Middle East I: Tunisia and Egypt

Middle East I

East summer, Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba began to withdraw from the Egyptian-dominated Arab League, and in October he finally broke with Cairo. His own quarrel with Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt is an old one, based on personal incompatibilities and mutual distrust. But the final diplomatic break marks a new cleavage between what has come to be known as Bourguism and Nasserism.

As a veteran of the anti-colonialist struggle, and the first North African leader to achieve independence for his country, Bourguiba has solid nationalist credentials; and his devotion to a socialist solution to the Arab problem of poverty cannot be questioned. Neo-Destour Socialism has evolved under his guidance in Tunisia in a manner tailored to this small country’s needs and capabilities. It works. This is just the reason that Bourguiba’s initiatives abroad matter. His successes at home and his moderation abroad represent a challenge to Nasserism.

In the Afro-Arab world Bourguism means gradualism, Fabianstyle socialism, neutralism, and anticolonialism without the streak of hate which colors Arab and African extremism. Bourguiba has stood up to both East and West: in 1956 he condemned both the Soviets’ Hungarian invasion and the AngloFrench-Israeli Suez invasion. He supported the United Nations with troops in the Congo. He worked tirelessly for Algerian independence through negotiation with France.

Yet he provided refuge for Algerian rebels in Tunisia, and permitted Egyptian arms to be run across Tunisia to them.

Bourguiba looks both ways

More recently, in African affairs Tunisians have opposed Liberation Committee activities of the Organization for African Unity (OAU) which they thought aided extremist elements without forwarding genuine nationalist objectives. At Addis Ababa late in 1966 Tunisians helped to reassert the OAU’s authority over the freewheeling Liberation Committee and its budget. Tunisia has further exasperated African extremists by avoiding irreconcilable disputes and seeking common denominators. Thus Bourguiba has pushed the idea of a French-speaking commonwealth of states within the OAU as a natural unit with common problems, and with an interest in retaining useful links with the countries of Europe.

In such company Tunisia naturally assumes the position which geography suggests — that of a relay station for exchanges between Africans and Europeans. In this role it can function with an effectiveness out of proportion to its size and power.

No such tidy relationships are possible with the Arabs to the East. There the failure of unity and growing disharmony between gradualists and activists drown out appeals to moderation and consensus. Bourguiba’s connection with Egypt goes back to his years of exile there in the forties. Since coming to power in independent Tunisia, he has found himself contending with rivals for power based in Cairo. These are the followers of the late Salah Ben Youssef, a former fellow combatant against the French.

The Youssefists dream of turning Tunisia into a purer Arab state untainted by European influences and based exclusively on Islam. They disparage Bourguiba’s control of the Neo-Destour and transformation of it from a revolutionary movement into a formal political party. His synthesis of Islamic and Western values is anathema to them.

Salah Ben Youssef himself was murdered in Germany under mysterious circumstances in 1961. In late 1962 his followers engineered an unsuccessful reprisal coup against Bourguiba, using Cairo as their base. Last fall a Cairo paper revived this vendetta by printing the transcript of a supposed tape recording of the plot which resulted in Ben Youssef’s death, attributing the plot to Bourguiba’s family. It was then that Bourguiba felt himself forced to break completely with Cairo.

Jousting with Nasser

At best, relations seesawed up to that time. In 1964 and 1965 Bourguiba made an effort to play a role in Arab affairs. Revisiting Cairo in the early spring of 1965, he took pains to praise President Nasser’s internal achievements. He spoke of the many paths to socialism, suggesting that Tunisia’s way might also serve as an example to others.

He held conferences with President Nasser on Palestine and agreed that Arab governments are constrained by international agreements from attacking Israel. He agreed that therefore the Arab Palestinians should push their own cause through guerrilla warfare. He and Nasser also agreed privately that UN resolutions were the point from which to reopen any political negotiations. Nasser was already on public record as being willing to observe all UN resolutions on Palestine if Israel would do the same.

When Bourguiba reached Jordan, however, and spoke out among Palestine refugees in this same vein, he was immediately disowned. He had said in public the unsayable truth that Arab strategy against Israel was not working, and that more practical means must be found. Only in Lebanon was there an approving echo of this obvious truth. In Cairo, Bourguiba was immediately reviled as a traitor to the Arab cause. His real crime, of course, was that he had presumed to speak out. It was an unacceptable challenge to President Nasser.

Bourguiba’s second offense against Arab solidarity came when he refused to break relations with Bonn after the disclosure of West German arms aid to Israel and the subsequent establishment of diplomatic relations between Bonn and Israel. This aid had never really been secret from Cairo. But when it became public, Arab League members were pressed to react. The refusal of Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco spoiled the gesture.

The latest in this series of independent actions which Cairo found infuriating was Bourguiba’s withdrawal of recognition from the pro-Nasser Sailal republican government of Yemen in February. The split between this faction, backed by Egypt, and a dissident anti-Egyptian republican movement offered sympathizers a choice. Last fall, representatives of the anti-Nasser group, the Union of Popular Forces, apparently won sympathy in Tunis, and this faction, moving out through Aden, has been increasing Egypt’s difficulties in getting a stable republican regime launched in Sanaa.

Nasser’s Vietnam

Yemen illustrates a cruel dilemma for Nasser in his attempts to lead the Arab revolutionary movement. It is his Vietnam. Now, after four years of extremely brutal encounters with tough Yemeni tribesmen, the Egyptian forces have begun to operate on the “strategic enclave” principle. They have withdrawn from northern Yemen and concentrated around the capital of Sanaa. In this way they have been freed of the worst of the guerrilla attacks and have improved security in more populated areas. At the same time they have been able to bring home some 20,000 troops.

But for Nasser, the political scene in Yemen has proved to be as dangerous a minefield as the military front, for the Egyptians have come up against the intractable realities of Yemeni tribalism. Added difficulties spring from Yemeni resistance to Egyptian representatives trying to organize an economy and an administration in a singularly infertile political soil.

Cairo pays a price

In Cairo itself there is growing cleavage at the top between the Egypt-firsters and the nationalist missionaries. For the first time in its fifteen-year history the regime is known to be divided on priorities. The political and economic cost of Egypt’s Vietnam is now in question. Nasser cannot withdraw without a face-saving cover. The only such cover in sight may be some general agreement on protection of Aden, once British forces pull out in 1968. There are now signs that Egypt would welcome a peaceful solution for Aden if one could be devised in time. Nasser’s present cautious rapprochement with London seems to foreshadow some sort of solution to this particular instance of decolonialization. Such a development could help to thaw the impasse in Yemen.

Egypt’s internal affairs have reached a point where an emergency three-year development plan has been devised to tide the country over an acute financial crisis. On the eve of completion of the High Dam, the need for food and capital is more pressing than ever. Population pressure shows no signs of easing. The birth-control program is being given more attention but so far without measurable results.

In the absence of a wheat agreement with Washington, Egypt has secured partial supplies from the U.S.S.R. and small amounts from Europe. Debt postponement has become a necessity, and some progress has been made in negotiations to this end with Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese, and, most important, British creditors.

Washington shows no alarm that Russia is helping to feed Egypt’s hungry. In fact, American officials have bluntly told Cairo that the United States is short of wheat and dollars; that its own internal borrowings cost 5 percent in interest; and that there is no longer a surplus from which to give. To this bad news, U.S. emissaries have added the suggestion that any future aid recipients will have to refrain from behaving like enemies. Trade with Hanoi and attacks on Saudi Arabia are cases in point.

Yet Washington continues to recognize Egypt’s pivotal importance, its pioneering strides in human welfare, and its striving for modernization. By succeeding in these efforts Egypt can, in Washington’s view, assume Afro-Arab leadership by force of example.

Peace through oil?

There is one hopeful sign for those who want to see Egypt prosper and leave its neighbors alone: the prospect of domestic oil income. An American concern, the PanAmerican Oil Company, will share with the Egyptian Petroleum Corporation in the development of the Morgan field in the Gulf of Suez. Output from this new field is expected to reach substantial amounts this year.

An even more promising discovery in the Western Desert, about twenty miles north of Alamein, has been made by another American company, Phillips Oil. Should this discovery be significant, Egypt’s whole position as a Middle Eastern havenot state would change. The capital needed for industrialization would be available. (Egypt is already a “have” country in terms of skilled manpower; money is what it lacks.)

It is tempting to imagine that the lure of empire and oil interests in the Arabian peninsula would become unimportant to Egypt if oil wealth materializes at home; Egypt’s energies could then be directed toward its own social and economic challenges.

But Cairo continues to incite restless local nationalists against regimes which they are incapable of replacing, and Washington’s demands that Cairo cool off these scattered minutemen are hardly welcome. Cairo feels beleaguered; it believes the West is trying to contain Egypt. Nasser has chronic fears of imperialist and capitalist manipulation. That is part of the creed of Nasserism.

Today Nasserism still stands for Egyptian hegemony in the Arab

world (or as the Tunisians call it, “micro-imperialism”). Those who follow Nasser believe that Egypt has a mission in Arabia and Somalia, for example. They do not accept the fact that numerous Arab League and OAU resolutions barring interference and subversion among member states are aimed at them. Above all, they are alarmed and angered by the Saudi Arabian and Iranian threat to organize an Islamic grouping to contain Egypt. Islam, they say, should not be used as protection for “tottering thrones.”

Cutting oil Nasser

The sharp contrast between the American role in Tunis and in Cairo is one index of the distance between Bourguism and Nasserism today. In Tunis, U.S. Ambassador Francis Russell can devote his attention to economic questions; political problems are minimal. The Tunisian government seems aware of its own needs, makes its own plans, needs only economic aid. It is receiving U.S. aid at the rate of some $40 million a year. Here, as elsewhere, most American aid goes for foodproducing efforts and for education.

The view is not so pleasant from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Ambassador Lucius Battle takes his leave to become an Assistant Secretary of State after four years of deteriorating relations between Egypt and the United States. After furnishing a total of $1 billion in assistance to Egypt since 1945, financial aid has ceased. Only a small amount of technical assistance, amounting to slightly over $1 million this year, continues. Private American educational institutions remain, and the Ford Foundation has a far-reaching program stressing birth-control aid. Otherwise, American contact with this most important and strategic of Middle Eastern countries is quite clearly at a low ebb.

What is difficult to calculate is the eventual effect, in the sixties and after, of a policy of isolating the unquestioned leader of a revolutionary movement, still attractive to Arab have-nots.