Suez ripples half century after
crisis By Ronan Thomas
An outspoken, youthful Middle Eastern
leader takes on powerful Western adversaries
seeking to isolate him. Grasping the mantle of
national and regional power, his gamble is
stunningly successful, but brief. Strategic
calculation leads Western powers and their ally
Israel to use military power in response. The
result: shambles, recrimination, political
downfall, imperial eclipse, and an entirely
altered regional complexion.
July marks
the half-century since the 1956 Suez Crisis and
Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's resistance to
the West. In 1956, Nasser, putative figurehead for
Arab nationalism, seized and nationalized the Suez
Canal, the Middle East's vital shipping
artery. His ambition: to
shake off British and French control of Egyptian
assets at a time when both powers were entering an
imperial endgame. Egyptian and pan-Arab euphoria
was followed by swift naval, airborne and land
assaults by Britain, France and (after secret
negotiation) Israel. Egyptian military defeat was
inevitable, but Western success illusory.
The events of the crisis bear retelling,
50 years on, and not just for the historically
minded, for parallels with today's Iran imbroglio
are emerging. Most of the actors of 1956 are
intimately involved.
In 2006 another
regional protagonist, Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, has voiced Nasser-style defiance
toward Western powers and Israel. Iran now appears
set on nuclear power amid international
opprobrium. It remains unclear whether development
of Iranian nuclear weapons may be next. The row -
exacerbated in recent months by Ahmadinejad's
colorful outbursts - has now moved to New York.
This week, the US, Britain, France and
Israel are attempting to secure a draft United
Nations Security Council resolution against Iran.
Ahmadinejad is seeking ways to prevent sanctions
against him while international media reports
ponder the risks of new Western military
intervention in the Middle East.
Suez
points to the risks indeed.
Imperial
endgame In 1956, the ambitions of one
nationalist moved rapidly into crisis and into
imperial shambles.
Egypt had been a vassal
state for the British since the latter gained
control of the canal in 1875 and made Egypt a
protectorate from 1882. It became nominally
independent only in 1922. Britain's grip on the
Suez Canal zone - the canal and several
surrounding bases - had continued during World War
II and on until 1952. That year, the compliant
regime of King Farouk was brought down by a
popular uprising led by the Free Officers' Group,
of whom Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Abdel Hakim Amer
were key figures. A new government was formed led
by General Mohammed Naguib.
Anthony Eden,
Britain's recently appointed foreign secretary,
sought to negotiate gradual British withdrawal
from Egypt but with rights of return. Enduring
postwar austerity at home, Britain's reliance on
oil supplies through the canal was absolute.
Recovering from war, two-thirds of Western
European oil flowed through the Suez.
But
in 1954, Nasser saw his own opportunity and ousted
Naguib. Acting from socialist convictions, he
launched a crackdown on Muslim militants to
consolidate his position. At the same time,
Nasser's antipathy toward Britain hardened after
that country negotiated the Baghdad Pact of 1955,
a tripartite defense alliance with Turkey and Iraq
(whose Hashemite regime was a key regional
competitor for Egypt).
The situation was
soured further by the so-called Gaza raid of
February 1955, sanctioned by Israeli leader David
Ben Gurion, with Egyptian/Israeli/Palestinian
clashes and infiltration increasing across Egypt's
borders dramatically.
Now active on the
international diplomatic scene, Nasser launched
wide-scale infrastructure development in Egypt,
including modernization of the Aswan High Dam. His
next move was critical: he negotiated a key arms
deal with the Soviets - who were becoming more
assertive actors in the Middle East.
Events then moved rapidly. Britain
responded to the arms deal by frustrating
financing for the dam. With Cold War animosities
and regional resentments rising, Nasser saw a
priceless opportunity to bid for Egyptian economic
independence.
On July 26, Nasser
nationalized the Suez Canal.
Initially,
Britain resorted to UN arbitration but, along with
France, seethed at its humiliation. There were
also other regional security concerns. France
strongly suspected Nasser's complicity in attacks
against it in Algeria; Britain felt the new
Baghdad Pact - central to its Middle Eastern
strategy - was under threat from a resurgent
Egypt.
And the issue became personal: Eden
was obsessed with the notion that Nasser
represented a new Adolf Hitler, not to be appeased
under any circumstances. Secret negotiations at
Sevres, near Paris, among Eden, French prime
minister Guy Mollet and Ben Gurion secured a plan
for Western intervention to solve the Egypt
problem once and for all. But in so doing the
participants made a crucial error. They kept the
United States in the dark.
On October 29,
1956, the military plan - "Operation Musketeer" -
swung into action. An all-out assault to regain
the canal and topple Nasser's regime began two
days later, involving 45,000 British, 34,000
French and 175,000 Israeli troops (the latter
invading Sinai by land).
Over the
following week, British and French air attacks
began on Egypt, followed by a successful British
airborne assault on El Gamil airfield. Amphibious
landings at Port Said led to house-to-house
fighting, while Nasser successfully blocked the
canal by scuttling dozens of ships.
The
United States now flexed its muscles. President
Dwight D Eisenhower, incandescent with rage at
British/French/Israeli duplicity, feared the
attacks might draw in the Soviets, then busy
crushing resistance in Hungary. Turning up the
diplomatic and economic heat, he forced Eden,
Mollet and Ben Gurion to accept ceasefire and
withdrawal on November 7. Casualties, killed or
wounded, totaled 100 British, 43 French, 200
Israelis and more than 5,000 Egyptians. Within a
year Eden and Mollet had resigned and Israel
withdrew from Sinai. Ben Gurion continued in
office until 1963.
With cruel intensity,
Suez showed that Western influence in the Middle
East was passing from weakened 19th-century powers
to the US, an assertive new player seeking to meet
the global threat posed by the Soviet Union as the
Cold War deepened. Snubbed by the US, British and
French reputations never fully recovered in the
Middle East.
In Britain, Suez was a
cataclysm, a byword for insider machination,
obsession and national shame. British veterans of
the crisis - many 19-year-old National Servicemen
- had to wait until June 2004 for a campaign
medal. Along with the fall of Singapore in 1942,
it remains the worst humiliation in the long
history of the British Empire. What was left of
the empire did not long survive. For France -
whose brilliant architect Ferdinand de Lesseps
first conceived and built the canal in 1869 - the
crisis constituted the midpoint of imperial
decline after defeat in Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu
in 1954, decolonization in Africa, and the final
blow - the Algerian war of 1954-62.
Notional winners emerged from the crisis.
In the short term, Egypt had successfully called
the bluff of former imperial masters and now
basked in the afterglow. Beaten militarily, Nasser
nevertheless emerged triumphant. Although he led
Egypt with mixed success until the disastrous 1967
war against Israel and his death in 1970, he has
remained a heroic figure in his country to this
day.
The United States and Israel were
longer-term winners; their influence in the region
was to grow exponentially in the succeeding
decades. The rise of US and Israeli power and
"special relationship" in the region advanced
rapidly over the next 15 years, most particularly
after the 1967 war. But there was a price to pay:
both inherited the legacy of visceral regional
resentments against Western imperialism, which
persist poisonously to this day.
Suez
reminder In 2006 there are many reminders
and lessons of the Suez episode still evident in
the Middle East.
The Suez Canal - casus
belli of 1956 - continues to proffer its
pivotal and traditional role. Civilian and
military vessels cross day and night into the Red
Sea and on to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.
In the six months to January, the canal
handled 11,000 vessels, at the rate of 60 million
tons of shipping per month, earning Egypt about
US$400 million each month (Suez Canal Authority).
The canal (190 kilometers long) remains a routine
transit point for warships sailing in support of
coalition operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to
the US bases in Qatar and Djibouti and other
destinations in the "war on terror".
In
the past three months, coalition naval task forces
have all passed through the canal. US military
websites in April showed the amphibious assault
ship USS Nassau and support ships crossing the
canal en route to the Persian Gulf and Iraq,
operational areas for the US 5th Fleet. Also last
month, Britain's formidable aircraft carrier HMS
Illustrious was photographed sending high-profile
80th-birthday wishes to Queen Elizabeth II from
the Red Sea. Its support vessels included a French
frigate.
There were also other echoes of
the crisis last month. Reports suggested that
Britain is set to conduct a major airborne
operation into Afghanistan as it completes control
of the southern province of Helmand. This "show of
force", led by 650 members of Britain's Parachute
Regiment, will aim to disrupt poppy production and
signal British capability to Taliban forces. If
launched, it would be the largest drop since Suez
and recall the virtually identical assault on
Egypt's El Gamil airfield of November 5, 1956.
Elsewhere, military reports from Israel suggest
that veterans of its Paratroopers Brigade hope to
make a commemorative drop this summer to mark
their successful action near the Mitla Pass in
Sinai.
The ripples of Suez extend even
further. Last week, Bolivian President Evo
Morales' nationalization of his country's energy
resources caused a frisson of uncertainty in Latin
America, drawing comparisons to Nasser in 1956.
Further north, reports of hugely expensive plans
to widen the Panama Canal, to handle larger ships,
point to the critical strategic role its Suez
counterpart will have for the foreseeable future.
New drainage to enlarge the Suez Canal has been
ongoing since 1997.
For the United Nations
- stage for this week's Iran negotiations - Suez
was also an important milestone. In November 1956,
the crisis prompted the first emergency special
session of the UN General Assembly. The crisis
also established the first UN peacekeeping force -
the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) - though results
ever since have been a mixed bag to say the least.
But above all it is the issue of Iran that
looms ever larger in today's regional and
international political-military calculations, and
which this year makes comparisons with Suez
inevitable.
Some regional observers
suggest that Ahmadinejad's actions as Iranian
leader - as both nationalist and vocal defender of
Iran's nuclear ambitions - make him a "Nasser for
our times", a gambler intent on pursuing
uranium-tipped, pan-Islamic ambitions.
From southern Iraq to the coast of
Lebanon, it is argued, Ahmadinejad hopes to lead a
Shi'ite Muslim revanche, much as Nasser hoped to
be a figurehead for pan-Arab aspirations, come
what may. Other commentators suggest that
comparisons between Ahmadinejad and Nasser fail:
the Iranian leader's motivations are even more
radical and dangerous. Iran's nuclear ambitions,
they argue, could set off a new, vastly expensive
Middle Eastern cold war - with Saudi Arabia, Egypt
and Turkey seeking their own nuclear deterrents -
and US and Israeli military responses to Iran set
on a hair trigger for decades to come.
There are clearly some cosmetic
similarities between Ahmadinejad and Nasser.
Ahmadinejad, 50, is relatively young (he
was born at the height of the Suez Crisis in
October 1956). He has mass popular appeal. So had
Nasser, aged 37 in July 1956. Both men share a
willingness to upset the status quo and, where
needed, display defiance and dogged determination
(in themselves admirable qualities for any
leader). Both were born of poor families,
Ahmadinejad to a Tehran blacksmith, Nasser to a
lower-middle-class postal official in a run-down
Alexandria suburb. It is claimed that both men's
energies are/were primarily driven by a need for
acceptance in their respective societies.
But there comparisons falter. An Egyptian
soldier and nationalist of the late 1930s who
became the "father of Arab Socialism", Nasser
contrasts vividly with bookish, devout Ahmadinejad
(a PhD in traffic and transport who came to
revolutionary political maturity during the 1970s
and 1980s while mayor of Tehran).
Instead,
the closest parallel between 1956 and 2006 will be
how all parties in the region view the efficacy of
military power used by outsiders in the Middle
East.
In 1956, intervention was disastrous
for Britain and France and presented both with
stark evidence of their shrunken global power and
reach.
Since Suez, Britain and France have
been international actors with minor roles; a
clear legacy of both the crisis and the end of
empire it represented. A key nostrum of post-1956
British foreign policy, oft-quoted as advice to
new entrants to the British Foreign Office, is
this: "Suez marked the last time Britain could
safely act alone overseas militarily. Clear
whatever we need to do with the Americans first."
This was well understood by former prime minister
Margaret Thatcher during the 1982 Falklands War
and by Prime Minister Tony Blair in Kosovo and
Iraq. Britain's "special relationship" with the US
may remain but pales in comparison with that
between the US and Israel.
For the United
States - inheritor of post-Suez Middle East
hegemony and still in 2006 the world's only
superpower - the limits of power are currently
being tested in Iraq and Afghanistan. Success or
failure of this latest venture has yet to be
played out. US military commentators are divided
as to whether potential action against Iran would
constitute "strategic overreach".
Fifty
years on from Suez, Russia has extensive
commercial and energy-linked relations with Iran.
As with China, energy issues are paramount
concerns: both are uncomfortable with the notion
of a nuclear-armed Iran but unlikely to support
sanctions against it in the UN or anywhere else.
As for Egypt this anniversary year, its
status as a key US ally, with peaceful relations
with Israel for the past 27 years, has been
strained by ongoing terrorism in the eastern and
northern Sinai - with tourist attacks at Dahab in
April the latest examples - and popular discontent
over coalition actions in Iraq and elsewhere.
Nasser remains a revered figure in his country: he
will be lionized by Egyptians this July. Famous
for standing against external Western pressure and
briefly leader of the Arab world, he has been much
emulated but never matched by national leaders in
the Middle East since.
Imperial
post-mortem, strategic handover or glorious
defiance, this July's anniversary will be
commemorated from different perspectives.
Like a flashing heliograph from history,
Suez will continue to provide unsettling messages
for the present.
Ronan Thomas is
a British correspondent.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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