President Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria and Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt during the early 1960s.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
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Remembering a great leader
By Nick Meyer
Friday, 10.01.2010, 06:28am
Abdel-Nasser's accomplishments, shortcomings remembered on 40th anniversary of his death
It was a day of remembrance and tributes on Tuesday, September 28 across Egypt and the Arab world as admirers marked the 40th anniversary of the death of highly influential late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser.
Thousands of Egyptians visited his tomb at the mosque near Cairo's Ain Shams University that bears his name, while Arabs around the world remembered his accomplishments. Radio stations also played vintage nationalist and pan-Arab songs to honor the legacy of the fallen leader while virtually all of the country's newspapers and TV stations ran tribute stories regardless of political affiliation, including the state-owned publications and stations.
It was Abdel-Nasser's death due to a heart attack that caused millions of men, women and children to weep in streets across Egypt and the Arab world in 1970, and a similar sentiment was felt by many on Tuesday, especially among the older generations.
While Abdel-Nasser was a complex figure like most well-known political leaders, with both supporters and detractors, he is remembered by most as a strong-willed leader who promoted Arab unity while preserving dignity of his people in the face of oppression and colonialisim.
Abdel-Nasser is well-known for nationalizing key industries along with the Suez Canal and establishing the United Arab Republic, a federal union between Syria and Egypt, which lasted from 1958 to 1961. However, strategic relations continued with Syria after the break up of the union in 1961 in an attempt to confront the Israeli military threat in the region. He also began construction of the Aswan High Dam under his watch, part of his modernization and industrialization of the nation, which included the building of more than one thousand industrial plants.
But years of mobilizing Egypt and the Arab world against looming aggression from Israel and other forces of colonialism came to an unfortunate climax for him and his people during the 1967 Six-Day War in early June.
The previous month, after six Syrian planes were shot down by the Israeli air force, Abdel-Nasser ordered the Straits of Tiran between the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas separating the Gulf of Aqaba from the Red Sea to be closed to Israeli shipping.
A speech given by Abdel-Nasser before the United Nations General Assembly on May 29, 1967 said that the issue was not the closing of the straits nor his order to remove United Nations Emergency Force troops from the Sinai Peninsula in anticipation of war, but that the most important issue at hand was the rights of the Palestinian people.
Abdel-Nasser disagreed with recommendations from military commander Abdel Hakim Amer and Syrian Prime Minister Amin Al-Hafiz that Egypt should launch a preemptive strike against Israel after receiving assurances from American and Soviet officials that Israel would not attack.
But the Israelis launched surprise attacks against Abdel-Nasser's country as its air force destroyed much of the Egyptian air force in its air fields on June 5, 1967. The Israelis also launched similar surprise attacks on the ground as they pushed forward into Egypt making key gains while many of Abdel-Nasser's troops were in Yemen intervening in the country's civil war, a conflict some have called the late Egyptian president's Vietnam in hindsight.
Abdel-Nasser informed his people of the nation's impending defeat on June 8, 1967 despite misleading national radio reports that his country was actually winning the war.
As Israel occupied the entire Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip of Egypt along with the West Bank of Jordan and the Golan Heights of Syria on June 10, 1967, Abdel-Nasser again went to the television airwaves to announce his resignation.
But after the news broke, millions of people took to the streets in Egypt and across the Arab world rejecting his decision, causing Abdel-Nasser to return to his presidential post.
Ron Stockton, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, talked about the popularity of Abdel-Nasser in the Arab world despite his military defeat in the Six-Day War.
"Nasser was one of the great leaders of his age, he created a vision of the Arabs as a people with a shared destiny," he said.
"When he would speak, whole villages would fall silent to listen. A friend told me that during a speech by Nasser (they would often last two to three hours), you could walk through his town and hear Nasser's voice filling the air. Every radio was tuned to The Arab Voice radio station (to hear him).
Despite the ultimate defeat of the Egyptians, Abdel-Nasser remained popular with the majority of the Arab world until his death in 1970.
An Egyptian political activist who was imprisoned by Abdel-Nasser for four years, Sherrif Hatatta, summed up the feelings of the people after the president's death.
"Nasser's greatest achievement was his funeral, the world will never again see five million people crying together," he is quoted as saying.
Abdel-Nasser's many supporters revered him for standing up against the oppression of Israeli occupiers and the interests of colonialism in the Arab world and other oppressed third world countries with whom he forged alliances. He was the co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, an alliance of countries forged by Egypt and fellow founding members India, Yugoslavia, and Indonesia for the purpose of maintaining a middle ground in relation to Cold War conflicts between powerful Eastern and Western blocs.
Despite that reverence, others disagreed with what some called oppressive tactics at home.
Abdel-Nasser and his regime were quick to dismiss and repress opposition and dissent and failed to establish democratic institutions in the country.
"The legacy and the universal affection he got during his life and afterward is because was consistently courageous to take on oppressors on behalf of our people," said Hasan Newash, director of the Palestine Office of Michigan.
"But at the same time he did not create the mechanism and democratic institutions that could have followed him and allowed Egypt to remain solid and to protect Egypt from decline; we have indeed seen a decline of Egypt after his death and a reversal of his national policies."
Despite the troubles at home, Newash believes along with many others in the Arab world that Abdel-Nasser will continue to be revered.
"Regardless of how difficult the tasks were, he somehow managed to side with justice no matter what the cause, he never dwarfed in front of the giants," he said, referring to pressure from colonialist interests of Israel, Britain, and others.
"He matched them, he stood up to them on behalf of all the Arabs, and I want to say that's a wonderful comment and therefore he was loved.
I'm so glad to see this post. As a college student I took a class on African Politics, and while I remember a discussion on Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism, Gamel Abdel-Nasser or any of the leaders of North Africa were not mentioned. It was taught that Pan-Africanism was very much a south of the Sahara concept. It was only years later, my father told me about the role of Egypt in Pan-Africanism.
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