Politics and change in the Middle East : sources of conflict and accommodation by Andersen Roy;Seibert Robert F;Wagner Jon G & Seibert Robert F & Wagner Jon G

Author:Andersen, Roy;Seibert, Robert F;Wagner, Jon G & Seibert, Robert F & Wagner, Jon G
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Pearson Prentice Hall
Published: 2004-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

coincidence of Nasser's Arab unity with his concept of Arab socialism and mass political participation. Nasser's forthright opposition to the traditional elites of Egypt did not endear him to the beleaguered traditional and transitional elites of other Middle Eastern countries.

Nasser had a particular vision of Arab socialism. This combination of politics and economics should not be viewed as socialism in any European or Marxist sense; rather, it was more a socialism of secular Islam. Its practical expression came in terms of the nationalization of basic industries, the elimination of foreign ownership, and the construction of hospitals, mosques, and schools in as many Egyptian villages as possible. There was no sophisticated understanding of socialist economics in Nasser's formula. There was. instead, an interest in the common man expressed in terms of daily needs and concerns—concerns like food, a place of worship, employment, and national ethnic pride.

The implementation of Nasser's socialism had benign political effects: mass public participation in the Arab Socialist Union, a very real improvement in Egypt's international prestige, and the integration of the professional and political classes with the military bureaucracy. But it nearly created an economic disaster: high inflation, low industrial productivity, high unemployment. As critical as we may justifiably be of Nasser's economic policies, however, we cannot deny his beneficial influence on Egyptian and Arab politics. His symbolic value to the emergence of an appropriate twentieth-century Arab identity is enormous.

Nasser's death and the consolidation of control under Anwar Sadat brought many substantial changes to Egypt and its elite. Under Sadat, the scope of the elite broadened as government policy became more tolerant of people and institutions in the private sector. In the mid-1970s. Sadat launched an ambitious program to create a parallel private economic structure: and he attempted to create competition between left, right, and center parties in the Arab Socialist Union. These efforts broadened the representativeness of the elite.

Sadat's rather bold changes to Nasser's political vision did not come cheaply or without opposition. Attempts in 1978 to raise the artificially

low price of bread met with widespread and angry public demonstrations, forcing the government to back down. Nasser is still a potent symbol in the hearts and minds of the Egyptian peasantry and bureaucracy, and one is more likely to encounter his picture in a peasant home than that of Anwar Sadat. It is clear that much of the thrust of the Egyptian revolution under Nasser survives. It is also clear that Sadat made a mark on that revolution himself, as the Egyptian treaty with Israel (1978). the dramatic break with the U.S.S.R.. and the wooing of Western industry to the Nile demonstrated.

Sadat's government, however, came under increasing domestic pressure from groups dissatisfied with these changes. Palestinian organizations placed a price on his head, as did Libya's volatile Colonel Qadaffi. The Muslim Brotherhood, violently repressed by Nasser in the early days of the revolution, showed signs of resurgence, encouraged by the Islamic revolutions in Libya. Iran, and Pakistan. And Arab nationalists, unhappy with Sadat's unilateral peace with Israel, began to oppose Sadat's rule.

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