Part 3: The Cold War: Suez Crisis and its effects on the Nile

The Suez Crisis of 1956, or the Tripartite Aggression was a changing point in the political sphere of influence in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt which as seen from my previous blogposts have been an integral player in the determination of the integrity of the River Nile. This blogpost therefore focuses on the importance of the Suez Crisis and how it has a knock-on effect on the geopolitical order surrounding the River Nile - in part due to the changing stance of the Western Powers (namely U.S and U.K) on decolonisation and self-determination. The Suez Crisis can be seen as the 'straw that broke the camel's back', the event which led to the hastening of decolonisation in Africa and the Middle East.

Our evaluation should begin with a brief comparison between the different leaders of Egypt at that time and how it had a significant impact on the events preceding the change in power as well as Egypt's stance on the Cold War world order. This had quite substantial repercussions on the politics along the River Nile. The last king of Egypt, King Farouk was overthrown by the Nationalist duo of then General Mohammed Naguib and Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Nasser, who subsequently became the first and second President's of Egypt. King Farouk was arguably merely a puppet for the Western Powers, namely the United Kingdom who at that time shared control of the Suez Canal with France. The Free Officers Movement, led by Naguib and Nasser was against the idea of Egypt being a mere pawn of the West, in addition, they had garnered the support of the masses, particularly due to incidents such as the 'Cairo Fires' and Black Saturday (King, 1989). With the exile of the last king of Egypt led to the creation of the Revolution Command Council (RCC), consisting mostly of members from the Free Officers. General Naguib was then sworn in as the first President of Egypt. His reign however did not last long as he had differing opinions to that of his younger compatriots (Nasser), wanting the country to be placed under civilian rule and the military to act as more of a shield rather than the ruler (Reich, 1990). Gamal Nasser then finally took chairmanship of the RCC, and became the second president of Egypt. His anti-imperialist stance and adoption of 'positive neutralism' in the period of the Cold War drew great attention to Egypt, as he could be seen as often trying to play off the Allies against the Soviets leveraging on the Suez Canal (which was nationalised) in a bid to lift Egypt's position in the Global World order (Aburish, 2004; Mansfield, 1973). In addition, the funding of the Aswan (High) Dam then was a additional card Nasser played, understanding that the Allies and Soviet Union were both keen on maintaining friendly relations with Egypt as the then leader of the Arab world. In the end, the Allies bowed out leaving the Aswan dam to be funded by the Soviet (Gaddis, 1998). These basic understanding of the shift in power of Egypt's rulers should provide a satisfactory insight to Egyptian politics then and how it could affect not only Egypt's reign of the Nile waters but also how the fellow players who were colonies or protectorates such as Sudan and Uganda changed their stance and gained courage to actively seek for self-determination against the colonial powers.

In addition, Nasser's rule was met with its first challenge and one of the key changing events shifting the power relations present in Northern Africa and Middle East in the late 1956 in the form of an Israeli, U.K and French invasion - the Suez Crisis. Prior to the actual invasion, the canal was seized by President Nasser and his troops in a bid to nationalise the nation's crown jewel. At that time, the canal was controlled by the British and the French, and hence a main objective of their participation in the invasion was to restore the canal to its 'rightful' owners (Kyle, 1991). In addition, the canal was a key installation which facilitates the movement of important raw materials - namely oil, from the Middle East and Saudi Arabia to the West. Not going into too much detail with regards to the invasion, it can be simply cited as one of the key failures in U.K's history, which to some extent leading some to cite it as the key changing point in U.K's global power. The failure was particularly important for it saw the U.S.A not only refuse to support the U.K and France, but also threatened to economically destabilise the British economy. The eventual withdrawal of the Allied forces in Egypt culminated Egypt's rise as a leader of the Arab world and signified their strength in the region (Owen, 2002). The victory (despite political) over Western Powers from a previous colony that gained independence merely years ago aspired many other colonies in Africa and the Middle East to actively seek self-determination. In addition, with the British failure and strenuous ties between Britain and the U.S.A, Britain had to adopt a more benign foreign policy post-Suez crisis, giving in to the UN's (USA) demands for collective decolonisation (Jervis, 1997).

With all that established, we hence consider how the aforementioned events affects the sovereignty and the power relations of the river Nile. As seen, the Soviet funding of the Aswan (High) dam, coupled with the Egyptian victory over the Western powers solidified their higher position in the ladder despite being a downstream riparian. In addition, many of the nations along the Nile were at that time more concerned about other issues such as independence. As a result, it is obvious that Egypt was not only victorious in Suez, but also gained victory over the dominance of the course of the Nile. However, with the riparians slowly gaining independence, e.g. Sudan, the previous treaties with respect to rights of the water were challenged and repudiated as a form of misrepresentation as much of the treaties (mentioned in my previous posts) clearly show that the treaties were signed by colonial rulers and not representatives of the nation itself. In conclusion, the introduction of Nasserism and the rise of Egypt as a key player in the region has significant impacts, not in the Middle East and the Arab world but in Africa and the rest of the world as many colonies then saw how a previous colony managed to rise against all odds and gained not only victory against their previous colonial rulers but also recognition in the global geopolitical order.

This leads us to our next blogpost where we discuss and investigate how these independent nations with personal political agendas solve the 'conflict' of water of the Nile.

References:

Aburish, S. K. (2004). Nasser: The Last Arab. Macmillan.

Gaddis, J. L. (1998). We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES, 32(1), 196-197.

Jervis, R. (1997). Risse-Kappen, Thomas. Cooperation Among Democracies: The European Influence on US Foreign Policy. ANNALS-AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, 1(553), 209-209.

Kyle, K. (1991). Suez: Britain's end of Empire in the Middle East. IB Tauris.

Mansfield, P. (1973). The Middle East: a political and economic survey. Oxford University Press.

Owen, R. (2002). State Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. Routledge.

Reich, B. (1990). Political leaders of the contemporary Middle East and North Africa: a biographical dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group.

Wucher, J. K. (1989). Historical dictionary of Egypt. American Univ. in Cairo Press.