Arabs (62 page)

 

The turning point for the French Empire in North Africa came in 1954. Protests had been mounting against French rule in Morocco and Tunisia since the late 1940s, prompting the French authorities to reconsider their position in both protectorates. The two states were nominally ruled by indigenous dynasties—the Alaoui sultans in Morocco and the Husaynid Beys in Tunisia. The French believed they could better secure their interests in both countries by coming to an accommodation with the nationalists and conceding independence under friendly governments. Yet French imperial policy was thrown into disarray by two events that spelled the end of the French Empire: the loss of Indochina following the decisive French defeat in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (March–May 1954), and the outbreak of the Algerian war for independence on November 2, 1954.

The French did not consider Algeria a colony. Unlike Tunisia and Morocco, which were ruled as protectorates, the territory of Algeria had been annexed to the French
state and divided into
départments
just like the rest of metropolitan France. One million French citizens lived in Algeria, with their interests actively protected by elected representatives in the French parliament. As far as the French—government and people alike—were concerned, Algeria was French. So when Algerian nationalists declared war, the French responded rapidly and with full force. They sent their troops, already embittered by the defeat in Vietnam and determined never to face surrender again, to “defend” Algeria from the threat of nationalism.

Faced with a war in Algeria, the government of Pierre Mendès-France took decisive action to cut its losses and resolve relations with Tunisia and Morocco. The French premier went to Tunis in person to ask the ruling bey, Muhammad VIII al-Amin (r. 1943–1956) to appoint a new government to negotiate Tunisian independence. The bey, who sought to preserve his own power over the nationalists, tried to exclude the most popular nationalist party, Habib Bourguiba’s Neo-Destour. However, by March 1955 he was forced by popular demand to invite Bourguiba to participate in the negotiations.

The charismatic Bourguiba quickly assumed the leadership position of the Tunisian negotiating team and secured agreement for autonomy in April 1955 before concluding the March 20, 1956, protocol in which France recognized Tunisia’s independence. Affirming the republican principle that sovereignty lay in the people, Bourguiba moved in July 1957 to abolish the monarchy in Tunisia, which had been compromised by its collaboration with French colonial rule. The Tunisian Republic elected Bourguiba its first president, which post he held for the next thirty years.

In Morocco the French sought to calm the situation by allowing Sultan Mohammed V to return from Madagascar to resume the throne. On November 16, 1955, the sultan landed in Morocco to a rapturous reception. Two days later, Mohammed V addressed the nation from the Royal Palace in Rabat, on the occasion of the Fête du Trône, the Moroccan national day. “What to say that could describe that day?” reflected Zahra, the nationalist freedom fighter of Leila Abouzeid’s autobiographical novel. “The whole of Casablanca became one huge celebration connected by stages and loudspeakers. Songs and performances mingled with speeches, and the aroma of tea being prepared on sidewalks filled the air.” Zahra, her family, and friends boarded a bus from Casablanca to Rabat to hear the sultan’s address. She remembered the “incredible roar” that greeted Mohammed V and his two sons when they appeared on the balcony of the palace. “How many times have I listened to his throne speech delivered that November 18! What a speech! I learned it by heart and can still recite it to this day.”

Zahra repeated the sultan’s words from memory: “On this joyous day God has blessed us twice over. The blessing of return to our most beloved homeland after a long and sorrowful absence, and the blessing of gathering again with the people we
have so missed and to whom we have been unerringly faithful and who have been faithful to us in turn.” The sultan’s message was clear: Morocco had achieved its independence only because the monarch and the people had supported each other. To Zahra, the events of November 18 revealed nothing so much as the failure of French efforts to split the monarch from his people through exile. “Fantastic what an effect [the sultan] had on our hearts! His exile had wrapped him in a sacred cloak, and for his sake the people had joined the resistance, as if he had become an ideal or a principle. Had the French not exiled him, their presence in Morocco would have continued much longer; I’m certain of that.”
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On March 2, 1956, Morocco achieved its independence from France.

 

By the time Morocco and Tunisia had achieved their independence, Algeria had descended to all-out war. What had started as a poorly organized insurgency by a small band (estimates range from 900 to 3,000 fighters on November 1, 1954) of underarmed men had developed into a mass popular uprising in which unarmed civilians—both settlers and native Algerians—were often the target of indiscriminate and murderous violence.

In August 1955, the Algerian National Liberation Front, known by the French acronym, FLN attacked the settler village of Philippeville, killing 123 men, women, and children. The French retaliated with extraordinary brutality, killing thousands of Algerians (official French figures acknowledge 1,273 deaths whereas the FLN claimed 12,000 Algerians killed).
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The Philippeville massacres intensified FLN resolve and also strengthened the organization by attracting large numbers of volunteers from those outraged by unmeasured French reprisals against Algerian citizens. The massacres also served as a stark reminder of the FLN’s strategic weakness in the face of the French army of occupation, with all of the resources of an industrial power.

The Cairo office of the FLN was an important base for the movement’s international operations, and the Egyptian government under Gamal Abdel Nasser had given full public support for the cause of Algerian independence. It was in order to isolate Algerian nationalists and to force Egypt to abandon its support for the FLN that France placed conditions on the sale of any military hardware to Nasser’s Egypt—conditions that, true to form, Nasser was unwilling to accept.

B
y 1955 Nasser had made some influential friends. He was respected by the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement—men like Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, and China’s Zhou Enlai. Nonalignment was a natural line for Egypt to adopt, given its aversion to foreign domination. Like the other members of
the movement, the Egyptian government wanted to preserve the freedom to enjoy cordial relations with both the United States and the Soviet Union without having to take sides in the Cold War. The organization also provided a forum for the countries of Asia and Africa to advance their goal of decolonization. Nasser, for example, proposed a resolution to the movement’s inaugural conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in support of Algerian independence that passed unanimously—much to France’s chagrin.

The Egyptian people were delighted as their charismatic young president was recognized as a leader on the world’s stage. The Americans, however, were far less pleased. President Dwight Eisenhower rejected the politics of nonalignment out of hand. His administration believed there was no middle position between the United States and the USSR—ultimately, a country could only be with the Americans or against them. Nasser’s refusal to join a regional alliance against the Soviet Union had raised American ire, though many in the American administration still hoped to bring Nasser around. They were to be disappointed.

Nasser’s pursuit of the arms denied him by the West ultimately led to the Communist bloc. He discussed the problem of securing modern weapons for his army with Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai, who offered to raise the matter with the Soviet Union on Egypt’s behalf. In May 1955, the Soviet ambassador in Cairo sought an audience with Nasser, initiating negotiations that ran through the summer months of 1955.

Even as he turned to the Soviets for military assistance, Nasser tried to keep the Americans on his side. The Egyptian president informed the Americans about his communications with the Soviets and told the U.S. Ambassador to Cairo that he had a firm offer of arms from the Soviet Union, but that he would still prefer U.S. military assistance. In Mohamed Heikal’s view, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles first thought Nasser was bluffing. It was only after he had incontrovertible evidence that Nasser was about to conclude an agreement with the Soviets that Dulles sent envoys to prevent the deal from going through.

In September 1955 Nasser presented the Americans with a fait accompli when he announced that Egypt would obtain arms from the Soviet satellite state of Czechoslovakia.
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The magnitude of the arms deal dramatically changed the balance of power in the Middle East as Egypt acquired 275 modern T-34 tanks and a fleet of 200 warplanes, including MiG-15 and MiG-17 fighters and Ilyushin-28 bombers.
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Following this first demarche toward the Communist bloc, the Egyptian government further alienated the Eisenhower administration in May 1956 when it extended diplomatic relations to the People’s Republic of China. Egypt had gravely undermined U.S. attempts to contain the spread of Communist influence in the Middle East, and the United States was determined to get Egypt to change its policies.

The British, French, and Israelis were more ambitious still: they wanted to change Egypt’s government altogether. They saw Nasser as the champion of a dangerous
new force known as Arab nationalism, which they believed he could mobilize against their vital interests in the Middle East. Ben-Gurion feared Nasser might rally the Arab states to mount a fatal attack on Israel. Prime Minister Anthony Eden believed Nasser deployed Arab nationalism to strip Britain of its influence in the Middle East. The French saw Nasser as encouraging the Algerians to intensify their war against France. Each of these states had a real reason to seek Nasser’s overthrow to advance their national interests.

In the course of the year of 1956 these three states conspired to make war on Egypt in a fiasco dubbed both the Suez Crisis (in the West) and the Tripartite Aggression (by the Arabs).

 

The road to Suez began in Aswan. Along with the land reform program, the Aswan High Dam remained a central part of the Free Officers’ domestic development agenda, as it was expected to provide both the country’s energy needs for industrialization and a significant expansion of agricultural area through irrigation.

The Egyptian government could not, however, fund the dam on its own. It was one of the largest civil engineering projects in the world, and the price was astronomical—an estimated $1 billion, of which $400 million would have to be paid in foreign currency. The Egyptian government negotiated a finance package with the World Bank in late 1955 to provide a loan of $200 million, backed by a commitment from the United States and Great Britain to provide the remaining $200 million.

The British and U.S. governments hoped to use the Aswan Dam project as a means to exercise some control over the politics of Nasser’s Egypt. According to Heikal, the United States and Britain never intended to give the full amount Egypt needed, pledging only one-third the sum requested—not enough to guarantee the dam but rather just enough to exercise influence over Egypt during the years it would take to build it. Dulles allegedly told the Saudi king Sa’ud in January 1957 that “he had decided to help [Egypt] with the Dam because the project was a long term one,” according to Heikal. “It would have tied Egypt to America for ten years, and in that time Nasser would either have learned the danger of co-operating with the Soviet Union or he would have fallen from power.”
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The U.S. government also tried to make the loan contingent on a commitment from the Egyptian government not to buy more arms from the Soviet Union. The military expenditure would, it argued insincerely, undermine Egypt’s ability to pay its part of the dam’s construction costs. Nasser had no intention of breaking with the Soviet Union, which was the only power willing to assist his military with no preconditions.

Nasser had come to recognize that the rules of the Cold War precluded cooperation with both the Soviets and the Americans. By April 1956 he suspected that the United States would withdraw its support for the Aswan High Dam. Three months
later, on July 19, 1956, Eisenhower announced that he was withdrawing all American financial aid for the project.

Nasser learned of the U.S. announcement in mid-air on his way back to Cairo from a meeting in Yugoslavia. He was irate; Eisenhower had announced the decision to withdraw financial support for the dam before giving the Egyptian government the courtesy of an advance warning, let alone an explanation. “This is not a withdrawal,” Nasser said to Heikal, “it is an attack on the regime and an invitation to the people of Egypt to bring it down.”
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