Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic ruler of Egypt, died 50 years ago today. During his eighteen years in power, 1952-70, he dominated the Middle East and, even now, he remains an intense topic of interest.
 Beirut's "Al-Akhbar" announced on Sep. 24 that "A Half-Century after His Passing ... Gamal Abdel Nasser Is the Future." |
 The "New York Times" top headline on Sep. 29, 1970. |
A 34-year-old colonel when he took over through a coup d'état in 1952, Nasser was the first indigenous Egyptian to rule the country since the pharaohs. His ambitions were as immense as his ideas were delusional. He overthrew a king and installed an oppressive military rule that still endures 68 years later. He dispossessed grand landlords and small merchants alike, then chased out Levantine entrepreneurs – mainly Italians, Greeks, and Lebanese – who fueled the economy. He persecuted the small but thriving Jewish community of 75,000 to the point that it now consists of 10 (at last count) elderly women.
He aligned with the Soviet Union, industrialized Egypt along Soviet lines, and ruled with post-Stalin-like brutality. Bewitched by the mirage of bringing all Arabic-speaking countries under his control, Nasser unified with some of them and made war with others. More than anyone else, he installed anti-Zionism as the mainstay of Middle Eastern political life and transformed the Palestinian refugee issue into Palestinian irredentism. Along the way, he initiated the Six-Day War of 1967 and dispatched his armed forces to the most lopsided military defeat in recorded history.
Nasser proved to be a master artist of deceit. He pretended to become a civilian while extending the military's monopoly of power over economic, security, legislative, and judicial affairs. He imposed a socialism that administered city buses with two classes of service while enriching his cronies. His mock unity with Syria concealed a crude drive to dominate. His ostensible enmity with Islamists masked a sordid struggle for booty.
I arrived in Egypt a few months after Nasser's demise, in June 1971. It was an exciting time of witness as his successor, Anwar al-Sadat, opened up the country by cutting back on socialism, the Soviet connection, and the foreign adventures. Each day felt brighter than the one before.
And yet, Egypt has never escaped Nasser's legacy. The regime persists in a casual brutality toward dissidents and a dogged hostility to Israel that outlasts the peace treaty signed forty-one years ago. It lags economically, with retired military officers more important than ever and the country unable to feed itself or produce goods the world wants. A population of 100 million stuffs itself almost entirely into the 4 percent of Egypt that comprise the Nile Valley and Nile Delta. Constant expansion onto agricultural land and the prospect of diminished Nile River water portend future crises. Even the famed Egyptian cotton is no more.
 Where Egyptians live; a nighttime NASA photograph from 2010. |
Thus did Egypt slide from its old status as the foremost of twenty Arabic-speaking countries to an afterthought.
Those New York Times headlines symbolized the West's cluelessness about the deeply malign nature of Nasser's rule. Blow to peace efforts? Hardly: only post-Nasser could Sadat yank Egypt away from its debilitating confrontation with Israel. Period of instability? No, Nasser's death removed the region's most disruptive element. Arabs grief-stricken? Some, yes; but many others felt relief.
Egypt's modern history reconfirms that when a country falls into the hands of a despot, the return to normality can take a very long time. Russia, China, and Iraq provide other past examples; Venezuela, North Korea, and Iran provide more current ones.
 Nasser at ease with his soulmate, Fidel Castro. |
Given Egypt's lugubrious immobility under Gamal Abdel Nasser's half-century-long shadow, I pessimistically predict that another fifty years hence, the Egypt of 2070 will yet suffer under his influence. Rulers will come, rulers will go, unable to break the boundaries he set so long ago.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2020 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Sep. 28, 2020 addenda: (1) I include Nasser in my listing of the Middle East's most consequential politicians in the twentieth century, all of whom founded new states: Atatürk (Turkey), Ibn Saud (Saudi Arabia), David Ben Gurion (Israel), Gamal Abdel Nasser (independent Egypt), and Khomeini (Islamist Iran).
(2) Happily, the walloping in 1967 has discredited Nasser among young Egyptians, who today tend to see his rule as an "age of defeats." Inversely, the monarchy is recalled (as expressed by historian Tarek Osman) as "liberal, glamorous, cosmopolitan."
(3) Egypt's current president, Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, confirmed how the regime remains confined by Nasser's legacy when he celebrated Nasser in 2018 as a fighter for social justice, free education, and free healthcare, and as the "leader of national independence who placed Egypt at the center of international attention."
(4) My other writings on Nasser include several book reviews:
- Review of "Nasser's Blessed Movement: Egypt's Free Officers and the July Revolution," by Joel Gordon. Orbis, Spring 1993.
- Review of "Nasser: The Final Years," by Abdel Magid Farid. Middle East Quarterly, June 1995.
- Review of "Ike's Gamble: America's Rise to Dominance in the Middle East," by Michael Doran. Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2017.
(5) Technically speaking, Nasser did not become president of Egypt until 1956, but he was the key figure right from the coup d'état on July 23, 1952, so I refer above to "his eighteen years in power, 1952-70."
