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Egypt The Revolution and the Early Years of the New Government: 1952-56
The nine men who had constituted themselves as the Committee
of the Free Officers' Movement and led the 1952 Revolution were
Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser, Major Abd al Hakim Amir,
Lieutenant Colonel Anwar as Sadat, Major Salah Salim, Major Kamal
ad Din Husayn, Wing Commander Gamal Salim, Squadron Leader Hasan
Ibrahim, Major Khalid Muhi ad Din, and Wing Commander Abd al
Latif al Baghdadi. Major Husayn ash Shafii and Lieutenant Colonel
Zakariyya Muhi ad Din joined the committee later.
After the coup, the Free Officers asked Ali Mahir, a previous
prime minister, to head the government. The Free Officers formed
the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), which dictated policy to
the civilian cabinet, abolished all civil titles such as pasha
and bey, and ordered all political parties to purify their ranks
and reconstitute their executive committees.
The RCC elected Muhammad Naguib president and commander in
chief. He was chosen because he was a popular hero of the 1948
Arab-Israeli War and an officer trusted by the army. In 1951 the
Free Officers had elected him as president of the Egyptian Army
Officers Club over the candidate chosen by Faruk. It was
extremely important for the Free Officers to ensure the loyalty
of the army if the coup were to succeed. Naguib was fifty-one
years old; the average age of the other Free Officers was thirty-
three.
The decision made by the Wafd government after the Anglo-
Egyptian Treaty of 1936 to allow sons of nonaristocratic families
into the Military Academy had proved an important one for the
future of Egypt. It meant that men such as Nasser and Sadat were
able to become officers in the army and thus be in a position to
shape events in Egypt. The decision had been made, not to create
a more egalitarian officer corps, but rather to meet a desperate
need for more officers. As it turned out, most members of the
Free Officers' group and all of the original members of the RCC
had entered the Military Academy during the period between 1937
and 1940. The men who profited from this new policy were not from
the poorest families; their families had to have enough money to
send their children to secondary schools. For the most part, they
were from families of moderately prosperous landholders and minor
government officials, who constituted the class of rural
notables.
Nasser himself came from a rural notable family. His father
was from a small village in Upper Egypt and worked as a postal
clerk. In 1915 the senior Nasser moved to Alexandria, where on
January 15, 1918, his first son, Gamal, was born. At the age of
seven, Gamal was sent to Cairo to live with his uncle and to
attend school. He went to a school in Khan al Khalili, the old
quarter of the city near Al Azhar Mosque, where he experienced
firsthand the bustling, crowded quarters of Cairo and the poverty
of many in the city. Between 1933 and 1938, he attended An Nahda
(the Awakening) School in Cairo, where he combined studying with
demonstrating against British and Egyptian politicians. In
November 1935, he marched in demonstrations against the British
and was wounded by a bullet fired by British troops. Identified
as an agitator by the police, he was asked to leave his school.
After a few months in law school, he joined the army.
Nasser desired vehemently to change his country; he believed
that the British and the British-controlled king and politicians
would continue to harm the interests of the majority of the
population. Nasser and the other Free Officers had no particular
desire for a military career, but Nasser had perceived that
military life offered upward mobility and a chance to participate
in shaping the country's future. The Free Officers were united by
their desire to see Egypt freed of British control and a more
equitable government established. Nasser and many of the others
seemed to be attached to no particular political ideology,
although some, such as Khalid Muhi ad Din, were Marxists and a
few sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood. The lack of a
coherent ideology would cause difficulties in the future when
these men set about the task of governing Egypt.
Although Naguib headed the RCC and Mahir the civilian
government, Nasser was the real power behind the RCC. The years
between 1952 and 1954 witnessed a struggle for control of the
government that Nasser ultimately won. The first crisis to face
the new government came in August 1952 with a violent strike
involving more than 10,000 workers at the Misr Company textile
factories at Kafr ad Dawwar in the Delta. Workers attacked and
set fire to part of the premises, destroyed machinery, and
clashed with the police. The army was called in to put down the
strike; several workers lost their lives, and scores were
injured. The RCC set up a special military court that tried the
arrested textile workers. Two were convicted and executed, and
many others were given prison sentences. The regime reacted
quickly and ruthlessly because it had no intention of encouraging
a popular revolution that it could not control. It then arrested
about thirty persons charged with belonging to the outlawed
Communist Party of Egypt (CPE). The Democratic Movement for
National Liberation, a faction of the CPE, reacted by denouncing
the regime as a military dictatorship.
On September 7, Ali Mahir resigned, and Naguib became prime
minister, minister of war, commander in chief, and president of
the RCC. That same month, the RCC passed its first major domestic
measure, the Agrarian Reform Law of 1952. The law was intended to
abolish the power of the absentee landlord class, to encourage
investment in industry, and to build support for the regime. The
law limited landholdings to 200 feddans with the right to
transfer another 100 to wives and children. The owners of the
land requisitioned by the government received about half the
market value of the land at 1951 prices in the form of government
bonds. The land was sold in lots of two to five feddans to
tenants and small farmers owning less than five feddans.
The small farmers had to buy the lots at a price equal to the
compensation paid to the former owner.
The RCC also dealt with labor legislation and education.
Initial legislation raised minimum wages, reduced working hours,
and created more jobs to reduce unemployment. Enforcement of
these measures was lax until the early 1960s, however. In another
effort to reduce unemployment, the RCC instituted a policy of
providing employment in government service for all university
graduates, a practice that swelled the ranks of the bureaucracy
and left many skilled people underused. The government increased
its spending on education with the goal of educating all
citizens. Rent control was established, and the government
undertook construction of housing for workers. These programs
were expanded in the 1960s.
On January 17, 1953, all political parties were dissolved and
banned. A three-year transition period was proclaimed during
which the RCC would rule. On February 10, the Liberation Rally
headed by Nasser was launched to serve as an organization for the
mobilization of popular support for the new government. On June
18, Egypt was declared a republic, and the monarchy was
abolished, ending the rule of Muhammad Ali's dynasty. Naguib
became the first president and also prime minister. Nasser became
deputy prime minister and minister of interior. Other officers
took over other ministries.
Between 1952 and 1954, there was a struggle between Naguib
and Nasser and his colleagues on the RCC for control of the
government and over the future form of the government. Naguib was
to have one vote on the council and was responsible for carrying
out council decisions. He enjoyed considerable popularity, and he
developed his own following after conflicts involving policies
arose between him and the RCC. The conflicts came to a head on
February 23, 1954 when Naguib resigned. The RCC may have been
relieved at this decision, but the popular outcry was so great
that Naguib was reinstated as president of the republic. Nasser,
however, took the position of prime minister, previously held by
Naguib, and remained president of the RCC.
As soon as the Free Officers came to power, their immediate
and major concern was the evacuation of Britain from Egypt. At
first, the Free Officers feared that the British from their
garrison in the Suez Canal Zone might try to intervene on behalf
of the king. However, the British made it clear that they would
not interfere on behalf of the king nor take any action unless
British lives were threatened. Achieving the evacuation of the
British, however, involved two contentious issues--Sudan and the
Suez Canal. Sudan proved to be the easier to resolve. In February
1953, the Egyptian government agreed to a plan for self-
determination for Sudan to be implemented over a three-year
period. The Sudanese opted for independence rather than union
with Egypt.
The issue of the Suez Canal was more complex and linked to
Britain's desire to involve Egypt in the West's Cold War with the
Soviet Union. As early as September 1952, the British government
announced that there was no strategic alternative to the
maintenance of the British base in the canal area. In the opinion
of Anthony Eden, British foreign secretary, Egypt had to fit into
a regional defense system, the Baghdad Pact, and agreement on
this point would have to precede any withdrawal from the canal.
This was the period of pacts directed against the Soviet
Union. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Southeast Asia
Treaty Organization were supposed to contain the Soviet Union in
the west and east. The Baghdad Pact, bringing into alliance
Britain, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq, was supposed to do the
same on the Soviet Union's southern borders. The British
government was attempting to force Egypt to join the alliance by
refusing to discuss evacuation of the Suez Canal base until Egypt
agreed.
Egypt, however, would discuss only evacuation and eventual
administration of the base, and the British slowly realized the
drawbacks of holding the base without Egyptian acquiescence. By
October 1954, Nasser signed an agreement providing for the
withdrawal of all British troops from the base within twenty
months, with the provision that the British base could be
reactivated in the event of an attack on Egypt by an outside
power or an Arab League state or an attack on Turkey.
The agreement gained a mixed reception among Egyptians.
Despite the enthusiasm for ending imperialism, there were those
who criticized Nasser for rewriting the old treaty. Nasser's
chief critics were the communists and the Brotherhood. It was
while Nasser was justifying the canal agreement to a crowd in
Alexandria on October 26, 1954 that a member of the Brotherhood
attempted to kill him. The following day, in a show of courage,
Nasser deliberately exposed himself to crowds in Alexandria, at
stations en route to Cairo and in the capital. In Cairo he was
met by an estimated 200,000 people, his popularity having been
enormously strengthened by this incident.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood had a long history of anti-
British and antiregime activities, its leaders stipulated that
they would work with the Free Officers only if the officers would
agree to Brotherhood objectives. Because the Brotherhood would
not refrain from opposing the RCC, Nasser had outlawed the
organization in February 1954. Naguib had always had a certain
sympathy for the Brotherhood, and its leaders implicated him in
the attack on Nasser. It is doubtful that he had any connection
with the attack, but it gave Nasser the pretext he needed to
remove Naguib from the presidency, and he did so in November.
In February 1955, Eden visited Cairo seeking again to
persuade Nasser to join the Baghdad Pact. Nasser again refused.
Many Egyptians were skeptical of Britain's intentions and
believed that membership in the pact would amount to trading one
form of British domination for another. In addition, however,
Nasser was increasingly attracted to the Nonaligned Movement that
eschewed membership in either the Western or the Soviet camp.
Nasser was no particular friend of the Soviet Union, and the
Communist Party remained outlawed in Egypt. It was Western
imperialism and colonialism, however, that Egypt had been
struggling against.
Nasser also had become an admirer and friend of President
Marshal Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru of India. Tito had survived by aligning himself
neither with the West nor with the Soviet Union. Together, he and
Nasser developed the concept of nonalignment, which entailed
avoiding both pro- and anti-Soviet pacts but did not prevent them
from purchasing arms or receiving aid from either bloc.
Nevertheless, the West, particularly the United States, expected
Third World countries to support the West in return for both arms
and aid, as Nasser was soon to learn.
A turning point for Nasser was the Conference of the
Nonaligned Movement in Bandung, Indonesia in April 1955. There he
found himself the center of attention as a Third World leader,
accepted as a colleague by Chinese premier Chou En Lai, and
greeted by crowds in the streets. Egyptian participation in the
conference, along with other former colonies such as India,
symbolized not only the new postcolonial world order but also
Egypt's own independence.
Another turning point for Nasser came in February 1955 when
he became convinced that Egypt had to arm to defend itself
against Israel. This decision put him on a collision course with
the West that ended on the battlefields of Suez a year later. In
February 1955, the Israeli army attacked Egyptian military
outposts in Gaza. Thirty-nine Egyptians were killed. Until then,
this had been Israel's least troublesome frontier. Since the end
of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt's leaders, from King Faruk to
Nasser, had avoided militant attitudes on the ground that Israel
should not distract Egypt from domestic problems. Nasser made no
serious attempt to narrow Israel's rapidly widening armaments
lead. He preferred to spend Egypt's meager hard currency reserves
on development.
Israel's raid on Gaza changed Nasser's mind, however. At
first he sought Western aid, but he was rebuffed by the United
States, France, and Britain. The United States government,
especially the passionately anticommunist Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles, clearly disapproved of Egypt's nonalignment and
would make it difficult for Egypt to purchase arms. The French
demanded that Egypt cease aiding the Algerian national movement,
which was fighting for independence from France. The British
warned Nasser that if he accepted Soviet weapons, none would be
forthcoming from Britain.
Rejected in this shortsighted way by the West, Nasser
negotiated the famous arms agreement with Czechoslovakia in
September 1955. This agreement marked the Soviet Union's first
great breakthrough in its effort to undermine Western influence
in the Middle East. Egypt received no arms from the West and
eventually became dependent on arms from the Soviet Union.
Relations between Nasser and the West reached a crisis over
plans to finance the Aswan High Dam. Construction of the dam was
one of the earliest decisions of the Free Officers. It would
increase both electrical generating power and irrigated land
area. It would serve industry and agriculture and symbolize the
new Egypt. The United States agreed to give Egypt an
unconditional loan of US$56 million, and Britain agreed to lend
Egypt US$14. The British loan was contingent on the American
loan. The
World Bank (see Glossary)
also agreed to lend Egypt an
additional US$200 million. The World Bank loan stipulated that
Egypt's budget be supervised by World Bank officials. To Nasser
these conditions were insulting and were reminiscent of Europe's
control over Egypt's finances in the 1870s.
While Nasser admitted to doubts about the West's sincerity,
the United States became incensed over Egypt's decision to
recognize communist China. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was
offering aid to Egypt in several forms, including a loan to
finance the Aswan High Dam. Then, on July 19, the United States
withdrew its loan offer, and Britain and the World Bank followed
suit. Nasser was returning to Cairo from a meeting with President
Tito and Prime Minister Nehru when he heard the news. He was
furious and decided to retaliate with an action that shocked the
West and made him the hero of the Arabs.
On July 26, 1956, the fourth anniversary of King Faruk's
exile, Nasser appeared in Muhammad Ali Square in Alexandria where
twenty months earlier an assassin had attempted to kill him. An
immense crowd gathered, and he began a three-hour speech from a
few notes jotted on the back of an envelope. When Nasser said the
code word, "de Lesseps," it was the signal for engineer Mahmud
Yunis to begin the takeover of the Suez Canal.
The canal's owner was the Suez Canal Company, an
international company with headquarters in Paris. Anthony Eden,
then British prime minister, called the nationalization of the
canal "theft," and United States secretary of state Dulles said
Nasser would have to be made to "disgorge" it. The French and
British depended heavily on the canal for transporting oil
supplies, and they felt that Nasser had become a threat to their
remaining interests in the Middle East and Africa. Eden wanted to
launch a military action immediately but was informed that
Britain was not in a position to do so. Both France and Britain
froze Egyptian assets in their countries and increased their
military preparedness in the eastern Mediterranean.
Egypt promised to compensate the stockholders of the Suez
Canal Company and to guarantee right of access to all ships, so
it was difficult for the French and British to rally
international support to regain the canal by force. The Soviet
Union, its East European allies, and Third World countries
generally supported Egypt. The United States moved farther away
from Britain and stated that while it opposed the nationalization
of the canal, it was against the use of force.
What followed was the invasion of Egypt by Britain, France,
and Israel, an action known as the Tripartite Invasion or the
1956 War. Whereas the truth about the invasion eventually became
known, at the time the Conservative government in London denied
that it used Israel as an excuse for attacking Egypt. Eden, who
had an intense personal dislike for Nasser, concealed the
cooperation with Israel from his colleagues, British diplomats,
and the United States.
The plan, which was supposed to enable Britain and France to
gain physical control of the canal, called for Israel to attack
across the Sinai Desert. When Israel neared the canal, Britain
and France would issue an ultimatum for an Egyptian and Israeli
withdrawal from both sides of the canal. An Anglo-French force
would then occupy the canal to prevent further fighting and to
keep it open to shipping. Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion
agreed to the plan but informed Britain that Israel would not
attack unless Britain and France first destroyed the Egyptian air
force.
On October 28, Israeli troops crossed the frontier into the
Sinai Peninsula (also seen as Sinai), allegedly to destroy the
bases of Egyptian commandos. The first sign of collusion between
Israel and Britain and France came on the same day when the
Anglo-French ultimatum was handed to Egypt and Israel before
Israel had even reached the canal. British bombing destroyed the
Egyptian air force, and British and French paratroopers were
dropped over Port Said and Port Fuad. The Egyptians put up fierce
resistance. Ships were sunk in the canal to prevent transit. In
the battle for Port Said, about 2,700 Egyptian civilians and
soldiers were killed or wounded
(see The 1956 War
, ch. 5).
Although it was invaded and occupied for a time, Egypt can
claim to have emerged the victor. There was almost universal
condemnation of the Tripartite Invasion. The Soviet Union
threatened Britain and France with a rocket attack if they did
not withdraw. The United States, angered because it had not been
informed by its allies of the invasion, realized it could not
allow the Soviet Union to appear as the champion of the Third
World against Western imperialism. Thus, the United States put
pressure on the British and French to withdraw. Faced with almost
total opposition to the invasion, the anger of the United States,
and the threat of the collapse of the pound sterling, the British
agreed to withdraw. Severely condemned, Britain and France
accepted a cease-fire on November 6, as their troops were poised
to advance the length of the canal. The final evacuation took
place on December 22.
Israel, which occupied all of Sinai, was reluctant to
withdraw. President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States
placed great pressure on Israel to give up all its territorial
acquisitions and even threatened sanctions. The Israelis did
withdraw from Sinai, but they carried out a scorched earth
policy, destroying roads, railroads, and military installations
as they went.
A United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was established and
began arriving in Egypt on November 21. The troops were stationed
on the Egyptian side of the Egyptian-Israeli border as well as
along the eastern coast of Sinai. Israel refused to allow UN
troops on its territory. The UN troops were stationed on the Gulf
of Aqaba to ensure the free passage of Israeli shipping to Elat.
The troops remained in Egypt until 1967, when their removal
contributed to the outbreak of the June 1967 War.
Egypt reopened the canal to shipping in April and ran it
smoothly. It was open to all ships except those of Israel, and it
remained open until the June 1967 War (Arab-Israeli war, also
known as the Six-Day War). Diplomatic relations between Egypt and
Britain were not restored until 1969.
Nasser had won a significant victory. The immediate effect
was that Britain and France were finally out of Egypt. Nasser
went on to nationalize all other British and French assets in
Egypt. The Egyptians now had full control of the canal and its
revenues. The Suez crisis also made Nasser the hero of the Arab
world, a man who had stood up to Western imperialism and had
prevailed.
In response to his increased prestige, Nasser emphasized the
Arab character of Egypt and its leadership role in the Arab
world. He had always had a concern for Arab causes, as shown by
his volunteering to fight in Palestine in 1948, but now this
tendency was amplified. His Egyptian nationalism became Arab
nationalism when he decided that if the Arab countries worked
together, they would have the resources to solve their individual
problems. In addition, the move toward nationalization, which
started with French and British assets, continued in Egypt and
became a cornerstone of Nasser's administration.
Another result of the 1956 events was the increased Soviet
influence in Egypt stemming from the Soviet financing of the
Aswan High Dam construction and Soviet arms sales to Egypt. Thus,
Egypt became the cornerstone of the Soviet Union's Middle East
policy.
Data as of December 1990
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