By Aisha Raheel, Wagner College ’16
President Gamal Abdul Nasser was a ruler like no other in Egyptian history. He was the son of a postal clerk and had no roots in the Egyptian upper class (Time, 1970). He seized power in a military coup but became a very popular ruler during his reign, remembered with nostalgia after his death.
He tried to improve the lives of ordinary Egyptians through land reform and public education (Migdal, 1988; Ahmed, 1992).
Yet Nasser’s greatest legacy was attempts at preserving Egypt’s independence and promoting Third World independence more generally. His greatest triumph was the nationalization of the Suez Canal. In addition, he also tried to promote Arab unity through his union with Syria. The attempt at a political union among Arab states was a failure but the Arabs united as one people with a shared language and culture was popular among ordinary Arabs.
Nasser was also a prominent member of the nonaligned movement (Prashad, 2007). The nonaligned movement represented a group of nations within the developing world who refused to take sides with the Soviet Union or the United States in the Cold War. In joining this movement, Nasser became a dissident citizen. Taken together, Nasser’s foreign policies emphasized an influential, nationalist, and independent Egypt that could take its destiny into its own hands. Even when he was humiliated by failure in the 1967 War with Israel, he remained a popular leader among ordinary Egyptians (Ajami, 1974). When he died in 1970, millions of people across the Arab world from Cairo to Muscagt mourned for him (Time, 1970)
Bibliography
Ahmed, L. (1992). Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven
Ajami, Faoud. (1974). “On Nasser and His Legacy.” Journal of Peace Research
Migdal, s. Joel. (1988). “Vision and Practice: the leader, the state, and the transformation of society.” International political science review. Pp, 23-41
Prashad, Vijay. (2007). The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World