The United Arab Republic (UAR; Arabic: الجمهورية العربية المتحدة, romanised: al-Jumhūrīyah al-‘Arabīyah al-Muttaḥidah) was a sovereign state in the Middle East from 1958 until 1971. It was initially a political union between Egypt (including the occupied Gaza Strip) and Syria from 1958 until Syria seceded after the 1961 Syrian coup d’état. Egypt continued to be known officially as the United Arab Republic until 1971.
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser led the republic. The UAR was a member of the United Arab States, a loose confederation with the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, dissolved in 1961.
History of the United Arab Republic
Origins
The United Arab Republic was established on 1 February 1958 as the first step towards a more significant pan-Arab state, proposed initially to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser by a group of political and military leaders in Syria.
The pan-Arab sentiment was traditionally powerful in Syria, and Nasser was a popular heroic figure throughout the Arab world following the Suez Crisis of 1956. Thus, considerable support in Syria for union with Nasser’s Egypt was enormous. The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party was the leading advocate of such a union.
In mid-1957, Western powers began to worry that Syria was close to a Communist takeover; it had a highly organised Communist Party, and the newly appointed army’s chief of staff, Afif al-Bizri, was a Communist sympathiser. This caused the Syrian Crisis of 1957, after which Syrians intensified their efforts to unite with Egypt. Nasser told a Syrian delegation, including President Shukri al-Quwatli and Prime Minister Khaled al-Azem, that they needed to rid their government of Communists. Still, the board countered and warned him that only total union with Egypt would end the “Communist threat”.
According to Abdel Latif Boghdadi, Nasser initially resisted a complete union with Syria, favouring a federal union instead. However, Nasser was “more afraid of a Communist takeover” and agreed on a total merger. The increasing strength of the Syrian Communist Party under Khalid Bakdash worried the Syrian Ba’ath Party, suffering from an internal crisis from which prominent members were anxious to escape. Syria had a democratic government since the overthrow of Adib al-Shishakli’s military regime in 1954, and popular pressure for Arab unity was reflected in the composition of parliament.
On 11 January 1958, al-Bizri led a Syrian delegation composed of military officers to Cairo and personally encouraged Syrian-Egyptian unity; Nasser opted for a quick merger. Only Syrian agreement advocates, including Salah al-Din Bitar and Akram El-Hourani, had prior knowledge of this delegation; Quwatli and Azem were notified a day later and considered it a “military coup”.
Nasser’s final terms for the union were decisive and non-negotiable: “a plebiscite, the dissolution of parties, and the withdrawal of the army from politics”. While the plebiscite seemed reasonable to most Syrian elites, the latter two conditions were extremely worrisome. They believed it would destroy political life in Syria. Despite these concerns, the Syrian officials knew it was too late to turn back. The elite members in Syria viewed the merger with Egypt as the lesser of two evils. They believed that Nasser’s terms were unfair, but given the intense pressure that their government was undergoing, they thought that they had no other choice.
A plebiscite was held on 21 February 1958, with Egyptians and Syrians voting in favour of the merger. The result was announced on 22 February, and Nasser was declared the new president of the United Arab Republic.
Egyptian and Syrian leaders signed the protocols, although Azem did so reluctantly. Nasser became the republic’s president and very soon passed a crackdown against the Syrian Communists and union opponents, including dismissing Bizri and Azem from their posts.
Early history
The union advocates believed that Nasser would use the Ba’ath Party to rule Syria. Unfortunately for the Ba’athists, Nasser never intended to share equal power. Nasser established a new provisional constitution proclaiming a 600-member National Assembly with 400 members from Egypt and 200 from Syria, disbanding all political parties, including the Ba’ath. Nasser gave each of the provinces two vice-presidents, assigning Boghdadi and Abdel Hakim Amer to Egypt and Sabri al-Assali and Akram El-Hourani – a leader of the Ba’ath – to Syria. The new provisional constitution of 1958 was adopted.
During the winter and spring of 1959–60, Nasser slowly squeezed prominent Syrians out of positions of influence. Though Nasser allowed former Ba’ath Party members to hold prominent political positions, they never reached positions as high in the government as Egyptian officials. In the Syrian Ministry of Industry, for example, seven of the top thirteen positions were filled by Egyptians. Four of the top six officials in the General Petroleum Authority were Egyptian. In the fall of 1958, Nasser formed a tripartite committee consisting of Zakaria Mohieddine, al-Hawrani, and Bitar to oversee the affairs in Syria. By moving the latter two, both Ba’athists, to Cairo, he neutralised important political figures who had ideas about how Syria should be run within the UAR.
In Syria, opposition to the union with Egypt mounted. Syrian Army officers resented being subordinate to Egyptian officers, and Syrian Bedouin tribes received money from Saudi Arabia to prevent them from becoming loyal to Nasser. Also, Egyptian-style land reform was resented for damaging Syrian agriculture, the Communists began to gain influence, and the intellectuals of the Ba’ath Party who supported the union rejected the one-party system. Mustafa al-Barudi, the Syrian Minister of Propaganda, stated that ‘the smallest member of the (Egyptian) retinue thought that he had inherited our country. [Egyptians] spread “like octopuses” everywhere.’ Nasser could not wholly address problems in Syria because they were new to him. Instead of appointing Syrians to run Syria, he assigned this position to Amer and Abdel Hamid Sarraj (a Syrian army official and Nasser sympathiser).
In Egypt, the situation was more positive, with a GNP growth of 4.5 per cent and rapid industry growth. In 1960, Nasser nationalised the Egyptian press, reducing it to his mouthpiece.
Foreign relations
The other nations interpreted the union as a significant threat to Jordan. Syria was a source of instigation and shelter for Jordanian plotters against King Hussein. Egypt’s status as a state hostile to Western involvement in the region (and thus to the close relationship between the British, in particular, and the Jordanian and Iraqi monarchies) added to the pressure. Hussein responded by proposing to Faisal II of Iraq a Jordanian-Iraqi union to counter the UAR; such a union was formed on 14 February 1958 as the Arab Federation. Jordan and Iraq agreed to establish a unified military command with a unified military budget, 80 per cent of which was to be provided by Iraq and the remaining 20 per cent by Jordan. Troops from both countries were exchanged in the arrangement.
In nearby Lebanon, President Camille Chamoun, an opponent of Nasser, viewed the creation of the UAR with worry. Pro-Nasser factions in the country, mainly comprising Muslims and Druze, began clashing with the Maronite population, who generally supported Chamoun, culminating in a civil war by May 1958. The former favoured merging with the UAR, while the latter feared the new country as a satellite of Communism. Although Nasser did not covet Lebanon, seeing it as a particular case, he felt obliged to back his supporters by giving Abdel Hamid Sarraj the task of sending them money, light arms, and training officers.
On 14 July 1958, Iraqi army officers staged a military coup and overthrew the Kingdom of Iraq, which had previously united with Jordan to form the rival Arab Federation. Nasser declared his recognition of the new government and stated that “any attack on Iraq was tantamount to an attack on the UAR”. The next day, US Marines and British special forces landed in Lebanon and Jordan to protect the two countries from falling into pro-Nasser forces. To Nasser, the revolution in Iraq opened the road for Arab nationalism. Although most Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) favoured joining Iraq with the UAR, the new prime minister, Abdel Karim Qasim, disagreed. Said K. Aburish states reasons for this could have included Nasser’s refusal to cooperate with and encourage the Iraqi Free Officers a year before the coup – or Qasim viewed Nasser as a threat to his supremacy as leader of Iraq.
Later in July, the US government convinced Chamoun not to seek a second term. This allowed the election of Fuad Chehab as Lebanon’s new president. Nasser and Chehab met at the Lebanese–Syrian border, and Nasser explained to Chehab that he never wanted unity with Lebanon, only that the country not be used as a base against the UAR. This meeting resulted in the end of the crisis in Lebanon, with Nasser ceasing to supply his partisans and the US setting a deadline for withdrawing from the area.
After the overthrow of its Hashemite monarchy in 1958, Iraq became the Arab state most supportive of the UAR. Iraq sought to join the union; however, in 1959, Qasim cancelled the unity talks. After Qasim’s overthrow in 1963, the union idea resurrected with the proposal of Egypt, Iraq, and Syria to reform the UAR. A new flag was proposed, with three stars symbolising the three states constituting the proposed union. However, the plan for a tri-partite union never materialised. Iraq used the three-star flag and later adopted it as the national flag. This three-star flag remained Iraq’s national flag (with some modifications) until 2007.
Flag
The UAR adopted a flag based on the Arab Liberation Flag of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, but with two stars to represent the two parts of the UAR. Since 1980, this has been the official flag of Syria. In 1963, Iraq adopted a similar flag with three stars, representing the hope that Iraq would join the UAR. The current flags of Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen are also based on the Arab Liberation Flag, which has horizontal red, white, and black bands.
Nationalisation
In June 1960, Nasser tried to establish economic reforms to bring the Syrian economy closer to the solid Egyptian public sector. However, these changes did little to help either economy. Rather than shift growth toward the private sector, Nasser embarked on an unprecedented wave of nationalisations in Syria and Egypt. These began in July 1961 without consulting top Syrian economic officials. The government and all import-export firms took over the entire cotton trade. Nasser announced the nationalisation of banks, insurance companies, and all heavy industry on 23 July 1961. Nasser also extended his social justice principles. The land limit was reduced from 200 to 100 feddans.
In some cases, interest rates for farmers were dramatically reduced to the point of elimination. A ninety per cent tax was instituted on all income above £E10,000. Workers and employees were allowed representatives on management boards. They were also given the right to a twenty-five per cent share in their firm’s profit. The average workday was also cut from eight hours to seven without a reduction in pay.
Collapse
Instead of a federation of two Arab peoples, as many Syrians had imagined, the UAR became a state completely dominated by Egyptians. Syrian political life was also diminished, as Nasser demanded all political parties in Syria be dismantled. In the process, the strongly centralised Egyptian state imposed Nasser’s socialistic political and economic system on weaker Syria, creating a backlash from the Syrian business and army circles, which resulted in the Syrian coup of 28 September 1961 and the end of the UAR. According to Elie Podeh, “… this unity scheme successfully consolidates the shaky Syrian identity. Once the Syrians lost their independence, they suddenly realised they possessed a different identity than the Egyptians.”
Despite the economic difficulties, the UAR’s demise was due to Nasser’s inability to find a suitable political system for the new regime. Given his socialist agenda in Egypt, the Ba’ath should have been his natural ally, but Nasser hesitated to share power. Though Amer allowed some liberalisation of the economy to appease Syrian business people, his decision to rig the elections of the National Union (the single party which replaced the Ba’ath), with the help of Colonel Abdul Hamid Sarraj (a Syrian army official and Nasser sympathiser), antagonised Ba’athist leaders. The Ba’ath Party won only five per cent of the seats on the higher committees, while the more traditional conservative parties won a significant majority. Sarraj was appointed the head of the National Union in Syria and, by the spring of 1960, had replaced Amer as the chair of the Syrian Executive Council. Under Sarraj, Syria was ruled by a repressive security force designed to suppress all opposition to the regime.
In August 1961, Nasser abolished regional governments in favour of one central authority, which operated from Damascus from February through May and from Cairo for the rest of the year. A push for centralisation accompanied the immense increases in public sector control. As a part of this centralisation, Sarraj was relocated to Cairo, where he found himself with little real power. On 15 September 1961, Sarraj returned to Syria, and after meeting with Nasser, Amer resigned from all his posts on 26 September.
Without close allies to watch over Syria, Nasser was unaware of the growing military unrest. On 28 September, a group of officers staged a coup and declared Syria’s independence from the UAR. Though the coup leaders were willing to renegotiate a union under terms they felt would put Syria on an equal footing with Egypt, Nasser refused such a compromise. He initially considered sending troops to overthrow the new regime but chose not to once he was informed that the last of his allies in Syria had been defeated. In speeches that followed the coup, Nasser declared he would never give up his goal of an ultimate Arab union. However, he would never again achieve such a tangible victory toward this goal.
After Syria’s withdrawal
After Syria’s withdrawal from the union in 1961, Egypt retained its “United Arab Republic” name until 1971.
From 5 to 10 June 1967, Israel seized control of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War. Eventually, the Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt in 1978. Egypt’s resumption of control did not follow Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been controlled by the Islamist militant group Hamas.
Geography of the United Arab Republic
If it existed today, the United Arab Republic would be the 25th largest nation on the planet (Egypt is 30th, and Syria is 88th). It was comparable to South Africa and twice the size of France. Following the dissolution of the All-Palestine Government, the United Arab Republic further exerted control over the Gaza Strip until the Six-Day War.
