Issue No. 596
Opinion
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
25 - 31 July 2002 Issue No. 596 Opinion |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Radical misadventures
The radical populism of the July revolution was imminent as it was disastrous, writes Hazim Saghiyah*
The July Revolution was a disaster waiting to happen. It was a disaster because it abolished democracy and civilian rule, but it was also one that was waiting to happen since the decolonisation era favoured the type of populist regimes that Gamal Abdel-Nasser and the Free Officers brought onto the world scene.
Before 23 July 1952, Egypt had a teetering monarchy, flawed political parties and a very unequal distribution of income and wealth. These were all serious problems, but they could have been addressed without the country submitting to military rule, and Mohamed Naguib, Egypt's first president, was right when he wanted to restore civilian authority in March 1954. Unfortunately, Nasser and his supporters outmanoeuvred Naguib, expelling him into the political wilderness.
Yet, Naguib's failure was not a surprise. The army, the bureaucracy and the educated classes were on the whole ready to sacrifice democracy for the sake of radical change. Fascist ideas -- both secular and religious -- were rife. Socialism was fashionable. Besides, the populist radicalism of the Free Officers was not an alien concept to newly decolonised nations: Sukarno had applied a similar formula in Indonesia seven years earlier, Musaddaq had similar schemes in Iran, and so did Ghana's Nkrumah, Guinea's Seku Ture, Mali's Modibo Keita and Congo's Lumumba.
True, even at that time there were voices of moderation in the Third World, Tunisia's Bourguiba and Senegal's Sengor being outstanding examples. But such people did not get the international backing they deserved, since the West was obsessed at the time with the international fight against Communism. Unconcerned by the spread of democracy, the West was looking for anti-Communist allies, which is why it arranged Musaddaq's overthrow in Iran, followed by coups against democratic governments in, for example, Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973.
In addition, the military had every excuse to stay in power in Egypt. Israel, an apparent extension of Western colonialism, posed a threat to the country and to the region, and Nasser, with charismatic flair, propagated Arab nationalism and socialism as alternatives to Western-style democracy. His foreign policy was reminiscent of Mohamed Ali's expansionism, and the union with Syria in 1958, and later the Yemen campaign, coincided with the strengthening of Egypt's military establishment.
However, even as these foreign-policy initiatives were taking place, at home education deteriorated, and knowledge of foreign languages quickly declined. Privately owned business, particularly in foreign trade, received deadly blows, and the role of religious minorities in public life diminished. Political parties were abolished, and the State took over the media. Egypt forged close links with the Soviet Union, and, following the 1967 defeat, the Soviet military presence in Egypt became quite visible.
The July Revolution is often commended for its democratisation of education, for its agrarian reforms and for its having given the country a prestigious role in international affairs. However, all of these achievements are to say the least questionable. Education became more widespread, but its quality dipped considerably; agrarian reform allowed the bureaucracy to spread its red-taped tentacles across the countryside; the Non-Aligned Movement began to fall apart shortly after the 1967 War.
As a result, from having been a beacon of enlightenment in the Arab World, Egypt turned into a hotbed for fundamentalist preachers and violent Muslim doctrinaires. It is a measure of the country's lack of proper institutional rule that Sadat was later able to rescind many elements of the Nasserite state, particularly with regard to foreign and economic policy. What he could not, or would not, do was reverse the Revolution's tradition of authoritarianism: years of living under a command economy, with a bloated public sector, nationalised education, and lack of entrepreneurial or market values, made it hard for the country to cope with the challenges of globalisation.
Any fair assessment of Nasser's rule cannot cast him in a good light. Indeed, the kind of populist radicalism he initiated should be blamed for the later appearance of the likes of Saddam Hussein. Ayman El-Zawahri and Osama Bin Ladin may be doctrinally different, but their violent inclinations feed on the same radicalism that the military fomented for years in order to stay in power. The only point in Nasser's favour is that his violent tendencies were comparatively benign, when compared with what was happening in other parts of the Arab World at the same time.
However, 50 years after the Revolution, we are in a position to criticise it -- which is something. The Russians were not so lucky: in 1967, 50 years after the Soviet Revolution of 1917, the Kremlin would not condone any criticism. While Nasser's one-party system, his National Union and Arab Socialist Union, certainly held Egypt back, we should be thankful that it could not stifle its soul.
* The writer is a columnist and managing editor of the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper.
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
