The Two Faces of Nasser

In Moslem sectors of Beirut, portraits of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser are plastered on hundreds of buildings. No fewer than four separate factions in the Lebanese civil war proudly define themselves as "Nasserite." In Libya, there are almost as many posters of Nasser with his fiery eyes gazing down at the public as there are of the country's mercurial military strongman, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Throughout much of the Arab world, in fact, the late Egyptian leader is passionately venerated as a modern prophet --but not, curiously, in his own country.

When Nasser died five years ago, his weeping, bereaved countrymen mobbed his funeral by the millions and screamed: "Nasser is Allah's beloved!"

Now, though, Egyptians are more likely to revile than revere him. Symbolic of the change in attitude is an increasing number of Egyptian books, articles and speeches that have cast Nasser in the guise of a latter-day Ivan the Terrible, guilty of misrule and injustices.

Last month, for instance, Cairo's al Akhbar, the country's most widely read daily, carried an article by aging General Mohammed Naguib, a leader of the 1952 coup that ousted King Farouk, charging that he himself was tortured by sadistic guards during Nasser's rule.

Many of the attacks against Nasser involve his brutal repression of political dissent within Egypt. Publisher Ibrahim Abdou recently completed his third anti-Nasser book; in it he calls Nasser's prisons "more inhumane than Hitler's."

In Communists and Nasserites, Egyptian Communist Writer Fathi Abdel Fattah tells of leftists imprisoned during Nasser's reign who were not allowed to wear shoes even while being forced to do hard labor in desert areas infested by scorpions and snakes. Another anti-Nasser book, called Second Grade in Prison by Mustafa Amin, a prominent rightist who spent nine years in Nasser's jails, charges that 21 political prisoners were murdered in their cells in 1957 simply because they refused to do hard labor.

Chorus of Abuse. Some of the recent attacks on Nasser also challenge his revolutionary credentials. In an al Akhbar article, former Socialist Leader Ahmed Hussein charges that on the night of the anti-Farouk coup, Nasser, then a lieutenant colonel, donned civilian clothes and was sitting in his auto ready to escape if the revolt failed. Only when success seemed assured did he join his fellow officers.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat has so far refrained from joining the chorus of anti-Nasser abuse. Significantly, he has also taken no steps to suppress it. It is no secret in Cairo that Sadat has long felt that Nasser's particular brand of socialism and his costly foreign policy adventures (such as his military intervention in the Congo and Yemen civil wars) blocked Egypt's economic progress. Sadat gradually closed the country's concentration camps; many political leaders imprisoned by Nasser have been rehabilitated and returned to positions of power. Mustafa Amin, who was released from prison in early 1974, is now editor in chief of al Akhbar, which regularly prints his broadsides against the dead dictator.

Nasser's portrait still hangs beside Sadat's in many government offices in Cairo. Nonetheless, the de-Nasserization campaign in Egypt is likely to accelerate. For one thing, Sadat's pragmatic approach to Egypt's future is quite different from Nasser's inflamed rhetoric and crusading Pan-Arab ideology. For another, Sadat's dramatic foreign policy shift--turning Egypt increasingly toward the West--requires that Nasser's pro-Soviet policies be discredited. In Ab-dou's recent book, for example, Nasser is denounced for "bringing the Russians into the Mediterranean."

Outside Egypt, however, the veneration of Nasser will continue. Libyans, Palestinians, Syrians and other Arabs are using the memory of Nasser to attack Sadat, who is regarded by the hardliners as soft toward Israel for having signed the second Sinai accord. Conveniently, the radical Arabs forget that even Nasser mellowed somewhat before his death, accepting in principle U.S.

peace initiatives and conceding Israel's right to exist in exchange for the territories conquered during the Six-Day War.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.