Egypt: Up the Rebels

• Share

It was Victory Day in Port Said, six years exactly since the last British soldier left Suez. There to celebrate the occasion was Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser. As 20,000 Egyptians cheered, Nasser called the British—from Queen to commoner—"sons of bitches," sneered at his critics, and ridiculed as a pair of "nuts" Jordan's King Hussein and Saudi Arabia's King Saud because they oppose Egypt's military venture in Yemen, where Nasser supports the rebel Abdullah Sallal.

"Brothers!" cried Nasser. "This is not the Yemeni people's battle. It is our battle, because the more people we can win over from imperialism and reaction, the more our power is increased. Revolution will soon triumph everywhere against reaction!" Nasser promised that Israel's turn would come as soon as "we get rid of Saud and Hussein, who conspire with Zionism and imperialism to preserve their own thrones and fortunes."

Nasser proudly watched a parade of Egyptian might—60 new Soviet-built T-54 tanks, antiaircraft detachments, batteries of tactical rockets, and dismissed reports that more than 10,000 Egyptians had been lost in the Yemen campaign, insisted that the actual number of Egyptian dead was only 136.

Washington was wrong if it thought that Nasser would withdraw Egyptian forces and leave the area in peace in exchange for U.S. diplomatic recognition of Yemen's revolutionary regime. Instead, Nasser made it clear at Port Said that he plans to stay in Yemen, the better to export revolution into the British-protected states—ranging from Kuwait in the north of the Arabian peninsula to Aden in the south—as well as to Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.