A new weekly series about Egypt (Saturdays)

The author of this series "Egyptian Frescoes" André Dirlik was born in Egypt and spent the first twenty years of his life in Cairo, then moved to Beirut where he studied at the American University. He later completed his studies at Mc Gill University, in Montreal. 

André's long career as professor exclusively at the "Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean" was only interrupted when that institution closed it's doors in 1995. 

Egyptian Frescoes part (14 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (14): The Six-Day War.

On June 5th, 1967, at dawn, waves of Israeli fighter-bombers were thrust into the skies of Western Egypt from the Mediterranean Sea. They had dribbled around Egyptian radars that expected them over Sinai. In barely thirty seven minutes, the entire Egyptian air fleet that stood, neatly, on the tarmacs of several military airports was destroyed, an air operation which was reminiscent of Japan’s total destruction of General Mac Arthur’s Air Force on the ground in the Philippines. As this very short and surgically executed operation took place and, during the rest of that fateful day, Egyptian and Arab radio broadcasts were announcing that the enemy planes were being plucked out of the skies by Egypt's air defences. Egyptian and Arab masses in the streets were in a state of delirium. The Road to Jerusalem had finally been opened as Nasir had promised in one of his firee speeches, on January 29th of that same year.

It took the entire day for the truth to emerge. What has since been referred to as the Six-Day War was, in reality, the Thirty Seven Minute War. Indeed, once the entire air force of Egypt was sent out of action, neither its armour, its artillery, its infantry or its navy could fight effectively. It took six days for the cessation of moping up operations to go into effect. It has taken till this day for Egyptians and Arabs to overcome the impact of this stunning defeat. The Six-Day War had announced loud and clear to Arabdom that the 1952 Coup which brought Gamal 'abd il-Nasir to power had proven that he and his Regime were a failure.

Barely after this, the shortest war, had been waged, Yusif Shahin, released his latest movie, al-'Usfur, the Sparrow. Censorship forbade the film to be shown. Audiences had to wait until 1973, after the victorious crossing by the Egyptians of the Suez Canal, during the Presidency of Anwar is-Sadat, to see it. Spectators weep each time they watch the camera hold hands with the script and the melody and take them through their great expectations and the deep pains they experienced as a result of their unbearable disappointments. An entire people's sense of betrayal, its humiliation by a regime that cheated on them, terrorized them and robbed them of their dreams when it urged them to stand up in dignity, is narrated in songs which are drawn from the best of Mahmud Darwish's tradition and from popular Baladi ballads. The message of Shahin appeals to everyone, the intellectual and the commoner, whose pathos was scorched. Way and long before the Arab Youth would muster the courage to rise in anger against its military rulers in an Arab Spring, the cynicism which the Sparrow brought about in Arab masses forewarned, one can see it four decades later, of the first rays of a new beginning that appears at the horizon.

The Revolution had come to correct the wrongs of yesteryears. The Revolution promised Social Justice. The Revolution would vindicate the colonial past and restore the lost pride of the Arab People. The Revolution, also, became committed to economic development and to raising the standard of living of the masses. The self proclaimed leader of the Revolution, Colonel Nasir and his conspirators among the Free Officers, would lead the way for a new Egypt to be born. The intellectuals supported the Revolution. So did the trade-unions. The peasantry acclaimed the Land Reform. Nasir, who was proving to be a formidable communicator, saw his star rise rapidly in the national and world arenas. 

Gamal Abdel Nasser

On October 26th, 1954, in a speech he gave in Alexandria, the one they now called the Rayyis was fired upon but he did not die. The Muslim Brotherhood was blamed for his attempted assassination and a witch hunt began against the Ikhwan. Hundreds were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in the desert and abused. Egypt was turning into a police state. The Communists, also, were rounded up and so was any imaginary enemy of the Regime. Fear had set in politics. The military ruled with an iron fist. Meanwhile, the junta was permeating all walks of life in the country. It was said at the time that the way towards social advancement passed through the military academies. Men in uniform were becoming a privileged class which, more often than not, placed themselves above the laws of the land. Some remarked jokingly that, before the Coup, in 1952, Egypt had one king. Now, one could count at least a dozen from the inner circle of the President who flaunted their power and their wealth around. Corruption had taken its roots.

The Egyptian Revolution had been intent on bringing about fundamental changes to the country and such changes did occur. Demographically, for one, infant mortality which had been estimated at 200 per 1000 in 1950 dropped to 50 as a result of improved hygiene and diet. The revolution opened dispensaries in the villages. It also increased the number of schools. As the population exploded in numbers, the trend towards urbanization followed at a critical pace. This measure by the government illustrates how policies were adopted haphazardly by incompetent policy makers who had not anticipated the slums that would mushroom around the cities as a result of overpopulation in the countryside. This haphazardness became the trade mark of the Regime which embarked upon worthy projects which proved, in the end, ill thought and poorly carried out. At the end of the day, when Nasir closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, on the 23rd of May, 1967, he did so while a major part of his Army was bogged down in Yaman, supporting a revolution. On the 5th of June, his air force was destroyed by Israel in retaliation. Between April 18 and 24, 1955, Nasir was invited at a Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Bandung, Indonesia. He was received by President Sukarno and welcomed by PM Nehru of India, President Tito of Yugoslavia and PM Chu en-Lai of China, three major players on the world scene, as the sole representative of 150 million Arabs who stretched from Morocco to Iraq. This was the time when the Cold War was raging between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Nasir's Egypt had gotten entangled in that cold war at great cost to itself. Historians will one day trace the true reasons for this entanglement. At face value, it appears as though Nasir's rashness, his inner anger and his arrogance led him onto the slippery path that caused the 1956 Tri-Partite Aggression against Egypt and brought him into the Soviet fold. It shall have taken the sudden death of its leader, in 1971, for Egyptians to disentangle themselves from a game of nations they proved they could not successfully play.

Bandung Conference

Meanwhile, Nasir's Egypt negotiated an arms deal with the East in spite of America. It received financing for a dam in Aswan in spite of America. Neither Tito nor Nehru had gone that far into the Soviet orbit. When Nasir flatly refused to host the Middle East Defense Organization (MEDO) on his territory, Egypt was abandoned to itself and was attacked on October 29th, 1956, by Israel, Britain and France and his newly equipped army was annihilated as a result. Dependency on the Soviets, meanwhile, was increasing by the day at the expense of non-alignment. The Arab World became divided into pro-Egyptian states and those that supported the Baghdad Pact. The Cold War had finally reached the Eastern Mediterranean, Yaman and the Horn of Africa.

Nasir was neglecting Egypt for the sake of his adventurist foreign policy. Israel rehearsed in 1956 the War of 1967 while the Egyptian Regime deluded itself by making believe it had defeated three powers on its own. The regime, also, toyed with an ideology which combined Arabism and Socialism. Its ideological vagaries were inducing its residents, especially the Khawagat, to consider leaving and some began to depart. As a result of the 1956 War, Jews, French and British citizens and businesses were expelled. And, in 1961, like a mother that turns against her own children, the State started nationalizing Egyptian owned enterprises, including the Misr Group initiated by Tal'at Harb. The country had grown impoverished and out of breath. Egypt's charismatic leader whom all had expected to perform miracles could not anymore. When his sudden death was announced on September 28th, 1970, many commentators explained popular hysteria as a proof that his popularity had not waned. True, the loss of his charisma, for the leader, is often expressed by anger on the part of his followers who turn against him; it may also be expressed by a sense of loss and despair. 

Many will consider the appraisal of the Nasir years harsh on my part and I admit they are. Unless one understands that Nasir was the child of his epoch. His vindictiveness, reflected in his petty actions and in some of his speeches, strip him of the title of a wise and great statesman. His police helped buttress his own insecurities.

Abdel Hakim Amer

His appointment of 'abd al Hakim 'Amir as his Commander-in-Chief denotes his preference for loyalty rather than competence. And yet competence amongst Egyptians there was who were eager to serve uplift their country. These competent Egyptians were, instead, pushed aside by a class conscious leadership which seemed to want to get even with those they had long envied. The Regime preferred to humiliate rather than utilize the many who were the result of several generations of reforms which Muhammad 'Ali Basha had initiated.

Let us, for fun's sake, next play the What If game. The aim of the game is not to make one cry over spilt milk but rather to speculate if, indeed, there were avenues that could otherwise have been borrowed and mistakes that could have been avoided. A footnote to What If should be a reminder that Major Kamal id-Din Husayn, a prominent member of the Free Officers, addressed a meeting of Egypt's intelligentsia, early on after 1952. Attendants were offering points of views and advice to the new powers that be. The Major responded that it was the officer corps that had become today's intellectuals. The new intellectuals he pretentiously referred to were devoid of any skills in determining costs and benefits of their acts. In 1967, barely a decade later, incompetence led to the threshold of the Thirty Seven Minutes Debacle.