Parallel Move

Gamal Abdel Nasser is not the first Egyptian to covet the Sudan. The Pharaohs, the Caesars, the Turks--all who held power in Egypt--cast envious eyes to the south on the "Land of the Blacks," which controls the upper waters of the Nile. In 1951 King Farouk presumptuously proclaimed himself "King of Egypt and the Sudan"; the Sudanese ignored him. During the Sudan's first parliamentary elections in 1953, the Egyptian army officers who overthrew Farouk dispatched Major Salah Salem to dance with the natives in his undershorts and ladle out a reported $5,000,000 trying to swing the Sudanese toward merger with Egypt; the Sudanese politicians took the money, rejected the merger and, in 1955, declared themselves independent. Last week, flushed with his success to the east, ambitious Gamal Abdel Nasser brazenly attempted to expand to the south. He discovered that the Sudanese were not as annexation-prone as the Syrians.

Split Claims. A month ago Nasser fired off a note to the Sudanese government of Premier Abdalla Khalil demanding that the Sudan immediately hand over to Egypt 1) a 6,700-sq. mi. triangle of desert and scrub hills around Halaib on the Red Sea, 2) a 90-sq. mi. finger of land in the Nile River valley near the interior town of Wadi Haifa. Actually, Nasser had a legal case for his claim. After Lord Kitchener's forces (including a young subaltern lancer named Winston Churchill) defeated the Sudan's Dervishes at Omdurman in 1898, Egypt and Britain set up a joint rule over the Sudan, drew the political boundary between Egypt and the Sudan along the 22nd parallel. But in 1902, in order to avoid splitting tribes in the Wadi Haifa and Halaib regions, the Egyptians agreed to pass to the Sudan administrative control of two areas which jut northward above the parallel (see map). In the past 56 years Egypt had never claimed them. Nasser followed up his first note with another announcing that he was sending election officials into the areas so that the inhabitants of the two areas could vote in the plebiscite ratifying the Egyptian-Syrian merger. It was a bald attempt at annexation.

The Sudanese reaction was instant.

Hard-boiled Premier Khalil, who has fended off both Egyptian and Russian attempts to penetrate his new nation, tried in vain to telephone Nasser, dispatched his Foreign Minister to Cairo, and finally, after a Cabinet meeting lasting until 3 a.m., cabled an urgent complaint to the United Nations Security Council accusing Egypt of plotting "aggression" and of organizing a "huge infiltration of Egyptian troops" (disguised, according to Sudanese sources, as camel traders and manganese miners). Said the complaint: "Since the Sudan is determined to defend its territory, the situation would result in a breach of the peace and, if uncontrolled, may develop into armed conflict." In Khartoum students protested, Nasser's picture disappeared from shop windows, Radio Omdurman blared martial music.

Divided Family. When Egypt's plebiscite day came, none of the tribesmen in the disputed areas voted. In the Wadi Haifa area, Sudanese troops sighted a 50-ft. Egyptian steamer churning up the Nile. Scrambling along the shore, shouting and waving their weapons, the Sudanese finally forced it to pull into the bank. The djellaba-clad Egyptians first claimed to be social workers. But on board, the Sudanese found a radio transmitter, rifles, ammunition, -L-1,400 in cash and a supply of ballot boxes, and soon the leader of the "social workers" confessed that he was an Egyptian army captain. Among the ship's passengers were two other captains and eleven noncoms in civilian clothes. Protested Captain Mohammed Ismail Kamel: "Our job was to ask the natives to vote. We were told not to fire, and we never will. We are like one family --the Sudan and Egypt."

No one except Nasser himself knew quite why he had chosen this particular moment for an act of bully and bluster that could hardly boost his prestige. The Sudanese said he was trying to interfere in their ten-day general election, which starts this week; if so, the attempt appeared to have hurt rather than helped the pro-Egyptian parties fighting Premier Khalil. Even the newspaper of the pro-Egyptian People's Democratic Party was reproachful: "Nobody thought that Egypt, which had got rid of the imperialists at such great sacrifices, would itself become an imperialist power and try to steal the property of others."

By week's end Nasser had recognized his mistake. Before the Security Council met, Radio Cairo announced that Egypt would defer its claim until after the Sudanese elections. On the Nile reinforced Sudanese troops crouched in dugouts scooped from the sand, fighting off thousands of gnats.

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