ultimately proved counterproductive. Deploying the force of alternative ideas against them would, in hindsight, probably have proved more fruitful. The fact remains that western organs from the CIA to Mossad encouraged and often funded religious fanatics as a counterweight to the nationalists, Hamas being one of the more recent examples of this phenomenon.

There’s a fair chance that Nasser will be turning in his grave over his portraits being borne aloft by demonstrators in Egypt alongside those of Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah. But perhaps the perpetrators of the Suez conflagration would be even more surprised to discover that so many of their follies are once more in vogue as an Anglo-American (rather than Anglo-French) combine tries in vain to subdue one occupied Arab country while seeking to introduce into another an international force aimed at alleviating Israel’s woes by doing its dirty work for it. As a Vietnam-era American folk song puts it, when will they ever learn?
 
That is sadly what it is. They never learn. History is repeating itself. The Arabs are in dire need of a 'hero' to put it appropriately. They need another Gamal Abdel Nasser!
 
Yeah, it's the fault of all them Jews and Americans and former colonial powers and Tony Blair and the French and George Bush and the Vietnamese and Santa Claws and everyone else on earth EXCEPT.........
 
Salim said:
Ahem!

(clears throat)
I know, I know, but I do wish Neo would actually post his opinions rather than just posting op-eds and maintaining a 'dignified' silence;)
 
You cannot turn your face away from Britain's and France's stained colonial past. The issues they didnt settle back then have come to haunt us all today.

Your mocking view of the region's issues does not help anyone and does not add anything to the discussion on hand.
 
Sid said:
You cannot turn your face away from Britain's and France's stained colonial past. The issues they didnt settle back then have come to haunt us all today.

Your mocking view of the region's issues does not help anyone and does not add anything to the discussion on hand.
What discussion? All I've seen is an op ed-piece. The only discussion on it has been by me.
 
Sid said:
You cannot turn your face away from Britain's and France's stained colonial past. The issues they didnt settle back then have come to haunt us all today.

Your mocking view of the region's issues does not help anyone and does not add anything to the discussion on hand.

Very right and i think after so long they now once again thought to colonise all those regions they had left in quaqmire, wether they colonise these by joing NATO or --------------
 
Oh, and I defy you to name any society that doesn't have a stained past, all of mine do, how about yours? Care to discuss?
 
The emphasis was not on the stained past. It was more on the issues they did not solve when they could've or issues they created; issues that, today have the capacity to turn the entire region in to a blood bath of sorts while pushing us all in to an imminent war. And yet, they refuse to learn.
 
Sid said:
The emphasis was not on the stained past. It was more on the issues they did not solve when they could've or issues they created; issues that, today have the capacity to turn the entire region in to a blood bath of sorts while pushing us all in to an imminent war. And yet, they refuse to learn.
Yes, but nobody in this slaughterous debacle is learning. It's the same old hatreds and emnities now as it was 50, 100 and 1000 years ago. This article IMO is the same old blame game, contributing nothing to any solution.
 
When those who have the ability to chalk out solutions or even impose them as roadmaps and what not, sit back on their laurels, what can a mere article do? It will in the end just always come down to pointing fingers since those who created the mess are not interested in a long lasting solution.
 
Sid said:
When those who have the ability to chalk out solutions or even impose them as roadmaps and what not, sit back on their laurels, what can a mere article do?
I don't know. My society has a habit of making our own solutions, perhaps because of our isolation. For me to sit back and watch the middle east being torn apart again, and see everyone blame/rely on/hold to outside agencies for solutions when those solutions have never worked is anathema to me. :frown:
 
Sid said:
You cannot turn your face away from Britain's and France's stained colonial past. The issues they didnt settle back then have come to haunt us all today.

Your mocking view of the region's issues does not help anyone and does not add anything to the discussion on hand.

It is interesting to note that when the Brits dismantled their Empire, they did a very poor and incomplete job of it. Everywhere they drew lines in the sand has been messy. Israel is just one such example. Iraq and Kuwait is another.
 
Sid said:
You cannot turn your face away from Britain's and France's stained colonial past. The issues they didnt settle back then have come to haunt us all today.

Your mocking view of the region's issues does not help anyone and does not add anything to the discussion on hand.

This article is just a nostalgic piece of sentimental mush to shore up the flagging Arab morale of being at the wrong end of the stick of a tiny country, Israel, which the Arabs united or otherwise, cannot "wipe it off the map" as is so fervently desires and dreams of.

These type of articles do appear in the times of national mourning or vacillation or disunity. The Arab world faces all three in the crisis in Lebanon. To imagine a moribund and impotent Arab world as Lebanon burns, thanks to the adventurism without the wherewithal of the Hizbollah.

It is the height of political and military inexpediency of the Hizbollah and the captive Lebanese govt to aggravate Israel to strike and then helplessly and impotently watch the country in rubble and in flames!

I agree that the Hizb is rocketing Israel, but just compare the devastation. Now, Israel is going in for the big push.

And then what?

If one does not mock the fatuity of the Arabs, then what should one mock?

It is as stupid as it would be for Taiwan to attack China! And Taiwan sure has equal amount of rancour against Communist China as the Hizbs against Israel.

But do you find Taiwan attacking China?

Chinese, on both side of the Straits of Quemoy, are but descendants of Sun Tsu and Confucius. That's where the difference lies. ;)
 

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