The legacy of Gamal Abdel Nasser.. Where did it go? Who squandered it?
The legacy of Gamal Abdel Nasser.. Where did it go? Who squandered it?
The revolution of July 23, 1952, led by the leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, broke out at such series circumstances locally and in the Arab Region.
Egypt used to have a society dominated by semi-feudal relations and capitalism, The British occupier controlled all the political, economic and social capabilities of the country, supported by his army consisting of 80 thousand British soldiers, and the traitorous class he established from Egyptians, and from the foreign communities that settled in Egypt, to suck their resources and plunder its wealth, and from the disturbing royal family that sank into corruption and decay, and its political, economic and social scandals were on everyone's lips.
The Wafd Party had let go the leadership of the National Movement since its shameful position on February 4, 1942, and had become a party for the rich. Besides, its backward right-wing affiliations, that were against the interests of the majority, were exposed.
The last national project of the Wafd’s government before the revolution was addressing poverty and barefoot.
Is there any humiliation equivalent to that?
Other political parties, such as: the Muslim Brotherhood, Communists and Socialists, were in the political landscape, yet they were all unable to take serious actions to ignite a revolution that would take over the fragile and in-trouble political system.
The Cairo fire came on January 26, 1952, as a declaration of political bankruptcy the liberal era in Egypt's contemporary history from 1923 to 1952.
While in the Arab political landscape, the Arab world was divided into countries and states under the control of British and French colonialization. In addition to the new american colonialization which was introduced to the region after World War II.
Israel was forcibly deep-rooted in the heart of the Arab world, on the land of Palestine, to separate the Arab world into North-South divide, to serve as an imperialist base to protect the interests of the West in the most important strategic areas, as they contain the first oil stocks in the world, and to destroy any national modern renaissance projects in the Arab world.
Globally, the Cold War outbroke between the capitalists and socialists in area where they could control. Parallely, Gamal Abdel Nasser's revolution erupted in Egypt. When Nasser took over egypt, Egypt was a poor, industrially backward country. Its main agricultural crop was cotton; however, there were cotton monopoly by the feudalists, speculators, and foreigners. The Egyptian economy was lagging behind and dependant on foreign capital monopolies.
Only 960 people controlled all the basic positions on the boards of directors of industrial companies, of which only 265 were Egyptians.
Barclays Bank of England exclusively controlled 56% of the deposits while the Bank of Egypt was under control of British and American capital.
The Egyptian economy was weakened due to its association with foreign interests through banks, insurance companies and foreign trade in exports and imports, and all the facilities of the Egyptian economy were in the hands of foreigners and Jews.
That convinced the great Egyptian economist Dr. Abdel Jalil Al-Omari to describe Egypt's economy by saying: "The Egyptian economy was like a cow grazing in The Land of Egypt, but all its udders were milking outside Egypt."
The historical documents convey dark facts about Egypt's internal situation before the revolution.
The last state budget in 1952 showed a deficit of EGP 39 million.
Investment allocations for new projects according to the budget, whether by the state or the private sector, were zero.
Egypt's balances of sterling due to it were for all its goods, services and transportation routes while serving war efforts of the Allies during World War II. Besides, 400 million pounds were squandered, and only 80 million pounds were left.
Al-Wafd newspaper published this issue in the 1980s, referring to the fact that Egypt was a creditor to Britain before the revolution. Documents proved that the remaining amount of debt of 80 million pounds, that Britain refused to give to Egypt during the rule of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, in retaliation for Abdel Nasser and his policies against it. Britain did not pay it off until the mid-1970s during the Al-Sadat’s era.
The looting of agricultural land in Egypt throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was because of Muhammad Ali's family who first monopolized everything and then distributed part of it on foreign usurers, and to a very limited class of Egyptians, which it created to be its representative in front of the majority of poor Egyptians.
When the Brits occupied Egypt in 1882, they created a class who owed them loyalty and adopted their civilized style. They distributed thousands of acres to members of this class. That created suspicious and extremely harsh conditions on the oppressed Egyptian peasant who was left prey to ignorance, poverty and disease, having only one robe, finding no income for living his day, and being treated like slaves to serve his masters of feudalism.
The Suez Canal Company was manifestation of the Egyptian tragedy in all its dimensions. The canal that was dug in the land of Egypt and by the hands of ten thousands of Egyptians whose blood flowed before the sea water, was stolen from Egypt. The Suez Canal Company became a state within the state with a special flag, a private code, a private intelligence service and a private neighborhood that is forbidden for Egyptians to enter it.
Its president was treated like heads of state with all respect, and no Egyptian official dard to hold him accountable.
U.S., French and Israeli documents proved that the company paid EGP 400 million funds to support military efforts of the Allies during World War II, and also made huge sums of money, up to ten millions, to the Zionist movement in Palestine as donations in support of the National Jewish Project.
After Israel's establishment, the Suez Canal Company administration set up offices for information and intelligence coordination to communicate with Mossad and continued to pay Egyptian funds in support of the Zionist entity .
The company's future plans were all based on the extension of the franchise of channel to a new 99-year-old contract.
Egypt’s wealth was stolen from its people, exploited by puppet classes, ruling families, foreign usurers and Jews.
Egypt did not belong to its people. Egypt had no independent foreign policy, but rather set out by british politicians.
When King Farouk decided to participate in the Palestine War, the Egyptian army failed in the battle due to the betrayal of other Arab armies, lack of readiness, poor armaments, incompetence of leaders, poor planning. This defeat resulted in the loss of 78% of Palestinian land and the establishment of Israel state.
Gamal Abdel Nasser took over power in Egypt and its situation in such a series period after the expulsion of King Farouk on July 26, 1952.
The first agricultural reform law was issued on September 9, 1952. The law consists of 6 sections covering 40 articles, the first article set the maximum agricultural property at 200 acres per person, and article 4 allowed the owner to give his children 100 acres.
The law allowed landlords to sell their lands which were above the maximum allocation for those who wanted, and gave them the right to avoid sold lands.
The law guaruanteed paying compensation to landlords, up to 10 times the price of land at its rental value, and added property and other land-based equipment, such as: trees and equipment, at high values.
The law regulated the paying compensations by withdrawing documents. And the government should pay them over 30 years at an annual interest the set out.
The law guaranteed distributing excess lands to small farmers, approximately 2 to 5 acres, and to pay for these land in installments for 30 years, at an interest rate of 3% per annum, in addition to 1.5% of the total price of the land for the assests that were already in the land, such as: trees, equipment and etc.
Title II of the Law tackled establishing of cooperative organization in distributed lands.
Title IV identified a number of measures to prevent the fragmentation of distributed lands and a new land tax.
Chapter 5 tackled the relationship between landlords and tenants.
The sixth and final chapter set a minimum wage for agricultural workers and gave them the right to organize their agricultural unions.
The total lands to which the September 1952 law applies was 653,736,000 acres belonging to 1,789 large owners, yet the lands to which the law was actually applied amounted to 372,305,000 acres. While the rest, about half, were sold by owners themselves until October 1953, then the government repealed the provisions that allowed owners to sell themselves.
The second agricultural reform law was issued in 1961, law (No. 127 of 1380 AH = 1961 AD), and the most important aspect of this law, is to make the maximum ownership of the individual 100 acres, in addition to 50 acres for the rest of the family (children) to benefit only, prohibit any sales of land from the owner to his children, and eliminate previous exceptions for low-fertility land.
The lands that had been subjected to "land reformation law" are up to 214,132,000 acres.
The third agricultural reform law was passed in 1969, Law 50 of 1969, which made the maximum ownership of an individual 50 acres.
According to official statistics, 1969, 989,184,000 acres had been distributed to farmers, of which 775,018,000 acres had been seized in accordance with land reform laws, and 184,411,000 acres were belonging to some different institutions, The rest of the 29,755,000 acres were lands related other projects according to the same official statistics. These lands were distributed to 325,670,000 families. Agricultural associations had also been established in all villages of Egypt, as a result the state had set a comprehensive planning system for agriculture all over the republic, and it had identified the types of crops planted and provided farmers with seeds, pesticides and fertilizers, and purchased crops from farmers.
The fragmentation of agricultural property under the comprehensive planning of agriculture through the agricultural cycle had eliminated the problem of unemployment and raised the economic level of the Egyptian farmer in parallel with the state's economic plan to achieve self-sufficiency in agricultural crops.
The most important and greatest of all was the change in the situation of the Egyptian farmer and his family, where schools and health units were introduced to the villages, awareness and education rates increased and health and economic conditions in the countryside improved thanks to the revolution.
The biggest and most important project of the revolution, was the High Dam for Agriculture in the first place. As it provided the amount of water needed to turn the irrigation into permanent irrigation, thanks to it as nearly 2 million acres were reclaimed.
During Abdel Nasser’s Era, Egypt was able to achieve self-sufficiency in all its agricultural crops except wheat, it achieved only 80% of its needs.
In 1969, Egypt's cotton production reached 10 million and 800,000 quintars, the highest cotton crop production figure in Egyptian agriculture history ever.
The area planted with rice in Egypt had reached more than one million acres, the highest area planted in Egypt's history.
The cultivation of new types of wheat, such as Mexican wheat, and wheat 155, has also been experimented.
In the industrial field, the Permanent Council for the Development of National Production was established in September 1952.
The council issued the Public Investment Plan in July 1953, an ambitious four-year plan under which the state began land reclamation.
Building heavy industry projects, such as: iron and steel.
And the company for fertilizers, Kima.
And the tire factories, Kauchuk.
And the factories of railway cars, the Semaf.
And electrical cable factories.
After the high dam, and in the 1960s the power lines were extended from Aswan to Alexandria.
Mines have also been built in Aswan and marine oases. All these projects have been self-funded.
On July 26, 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company and returned it to Egypt.
Following the tripartite aggression, British and French funds were nationalized and confiscated.
The Economic Corporation was established in 1957, which was the corner stone of the Egyptian public sector, and all egyptian foreign institutions have been assigned to it.
On February 13, 1960, President Abdel Nasser nationalized Bank of Egypt, the country's largest commercial bank, and all associated industrial companies, after it fell under the control of British and American monopolies, it was returned by Nasser to Egypt.
In July 1961, socialist decisions were issued, and it became clear that the system was moving towards a kind of planned economy under state supervision and led by the public sector.
Through these measures, Egypt has achieved a growth rate from 1957 to 1967, which amounted to approximately 7% per annum and the source of this figure is the World Bank Report No.870-A on Egypt issued in Washington on January 5, 1976.
This means that egypt was able in ten years of the era of Abdel Nasser, to develop four times as much as it did in the forty years before Abdel Nasser’s era.
This was an unprecedented result in the developing world as a whole, with the annual development rate in its most independent countries during that period not exceeding two and a half percent, but was attributable to the developed world except Japan, West Germany and the group of communist countries.
For example, Italy, an advanced industrialized country, and major industrialized countries achieved a growth rate of only 4.5 percent in the same time period.
Since the early 1960s, Egypt and India and Yugoslavia have launched an ambitious project to manufacture aircraft, missiles, jet engines and weapons.
Until 1967, Egypt was superior to India in the manufacture of aircrafts and jet engines. The Egyptian Cairo 300 jet was made. Egypt manufactured the first two missiles, produced with the help of German rocket scientists, but they were flawed by defects in routers.
In 1966, the difference between Egypt's nuclear program and its Israeli counterpart was a year and a half in favor of Israel's nuclear program. Despite the setback, Egypt was about to achieve a balance of power in the nuclear field between it and Israel by 1971.
Unfortunately, after the October 1973 war, President Sadat stopped all these projects and ended their existence, and now let's look at how far India has come in the field of missiles, aircraft and nuclear weapons, to realize the extent to which Gamal Abdel Nasser has looked forward at the seriousness of his renaissance project on the Us-Zionist project in the region.
In 1965, after Egypt completed its first five-year plan, Egypt's gross domestic product GDP reached about 5.1 billion dollars, while its Saudi counterpart was about 2.3 billion dollars in the same year. The UAE has not yet been founded. Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Singapore each had a GDP of 4,390, 3,840, 3,130,300,970 million dollars in the year.
Which indicates that each of these countries was behind Egypt when it comes to GDP.
On June 5, 1967, judgment day came to evaluate gamal Abdel Nasser's project.
In the war, that French President Charles de Gaulle described as "the American battle and the Israeli performance."
Despite the violence of the strike and the magnitude of the military defeat.
Did Egypt collapse and end, as some of the addicts try to perpetuate defeat, convince us that the 1967 war is the cause of all Egypt's problems?!!
By taking a look at the situation in Egypt after the defeat, it is clear to us: that the Egyptian economy has borne the costs of completing the construction of the giant high dam project, and the construction of the dam was not completed until 1970 before the death of President Abdel Nasser.
The aluminium plant complex in Naga Hammadi, a giant project costing nearly 3 billion pounds, had also been built.
During the setback, Egypt maintained its economic growth rate before the setback.
In 1969 and 1970, the figure increased by 8% annually.
In 1969, the Egyptian economy was able to achieve an increase in favor of its trade balance for the first and last time in Egypt's history with a surplus of EGP 46.9 million at the prices of that time.
The Egyptian economy borne the burden of rebuilding the Egyptian army from scratch, without external debts.
Egyptian stores were displaying and selling Egyptian products such as food, clothing, furniture and electrical appliances.
President Abdel Nasser was proud to wear suits and t-shirts for mahalla yarn, and use Egyptian electrical appliances from IDIAL.
The World Bank reports detected some of the manifestations of social transformation that Egypt experienced between 1952 and 1970:
The agricultural lands had increased by more than 15%.
For the first time, the increase in agricultural lands is preceded by an increase in the population.
Gamal Abdel Nasser was the first Egyptian ruler since the time of the ancient Egyptians to expand the Nile Valley.
The number of young people in schools, universities and higher institutes has increased by more than 300%.
The area of land owned by small farmers has nearly doubled, from 2.1 million acres to about 4 million acres.
There has been remarkable progress in equality and social justice in cities as well as taxation.
Minimum and high salary limits have been set, and no one lives below the subsistence level.
Prior to the death of President Nasser, Egypt completed the construction of the famous rocket wall, and completed the plans to cross and liberate all Arab territories.
President Nasser accepted rogers' initiative.
The heroes of the armed forces were able to move the great rocket wall to the edge of the Suez Canal.
The role of Israeli warplanes, Israel's long arm in the attack on Egypt west of the Suez Canal, was abolished.
And the outbreak of the liberation war, and the Egyptian army's crossing the East Bank, became a matter of time.
Just before the president's death, he endorsed Granite Plan, the transit plan, the first part of which was implemented on October 6, 1973.
He also endorsed Plan 200, the defense plan that tackled a gap may occur in the critical joint between the second and third Egyptian armies.
One of the wonders of destiny is that the gap occurred exactly as plan 200 predicted following President Sadat's late decision to develop the Egyptian attack on October 14, 1973.
President Nasser's spirit had rested in peace, and Egypt's economy is stronger than South Korea's. Egypt has a hard currency surplus of more than 250 million dollars, according to the World Bank.
The public sector, built by Egyptians under President Nasser, was estimated by the World Bank to be 1,400 billion dollars.
Egypt has the largest industrial base in the third world.
The number of factories established under Nasser was 1,200, including heavy, transformative and strategic industrial plants.
The High Dam, the greatest engineering and development project of the 20th century, according to the United Nations estimations, which is equivalent to 17 pyramids like Khufu pyramid.
Illiteracy was reduced from 80% before 1952 to 50% in 1970, thanks to the introduction of free education at all levels of schooling.
The free education that introduced scholars, such as: Ahmed Zewail, Mohammed Nashawi, Magdi Yaacoub, Mustafa El Sayed, Yahya Al-Mashed, Said Badir, and many others despite all the fabrications of Nasser's opponents and his ambitious policies, and to read more about these scholars, just read their diaries as they tackled Nasser’s era.
Electricity, clean water, schools, health units and agricultural associations have been intoduced in large number to villages of Egypt.
Health and social insurance and pensions have been guaranteed to every Egyptian citizen. Almost all of that was debt-free.
On the night of Nasser's death, Egypt had debts up to one billion dollars for weapons it bought from the Soviet Union.
Egypt's currency was not pegged to the US dollar, but the Egyptian pound was equal to three and a half dollars, and fourteen Saudi riyals according to the prices of the Central Bank of Egypt.
President Abdel Nasser left, and the gold pound was equal to 4 Egyptian pounds.
After the leader's death, Egypt took part in the October War and with all mechanisms of the Nasser’s Regime.
The public sector led development.
The Egyptian army built by Nasser after the defeat.
The rocket wall that Nasser moved to the edge of the canal just before his death.
And the military plans that had been in place since his time.
What President Gamal Abdel Nasser did was not a miracle or something extraordinary.
Yet this is the normal for a country like Egypt, which God has loved, gifted all the advantages, possibilities and wealth to become a strong country.
Egypt's genius location, potential and wealth merged to President Gamal Abdel Nasser's patriotism, ambition and vision for Egypt, which led to all this success, which took place in a limited period of time, not more than 18 years, disfigured by many conspiracies and wars to abort the projects of Nasser.
Since the death of President Abdel Nasser, and the changes in Egyptian politics after the October 1973 war, destruction moves began to strike in the giant edifice of President Gamal Abdel Nasser's legacy in Egypt.
Resources:
Books:
How Abdel Nasser ruled Egypt? Abdullah Emam
For Egypt not Abdel Nasser. By Mohamed Hassnin Haykal
Suez Files. By Mohamed Hassanein Heikal
The third looting of Egypt. by Saad eddin Wahba
Abdel Nasser. By Robert Stevens - Mohamed Odeh
Gamal Abdel Nasser. By Agaryshev
A man is his position. By Mahmoud Amin al-Alam
Memoirs of Sami Sharaf part 1 and 2
Collapse after Nasser. Why? by Adel Hussein
What happened to the Egyptians? by Jalal Amin
The reports of the United Nations and the World Bank referred to.
Chapter of the book (Battles of Nasser.. A New Reading in Our Contemporary History): Amr Sabih - First Edition 2011.
