Nasser – his legacy lives on

by Mustafa Fetouri

Nasser defied Britain, France and Israel – and his legacy still animates Africa. When Gamal Abdel Nasser led the Free Officers Movement to power in 1952, Africa’s political landscape was mostly vacant – with independent nations limited to Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, Libya and apartheid-ruled South Africa. Yet, by his death in September 1970, more than 40 African countries had achieved sovereignty. This monumental shift was no coincidence.
Under Nasser, Cairo transformed into the hub of global anti-colonialism – a diplomatic base and logistics centre for liberation struggles from Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) to movements in the Congo, Angola and Southern Africa. By exporting the ideals of the 23rd July Revolution, Egypt helped engineer Africa’s decolonisation wave, anchoring a Pan-African momentum that forged the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and championed a multipolar world order through the Non-Aligned Movement.
The legacy of the 23rd July Revolution underscores Nasser’s early recognition that the survival of Egypt’s domestic development programmes and regional initiatives required strategic depth. Mapping out Egypt’s geopolitical destiny in his 1954 manifesto, The Philosophy of the Revolution, Nasser conceptualised Cairo’s foreign policy within three interconnected spheres: the Arab world, the African continent and the Islamic sphere.
While the Arab world was bound by a shared language and history, the African sphere offered the most fertile ground for a systemic challenge to European empires. Nasser argued that a colonised Africa left Egypt’s southern flank dangerously vulnerable. Conversely, a liberated continent would secure Cairo’s vital interests – including the crucial waters of the Nile – and solidify Egypt’s role as the vanguard of the developing world. Meanwhile, the Islamic sphere provided the cultural and civilisational network necessary to mobilise transcontinental solidarity against foreign hegemony, ensuring that Egypt never stood isolated against imperialist powers.
To turn this geopolitical vision into reality, Nasser transformed Cairo into the operational centre of African decolonisation. Crucially, arts and literature flourished alongside these movements. The city evolved into a dual Pan-Arab and Pan-African sanctuary for liberation fronts that the European empires were actively trying to crush.
From Nelson Mandela seeking military backing for the African National Congress (ANC), to Jomo Kenyatta’s representatives from Kenya and Amilcar Cabral’s PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) vanguard, the architects of African revolution found resources and safety in Egypt’s capital. However, subverting entrenched empires also required the imperialist monopoly on information to be broken. Cairo utilised its reputation as the “Arab Hollywood”, leveraging the continent’s latest pop music and poetry to draw millions of listeners to the Voice of the Arabs and Radio Cairo. Broadcasting across the continent in dozens of indigenous languages (including Swahili, Hausa, Amharic and Somali), Egypt bypassed colonial censors to deliver a message of self-determination directly to the African masses.
Cairo under Nasser utilised its diplomatic infrastructure as an instrument of liberation, most notably through its backing of Algeria’s FLN. Central to this strategy was the African Association, established in 1955 in Cairo’s Zamalek district under Nasser’s close advisor, Mohamed Fayek. The Association functioned as a diplomatic centre for exiled vanguards. When European imperialist rulers legally erased freedom fighters by revoking their citizenship, the Nasser government stepped in to issue official Egyptian travel documents and stipends.
This infuriated the colonial powers, culminating in October 1956 when French intelligence intercepted and hijacked a civilian plane carrying the top FLN leadership, including Ahmed Ben Bella, from Morocco to Tunis. This act of French piracy saw Cairo double down: Nasser escalated military shipments, financial aid and gave the FLN a state-backed diplomatic and media platform in Cairo to rally the world. Combined with similar passport, logistical and broadcast lifelines to those extended to South Africa’s ANC, Mozambique’s FRELIMO, and Zimbabwe’s ZAPU, this mobilisation proved that true sovereignty demanded the defence of a globally connected political elite long before the formal lowering of a colonial flag.
The escalation did not go unanswered by the colonial powers as they witnessed their influence quickly waning. France, the UK and Israel were determined to crush Nasser once and for all. Their opportunity came when he announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal. The tripartite alliance launched a full-scale military invasion of Egypt in late 1956. However, their aggression backfired. By holding the line militarily and leveraging diplomatic pressure through the UN with back-channel support from both Washington and Moscow, Nasser transformed a crisis into a political triumph for the Global South, when the invading forces had to withdraw.
The humiliation of London and Paris signalled the collapse of traditional European imperial power, proving to liberation movements that the Western empires were no longer invincible.
This solidarity culminated in a structural overhaul of the global architecture, with Nasser cementing his legacy as a co-founder of continental unity. Egypt was a primary driver behind the historic May 1963 OAU Addis Ababa summit. As the leading voice of the Casablanca Group, Nasser placed his signature on the founding charter of the OAU alongside fellow continental leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, and Guinea’s Sekou Toure. They did so out of a shared conviction that isolated independent states would remain vulnerable unless they came together, particularly at a time when the African continent was facing new challenges, including wars.
This institutional anchoring of Pan-Africanism was mirrored globally as Egypt’s revolutionary path converged with other titans of the Global South – such as India’s Nehru and Yugoslavia’s Tito – to establish the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. By refusing to become vassals of either Cold War bloc, Nasser and his contemporaries forged a distinct third way.
Today, as debates intensify around African autonomy and resistance to neo-colonial pressures, the legacy of the July 23 Revolution remains a foundational blueprint for Global South sovereignty. Seven decades later, the structural shifts engineered in Nasser’s Cairo continue to reverberate across the African geopolitical landscape, in which African states have not only replaced the OAU with the more unifying African Union but made it a trusted vehicle for collective will.
And the struggle is not over yet, as seen today in the Sahel countries which, decades after formal independence, have managed to kick out the remnants of French colonialism. As the modern international order fractures, today’s African leaders echo the exact vocabulary forged during the anti-colonial wave, asserting independent policies in a multipolar world. Whether navigating new financial frameworks, resisting external security dictates, or demanding structural reforms at the UN, the continent’s push for absolute sovereignty stems directly from the precedents set when Cairo broke the imperial monopoly on power.
rt.com 

Johnson in Wonderland

Boris Johnson didn’t amount to much when he was Foreign Minister in Theresa May’s government. His seemingly trivial approach to international diplomacy led the Russians to compare him unflatteringly with his famous Victorian counterpart, calling him Britain’s “New Palmerston”. Few took him seriously and it is even said that President Sisi of Egypt walked out of a meeting with Johnson simply because the conversation did not get beyond the usual pleasantries.
    So we shouldn’t be surprise to see BoJo posing as a great statesman in Kiev in a desperate attempt to show his usefulness to the Biden administration and divert domestic attention away from the ‘partygate’ scandal. But Johnson has, not surprisingly, failed to shake off the pack of Tory back-benchers baying for his blood or attract the attention of Vladimir Putin or the man in the White House Johnson is so keen to impress.
    Johnson knows that the real reason that so many Tories are turning on him is because they believe they will never be able to restore the ‘special relationship’ that many of them think is vital for the survival of British imperialism as long as he remains at the helm.
    Johnson may think that posing as US imperialism’s chief henchman à la Blair is the way to get back into Biden’s good books. But BoJo, who is still remembered as “Britain’s Trump” in Biden’s circles, needs to do much more than this to restore Britain’s standing with the current President of the USA. Rather than wasting his time talking to a nonentity like Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, Johnson would be better off working to improve relations with Ireland by ending the impasse with the European Union over northern Ireland’s Irish Sea ‘border’. But that is something Johnson clearly cannot do.

The long and winding road

Sad to see that Ken Livingstone, who was hounded out of the Labour Party by the Blairites and Zionists, has applied to join the Greens instead. Some will argue that there was nowhere else for him to go. Others that the Greens are indeed a genuinely left alternative to Labour.
    Meanwhile, reports that Jeremy Corbyn is planning to form a new party – reports almost entirely coming from the Starmer camp that want him out anyway – have fired calls from the usual suspects for the establishment of yet another left social-democratic alternative to Labour. But, needless to say, this will go nowhere without the support of the trade union movement and the unions are simply not interested.
    Past efforts have dismally failed. Arthur Scargill, the militant miners’ leader, did his best with his Socialist Labour Party (SLP) whilst even the RMT’s money wasn’t enough to get their Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) off the ground.
    There’s no point even in standing communist candidates. It is literally divisive. The old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) abandoned the revolutionary road when it adopted the {British Road to Socialism}. Other left electoral platforms such as Respect, the SLP and TUSC all essentially express the same theory.
    The parliamentary election system in Britain is essentially a two-party system. At this stage the main working-class demands are for social reforms, and we believe that they are best carried out by reformist parties such as the Labour Party. We see the main struggle being within that party and the trade unions, and as long as Labour retains its organic links with the trade unions our policies are unlikely to change. Lenin himself said, at the time of Ramsay MacDonald in the early 1920s, that the British Labour Party was a very strange party, unlike any other social democratic party in Europe. The ‘strangeness’ is that Labour gets nearly all its members and funding from the trade unions. This is still the case.

Muhammad Ali – Friend of the Arabs

Ali meets President Nasser

By our Arab Affairs correspondent

Black American boxing legend Muhammad Ali died last week in a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, where he was being treated for respiratory complications. Ali’s condition was aggravated by Parkinson’s disease, which was first diagnosed in 1984, and he died on Friday 3^rd June. He was 74-years-old.

            He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville, Kentucky on 17^th January 1942. White supremacy was rife in Kentucky in those days. Like the rest of the South, Kentucky upheld segregation and “Jim Crow” laws designed to keep all Blacks in bondage. As a boy he tried to ignore Kentucky’s institutionalised racism. When he got older he became an outspoken champion of the civil rights and anti-war movements.

            Cassius Clay took up boxing at an early age, developing a skill, technique and nimbleness that won him a place in the US boxing team for the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics – winning a gold as a light-heavyweight and turning professional the same year. Clay’s poetry and talent for self-promotion went down well with the fans but few believed he had the power or the punch to survive in the big league. Four years later he would take the world heavyweight crown from Sonny Liston.

That same year he converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. He later refused to serve in the Vietnam War, saying that no Vietnamese had ever called him “nigger”.

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?” he declared.

Charges of “draft dodging” soon followed. In 1967 Ali was stripped of his passport, championship titles and boxing licences, and sentenced to five years in jail. Although he did not go to prison he spent the next three and a half years fighting the decision that ended with the Supreme Court overturning the conviction and recognising his status as a conscientious objector.

Muhammad Ali returned to the ring in 1970 and continued to make boxing history until age and declining health forced him to hang up his gloves in 1981.  During a 21-year career the three-times World Heavyweight Champion won 56 bouts, knocking down some of the giants of the sport such as Sonny Liston, George Foreman and Joe Frazier. But his renown went far beyond the sporting arena.

Muhammad Ali became a civil rights champion and an icon for all the Muslims in the United States. He stood up for the Third World and the world-wide Muslim community. His fame spread throughout the world. Not surprisingly Ali won a huge following amongst the Arabs.

Soon after embracing Islam Muhammad Ali went to Cairo at the invitation of the Arab boxing federation. He prayed at the famous Al-Hussein Mosque in Cairo and also received a gold-inscribed Koran from Egypt's Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs.

  At that time Egypt was known as the United Arab Republic (UAR). The country was led by a charismatic leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had  developed “Arab Socialism” and the call for Arab unity. Ali spent two weeks in the UAR in 1964 visiting major cities, ancient monuments and the Aswan High Dam, which was still under construction with Soviet assistance. Ali said:  "Now, I saw the high dam that I heard about before. Now I can say that it is not an easy project and it's an obvious proof of the greatness of Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser."

Ali said Nasser was his "role model" and that he considered him the "best president in the world". He was overwhelmed when the Arab leader agreed to meet him, kissing Nasser's photo and statue before meeting him at the presidential office.

Ali visited the holy sites in Mecca in 1972 and toured the Middle East again in 1974.

In Beirut he told the media that “the United States is the stronghold of Zionism and imperialism”, and said during a visit to Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon that:  “In my name and the name of all Muslims in America, I declare support for the Palestinian struggle to liberate their homeland and oust the Zionist invaders.”

Now long retired, Ali even went to Israel in 1985 to seek the release of some 700 Lebanese prisoners captured by the Zionists during their invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon, but his appeal was politely turned down.

The following year he returned to Cairo, now capital of the “Arab Republic of Egypt”,   as a goodwill ambassador, visiting the pyramids and praying at the great mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha.

He met Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 1990 and brokered the release of Americans who had been held hostage following the Iraqi intervention in Kuwait.

Though a passionate anti-Zionist, Ali was never an anti-Semite. He said: "There are Jewish people who lead good lives. When they die, I believe they’re going to heaven. It doesn’t matter what religion you are, if you’re a good person you’ll receive God’s blessing. Muslims, Christians and Jews all serve the same God. We just serve him in different ways.

Anyone who believes in One God should also believe that all people are part of one family. God created us all. And all people have to work to get along."

            Recently he condemned the terrorism of the “Islamic State (ISIS)” following the barbarous ISIS attacks in Paris last year, saying:” "I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so-called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion."

And although self-praise was part of his boxing stage-craft Muhammad Ali never lost his sense of humour. He said: “I would like to be remembered as a man who won the heavyweight title three times, who was humorous and who treated everyone right. As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him… who stood up for his beliefs… who tried to unite all humankind through faith and love.

“And if all that’s too much, then I guess I’d settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and a champion of his people. And I wouldn’t even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was!”

SUEZ: When Nasser stood up against imperialism!

by Andy Brooks

ON 29th October 1956, Israeli troops stormed into the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula and advanced towards the Suez Canal. The Israelis claimed it was aimed at curbing Egyptian support for Palestinian guerrillas based in Gaza.
In fact it was part of a secret deal hatched in London and Paris to topple Egypt’s Free Officer Revolution led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and return the recently nationalised Suez Canal to Franco-British imperialism.
The next day, Britain and France offered to temporarily occupy the Canal Zone to protect the international waterway, demanding a 10 mile buffer-zone on either side and entirely on Egyptian territory, to separate the warring forces. When this unacceptable ultimatum was rejected by Nasser the RAF began bombing Egyptian air-fields and Anglo-French paratroopers descended on the Canal. The second Arab-Israeli war had begun.
The old colonialists dreamt of restoring their power in the Middle East. The Egyptians dreamed of building a new modern Arab republic in the heart of the Arab world. While the Arab dream remains unfulfilled to this day the colonial pretensions of British and French imperialism were shattered in October 1956.
The 1952 Egyptian Revolution, led by progressive army officers, ended a corrupt and venal monarchy that had long been in the pocket of imperialism. The Free Officers immediately introduced land reforms, public education and a rudimentary welfare state.
But above all they were determined to fulfill the centuries-old dream of all the people of Egypt – the construction of a dam that would conserve the waters of the Nile for agriculture and use its power to generate electricity for the people of the great river.
British engineers had already built one dam across the Nile at Aswan in 1899 but it had become woefully inadequate and almost overflowed in 1946. Plans for a new High Dam at Aswan began in 1952 and the Nasser government had been led to expect funding to come from loans from the United States and Britain. But in 1956 Britain and the United States both cancelled their offer.
British imperialism, like the French, was angered at the Egyptian government’s embrace of Arab nationalism which had inspired democratic movements that challenged the Arab kings and princes under British protection in Jordan, Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Cairo was the base for the Algerian national liberation movement fighting to kick the French out while the Americans had been stung by Egypt’s decision to import arms from socialist Czechoslovakia and establish diplomatic relations with People’s China.
This left Nasser with only two choices. Give in to imperialism or find the money elsewhere. He did – by nationalising the Anglo-French Suez Canal Company.
No one had asked the Egyptian people whether they wanted the canal in the first place though 120,000 Egyptian workers, mainly forced labourers, had perished during its construction. Egypt’s feudal rulers originally held shares in the French company but Ismail Pasha was forced to sell all of Egypt’s stakeholding to Britain in 1875 to meet external debts. The canal then came under total Anglo-French control.
Opened in 1869, the charges levied on shipping made a handsome profit for its owners but the Egyptians got little back in return. The Suez Canal Company had effectively robbed the Egyptian people of £35 million a year, Nasser said in his fateful address on 26th July 1956 in Alexandria. This money, just like the canal, belonged to the people.
Anglo-French imperialism immediately tried to bring the Canal to a standstill. All British and French pilots were ordered out but the Egyptian and Greek pilots stayed at their posts. Then Britain and France tried to build up an international lobby to challenge the nationalisation while secretly plotting with Israel and moving troops to the region in preparation for the invasion.
On 31st October Anglo-French warplanes began to bomb Egypt. Nasser ordered the sinking of all 40 ships present in the Canal to block it to all Powers.
Significantly the Eisenhower administration in Washington had not been consulted nor had it given its blessing to the Anglo-French invasion. American imperialism had no interest in maintaining the old European colonial empires and indeed they were actively working to dismantle them to open the Third World to US competition.
Their major Arab ally was the feudal king of Saudi Arabia who was threatening an oil embargo on Britain and France if the war continued and the United States still hoped to win Nasser over to their plan to extend Nato into the Middle East.
At the United Nations on 2nd November the American delegation voted in favour of a General Assembly resolution, moved there to sidestep a British or French veto, calling for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of the invading troops In Britain Labour opposition leader Hugh Gaitskell had initially backed the efforts of Tory premier, Sir Anthony Eden, to regain control of the Canal. But a growing peace campaign and pressure from union leaders and the rank-and-file soon changed his mind. On Sunday 4th November Trafalgar Square was packed with demonstrators chanting:‘One, two, three, four! We won’t fight in Eden’s war’ and Gaitskell forcefully attacked Eden’s aggression.
Britain and France ignored the UN ceasefire vote and on 5th November Anglo-French paras were dropped along the Canal. Egyptian forces, already fighting the Israelis, were deployed to defend the waterway. The French and British commandos faced fierce resistance in the streets of the Canal ports. The Egyptian masses rallied to defend their revolution and drive the invaders out. Pro-Nasser demonstrations swept the streets of the Arab world, still largely controlled by Anglo-French imperialism.
Oil pipelines were sabotaged and French and British property attacked by angry crowds. In Cyprus, the key British base for the invasion, General Grivas’ EOKA guerrillas – also fighting British colonialism – attacked the RAF bases and throughout the non-aligned world the tripartite aggression was denounced.
The Soviet Union moved quickly the day the paras landed. Failing to receive a positive response from President Eisenhower to a proposal for joint action to repulse the aggressors, the Soviet Union then demanded an immediate halt to all military operations. The Soviet government stated that the USSR was “determined to use force to shatter the aggression and to restore peace in the Middle East”. It obliquely threatened to launch missile attacks on Paris and London while Krushchov warned that he would send Soviet volunteers to join the fighting Egyptians.
The next day, 6th November, the British Cabinet met in crisis session. Seven ministers in Eden’s government threatened to resign. Eden visibly shaken, told a news conference he was going on hunger strike. When Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Prime Minister, received the news, he interrupted a meeting in the Indian parliament to read it out, and said that an empty stomach was better than an empty head.
On 7th November Britain, France and Israel agreed to a ceasefire. By the end of the year all British and French troops had left and Israel evacuated Sinai and the Gaza Strip the following year with the end of the Egyptian blockade of the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat and the establishment of UN buffer troops in the Gaza Strip and along the Egyptian-Israeli frontier. Eden retired soon after, a broken man, while Nasser became a hero to all the Arabs. And the Aswan High Dam was built with Soviet assistance in the 1960s.
In a speech in 1960 President Nasser said: “The true significance of Suez for the liberation movement in Asia and Africa was that it signified an end to the era when the imperialists could mobilise their armies and navies to deal lethal blows to liberation movements. The Suez war proved that the victim of aggression had its own armies and that freedom had supporters all over the world”.