Modern Arab nationalism doesn’t begin with Gamal Abdel Nasser✲, but the charismatic Egyptian politician’s bold and assertive leadership in the 1950s provided inspiration and the impetus to give the movement a particular vigour and purpose.

Egyptian hegemony under Nasser?

In 1952 the Egyptian “Free Officers’ Corps” (with Nasser in the driver’s seat) launched a coup, deposing the Egyptian ruler, King Farouk, and installing General Mohamed Naguib as prime minister. The following year the Egyptian-Sudanese monarchy was irrevocably abolished and guided by Nasser, a republic was established. In 1954 Naguib was cast aside and Nasser assumed full control as prime minster and later president. The new Egyptian ruler (Egypt’s first leader NOT emanating from the country’s elite), with a clear nationalistic agenda was determined to rid Egypt of foreign interference, especially from the old colonial European powers.

 Nasserist brand of Pan-Arabism  

Nasser, a passionate Pan-Arabist, had aspirations beyond Egypt’s national borders and was evolving a strategy for unifying the Arab world in a common struggle against the European colonial powers. One of the first tasks tackled by Nasser was to try to ingrain in his fellow countrymen and women a sense of their unique Arab identity. Accordingly, the national constitution was amended to state that Egypt was an Arab state (as well as a socialist state). The choice of the name “United Arab Republic” in 1958 imported this theme to countries outside of Egypt. To Nasser’s mind, an instrumental factor in unifying the Arab world was a common commitment to the liberation of Palestine [‘Arab Unity: Nasser’s Revolution’, Al Jazeera, 20-Jun-2008, www.aljeera.com].

On the home front Nasser introduced socialist policies, pursuing wide-reaching land reforms to lift Egyptians out of the depths of poverty. The Aswan Dam project was a key component of the reforms with the US committing itself (with the UK) to finance the massive enterprise. The prevailing Cold War intervened at this juncture with Washington reneging on its promise of aid for the project, citing Nasser’s dalliance with the Soviet Union as it’s reason [‘1956: United States withdraws offer of aid for Aswan Dam’, www.history.com].

Suez Crisis

The USSR duly rushed in to fill the void left by the US, offering to provide Egypt with the required finance. Nasser’s annoyance at the sudden US pullout led to an audacious  unilateral action in retaliation…he nationalised the Suez Canal. France (owners of the Suez Canal Co) and Britain (the major shareholder) responded by invading the canal in unison with Israel. The US, outmanoeuvred, refused to join in. The ensuing action saw the combined forces inflicting a military loss on Egypt, however under US and UN pressure they were forced to withdraw by 1957. France and Britain emerged from the episode as weakened powers and US relations with the Middle East also took a hit. The diplomatic upshot was a political victory for Nasser.

The Egyptian president, having stood up to the colonial powers, emerged from the conflict with an enhanced reputation as the strongman of the Arab world. Nasser’s  example inspired Arabs in other states to act, such as the 1958 Iraqi Free Officers’ coup d’état against the Hashemite monarchy; radical elements within Lebanon taking on the status quo regime (the 1958 Civil War) [Al Jazeera, op.cit.].

Groundswell for union

During the 1950s Syria underwent an upsurge of support for Arab unity…at the national conference in 1956, Syrian political parties endorsed union with Egypt, concurring with the view that any bilateral agreement between the countries should include economic, political and cultural affairs [Palmer, M. (1966). ‘The United Arab Republic: An Assessment of Its Failure’. Middle East Journal, 20(1), 50-67. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4323954]. Observers at the time noted that the Syrian government  “made all the running” for union. Such was Nasser’s stature and charisma within the Middle East that the incumbent Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli was happy to stand aside for Nasser to be anointed president of the unified republic [T. R. L. (1958). ‘The Meaning of the United Arab Republic’. The World Today, 14(3), 93-101. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40393828].

Nasser’s first UAR cabinet ⟰ 

For his part, Nasser was initially cool on the idea of unification, his concern was  that the two states had quite different political systems and experiences …Nasser’s preference at this time apparently was for a federation [Al Jazeera, op.cit.]. Under urging from the Syrian politicians Nasser eventually came round to the union idea☯.

UAR Flag (1958-61) ⟰ 

On the 1st of February 1958 the United Arab Republic (UAR) was proclaimed in Cairo with due fanfare (under the banner of “one flag, one army, and one people”).  Nasser was confirmed as president of the new republic by referendum involving both Egyptians and Syrians. Nasser’s special position as primus inter pares (“first among equals”) was shown in his being given sole selection of the membership of the UAR’s joint assembly [ibid.]. In 1959 Nasser absorbed the Gaza Strip into the UAR.

⟰ North Yemen – at the southernmost tip of the Arabian Peninsula

UAR/MKY alliance

Later in the same year as UAR formed, the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen (MKY) (North Yemen) joined the Syrian-Egyptian union (which had been preceded by a defence pact between North Yemen and Egypt). The new association was called the United Arab States (UAS). The Yemeni motives for allying itself with the UAR were security concerns about it’s larger neighbour Saudi Arabia. North Yemen and Saudi Arabia had fought an war in 1934 over territory and there was still an undemarcated border situation between the two states. The UAS, a different beast to the UAR, was a loose confederation of states only, MKY retained its sovereign independence and its separate UN membership and embassies for the duration of the confederation – which in any case, like the UAR, only lasted a short period❇.

⟱ North Yemen flag

Rivalry and suspicions: Rifts in the unitary socialist republic 

What harmony there was in the Syrian-Egyptian union at its onset, did not last long. Egypt dominated the UAR, producing a grossly unequal partnership. With Cairo chosen as the UAR capital, Damascus, Syria’s traditional capital, was downgraded to provincial status only. Syria’s leading politicians were required therefore to live in Cairo, which isolated them from what was happening back in their home country.

Syrians across the board had cause to be disgruntled with life under the lop-sided union. Those now working for the UAR government found themselves on lower salaries than they had been as Syrian government employees. The three years of the UAR saw a succession of failures of the Syrian food harvest – resulting in hikes in the price of foods for locals [Arthur Goldschmidt Jr, The Middle East: Formation of a Nation State, (2004)].

With the new administrative structure in place, many Egyptian military and civilian personnel were ‘parachuted’ into Syria, taking over the important public offices that had been filled by local (Syrian) staff. This greviance was compounded by the high-handed, imperial attitudes of many Egyptians towards the Syrian population (as typified by Nasser’s right-hand man in Syria, Abd al-Hakim Amir) [ibid.].

⟰ A Syrian issue stamp celebrating the formation of the UAR

Another factor adding to Syrians’ dillusionment with UAR was that after three years everyone had come to the realisation that Iraq and the other oil-rich countries were not going to join the union [Goldschmidt, loc.cit.].

Nasser reshaped Syria’s political setup to mirror that of Egypt. Syria’s assortment of political parties were abolished and replaced with a single political instrument (the unicameral National Union) to match Egypt’s one-party state.

Many sectors of society found axes to grind with the new system – Nasser’s sweeping land reforms angered landlords, as his program of nationalisation did for business interests (in Egypt as well) [‘Egypt: Nasser and Arab nationalism’, The Socialist, 08-Apr-2011, www.thesocialist.org.au].

Syria formally disengaged from the UAR in September 1961…despite this Egypt however retained the union name “United Arab Republic” for itself until 1971.

Conservative Arab response to Nasser and proxy Cold War

The advent of Nasser’s left-leaning Arab union prompted an instant reaction from the conservative Hashemite monarchies of Iraq and Jordan (until 1949 Transjordan). In February 1958 King-cousins Faisal II (Iraq) and Hussein (Jordan) formed the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan (AFIJ) as a buffer against the rise of Nasserism. AFIJ, more a confederation of kingdoms than a unification, and UAR, represented two very different versions of Arab nationalism❂. At the same time the two Arab federations, sparring against each other ideologically, were also arranged as surrogates for the Cold War. Monarchist Iraq, the senior partner in AFIJ, took a position opposite Egypt with a clear orientation toward the West, aligning itself with the UK, and with Turkey, Iran and Pakistan as regional cogs in the American stratagem of trying to contain Soviet expansion. In contrast, Egypt, through the acquisition of economic and military aid and friendship agreements, was moving closer to the Soviet Bloc, while professing an orientation towards the Non-Aligned Movement [‘Arab Federation’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

⟰ Arab Federation of Iraq & Jordan

The Arab Federation bound Iraq and Jordan together in defence and foreign policy while leaving the running of domestic affairs to each country. Though Iraq was clearly the ascendant party in the confederation, it didn’t repeat the Egyptian mistake of making the partnership too one-sided…there were more cabinet posts in AFIJ for Jordan and Amman was allowed to retain its status as a union capital, although Baghdad was de facto the centre of the confederation [Juan Romero (2015), ‘Arab Nationalism and the Arab Union of 1958’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 42:2, 179-199, DOI: 10.1080/13530194.2014.994317].

”14th July Revolution”

As things transpired AFIJ didn’t get a chance to demonstrate if it could become an effective regional force in the Middle East. In July 1958 an Iraqi Free Officers coup led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew the monarchy and executed Faisal and some of his senior ministers. The Sunni Arab coup leaders, drawing inspiration from Pan-Arabism and Nasser’s 1952 Egyptian coup, acted (they said) “to liberate the Iraqi people from domination by a corrupt group put in power by imperialism” (the dissidents’ perception was that the monarchy under Faisal had associated its interests too closely with Britain and the US) [1958: Coup in Iraq sparks jitters in Middle East’, ‘This Day – 14 July’, (BBC Home) www.news.bbc.co.uk/]. The Hashemite kingdom was abolished and Iraq was declared a republic.

PostScript: Arab federation redux

In the 1970s Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi tried several times to resurrect the idea of union in the region, first proposing a Federation of Arab Republics (FAR) in 1971◚. Comprising Libya, Egypt and Syria, the proposed merger was approved by referenda in all three countries, but in working through the details the “member states” couldn’t agree on the specific terms of the merger. The union was never implemented and remained effectively stillborn (however the federation was not formally revoked until 1977). The leaders, especially Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat, didn’t follow through because they thought Gaddafi was too radical in his aims [‘The Federation of Arab Republics’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Gaddafi refloated the concept in 1974 with the Maghreb countries to Libya’s west. Agreement (the Djerba Declaration) was reached between Libya and Tunisia to establish the Arab Islamic Republic (AIR) [‘Arab Islamic Republic ’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Tunisia’s leader Habib Bourguiba’s idea was of a confederation that retained the identity of each sovereign entity…which was at odds with Gaddafi’s notion of an seamless, homogeneous “revolutionary movement”.  Algeria and Morocco were later included in the proposed AIR but again the idea never got airborne※. 

There were a number of other Libyan-led proposed “Federations of Arab Republics” during the Seventies (with various combinations of states some of which included Sudan, Syria and Iraq), but all with the same result of not leading to anything tangible.

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Endnote: Common purposes and individual priorities 

The idea and actuality of an “Arab League” predates the rise of Nasser by some 13 years. The original such organisation, the League of Arab States was founded in 1945 with an focus on developing cooperation between Arab states re economic matters, post-colonialism, resolving disputes and coordinating political aims [‘Arab League’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. This last objective has proved wholly elusive given the key different orientations of Arab nationalism of the states of the Middle East◈. Largely because of this, the various Arab federations of the 1950s to the 1970s ultimately failed to deliver on their raison d’etre as vehicles for Pan-Arabism or Arab nationalism.

Flag of the League of Arab States  ⟱

 

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✲ the seeds of modern Arab nationalism were sown during the Ottoman Empire and the sentiment intensified among Arabs as the empire’s decline gathered pace in the early part of the 20th century culminating in the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule during WWI

☯ the two main status quo political groupings within Syria had their own, separate reasons – Syrian army officers of a pro-Nasserist bent naturally sought to be unified under the Egyptian president, while the rival socialist Ba’ath Party was fearful of internal communist insurgency and thought that merger with Nasser’s Egypt would head off the communists’ challenge and the same time allow them to stay in power in Syria [WL Cleveland & M Bunton, A History Of The Modern Middle East, (4th Ed, 2009)]

❇ the withdrawal of MKY from the Arab Union didn’t end Nasser’s involvement with Yemen. When civil war broke out in North Yemen in 1962 Nasser committed  over 70,000 Egyptian troops to fight with  the Yemeni republicans in the five-year long war against the monarchy

❂ the creation of the Hashemite conferation in fact intensified the Iraqi-Egyptian rivalry [Romero, loc.cit]

◚ once again Nasser was the model exemplar for an aspiring Pan-Arabist leader…Gaddafi followed the Nasser blueprint, seizing power from the enfeebled Libyan monarchy in 1969 through a “free officers’” movement. He formed a one-party Socialist Union in Libya (á la Nasser) and in public repeatedly espoused the broad objectives of Arab nationalism

※ Bourguiba wanted a regional alliance with Gaddafi (not a de facto absorption) …strategically he envisaged Libya as a buffer against potential threats posed by Egypt [‘Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’, (MJ Deeb), in The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa, DE Long and B Reich (Eds.) (4th ed. 2008)]

◈ the historic, default common cause for unity among the Arab states – the need to establish a permanent Palestinian state and homeland – has only occasionally got beyond the realm of rhetoric when the vested self-interests of individual Arab countries are on the table