Word: nasser
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Does Arab Fight Arab? Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser took to Cairo radio to denounce the revolt. In somber, ragged sentences, he declared: "What happened today is more serious than Suez. Any division in national unity is much more serious than foreign aggression." To "straighten out the situation," as he put it in his broadcast, Nasser ordered his fleet and 2,000 paratroops to take seaport Latakia, started commandeering merchantmen to haul ground troops to Syria, which is seperated from Egypt by Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. Suddenly, Nasser changed his mind. He called off the attack just after...
Syrian Twitch. It was Syria's President Shukri Kuwatly who had promoted the merger with Egypt, out of fear that his country might otherwise be taken over by a strong Communist clique in the army. While Nasser hailed the new state as "the first step on the path to complete Arab unity," it was soon apparent to Syrians that their wealth was being siphoned off to prop impoverished Egypt. Nasser's land reforms alienated landowners and hurt the economy. Businessmen, after long years of laissez faire, bitterly opposed Nasser's import restrictions, currency controls, a new income...
Moreover, with Nasser's blessing, the easygoing country was consigned to the rule of Interior Minister Abdel Hamid Serraj. Now 36, a ruthless graduate of the French-modeled gendarmerie, Serraj had a hammer lock hold on the country through control of its 15,000-man police force and an army of informers. Strongman Serraj beat and imprisoned thousands of Syrians. So efficient were his spies that garrulous Syrians learned to speak in whispers, developing an ailment known as "Syrian twitch"-a nervous compulsion to glance over their shoulders when talking...
Alarmed by Syrians' loathing for Serraj -and well aware that an uprising in the U.A.R.'s remote northern province might not easily be suppressed-Nasser belatedly removed Serraj from power and assigned him to Cairo. Under one of Nasser's closest and ablest friends, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer (who was put on a plane to Cairo by the rebels last week), civil rights were restored-and ironically, Syrians were able to plot last week's coup...
Less Than Reverence. For Nasser, as the Middle East's most fervent apostle of Arab unity, the revolt was a crushing blow. Not only was the U.A.R. in ruins, and with it Nasser's grandiose dreams of a superstate encompassing the whole Arab world. Nasser's myth would also be badly bruised in the eyes of millions who idolized him as a crusader against colonialism. By its impassioned rejection of Egyptian "tyranny," the revolution could only deepen the suspicion that under the guise of pan-Arabism Nasser pursues a Pharaonic imperialism. After Nasser's fulminations against...