Bagmati Lens On Nile

Released earlier this year, Prof. Pushpa Adhikari’s ‘Egypt Until Democracy’ is on its way to a second print, by Lancer Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi. It dwells upon post-monarchy Egypt’s first three presidents — Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. A major force in the Arab world with a population of 115 million, the North African state’s first three presidents played a significant role in West Asia even as other big powers, including superpowers, courted it for influence and cooperation.

Nasser led a revolution in 1953, which dethroned King Farouk and made Egypt a republic. He emerged as a tall figure who played leading role in the launching of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) at a time when the Cold War was getting increasingly consternating and chillier by the day. Several years before NAM formally took off in 1961, Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956. This sparked off a big row and risked a bigger conflagration until the US sternly cautioned the United Kingdom and France. 

Rankled by the fact that the strategic and economically profitable canal exclusively owned and operated by foreign companies, Nasser did the nationalisation act and enhanced his international profile overnight, emerging as he did as an Arab hero who could deal with the Western world firmly. Egypt was at the forefront of the Arab world in the confrontation with the newly established independent state of Israel in 1948. 

Key events

A nationalist, Nasser was, on a number occasions, at loggerheads with what he saw as imperialist forces, some of which developed an arrogance against their former colonies and developing countries. He weathered the 1967 six-day Arab-Israel war, in which Egypt and other Arab states suffered a humiliating defeat, but he remained popular all along his 17 years in power until his death in 1970. Nasser’s successor Sadat led another war with Israel in 1973 whose outcome was mixed but no clear triumph for either of the warring sides. The Arab objective of recovering the territories lost to Israel in the 1967 conflict was not fulfilled while Israel could not claim a result reminiscing of the 1967 conflict that enabled the Jewish state to occupy Arab territories.

Egypt remained the most significant force in supporting Palestinian cause. Israeli obduracy eludes any enduring political settlement. It was also seen as a bulwark against the Soviet communist penetration. The US and its close allies pump in aid worth several billion dollars a year to Israel that the West considers as an oasis in a sea of authoritarian and potentially belligerent neighbours. A fervent supporter of independence movements in Africa, Nasser backed anti-monarchy movements. He detested political parties for what he saw as their fissiparous tendencies and divisive entities that created political instability and delayed economic prosperity in developing countries. 

On succeeding Nasser, Sadat’s experience for three decades under his illustrious predecessor enabled him to consolidate his position. The Arab-Israeli war of 1973 did not bring the victory the Arabs had hoped for. He became convinced of the need for a peace settlement with Israel with the ultimate goal of regaining for Arab countries the territories Israel had occupied since 1967. As many as 2.3 million Palestinians refugees were spread in various countries. In 1974, Sadat and Jordan’s King Hussein recognised PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. In 1977, US President Jimmy Carter recognised the rights of the Palestinians, compared in significance by many with the Balfour declaration that accepted the right of a Jewish homeland.

In a bold break from the past, Sadat visited Israel and addressed the Knesset in November 1977— something that divided the Arab world. In 1978, the US president’s country retreat, Camp David hosted 13-day negotiations between Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Sadat. Israel promised to pull out from Sinai Peninsula within 3-9 months and withdraw from Gaza Strip and West Bank for self-governance. Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize for Peace that year. Experimental withdrawal of bread subsidies and the resultant street riots, unemployment and partly the Camp David accord made Sadat unpopular to a large section of Arab public opinion. 

Mubarak succeeded Sadat and persuaded his foreign counterparts to again relocate the Arab League office in the Egyptian capital in 1989. He pursued the Sadat’s pragmatic approach and ensured US annual aid of $2.5 billion. He sent his troops to join with the US-led forces in the 1991 Gulf War. The allies in appreciation wrote off an estimated $20 billion in Egyptian debts. 

But his 30-year-rule came to an end when the Arab Spring in 2011 forced him to resign. If he had hoped for Western intervention, he must have been bitterly disappointed. On his death in 2020, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Mubarak as “a leader to peace and security, to peace with Israel”. The head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas deeply appreciated his focus on “the issues of our Palestinian people at the top of them”.

Summation  

Nasser was a heroic leader in as much as he was respected widely in the developing countries while the rich nations took him as an assertive nationalist leader who deviated from the course they wanted him to follow. Sadat was praised in the West and Israel, but he was not very popular in the Arab world and among Egyptians. Mubarak continued with the Sadat policy but he never visited Israel as president as he pressed for Israel’s pull-out from all Arab territories occupied since the 1967 war. Israel and its Western allies saw Sadat and Mubarak as capable leaders, though the duo became unpopular in the later phase of their rule. On the other hand, Nasser was admired at home and the Arab world as well as most other developing countries. 

Dr. Adhikari’s narrative flow is information-filled, simple and straightforward, which could be a reflection of his no less than two decades of active journalism in print, news agency, radio and TV journalism, among other professional stints in national and international media. His academic innings at Tribhuvan University and foreign institutions in Kathmandu, Beijing, New Delhi and London have also come in good stead in his study. A South Asian academic work on an African nation is rare, and hence the brisk pace to the Adhikari book’s reprint.  It’s a novel undertaking for a South Asian academic, especially a Nepali.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)