TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93HT0293> <link 93HT0388> <link 93HT0386> <title> 1950s: Middle East Nationalism </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1950s Highlights </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Middle East Nationalism </hdr> <body> [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 cleansing 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 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 of 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 forces 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 19, 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 nationalists 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; Jordan 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 in 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. </body> </article> </text>