The ghost of Nasser yet to come

Since the funeral of Gamal Abdul Nasser, the Arab masses have never taken to the streets of their major cities as they are doing now. On October 1, 1970, it was to mourn their leader. Now it is to protest against their leaders. Interestingly, though, both instances show the Arab masses can be united and can do things together.

Nasser’s name immediately brings to mind the repossession of the Suez Canal in1956 for the Egyptians after successfully battling against the combined British, French and Israeli forces. But Nasser’s list of achievements runs quite longer. The construction of the massive Aswan high dam was already a major leap forward for Egypt’s economy. It generated electricity, increased agricultural production and averted floods. His agrarian reform did away with the exploitation of the agricultural workers by the landlords and paved the way to a fairer distribution of land ownership. In 1954, he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood, which always enjoyed sizeable support in Egypt. The confrontation with the Brotherhood was inevitable as Nasser stood for a secular society.

But Nasser’s political peak was his grand vision of Arab unity. Quite correctly he saw no reason why the Arabs should accept the political boundaries imposed upon them by the previous colonial powers, defined according to the needs of Britain, France,Italy and Spain. He argued that historically, geographically, and, to a great extent, also culturally, the Arabs are but one nation. Therefore, they should also form one state, extending over 7,000 kilometres from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. By uniting, they would gain economic and political advantages and, ultimately and justifiably, more dignity. He twice initiated a United Arab Republic, first in 1958 and again in 1963. Both prototypes proved short-lived but, then, all prototypes are destined by necessity to be revised.

Anwar Sadat succeeded Nasser but walked a different path. He abandoned the vision of a united Arab front and focused on narrower Egyptian interests. He also departed from Nasser’s policy of neutrality and moved closer to the US and Israel. If this strengthened his position within Egypt it caused resentment among the rest of the Arabs. In 1981, Sadat’s assassination elevated Hosni Mubarak to the throne, only to continue in Sadat’s footsteps.

Egypt’s departure from Nasserism opened the diplomatic path for the West to forge stronger alliances with various Arab governments. For decades, the US, Britain and France asked no questions about dictatorship, mass arrests, torture, detention without trial and the execution of protesters. Some years ago, the US actually subcontracted its torturing activities to Egypt. President Mubarak’s second, Omar Suleiman, was the official responsible for the torturing of suspects who had been kidnapped by the CIA and flown into Egypt. In Saudi Arabia, protesters have been publicly and ritually beheaded on Fridays for ages. Last March 14, the Bahraini government killed and injured dozens of unarmed protesters only hours after US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates had visited Bahrain.

Yet, the West now only pounds Libya because it is not an ally. Not that Muammar Gaddafi has no blood on his hands but each bomb that blasts him also blasts into one’s mind the fact that, in the pantheon of Western capitalist doctrine, hypocrisy is an Olympian god, along with greed and militarism. The intervention is solely profit-motivated.

Meanwhile, the Arab masses are shedding their blood demanding democracy and better social and economic conditions. And this they do in a nasserist way across all the Arab spectrum.

They combat concurrently in their respective countries but they should ultimately reconstruct themselves as one nation. The optimal outcome of the present upheaval would be the creation of a “Nasseriya”, a United Arab Republic. Only the political strength of the Arab masses can bring this about.

It is the “ghost of Nasser yet to come” that haunts the streets of the Arab cities today.