We Are Your Soldiers: How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World

Journalist Rowell (Vintage Humour) offers a searing indictment of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who served as Egypt’s president from 1954 until his death in 1970. As leader of the 1952 revolution against the Egyptian monarchy and British occupation, Nasser is commonly remembered as an anticolonial hero. Rowell argues, however, that Nasser’s legacy is marred by his interventions in the affairs of Egypt’s neighbors, which led to needless political chaos. The new governments established by the Pan-Arab revolutionaries whom he furnished with financial and military support routinely ended in disaster, Rowell notes, partly because of their close ties to Egypt. For example, Nasser backed the 1958 coup led by Abd al-Salam Aref in Iraq, who overthrew the monarchy and established a military dictatorship, but was subsequently deposed by nationalists opposed to Pan-Arab political unification under Nasser. Among other episodes, Rowell spotlights Nasser’s facilitation of assassinations and coups in Jordan and Syria, his systematic campaign of torture and violence against opponents at home, and his role in events leading up to Lebanon’s tragic civil war from 1975 to 1990. According to Rowell, “Nasser’s responsibility for Lebanon’s ruin was arguably greater than that of any other single individual.” Though Rowell somewhat overshoots in blaming Nasser for the problems of an entire region, he makes a strong case for a more tempered assessment of the Egyptian ruler. Readers interested in the Middle East’s thorny political history will be intrigued. (Nov.)