Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
165. The Suez Crisis of 1956 - 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
World War II (1939-45) intervened and Egypt once again became the prize that was sought after by the axis powers and the allies alike. In 1942, the German Afrika Corps under Rommel advanced across North Africa. Their target was the Canal zone. The goal was to cut off the allied forces in the Far East from European supply lines. At the historic battle of El Alamein, a large allied army of British, Indian, Australian and New Zealand troops led by Montgomery stopped Rommel and compelled him to withdraw. This was a decisive turning point in the War.
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the United States was dragged into the War. The Japanese quickly overran the European colonies in Hong Kong, Indo-China, Singapore, Malaya, Indonesia and Burma. The aura of European invincibility was punctured and many in the Asian colonies saw in the Japanese victories a glimmer of hope for their own independence.
Germany surrendered in May 1945. Japan was bombed into submission by the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The long and grueling War left the British, French and other colonial powers exhausted. The naval uprising of the Indian navy in February 1946 convinced the British that the Indian army was no longer a reliable partner in its global colonial venture. India was granted independence in August 1947. The Dutch were driven out of Indonesia by the nationalist forces under Sukarno in 1948. The French tried to hang onto Indo-China but suffered a humiliating defeat at the battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954) and withdrew in ignominy, opening the door to direct American intervention.
The Second World War redefined equations of global power and let loose forces of far reaching historical import. The persecution of the Jews by Hitler generated support for political Zionism in the United States. Palestine was partitioned and the state of Israel came into being in 1948. Warfare erupted between the Arab states and Israel (1948-49) in which Israel was victorious while the Arabs felt betrayed and humiliated. This, in turn, fostered resentment of the West in Arab lands. Millions of Palestinians were dispersed throughout the Arab world as refugees, creating a perpetual source of tension and instability in the Middle East.
The Second World War and the triumph of the state of Israel unleashed powerful forces of nationalism in the Arab world which challenged at once the hegemony of the West and the established political order based on monarchies. In 1951, the Egyptian parliament revoked the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. The British responded by attacking Ismailia and occupying the Canal zone. Riots broke out in Alexandria and European properties were damaged. In retaliation, the British threatened to occupy Cairo. To placate the European powers, an alarmed King Farouk of Egypt dismissed Nahas Pasha, the leader of the ruling nationalist party and dissolved the parliament. More riots followed, and in July 1952 an officer’s revolt eliminated the monarchy and drove King Farouk into exile. General Naguib became the Prime Minister of Egypt. Under Naguib the Anglo Egyptian Treaty of 1936 was renegotiated for seven years with the provision that British troops would leave Egypt by 1956. The Canal was to be open to all international shipping.
In 1954, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser forced out Naguib and became the de facto ruler. Nasser was a firebrand nationalist, a fervent promoter of Pan-Arabism and undoubtedly one of the prime movers of Middle Eastern history in the post-war years. His ambitious agenda included forcing the British out of the Canal Zone, modernizing Egypt and the unification of the Arab states into a single federation. This agenda was at odds with the agenda of the British who sought to maintain a permanent presence in Egypt and that of Israel, which perceived a unified Arab state as an existential threat to its survival. To prevent this, Israel sought continuing political-military dominance over the Arabs. As for France, it was busy suppressing a bloody war of independence in Algeria, which it claimed as an integral part of France, and saw in Arab nationalism a threat to its long-term national interests in Africa.
Nasser sought British arms to modernize his armed forces. Fearing a backlash from Israel, the British refused. The cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union was at its height. So Nasser turned to the Soviets for political and military support. The Soviets saw an opportunity to penetrate the strategic Middle East and gladly obliged. The arms deal upset the Western powers and they armed Israel to more than offset the flow of Soviet arms to Gamal Abdel Nasser and maintain a qualitative military balance of power in favor of Israel.
The destiny of Egypt is defined by the River Nile. Indeed, it is said that Egypt is the Nile and the Nile is Egypt. The annual floods from the Nile inundated the lower delta, devastating the land and causing considerable loss of life and property. To tame the mighty river and regulate its flow, Nasser proposed building a high dam at Aswan. Financing was required and Nasser appealed for help from the World Bank. The Eisenhower administration was at first disposed to assist and offer a loan. But the Egyptian arms deal with the Soviets alarmed Washington, and the offer of aid for the Aswan high dam was withdrawn. The British followed suit and refused to finance the project. That was in January 1956.
Events now moved rapidly towards a showdown between Egypt and the Western powers. To raise money for the Aswan High Dam, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956. Even as world capitals buzzed with high level diplomatic activity to avoid a crisis, Eden, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, decided to use military force to topple Nasser and contain Arab nationalism. This plan was in consonance with the strategic interest of both France and Israel and they joined in. At a secret meeting held at Sevres, France in October 1956, the prime ministers of UK, France and Israel, Eden, Mollet and Ben Gurion, drew up a plan for combined military action. Under the plan, Israel would attack Egypt. France and the United Kingdom would then intervene, presumably to separate the warring parties and occupy the Canal zone.
On October 29, 1956, the Israeli armed forces attacked on a broad front extending from Gaza to El Arish, the Mitla pass and Sharm el Shaik on the Gulf of Aqaba. Israeli tanks made rapid advances in the Sinai against the retreating Egyptian forces.
As planned, the British and the French intervened on October 30. The assault began with heavy aerial bombardment from bases in Cyprus and Malta as well as from aircraft carriers positioned off the coast of Egypt. A ground assault followed. Resistance from the Egyptian armed forces was stiff but it was silenced within a week by the overwhelming firepower of the invading forces.
The reaction from the world powers was quick and predictable. The Soviet Union, furious that a client state was subjected to armed aggression, threatened to intervene. The United States, concerned that the armed conflict could easily get out of hand and result in a broader conflict, called for immediate cessation of hostilities and a withdrawal of the invading forces. For Washington, Middle Eastern oil was more important than physical control of the Suez Canal. It was one of those rare occasions when the United States stood opposed to Israeli actions and applied political pressure on Tel Aviv to withdraw from the Sinai. Faced with combined pressures from both super powers, Britain, France and Israel relented and withdrew their forces to the pre-war positions by March 1957. United Nations observers were posted in the Sinai, and the Straits of Tiran were opened to Israeli shipping.
There were clear winners and losers in the Suez crisis of 1956. Nasser dared the British and the French and succeeded in expelling them from the Canal zone. His firebrand rhetoric gained increasing acceptance in the Arab world and he was hailed as a champion of Arab nationalism. Nationalism was a quest for dignity and a search for Arab manhood in the face of humiliating defeats by Israel. But it failed to comprehend the strength and determination of forces arrayed against it.
Nasser overplayed his hand in the succeeding years by intervening in the civil war in Yemen (which degenerated into a proxy war between an American backed Saudi Arabia and a Soviet backed Egypt) and entering into an ill-fated short-lived federation with Syria. Finally, in 1967, he was cornered into a war with Israel, defeated and humiliated.
Israel gained valuable experience in the rapid movement of its armor, lessons which it used with devastating effectiveness in the war of 1967. It also gained access to the Red Sea through the Straits of Tiran and to shipping with Asia. However, its ambition to militarily dominate the Arab world received a temporary setback. It had to postpone that ambition for a decade until the 1967 war.
The principal losers were the United Kingdom and France. The Suez crisis demonstrated that the days of imperial England and France were over and that the world now danced to the beat of new super powers based in Washington and Moscow. Within a decade of Suez, Britain had granted independence to its remaining colonies in Asia and Africa. The old imperial powers were put on notice that they had to invent new financial and political mechanisms to dominate and control the world through a new world order. Neo-colonialism replaced colonialism. Local satraps replaced viceroys.
The IMF and the World Bank became instruments for financial control of the newly independent cash starved Third World. Britain and France marched towards these new horizons, looking for leadership from the United States, which had emerged from the Second World War as the richest and the most powerful country in the world.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
