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Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970)Egyptian nationalist leader. Born on 15 January 1918, in Alexandria, he was educated at Cairo military academy, where he subsequently taught. With fellow officers, he made plans as early as 1945 to overthrow the corrupt King Farouk I, and helped form the Free Officers movement. After the Egyptian army was defeated by the newly created state of Israel in 1948-9, Nasser played a key role in the military coup that removed Farouk in 1952. Under Mohammed Neguib, a fellow-officer who became prime minister, Nasser became minister of the interior and ordered the wide-ranging persecution of his opponents. After an acrimonious power struggle, he ousted Neguib and became president on 17 November 1954. With his sense of moral rectitude, he reduced government corruption, began land reforms and introduced social provisions. But antagonism from the Israeli government, its supporter the United States and the former colonial power Britain pushed him towards the Soviet Union, which supplied him with arms. After the withdrawal of Western aid, he built the Aswan dam with Soviet help. In June 1956, Nasser was officially elected president. One of his very first acts, on 26 July 1956, was to nationalise the Suez Canal, which was owned by British and French investors. This resulted in the Suez crisis, during which an abortive invasion ended in a fiasco for the Western powers. As a leader of pan-Arabism, Nasser formed a short-lived United Arab Republic with Syria, and encouraged further attempts at Arab unity. His personal integrity made him a regional figurehead, and he was seen as a patron of socialist independence movements throughout the Middle East and Africa. In Egypt, however, the more militant political groups pushed him into taking an increasingly hostile attitude to Israel. When Israel launched the Six-Day War in 1967, Egypt's air force was destroyed on the ground and its army defeated. For the next three years, Nasser tried to make peace with Israel and come to an agreement with the United States. He died on 28 September 1970. |
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