In The Nile Valley, Two Heroes of Unity: One, Since 3100 B.C., Is Celebrated; The Other, Since 1954 A.D., Is Ignored.

History can be kind to some great leaders, yet unkind to other similarly great leaders.

In Egypt, there was Pharaoh Narmer (Mina) who united the two geographical parts of Egypt: the Delta, in the north, and the Valley in the south. Around 3100 B.C., Narmer, not only established the First Egyptian Dynasty. He also brought Egypt, both Upper (meaning South), and Lower (meaning North) under one crown -His!!

The Narmer tablets, depicting that historic and enduring unity, are well known to Egyptians, especially those who, like myself, taught the History of Egypt in Cairo.

Our late Egyptology professor, Dr. Ahmed Badawi, drilled in our heads the name Narmer, at the University of Heliopolis. He even exhorted us to stop by the historic hotel called Mina House, located till today at the foot of the Giza Pyramids.

What Narmer accomplished for Egypt in regard to that geographic unity, the British, during their heinous occupation (1882 - 1954) could not undo. Trying to create North Egypt and South Egypt (Divide and Rule), they utterly failed. Unity, one could assuredly say, is in Egypt's DNA.

From Narmer, a celebrated unity hero for the past 6000 years, to another Egyptian hero, Muhammad Naguib, first President of Egypt (1953 - 1954) who, until now is totally ignored. His dream of unity, though not attained, would have brought the Nile Valley, from the Mediterranean to Uganda into one proud entity, with the great Nile as its spinal cord.

Naguib's failure in accomplishing that breath-taking mission was not for lack of trying. It, as could be seen from his memoirs, was due to the Nasser coup of 1952, with its participants turning against one another. It boiled down to Naguib, whose mother was Sudanese, and Nasser, whose family hailed from Upper Egypt. Near South versus Deep South. A historic catastrophe which changed the entire history of the modern Middle East.

The Naguib vs. Nasser split had to do with different outlooks, personal, political and geostrategic. Naguib, the fatherly face of the Nasser Coup, was in favor of democracy in Egypt and of Egyptian/Sudanese unity. But Nasser, the young photogenic face of the army rebellion against the monarchy of King Farouk, guiding Egypt east (Nach Ost -as they say in German) for leadership of the Arab World.

The result: expulsion and imprisonment of General Naguib; the declaration by the Sudan of its independence in 1956; thrusting of Egypt in non-winnable Middle Eastern wars; the destruction of Egyptian democratic institutions until the revolutions of 2011 and 2013; and the unintended consequences of the growth of Islamism in Egypt, especially under President Sadat.

Returning now to the question which should haunt, if not all Egyptians, at least those who care about the full projection of Egyptian history and politics. Thus I turn to the memories of Muhammad Naguib, published in Arabic under the title of "I was President of Egypt" (Konto Raiisan Li Misr).

For fairness, I have no means of verification of what Naguib argues in those memoirs. Except for two circumstantial pieces of evidence: The outcome of the Nasser/Naguib conflict; plus my personal knowledge of President Naguib when he was alive.

I was his son's teacher in the early 1950s at the Model School of Al-Naqrashi Pasha at Qubba Gardens, Cairo. His character was stellar; spoke modestly  and sincerely; and was attentive to the quality of education in post-war Egypt. He was also loved by his troops forming the Frontiers Battalions (Selah Al-Hodood).

These were reasons why the Free Officers, led by Nasser in that historic coup against monarchical Egypt in 1952, chose him to front that rebellion.

Without summarizing those 420 pages, published in various editions from 1984 to 2003, my focus in this blog posting is the junctures of that rift whose consequences are still present. Even within the scope of that limited material, I shall focus on the manifestations of that rift as they impacted the destruction of the Naguib dream of unity between Egypt and the Sudan.

As an army officer and a patriot who participated in the Egyptian uprising of 1919 against British occupation, Naguib, throughout his life, called himself "Son of the Nile." 

His maternal grandfather, Muhammad Othman Bek, was a senior Army officer stationed in Khartoum., the Sudan. The Mehdi rebels in the Sudan in the late 1880s spared his life in recognition of Othman's commitment to Nile Valley amity.

Naguib's entire family lived in the "Anglo-Egyptian Sudan," named as such by the diktat of the British occupiers of Egypt. A major stratagem of Great Britain in the Nile Valley was of dual nature. To separate Egypt from the Sudan, and to separate the Sudanese north from the Sudanese south.

That divide and rule approach was premised on ethnic and religious lines: North of Malakal was "Arab and Muslim;" south of that point was "Negroid, and either Christian or animist." 

Following on his father's footsteps, Naguib graduated from the Cairo Military Academy in 1918. As with his father, his early service was in the Sudan. That is where some members of his family still live, and where his father was buried. Fondly, Naguib recalls his childhood in the Sudan, his camaraderie with the Sudanese, and his mother being Sudanese.

A total immersion which provided Naguib with a purely Nilotic outlook which did not recognize the line of demarcation between Egypt and the Sudan.

Such outlook was deepened by Naguib's early education in the Sudan. From Wad Madani, south of Khartoum, to Wadi Halfa, south of the Egyptian border. His icons were Sudanese officers and educators looking for British departure and for unity with Egypt.

So were Naguib's experiences in the Upper Nile region (south Sudan) as he had to travel with his family to wherever his father was transferred throughout the huge expanse called the Sudan.

At that time, the Sudan was geographically the largest African country, endowed with unlimited resources: water, land, diversified agriculture, huge animal resources, and a population full of pride and passion for being Sudanese.

Orphaned at the age of 13, following his father's death at the age of 43 in Khartoum, Naguib, though impoverished, was admitted into Khartoum's Gordon College. That was an exception, as the British occupation prevented Egyptians in the Sudan from applying for admission. But Naguib's father, though an Egyptian, was a senior officer in the service of "the Government of the Sudan."

His studenthood at Gordon was marred by his loyalty to Egypt. The sovereign in Cairo was "The King of Egypt and the Sudan." Not the British, a foreign occupier who saw to it that even the railroad from Cairo to Aswan would not be connected to the railroad in the Sudan -a few miles from that connection.

While being a student at Gordon College, Naguib's loyalty to that natural and historic unity caused him trouble. He refused to take down a text dictated by a British professor. In part, the text said that "Egypt was ruled by the British." 

Standing in protest, Naguib was defiant: "Sir!! Britain is only an occupier of Egypt. Egypt is internally self-ruled, but is a part of the Ottoman Empire." His punishment was 10 lashes administered to his back. "I submitted to that degrading punishment, without even opening my mouth out of personal pride."

Naguib was in fact an Egyptian Sudanese, not fitting in the mold of Nasser whose gaze was not South, but East. His fronting the Nasser coup and becoming Egypt's first president proved to be a painful ordeal.

• He felt that the Free Officers caused more harm to the cause of democracy and party politics than those opposed to the coup;
• He posited that "We dismissed King Farouk but replaced him with 13 other kings;
• He bemoaned his inability to stand up to "the increasing Nasser dictatorship;"
• Out of disgust with the direction of the Nasser's coup, Naguib submitted his resignation to the "Revolutionary Command Council," made up of members of the Free Officers who submitted to Nasser's authoritarianism.
• Before submitting that resignation on February 22, 1954, he confronted the entire Command Council accusing them of influence peddling, financial corruption, and other deviations, such as the establishment of "an Egypt as a State ruled by central intelligence."
• His options were: either to exercise his authority as president, or to resign and let Nasser have his way. One of Naguib's central complaints was that he was forced to sign off on decisions by the high military command which were issued and then brought to him afterwards for a pro forma endorsement.
• As to the Sudan, Naguib who felt the inner pulse of the Sudanese more than any other member on the Revolutionary Command Council, saw that the complaints voiced by the Sudanese were on the upswing. Especially after the plebiscite on unity with Egypt, where the vote was seven for unity, and one for independence.
• Naguib was convinced that Nasser felt that "the Sudan was a burden on Egypt, and should be jettisoned." One of Nasser's side kicks was Salah Salem who advocated that "the Sudan was definitely lost;" a shock for Naguib!!
• Naguib's bottom line was that the Revolutionary Command Council sacrificed the unity of the Nile Valley, and acted accordingly, causing protests in Khartoum where the crowds chanted "Sudan is for the Sudanese."

Imprisoned till his death, Naguib bemoaned that his name was expunged from schoolbooks in Egypt; that he was beaten and insulted by officers who were encouraged to disregard his prior status as a patriot, and his having been the first president of Egypt.

In his memoirs, he expresses his deep pain for the rising Nasser dictatorship, the loss of the unity of the Nile Valley, and the conversion by Nasser of Al-Azhar to a mere department for religious affairs.

Naguib's championed the unity of the Nile Valley. To him, it was a means of bolstering the backbone of the Arab homeland through the creation of a strong State at the Arab geographic midpoint. He is more than deserving rehabilitation, though posthumously. That would be a means of rectification of that gap in the history of modern Egypt.

If Narmer is celebrated as the unifier of Egypt after 6000 years of his rule, so should Naguib who, in the early 1950s, saw in Egypt a fulcrum for a larger unity.

When I was sent as legal counsel to Darfour, the Sudan, in 2006 by the UN Security Council, I experienced sudden pain for what had been lost by the destruction of that unity. It was as if Naguib, from his grave, was whispering: "See what has become of this beautiful land once that unity vanished."