TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/50s/50midest

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                c`                                                            Middle East Nationalism


  [The high tide of imperialism was past, but there were times
in the 1950s when the national interests of the colonial powers,
and even the U.S., impelled them to reassert themselves into
Third World affairs. One such instance was set off by Iran's
nationalization of its oil industry, a British concession that
accounted for 6% of the world's production.]

(May 7, 1951)

  The last hope of compromise in Iran seemed gone. Backed by
the young Shah, astute Premier Hussein Ala had tried to slow
down the headlong drive of Iran's National Frontists for
expropriation and nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.,
had apparently won the extremists over to a go-slow policy. But
last week the Front brushed Ala aside, made nationalization an
accomplished fact.

  The National Frontists were goaded by the fact that the
Communist Tudeh party was trying hard to take over the popular
anti-British movement, was yelling that the Nationalists were
selling out to the British. Without notice to the Premier, Dr.
Mohamed Mossadegh, Frontist leader and Majlis (Parliament)
speaker, called a meeting of the parliamentary oil commission,
rammed through a report that recommended immediate expropriation
of A.L.O.C. The Majlis unanimously made the report the law of
the land, provided for a commission to work out details within
three months. Majlis members knew that dissent would invite
assassination by Nationalist fanatics.

  Thin, bald and aging (70), the new Premier is a rich landowner
who was educated in France, has an honorary LL.D. from Oxford.
In a country where political skullduggery is the rule, he has
remained an honest man. He is rated an able orator, often gets
so worked up in his speechmaking that he faints; he is then
revived and, after finishing his address, is carried out feet
first.

  A violent enemy of what he considers "foreign encroachment,"
he tangled bitterly with American advisers to the Iranian
government. He is anti-Russian as well as anti-British, only
slightly less anti-American. There is no evidence that the new
Premier's government will be able to operate nationalized
oilfields--or even maintain order in the country. Iran trembled
with reports that the Tudeh party was getting arms from across
the Russian border, that violent demonstrations were being
plotted.


  [Iran's economy, already in crisis, deteriorated steadily as
foreign technicians departed, foreign tankers refused to load
Iranian crude, and revenues from Britain steered a precarious
course between the religious extremists and the Communists, and
stripped power from the young, reckless Shah Mohammed Reza
Pahlevi. In 1953 the Shah tried to reassert authority, but it
was too late. He fled into exile.]

(August 31, 1953)

  The violent hot land of Iran last week headed uncontrollably
over the crumbling edge of the abyss, and then, during three
wild days, pulled itself back to safety.

  When the week began, Mohammed Mossadegh seemed safely on top.
The Shah was in flight, the fanatic mullahs' and the stubborn
majlis' opposition was hidden or cowed; the army was a sullen
eunuch; the world resigned. Who was there to tell him no?

  His street supporters celebrated with a carnival of
destruction. Communist and Nationalist mobs swarmed deliriously
over Teheran's principal squares, pulling down the great bronze
status of the Shah and his father. They opened and defiled the
Reza Shah's tomb, spat on the Shah's picture, applauded as
Foreign Minister Hussein Fatemi cried. "To the gallows" with the
young Shah.

  At sundown of the second day, wily old Mossadegh seemed to
have all Teheran in his hand. But something was stirring in
Teheran that could not yet be measured. Perhaps Mossadegh,
unopposed, had gone too far and too fast and frightened the
people. Perhaps the Shah's flight forced them at last to decide
between monarch and Premier.

  The third day was the people's day. The shabbily dressed poor
poured out of their south Teheran slums, chanting, "Long live
the Shah." Others, armed with knives and clubs, joined them.
Shopkeepers pulled down the shutters in front of their stores
and swelled the march. Ordered to stop the parades, the soldiers
turned, instead, on their officers. Eight truckloads of troops
and live tanks, dispatched to the city to help Mossadegh, turned
over their equipment to the first pro-Shah mob they met.

  Flanked now by soldiers, the mob began a nine-hour-long
assault on one Mossadegh stronghold after another. When they
finished, they had captured the police station and Radio
Teheran; they had sacked eight government buildings and two
pro-Mossadegh newspaper plants; they had smashed the
headquarters of the Tudeh and the pro-Mossadegh Pan-Iranian
party.

  This was no military coup, but a spontaneous popular
uprising; individual soldiers joined, but not a single army unit
came in. Not until 4 p.m., when an air force general appeared
before General Zahedi's hideout with a tank, did Zahedi emerge
and take command of a field already won. The General-Premier and
his officers were as surprised by the victory as the people
themselves. The army had planned to counterattack Mossadegh on
Friday; the people beat them to it by two days.

  Six days after fleeing into exile, the Shah was back in his
capital, stronger than ever, without having lifted a finger.
Though his flight had reflected his panic, it also served to
precipitate the crisis and thereby, in the end, had proved
beneficial. For the people had shown more faith in him and in
the throne he occupied than he himself suspected. Premier Zahedi
and the entire frock-coated diplomatic corps were at the airport
to greet him.


  [It was later revealed that the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency played a large role in fomenting the "popular uprising"
that ended Mossadegh's disruptive nationalist regime. The
Premier was tried and convicted of treason, but received only
a three-year sentence because of his age. And the foreign
interest returned--until the next time.]

(November 8, 1954)

  Forty-two months ago, stirred by the weepy fanaticism of
Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran's Parliament voted to drive foreigners
from Iran's oilfields. Last week, with neither tears nor cheers,
it agreed to ask them back. The Senate approved 41-4 a bill
already rushed through the Lower House. In return for turning
over control of Iran's oil production and marketing to an
eight-company foreign consortium (American, British, Dutch and
French companies), Iran will get a 50-50 profit split, which
should yield it a badly needed $420 million in the first three
years.


  [The same nationalism that had infected Iran also roiled
Egypt, a British protectorate under fat, ineffectual King
Farouk.]

(August 4, 1952)

  At 7:30 one morning last week. King Farouk's past caught up
with him. He looked out of the huge window of his office in the
summer palace in Alexandria, saw tanks and cannons of a hostile
army--his own--advancing under cover of Egyptian Royal Air Force
planes. Farouk had made and unmade Premiers and generals,
manipulated the Arab League, and lost $140,000 in a single night
of gambling. But last week--at the payoff, he couldn't command
a battalion. His order to the bodyguards to resist never reached
them because the messenger was intercepted. A few loyal
bodyguards shot up three soldiers and with that the last remnant
of Farouk's power evaporated.

  Always a realist, he accepted the ultimatum of an obscure
general delivered by a turncoat politician. He abdicated, and
quit Egypt within the six hours specified. As he stood on the
quay to embark, his huge, beefy frame encased in a white naval
uniform, tears spilled down his cheeks. Twenty-one guns fired
the royal salute, and the royal yacht Mahroussa (meaning
Protected) put past the harbor's red and green entrance lights
and steamed for Italy. It carried Farouk, his 19-year-old wife,
their seven-month-old son, now King Fuad II, and 204 royal
trunks.

  The coup which had been on the planning boards for months was
brushed up in an all-night session, mostly by junior officers,
and [Major General Mohammed] Naguib, who had been reluctant to
move against the King, agreed to take the leadership.

  Performance was faultless. The officers of the coup called
out combat units at Abbassich barracks outside Cairo, secured
the base, then swooped down on a senior officers' meeting. Among
the arrested was Naguib's own brother, a top general. The
mutineers moved into Cairo with big field guns and tanks, and
cordoned off the palace and communications facilities. At 7:15
that morning the Radio Cairo news commentator stopped in
mid-sentence. The next voice, a husky parade-ground baritone,
read a communique from General Naguib: "Egypt has been subjected
to bribery, corruption, and instability in government. For this
reason we are cleaning ourselves."


(June 29, 1953)

  "This is the capital of the Republic calling," said an
announcer over the Egyptian State Radio early one morning last
week. It was the first hint of the big news: Egypt, after 5,000
years of rule by Pharaohs, pro-consuls and kings, had been
declared a republic.

  A little later, slender Major General Mohammed Naguib, front
man in the military coup which toppled playboy King Farouk from
his throne last July, went on the air as the Republic of Egypt's
first Premier and President. "...We proclaim today," said he,
"in the name of the people, abolition of the monarchy.


  [As Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged as the real strongman, Egypt
negotiated the withdrawal of British troops from Suez, ending
2,000 years of foreign occupation. But Nasser also made an arms
deal with the Russians, and accepted a Soviet offer to build the
Aswan High Dam when the U.S. withdrew its offer. In July 1956,
Nasser's nationalism went too far for the British and French.]

(August 6, 1956)

  Two days later, on the fourth anniversary of the dethronement
of ex-King Farouk, the West got a jolting reminder that Nasser
had a nasty bite as well as a loud bark. Stridently haranguing
a crowd of more than 150,000 with semi-hysteria reminiscent of
Hitler, Nasser shouted denunciation of Israel, Britain and the
U.S. for an hour and a half, then, with apparent irrelevance,
turned his fire on World Bank Director Eugene Black.

  "Whenever Black spoke," said Nasser, "I went back in my memory
to the year 1854, when Ferdinand de Lesseps arrived in Egypt and
told the Khedive: "We want to dig the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal
will bring you untold benefit.' Egypt put up $40 million to help
build the canal, supplied forced labor to dig it, and 120,000
workers died digging the canal...Britain forcibly took away from
us our 44% of the company's shares...Instead of the canal being
dug up for Egypt, Egypt became the property of the canal."

  Then Nasser delivered his blow: "We shall build the High Dam
as we desire...The annual income of the Suez Canal is $100
million. Why not take it ourselves? In the name of the nation,
the President of the Republic resolves that the World Maritime
Company of the Suez Canal will be nationalized... At this very
moment some your Egyptian brethren are taking over the Canal
Company.

  "We shall rely on our own strength, our own muscle, our own
funds," cried Nasser. "And it will be run by Egyptians!
Egyptians! Egyptians!"


  [As the Suez Canal unexpectedly continued to operate smoothly
under Egyptian administration, the frustrated, furious British
and French made shows of force, then, at U.S. urging, agreed to
talks about a canal-users' association to deal with Nasser. But
in October, the British and French moved in collusion with
Israel to impose an old-fashioned imperialist solution to the
Suez crisis.]

(November 12, 1956)

  The border was only an arbitrary line drawn between two
hatreds, and it had been violated for eight years by raiding
parties from Egypt or reprisal raiders from Israel. But this was
bigger. In the cooling desert dusk, along the 120-mile border
separating Israel from Egypt's Sinai peninsula,heavily armored
Israeli army units assembled at positions. Tank engines, in
World War II U.S. Shermans and light 13-ton French AMXs,
coughed, then roared. Behind the armor trailed streams of troop
carriers, weapons carriers, artillery pieces. Some 30,000 men
in sandtan battledress rode in the convoys--a force "too big for
a reprisal," said an Israeli official, "and too small for a
war."

  But war it was.

  Where once at least half of Egypt's ill-trained army--perhaps
60,000 soldiers--had ranged the Sinai peninsula, now little more
than 30,000 troops remained; Nasser had pulled the rest back to
defend the Suez Canal and his capital. The Israeli army, a
deadly machine full of disciplined power, had been swiftly
mobilized from the citizen soldiers of a soldier state
constantly on the alert for invasion from any part of its 600
miles of border with Arab enemies.

  In a stretch of dune country in north-central Sinai, at a
vital road junction called Abu Aweigila, the Egyptians threw
their one fierce punch. Israeli Shermans and AMXs ran into a
strong battalion of Egyptian armor, veered away from it while
Israeli infantry moved to attack. Overhead, Israeli Mysteres
spotted a major reinforcing column (it apparently was a full
corps of up to 50,000 men) lumbering eastward along the macadam
road from Ismailia. Egyptian Vampires and MIGs came in to cover
the reinforcements, fell into battle with Israeli fighters. By
late in the day, it was still a battle. The Egyptians were
fighting with more skill and courage than in the 1948 fiasco.
Then came the ultimatum from Britain and France set to expire at
4:30 the next morning. So Egypt had three enemies to content
with instead of one.

  At dusk the first Anglo-French bombers hit Egypt's airfields.
It was all the help the Israelis at Abu Aweigila needed. With
Egypt's air harassment all but eliminated, the vulnerable but
speedy French tanks engaged the T-34s. Soon the hillside were
smoky with burning tanks, both Egyptian and Israeli, but the
AMXs' speed was proving decisive when night fell.

  When dawn broke over the tank battlefield of Abu Aweigila,
the Israelis discovered that in the darkness the Egyptians had
pulled out what was left of their armor, to scurry to safety
west the Suez. A considerable remnant got away, but the
Egyptians' one big punch had failed.

  The desert blitz ended. Israeli forced marched triumphantly
into the ancient and grubby city of Gaza, where blinded Samson
pulled down the pillars and destroyed the temple. They found
only a handful of dull-eyed, curious Arabs, the raveled remnants
of an Egyptian division, and the unhappy Egyptian Governor
General of the Gaza Strip. He put his name to the surrender
papers and handed over to Israel some 325 square miles of
disputed real estate and the perplexing responsibility for some
250,000 ragged, ill-housed, ill-fated Palestinian refugees.

  In less than a week, a third of Egypt's army had been routed;
its air force was gone; its terrain east of the Suez was in the
hands of its most hated enemies; and its capacity to resist
Anglo-French invasion of the canal was sorely crippled.


(November 12, 1956)

  The transports lumbered off the ground at Cyprus in the
purple-streaked dawn, and two and a half hours later dropped
the paratroopers over the northern mouth of the Suez Canal. The
Britons aimed at Port Said, the French for Port Fuad, across the
canal's mouth. From the first instant of combat, it became
apparent that the Angle-French could not hope for a quick
victory without bloodshed. The Egyptians had littered the drop
areas with barbed wire and oil drums, were ready with a
desperate and (one of the invaders reported) "bloody good"
reception committee.

  In the first flash of conflict, casualties were considerable
among British and French as well as Egyptians. Back in Cyprus,
beaming, well-starched Invasion Chief Sir Charles Keightley
admitted that the Egyptian army was still "a cohesive force,"
but he was ready with Step Two in his "limited operation." The
invasion fleets had already steamed out for Port Said from
Cyprus.

  Tuesday at dawn, 24 hours after the air-borne troops hit the
silk, a force of 30,000 British commandos and French commando
units, with tanks, stormed ashore and into Port Said and Port
Fuad.

  The tank-led assault troops moved briskly through the suburbs,
and by the afternoon claimed capture of both Port Said and Port
Fuad. Soon a column was moving southward along the Canal Zone
to occupy Ismailia, hoping to be in possession of as much as
possible of the 20-mile-wide Canal Zone before the cease-fire
ordered for Tuesday at midnight.


(November 9, 1956)

  For a time last week, responsible statesmen on both sides of
the Atlantic feared that war was in the making. Messages of
alarm shot between Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv. U.S.
armed forces were alerted--not because attack was believed
imminent, but in case it was. Out of their mutual concern, the
Western alliance, sent by the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt,
was put back together again. The price: an incomplete victory
in Egypt.

  The alarm bell did not ring until after Britain and France
had already agreed to a cease-fire in Egypt, in the face of the
expressed disapproval of other principal allies around the world
and a 64-to-5 vote against them in U.N. Israel too had agreed
to a cease-fire, but was waiting to exact a victor's
satisfaction from Nasser.

  But at midweek Israeli intelligence (usually quite good)
reported that 24 Russian-manned MIG-7s, accompanied by Soviet
transports bringing technicians, radar and ground equipment, had
landed in Syria.

  Late Wednesday David Ben-Gurion got a personal message from
President Eisenhower. Its gist, as relayed by Israeli Ambassador
Abba Eban, was that the U.S. had reached a stern decision:
unless Ben-Gurion backed down and agreed to retreat from the
Sinai peninsula as the United Nations asked, he could not expect
any U.S. aid in the event of a Soviet attack. THe White House
had already made clear to Paris and London that the U.S. did not
conceive its NATO commitment to include the Middle East or
Cyprus if the Anglo-French persisted in their use of force. In
short, so long as Britain, France and Israel had not purged
themselves of their aggressions, they were on their own. But
Eisenhower had also served notice on the Kremlin in a White
House statement: the U.S. would not allow any "new force" to
intervene in the Middle East situation except under the mandate
of the U.N. This was a characteristically quiet way of asserting
a tough stand: the U.S. would not let the Russians intervene.

  By the time widespread private fears of war had risen to the
headlines, and to the public consciousness, the statesmen were
beginning to feel that they had affairs under control.
Ben-Gurion hastily reversed his talk of the victory's spoils,
agreed to withdraw from Sinai. The Anglo-French hastened to
comply with the U.N.'s pleas for an early and easy take-over in
Suez by a U.N. police force of soldiers from the small powers.
The Middle East crisis became a race between the U.N.--trying
for a peace before the Russians, hastening to raise "volunteers"
by the thousands (and in entire army reserve units), perhaps to
move into the Middle East under the guise of peacemakers.


  [After his successful defiance of the Western powers, Nasser
nursed bigger ambitions, and his dream of becoming leader of all
the Arabs.]

(February 17, 1958)

  "Within the Arab world," said Egypt's Strongman Nasser in
1953, "there is a role wandering aimlessly in search of a hero."
Last week President Nasser made his biggest bid yet for the role
of Arabism's hero. Meeting simultaneously in Cairo and Damascus,
the Egyptian and Syrian Parliaments unanimously adopted his
terms for immediate union and nominated him as sole candidate
for President of the United Arab Republic.

  "Long live Gamal, founder of Arab union!" roared the Cairo
Deputies of the first leader to make a start toward the ancient
dream of Arab brotherhood since Saladin united his Saracen hosts
against the Crusaders in 1174.

  Such plans only confirmed Middle East speculation that Syrian
nationalist had thought up the merger in their anxiety to head
off a Communist drive for control of their country, and had
accepted virtual annexation by Egypt as the only way out. Said
Iraq's irascible old Nuri as-Said: "You don't have union when
one of the countries is erased." Nasser's terms--power to impose
a single party and choose its leader, to extirpate other
parties--were clearly designed to allow Nasser to crack down on
Syrian Communists as hard as he has on his own. Already Nasser's
housecleaning was under way.


  [By mid-1958, the entire Middle East was in crisis: the King
of Iraq had been assassinated, apparently with Nasser's
connivance, or at least acquiescence; Jordon was being
threatened by Syria; near civil war, instigated by the U.A.R.,
roiled Lebanon. Acting under the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, by
which the U.S. pledged military aid to any Middle Eastern nation
threatened by "aggression from a country dominated by Communism"
(broadly interpreted here to mean the U.A.R.), the U.S. landed
a force of Marines on Lebanon's beaches.]

(July 28, 1958)

  On "Red Beach" at Khalde, five miles south of Beirut, began
one of the strangest of all Marine operations since the first
leathernecks landed in the Bahamas back in 1776. As planes of
the U.S. Sixth Fleet whizzed overhead, amphibious tracked
vehicles mounting twin-turreted machine guns, their armored
sides tightly buttoned, the drivers steering by periscope,
lurched from the sea like hippopotamuses. Tension written on
their young faces, sweat dripping from their brows in the 90
degree heat, marines full 90-lb. battle pack, lugging an awesome
array of Tommy guns, Garands, bazookas, mortars, machine guns
and grenades, pounded waist-deep into the surf, regrouped at
water's edge and pushed up the hill toward Beirut International
Airport. Above the roar of the boat engines came the first
historic growl of a Marine sergeant: "Come on, you bastards, get
going up that beach!" A red-mustached sergeant waved his men on,
shouted: "They're supposed to have mortars, and you're all
bunched up. You don't want to live long."

  The "they" to whom the sergeant referred were the pro-Nasser
rebels who had been resisting for 60 days the legally elected
pro-Western government of President Camille Chamoun. The
marines--and their commanders--had no way of knowing...when
their operation began, whether U.S. forces would be opposed or
not. All the normal precautions had to be taken, but Alice
arriving in Wonderland could hardly have found the situation
more confusing. The marines were met not by rebel fire but by
ice-cream vendors selling Eskimo pies, and the renowned traders
of Lebanon pushing soda pop at 50 cents a bottle, triple the
morning price.

  The marines, led by Ambassador McClintock in a black
Cadillac, marched (in small groups) into the capital, their arms
as inconspicuous as possible, and took up posts around the city.
Some Lebanese cheered, but most looked on expressionless. On the
second night, marines stationed at an outpost two miles south
of the airport returned small arms fire from four rebels, with
no casualties on either side. Two marines who took a wrong turn
in their jeep were seized by rebels, questioned by a man who
identified himself as a "schoolmaster," and after steadfastly
saying, "I don't know" to all questions about why they were
there, were released three hours later. The impressive presence
of nearly 10,000 U.S. troops, and the accessibility of 70 ships,
three carriers and 25,000 men of the Sixth Fleet might make even
the itchiest-fingered of Lebanese rebels hesitate. But the
possibility of ambushes and stray shots remained.