NASSER: THE OTHER MAN

For four months Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, basking in much of the world's indulgence, has played the role of a wronged man. But once Israel's invading armies leave his soil, it will be time to examine Nasser's own conduct, past and future, and take new measure of him. The world has known Gamal Abdel Nasser for only four years; few men have undergone more violent alternations of public reputation in shorter time.

Man to Admire. In the beginning, when Nasser's Free Officers overthrew corrupt and fat King Farouk, and shortly thereafter displaced Mohammed Naguib, their pipe-smoking front man, Nasser, an assistant postmaster's son and professional soldier, seemed a bright hope for a new Egypt. His smile was disarming; he confessed he knew little about running a country, but he was a plain man, plainly honest, eager to end the effete and selfish rule of the pashas. Fighting in the losing Palestine war he became convinced that his country's real problem was not Israel but the poverty of its people. The Eisenhower Administration pinned its hopes on him as the keystone of its new Middle East policy, backed his development programs with grants of $26 million, helped him lever the 80,000 troops of the British, grumbling, out of Suez. The U.S. sent as ambassador to Cairo a young West Pointer, Henry Byroade, who understood and liked Nasser as a fellow soldier. "Egypt stands today in every respect with the West," said Nasser, and Byroade sent back to Washington sympathetic and admiring reports. Even the Israelis considered Nasser the most progressive of Arab leaders, nursed a hope that he might lead the way to Arab-Israeli peace.

Man to Watch. But as his confidence grew, so did his ambition. He published a booklet, The Philosophy of the Revolution, which French Premier Guy Mollet calls Nasser's Mein Kampf, but the comparison with Hitler is unfair: Nasser came to power bloodlessly and, though a dictator, conducted no bloody Putsch of his political enemies. In his book he talked about Al Umma al Arabia--"the Arab nation"--which would extend from Cairo and Damascus to Baghdad and Amman, and of a role in the Arab world searching for a hero. It was a first warning to the few who read it. He began covertly, then more openly, to play the neutralist game of East against West. He first welcomed, then suddenly denounced, the U.S.-sponsored Baghdad Pact. He refused to sign a military-aid agreement with the U.S. on the ground that its provisions for supervision were "too much like colonization." He fell under the flattering spell of Chou En-lai and Nehru at Bandung. Then, in September 1955, he suddenly announced that Egypt had made a deal for large amounts of Czech arms. He offered his habitual explanation: he was forced into it. Israel's massive Gaza raid earlier in the year, he explained, had convinced him that Egypt must have arms to defend itself, and the U.S. refused to provide them. It was just a commercial transaction, he said. Wary now, but still hopeful, the U.S. made a counterbid for Nasser's favor, offered to help build the $1.3 billion high dam on the upper Nile at Aswan.

Man to Top. His new Communist arms had freed Nasser from the restraints imposed by the West's balance-of-arms policy in the Middle East, and in every village and sook from Tangier to Baghdad he suddenly found himself hailed as a hero who had bamboozled the Western colonialists. His Voice of the Arabs grew increasingly shrill, demanding the blood of every Western imperialist, sowing hatred for the French throughout North Africa. He sent arms to Algerian rebels, fomented terrorism against those Arabs who would cooperate with the French in Morocco and Tunisia, offered hospitality to exiled leaders in Cairo.

When the British tried to hustle Jordan into the Baghdad Pact, Nasser turned loose his Voice of the Arabs on the Jordan mobs, helped get Britain's Glubb Pasha expelled from Jordan. Then the West learned that Nasser had contracted to buy not $60 million worth of arms (as he indicated) but $240 million worth; he had mortgaged Egypt's cotton crop to the Communists for years to come. Later Nasser also triumphantly announced that the deal was with Russia itself, not Czechoslovakia. Abruptly the U.S. lost patience, withdrew its offer to help finance the Aswan Dam. In retaliatory fury, Nasser seized the Suez Canal crying: "Americans, may you choke to death on your fury." Three months later, determined not just to teach him a lesson but to topple him, the Israelis, British and French attacked Suez.

Wasting Victory. For a moment after the humiliating forced withdrawal of Britain and France, Nasser seemed stronger than ever. He had withstood, at least for a few days, two of the world's greatest colonial powers, and he had all Europe squirming in the economic pinch of the blocked canal. But the victor of the November crisis has not fared well under the wasting pressures of its aftermath. The blocked canal has cost Egypt heavily in revenues and business dependent on its traffic; Port Said is an economic wasteland and its citizens in an ugly mood. Egypt's profitable tourist trade has dried up. Nasser's expulsion of British, French and Jewish residents (an estimated total of 30,000 people) and the "Egyptianization" of foreign banks and agencies has resulted in a devastating dislocation of the economy. Nasser still seems to be holding the popularity of the Egyptian masses, whose miserably low standard of living cannot be much worsened. But there are increasing mutters of discontent among the upper and middle classes, who include not only the old pashas but also the best of Egypt's professional and business people, who are Western-minded.

His foreign-exchange credits frozen by the West (including $50 million worth sequestered by the U.S., $420 million by Britain), Nasser has become increasingly dependent on the Russians in his desperate efforts to shore up the economy. The Communists have supplied him with shiploads of wheat, sold him tankersful of oil to replace the wells seized by Israel in Sinai. More and more Russians and satellite Communists are seen in Cairo nightclubs. Worse still, Nasser's own movement is infected with fellow travelers, though Nasser seems unaware of it.

Ahmed Fuad, whose application for a U.S. visa was delayed so long on the ground of his Communist connections that he ended by withdrawing it, directs the government's powerful Foreign Trade Co. In press and propaganda, key jobs on Cairo's three government papers belong to party members, and the propaganda draws so heavily on Communist techniques as to argue coaching. Khaled Moheddine, who went into exile during Nasser's early days because he was too Red for Nasser, is back editing the government's daily Al Missa. His cousin, Zachariah Moheddine, is one of the top colonels in Nasser's tight little junta.

Prisoner or Circumstance. Nasser's prestige has fallen perceptibly among his Arab allies. Not even Nasser's propaganda machine can conceal the fact that Israel's army inflicted a brutal beating on Nasser's vaunted army. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, though they gave lip service to Nasser when he was attacked, have found his blockage of the canal has cost them dear in oil revenues. The Arab Kings have always resented Nasser's implied threat to reach over their heads to the street mobs in their own countries, have become increasingly aware that Nasser has exploited Arab nationalism primarily for Egypt. The new rulers of Tunisia, Morocco and Libya, the young King of Jordan, the new pro-Western government of Lebanon, though all making noises of Arab unity, resent Nasser's dominance.

Today, 39-year-old Gamal Abdel Nasser is a captive of his own proud insistence that he will never compromise. He is pathologically suspicious of the U.S. "It's got to the point where Nasser rejects everything the U.S. suggests simply because it comes from the U.S.," said one U.S. observer ruefully. "The trouble is that Nasser has taken such a rigid attitude on every issue that any concession he makes becomes a 'major' concession."

But Nasser is also cornered by circumstance. He is reluctant to get too closely tied to the Communists (and has several times in recent weeks cracked down on more conspicuous Communist propaganda efforts), but in his usual self-justifying fashion blames his predicament on the West. He was astonished at the hostile reaction observed when he "Egyptianized'' all foreign business. He thought he was just taking one more step toward purging Egypt of exploiting foreigners, apparently expected British and French investors would still invest in all-Egyptian enterprises--even though posters all over Egypt depict the British and French as ogres and snakes.

He has made no public speech since the early days of the invasion. Personally, he remains friendly and charming to visitors and apparently as reasonable as ever, but he often seems bewildered and uncertain nowadays, a counterpuncher with nothing to counter. The "role wandering aimlessly in search of a hero," which he envisioned for himself and his country, is more and more becoming a role in a Greek tragedy, its protagonist hopelessly playing out his own doom. He still has the possibility of creating further disasters, but no soundly bottomed hope of raising up his people, for he has denied himself the trust of those who could help him fulfill his original dream. He can only call in the help of Communists who, for the price of helping him, will enslave his people. Even as talk of a "successor" circulates in cafes and chancelleries, there are some who regret that a man with such promise for good should have been reduced by his overreaching ambitions to a cunning and reckless figure. Egyptians in time may say as Cato said of Caesar: "His virtues be execrated, for they have ruined my country!"

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