Had Nasser Not Come to Power (3-3)

One of the dark ironies accompanying the July 1952 coup is that, had it not been for the entry of the coup’s true hero, the Communist officer Youssef Seddik, into the bar of the brigade commander to drink a shot of firewater to steel his resolve, and his subsequent misreading of the bar’s clock in the dim light—leading him to move an hour early, thereby causing the coup to fail due to leaked news reaching the King and senior officers flocking to the General Staff headquarters to thwart it—Youssef Seddik would not have arrested them. He also arrested Nasser and Abdel Hakim Amer, who were in civilian clothes monitoring events at the General Staff headquarters. Had the coup failed, they would have disavowed it, citing their civilian attire, and left their fellow conspirators to hang. Had it succeeded, as it did, they would have eliminated them, with Youssef Seddik being the first to be disposed of, followed by Muhammad Naguib and the rest of the coup leaders in turn. They claimed that Nasser and Amer were their heroes, which is part of the blatant falsification of history that made Nasser, rather than Naguib, the first president of the Republic of Egypt.

A logical and justified question remains: What would Egypt and the region have looked like had the coup failed and Nasser not ruled Egypt?

1. Egypt would have remained a monarchy to this day, including Sudan (both north and south), and likely Syria, as its nationalist president, Shukri al-Quwatli, favored unity with Egypt, having lived there for many years during the struggle. Naturally, he would have governed Syria as a deputy to the King of Egypt, and Dr. Ismail al-Azhari would likely have governed Sudan after a referendum on behalf of the King. The Kingdom of Libya would have joined this union, along with the Kingdom of Yemen led by Imam Badr, given the Senussi and Badr’s affinity for the Arab unity project. This union would have resembled the European Union or the United Arab Emirates more than anything else, as King Farouk and his heir apparent, Ahmed Fuad, were not authoritarian nor harbored grudges, unlike the "eternal leader" Abdel Nasser.

2. Egypt would not have joined, nor encouraged other Arab states to join, the Baghdad Pact. Consequently, the subsequent wars and defeats would not have occurred, and the Palestinian issue would have been resolved according to the Eisenhower project. Our region would have competed with Western Europe and East Asia in progress and prosperity.

3. Monarchical Egypt would now be a highly advanced and wealthy industrial state, part of an Arab-Islamic military alliance encompassing all Middle Eastern countries. Competition among regional states would have been focused on progress and welfare, rather than backwardness, poverty, and destitution.

4. Arab military coups would not have occurred, and the ancient nation would not have been plagued by destructive leaders such as Saddam, the two Asads, Gaddafi, Saleh, al-Bashir, Arafat, and Hamas leaders. We would not have witnessed wars and defeats, and the nation’s resources would have been allocated to education, development, and welfare.

5. Our systems and peoples would have been humane, liberal, and moderate, akin to the exemplary Gulf systems. We would not have witnessed the expansion of political Islam movements, which emerged and flourished due to the failure and repression of revolutionary leftist coup regimes. Abdel Nasser’s rule saw neither Egypt nor the Arab nation experience a single happy day.

Final station:

1. Had it not been for the foolish coups and revolutions, we might now have a great Middle Eastern Union, similar to the European Union, with open borders among all regional states and peace prevailing.

2. The catastrophe of nationalizing the Suez Canal, and the subsequent chain of wars, along with the ensuing nationalizations and state apparatuses in backward countries seizing control of economies—thereby spreading financial corruption, bureaucracy, backwardness, and chaos—would not have occurred.

It remains that a nation which praises its killers and destroyers while condemning its builders and labeling them as backward and reactionary needs its thinkers and intellectuals examined before the minds of the illiterate and ignorant are scrutinized.