We Are Your Soldiers

October 15, 2023
Comprehensive study of how much of the modern Arab world still reverberates with actions committed by Egypt's former dictator. "Seven decades since his coup, and more than half a century since his death, the Arab peoples have scarcely begun to shake off the legacy of 'Father' Gamal Abdel Nasser," writes Lebanon-based journalist Rowell. The now largely suppressed Arab Spring movement, for example, was in many ways a continuation of anti-Nasser resistance, while the Syrian civil war and political chaos in Iraq bear Nasser's marks in the wake of his failed effort to create an "Arab socialism" that would unite authoritarian rulers in the region. Nasser was a military adventurist who sent Egyptian troops as far afield as the Congo and unleashed chemical warfare on battlefields in Yemen. Ironically, Nasser's actions helped his enemies rise, including Saudi-inspired Islamists, for Nasser was unsuccessful in playing off the factions of his day such as the Muslim Brotherhood. As Rowell notes, in matters of religion and its Muslim fundamentalist practitioners, "Nasser's own stance was far more protean and mercurial than the one-dimensional 'secular' label permits." The author shows that Egypt was much the weaker after Nasser's rule, in part by his alienating the U.S. while courting a failing Soviet Union; in part because of the brain drain that accompanied his regime; and in part because of the disastrous 1967 war, which destroyed Egypt's air force and led Israel to occupy Gaza and the West Bank. Nasser came to rue his errors, though, and "he made unequivocally clear to his fellow Arab heads of state that neither he nor they were in any position to wage war on Israel in the near future," a confession "amounting to an indictment of much of pre-1967 Nasserism as a whole." A welcome history that helps explain the formation of the Middle East over the last half-century.

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October 30, 2023
Journalist Rowell (Vintage Humour) offers a searing indictment of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who served as Egypt’s president from 1954 until his death in 1970. As leader of the 1952 revolution against the Egyptian monarchy and British occupation, Nasser is commonly remembered as an anticolonial hero. Rowell argues, however, that Nasser’s legacy is marred by his interventions in the affairs of Egypt’s neighbors, which led to needless political chaos. The new governments established by the Pan-Arab revolutionaries whom he furnished with financial and military support routinely ended in disaster, Rowell notes, partly because of their close ties to Egypt. For example, Nasser backed the 1958 coup led by Abd al-Salam Aref in Iraq, who overthrew the monarchy and established a military dictatorship, but was subsequently deposed by nationalists opposed to Pan-Arab political unification under Nasser. Among other episodes, Rowell spotlights Nasser’s facilitation of assassinations and coups in Jordan and Syria, his systematic campaign of torture and violence against opponents at home, and his role in events leading up to Lebanon’s tragic civil war from 1975 to 1990. According to Rowell, “Nasser’s responsibility for Lebanon’s ruin was arguably greater than that of any other single individual.” Though Rowell somewhat overshoots in blaming Nasser for the problems of an entire region, he makes a strong case for a more tempered assessment of the Egyptian ruler. Readers interested in the Middle East’s thorny political history will be intrigued.