This is a story of how the government of the United Kingdom
decided to attack an Arab nation, of how afraid
its oil supplies were under threat and
embarked on a strategy of regime change.
Of how Britain deliberately bypassed the United Nations
and of how a power British Prime Minister led
the nation to war based on suspect intelligence.
But this isn't Iraq 2003,
this is Egypt 1956. These are British paratroopers
fighting on the orders of British Prime Minister
Anthony Eden. He has gambled on a war in a desperate bid to destroy
Egypt's new young president Gamal Abdel Nasser.
"I'm utterly convinced the action we have taken is right."
This is a war over who will run
this Egyptian waterway - the Suez Canal - and the vital
oil supplies which are transported through it.
Suez is a crisis which will push the world to the brink of nuclear
catastrophe. "That moment I did think
this is really going to be the
Third World War."
In Britain we know Suez is a war based on a Prime Minister's lie,
a lie which destroys him. "MI-6 sexed up their intelligence."
But seen from the other side, Suez is a story of how a small
poor Arab country defended itself against the Western world
and won. "People will defend their country, they will defend their land."
July the 26th, 1956. It is a warm evening
as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser prepares to address his people.
His country is in ferment. Only seven days before,
the young president had suffered a humiliating blow when the West sabotaged
his key plan to lift
Egypt out of poverty. Now, two hundred thousand people gathered to hear their
president's response.
But unknown to the crowd, 30 people stationed on the banks of the Suez Canal
are listening for a password - a Frenchman's name hidden
in Nasser's speech. "They have
their radio on to follow the speech
waiting for the password "De Lesseps."
When they hear this word, their president has told them to storm the offices of
the Suez Canal Company.
{Segment from speech}
As jubilant Egyptians celebrate,
Nasser heads to a movie theater to relax. He doesn't know that in London,
Anthony Eden has already decided to have him killed.
Egypt - cradle of ancient civilizations
and in the post-war era, strategically the most valuable country in the Arab
world.
Thanks to this, the Suez Canal, which carries oil to the economies of the West.
The company that runs the canal
is largely owned by Egypt's old colonial masters, Britain and France,
and is staffed by Europeans. "Reconsider
the Suez Canal Company is a country, inside
our country, a state inside our state. Egypt sees virtually nothing of the tens of millions of dollars the
canal earns each year.
Feelings of resentment are growing. "Imagine
somebody, a foreigner in your country, and he give your nothing.
He take everything and give you nothing. Is that justice?"
In February 1955, Egypt's young President Gamal Abdel Nasser
meets British Prime Minister Anthony Eden for the first time.
The two men dislike one another from the start.
"The impression of President Nasser
about Anthony Eden
was that he was small Cheshire and not a, you know,
committed with imposing
the British point of view on the other side."
For Eden, Egypt remains part of Britain's sphere of influence in the Middle East.
Although nominally independent since 1922, Egyptian kings have dutifully done
what British Prime Minister's
have told them to do. "Eden lived in the
legend of the empire, but the world was different.
Eden didn't realize
the change in the balance of power."
Anthony Eden is every inch the conservative Prime Minister.
Educated at Eton and Oxford, he was foreign secretary during the war
and is Winston Churchill's hand-picked successor.
But in Nasser, Eden encounters a new kind of Arab leader.
He is part of a new generation of Egyptians determined to secure
real independence for their country.
Nasser is one of a group of officers who had overthrown the playboy
King Farouk in 1952. Two years later,
Nasser had shown Britain that Egypt would not be pushed around.
An aggressive guerrilla campaign forces the British to evacuate
eighty-eight thousand soldiers from the biggest base in the world,
on the banks of the Suez Canal. "At that time,
what was most important is real independence
and to get free, really free, by
evacuating the troops." "There was an operation
against the British troops prior to the negotiations.
When the negotiations go in a smooth way,
we ease the resistance. When
the British delegation became stubborn,
we intensify the resistance."
By the spring of 1956,
Egypt is free of British troops. With his country moving away from its
colonial past,
Nasser embarks on an ambitious plan to transform the lives of his people.
"Egypt was very much backward,
half percent of the people were possessing
nearly about seventy-five percent of the fortune.
"We had one of the lowest standards life,
the majority of Egyptians were in streets with
naked feet."
Nasser's solution is to build a huge dam on the Nile at Aswan
which will provide water for agriculture and electricity.
It will be the biggest dam in the world and will lift Egypt out of poverty
once and for all. "This project of the high dam
will provide Egypt with water to double the
farms and will give power - electricity to industrialize Egypt."
But Nasser needs four hundred million dollars to realize his dream,
an enormous sum in the 1950s. His first port of call
is the West. "In the beginning, Nasser
and all the revolution have no problem with the Americans. On the contrary, we can get help
of the Americans." The World Bank, backed by the United States and Britain,
agrees to give him a loan. At this point, Nasser's relations with the Americans
seem close. "Nasser's favorite film
is It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart. He really loves that
film and Washington arranges to send out a special copy of the film
with Arabic subtitles." By 1956,
Egypt's glamorous young president is confident his plans to develop Egypt
are on course, but Nasser has another problem,
which will destroy his plans.
"As the sporadic fighting takes on the proportions of full-scale war,
dead and captured arms are the order of the day, as both Arabs and Israelis put
their nations on a full mobilization basis."
{Explosions}
Nassar faught in the Arab armies defeated by the Israelis in 1948.
Since then the Middle East's newest state has fought a border war with its
Arab neighbors.
Israel's very existence is an affront
to Nasser. "Nasser was at the time a great
danger and enemy. Very soon, it was clear that he aspires
to the unify the Arab world." "Nasser
made great speeches. He was handsome, he
was eloquent. He carried fire with him,
there was a catastrophe."
The Israelis see themselves surrounded by enemies,
fearing attack, they are desperately trolling the world for arms.
"The Americans were very strict, they wouldn't supply us arms,
so did Great Britain, and I thought
the only opening we have is France."
France agrees to supply Israel with the Jewish state's
first jet fighters. To Nasser,
it looks like an increasingly powerful enemy is at the gates.
"The French are giving Israel arms, I am
confronting the situation that may distract my country.
Should I stand still?"
So Nasser decides he too will look abroad for arms.
As with the loan for his dam, his first call
is on the United States. "Nasser, from the first
day of revolution, asks the Americans,
I need arms, our
army needs arms and he asked the British
the same question. Neither the British
nor the Americans gave a response on that." But this
is the 1950s, the depths of the Cold War,
the West and the Soviet Union are locked in a battle for influence across the
world.
Nasser knows that if Washington says no
then maybe Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow will say yes.
"Egypt flexes its military muscles with the display of arms newly acquired from
Russia and its satellites."
The first arms from the Soviet bloc
land in Alexandria on the 27th of September,
1955. The deal as a triumph for Khrushchev,
who is keen to extend Communist influence in the region.
"He didn't expect that countries would be communist immediately,
he's willing to wait. Egypt was the first great success for him.
This was for Khrushchev a sign.
The kind of relationship he could have with many of the large states in
developing world.
And for the West, this was a very dramatic achievement."
But Nasser is not in Khrushchev's pocket,
as many in the West fear. "Nasser has never been a Communist, never, never
at all." "We are believer. I am a believer, I believe in God. Nasser
used to believe in God. Nasser used to pray.
The Communists don't believe in God.
Nasser was an anti-communist.
The soviets knew full well he was an anti-communist. They knew that he was putting communists
in jail.
He didn't let those communists out of jail when his relations improved with the
Soviet Union, but both sides made a pragmatic
decision." But in Eden's view,
Nasser does look like a communist stooge. The prime minister and the Americans
decide to punish him for cutting a deal with the Soviets.
Their response is to mount a covert campaign against Nasser,
code-named Omega. "Omega includes propaganda
to provide information to journalists, to broadcasters,
that say, "Nasser really isn't a very good person, can you please report this?"
"Omega also includes sanctions against Egypt. It includes
locking military aid to Egypt." Then
as part of this undeclared war, a secret decision is taken to slow down financing
on the Aswan dam.
Anthony Eden and the US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles,
are behind the new strategy. "I think
Dulles was angry with Nasser for having
almost flaunted his independence. I really think that
Dulles believed that Nasser's behavior was
almost a personal affront him.
In London, Eden's mistrust of Nasser is increased by some mysterious
intelligence reports which have just landed on his desk.
They are from an MI6 contact known as "Lucky Break".
Lucky Break tells Eden that Nasser is a pawn of the Soviet Union
and the Egyptian people will welcome his overthrow. "From reading the reports in MI6
is giving to British officials and giving to the Americans,
I think they're taking a few sources and their sexing them up.
No one individual
could have provided the information that Nasser was so close to the Soviets,
that Nasser was so vulnerable to being overthrown,
if not assinated, because that was
not true, that simply was not true."
But "Lucky Break" is telling the British Prime Minister
what he wants to hear them. The firm attitude that the government have adopted is not (quote fades)
Foreign Office Minister Anthony Nutting
is one of the first to realize just how far the Prime Minister
is now prepared to go. "Over an open line,
having just said, 'it's me,' we started a violent argument on the telephone, and he
was really violent
in our conversation
and ended up by shouting at me, 'I don't want Nasser neutralized, I want him
destroyed'."
There were two-two people [unintelligible] in conversation:
Eden and Nutting. Nutting said subsequently that Eden had said murder.
Operatives within MI6
take the Prime Minister at his word. "What you have is Thomas of Becket situation
were Eden says will someone not
make me rid of this turbulent Nasser." "I'm not exaggerating.
Nearly every month, nearly
every month, there was an attempt against Nasser.
From the West, either French
or British, or Israelis, nearly every month.
As Nasser was making a public speech in Alexandria,
a young man fired eight bullets at him. All missed the Premier, but two of his aids
were wounded.
"The plans just are are wildly out of control,
putting nerve gas into the ventilation system of
Nasser's headquarters, trying to put poison into Nasser's coffee,
trying at some point to possibly shoot Nasser.
If Lucky Break did not exist in 1956, he would have had to be created
to justify their extravagant plans to get rid of Nasser.
On the 19th of July, 1956, the Egyptian ambassador to the USA
is called into the state department. He is informed that the financing up the Aswan
dam is cancelled.
If the West can't assassinate Nasser, then they will destroy his dreams to
develop Egypt.
To add insult to injury, president Nasser only learns of the decision from the
radio news.
I was surprised by the insultive attitude
which the refusal was declared,
not by the refusal itself, but the
insultive attitude and- which meant humiliation. Now
Nasser has two choices, he can meekly except the West's punishment,
or he can fight. Three days later,
he gathers his most trusted lieutenants together. "President Nasser
ordered me to bring him the file on the Suez Canal.
And he told me 'what about nationalizing this canal?'"
I got surprised
but internally
in myself, I got proud to think about
this action at that time.
I felt proud."
Nasser calculates that the Aswan dam can still be built,
if the tolls have ships transiting the Suez Canal come to Egypt
and not the British and French controlled Suez Canal Company.
But Nasser knows that nationalization is a huge risk,
he will have to physically seize control of the canal itself.
The next day he is scheduled to make his first speech since his humiliation at
the hands of the West. All Egypt waits for his response.
The speech is an anti-climax. "It was all rhetoric.
The reaction of Egyptians was 'Oh, that he hasn't got the balls
to really stand up to the United States. But afterwards
Nasser orders an old military colleague, Mahmoud Eunice,
to mastermind the dangerous job taking physical control of the canal.
Eunice selects 30 man he can trust.
Eunice emphasized that, if
this peace of news
is released then
it will surely
not succeed. Three days later,
Nasser is scheduled to speak publicly again. The men know their queue for
action is a password hidden in the President's speech,
which will be carried on Egyptian radio. The password
is the name of the man who designed the canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps.
As they wait, they still don't know if their President has definitely decided
to take the gamble.
"My feelings were combination
of first, fear,
and of course the sense of
responsibility. This
is tremendous.
In the stifling July heat, Nasser makes his way to Alexandria's Mansheya Square,
where he is to deliver his speech. Once again his people wait to hear if he
will respond to the West's
denial of funding for the Aswan dam. At 9pm,
Nasser climbs the podium. The speech is long.
Nasser catalogs the centuries of humiliations the Egyptians have suffered
at the hands of the West.
It is an attitude of such arrogance towards other peoples. We will not be manipulated.
His tone is measured but angry.
Today we are going to get rid of what happened in the past.
On the canal, Esset and his men are in position,
ready for the signal, but after two hours,
it still hasn't come.
"Every year the Company earn 35 million pounds sterling. This money should be ours.
Then the moment of truth
"I imagined I had seen Ferdinand De Lesseps."
At the signal, Eunice, Esset and their men, simultaneously break into the
four main offices ot the Suez Canal Company.
In Alexandria, Nasser leaves nothing to chance.
He repeats the password a total of 14 times.
In the Canal Company headquarters, Eunice informs the European employees that the
company has been nationalized.
He is polite,
but he is also armed. Attempts sabotage or obstruction by the employees
will not be tolerated. "They were very
astonished and afraid.
We tried to calmed them down and
asked them to continue work
as if nothing has happened."
Back in Alexandria, Nasser now reveals to the world
what the employees at the Suez Canal Company have just discovered.
"Some of your fellow citizens have just taken over the Canal." Across Egypt, there is pandemonium. "It was a.
bombshell, of course, absolute bombshell. We listen to this thing
nobody expected." "People were rioting
in the street.
I celebrated with all Egyptians."
The Suez Canal Company shall be nationalized. All Company assets shall be transferred to the state. The Company is under new management.
The employees at the newly nationalized company
do not join in the celebrations. "I remember that
some of them said, 'You do not
to realize the impact
and the reactions from the West.
Because the West cannot leave
this international waterway
in incapable hands.
In London,
Eden is enjoying post-dinner brandys with military and diplomatic top brass
at No. 10.
When news of Nasser's actions comes through,
he is furious. "We all know this is how
fascist governments behave and we all remember,
only too well, what the cost can be
in giving in to Fascism." The former commanding officer
of our battalion described, in his usual blunt way to me, he said that
the moment you mentioned the name Nasser, Eden practically
got down and chewed the carpet.
But in the United States, initial reaction is less belligerent.
Eisenhower dispatches John Foster Dulles to London,
to calm me Eden down. Dulles carries with him a letter from the President.
"The letter said that, under no circumstances, within
American public opinion or the american government support use of force in the
Middle East." But Eden has already made his decision.
The next morning, Eisenhower had a
cable from Eden,
stating the explicitly that the government had decided that they were
going to get rid of Nasser,
that this is the only alternative, that there was a firm decision, they were
going to change it,
and that was that."
"Essentially, the British and French reaction
to the Suez Crisis, captivated two principles,
about which we have heard quite a lot recently.
One was regime change, feeling that Nasser must go.
The other was preemptive
self-defense. Eden's justification for this
is the belief that Nasser is a Soviet puppet, a direct threat
to British interests. Lucky Break's intelligence has told him so.
But the intelligence is wrong. In moscow,
Nikita Kruschev knows nothing of Nasser's plans.
"When he nationalized the canal, it was a surprise for the Soviet Union also.
He didn't take their permission or anything."
"Even once he had made this decision, a few days before the announcement, he didn't tell the Soviets.
And he didn't tell them for an obvious reason, he knew what their reaction
would be. Moscow would tell him, "Don't do it." The West
saw Moscow as the ginger man in the story, as provoking Nasser to be more and
more aggressive.
In fact, Moscow was doing the opposite." Meanwhile,
in the newly nationalized canal, the atmosphere is tense.
Nasser knows that Edan does not expect the Egyptians will be able to run the
canal.
Critical to its running, are the three hundred pilots,
nearly all European, who guide each ship from one end to the other.
"Without these pilots, the traffic will
will never start, canal will stop."
"We noticed that after
the summer leave is over, some
did not come back. We also notice
that some are selling their cars."
"In fourteenth of September,
at twelve o'clock, they declared
we stop work." Seven weeks after nationalization,
the British Prime Minister has secretly instructed the pilots to abandon the
canal.
"It was now an exam, in
which if we failed, then soon,
then soon the Suez Canal would be lost. Egypt's hopes rest on the shoulders of the
26-year-old trainee pilot Ali Nasri,
who, with only a fortnight's training, has to take a ship through the canal.
"My first vessel was German and the captain came and say,
'You are from the new pilots?', I said, 'Yes and this is my first time.
I have to take a ship alone'."
The potential for disaster is huge. The canal is little over a hundred meters
wide at points.
Ali Nasri fears a miscalculation could send his tanker into the bank's
blocking the whole canal and proving Eden right.
"The feeling of responsibility makes me losing some confidence.
I couldn't see the buoys. You see the green boys and red buoys.
I couldn't see any.
But by time, they [unintelligible], and they start to give orders.
Slowly his ship moves off down the canal.
"My orders, I executed immediately.
You keep the vessel in the middle, straight.
So I start to feel happy, relax.
I can see the way, the vessel was moving.
So I start to feel easy-easy." Nasri's progress is followed with baited breath
on the banks of the canal. I saw somebody
in the road, somebody calling, "Pilot, Pilot."
Yes, I look by the glass, and found him, Mahmoud Younis himself.
The Chairman standing in the road saying,
'Good luck, go ahead."
14 hours later, a ship piloted by an Egyptian has passed successfully through
the canal.
Once again, there are celebrations in the streets.
"It is beyond any imagination
that gave the confidence
to the Egyptian state that they can do
what the whole world thought
that they cannot.
But in London, Eden is still determined to build a case for intervention.
Removing the pilots is only his opening gambit.
Now he decides to overwhelm the inexperienced Egyptians
by forcing a gigantic fleet of tankers through the canal.
"Now the British had planned a nice little scheme which would demonstrate to
the world Egyptians were incompetent at
running the canal and they would have lots of ships, just poised and ready,
to go through the canal once the pilot's have been withdrawn."
"Then instead of receiving, say 20 vessels at
Port Said, you receive 30, to make it more difficult
for any group to carry on as [unintelligible].
Exhausted, the 36 Egyptian pilots
and whatever foreign recruits they can muster, work day and night
to deny Eden his wish and to keep the canal running.
We were working continuously.
President Nasser, at that time,
was on the phone, on the wireless,
hour by hour."
The Egyptians succeed in keeping the canal open, despite Eden's best efforts
at sabotage.
For a second time, the Prime Minister has been foiled.
The whole world was
not expect, at all, that
Egypt would succeed in this severe
exam. And some of the Western
papers sugguested that the Egyptians
cultivate the Suez Canal area with
potatoes, instead of running
the Suez Canal." Eden is frustrated,
but Nasser feels vindicated. It is now almost three months since nationalization
and the canal is still open for business. It seems Aiden's plans to overthrow Nasser
and wrestle back control of the canal, have failed. The world can see no reason
for war. Then,
on the 14th of October, two visitors from the French Ministry of Defence
arrive to see a gloomy Prime Minister at his country retreat,
Checkers. "The French had invented the following
senario, that Israel should attack
Egypt. There upon, Britain and France, who
had forces in the neighborhood, should say, 'We cannot allow this kind of war because
it will interfere with the Suez Canal, and therefore.
we are going to intervene and hold the two countries apart.
"I happened to be in Paris,
so the Minister of Defense called me in
and says, 'You ever thought about storming over Sinai?'
And that's how it started."
Eden is enthusiastic about this French plan,
not only will he be able to seize the canal, he sees a way to bring about
Nassar's downfall.
"To bomb Egypt, you
create panic within the country, you link this
to an invasion - Israeli invasion, and the new government will emerge
and Nasser will be no more. As Eden is plotting in Britain,
the rest of the world is trying to broker a peace deal at the United
Nations.
Eden has reluctantly sent his foreign secretary,
Selwyn Lloyd, to meet with the French and Egyptians in New York.
To Lloyd's surprise, the talks are going well.
"He desperately hoped he would be able to make
real progress in these talks in the United Nations
and was encouraged by the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Fawzi's,
willingness to talk over the subject." But just as it seems progress is being made
the atmosphere changes, the attitude
of Pireau, the French Foreign Minister, was very ambiguous.
From the beginning, he seemed to be prepared
to get down to real negotiations, but then halfway through,
he seemed to lose interest intirely and we wondered
what was going on and why. Eden,
anxious that no deal is struck in New York, telephones Lloyd and orders him to
abandon the talks immediately.
The Foreign Secretary, feeling he might be close to a solution,
is exasperated. Selwyn Lloyd
probably thought that it was worthwhile continuing with these discussions.
You might say like Hans Blix thought that he could do with a couple more months
of time to decide something very definite about the weapons of mass destruction
but Eden wasn't having any of it."
Eden has another agenda and instructs Lloyd and Logan to travel,
in secret, to a Parisian suburb called Se,
to finalize the plot with the French and Israelis.
Lloyd was desperately disappointed, but felt,
out of loyalty, that he had to do it but it turned his stomach to do it
and he hated it all the way through. The document agreed on here,
known as the Sev protocol, puts down in black and white the covert plan to
invade Egypt
and fool the world. At the end, copies of the protocol are presented for
signatures.
Patrick Dean, a Foreign Office official, signs on behalf of the British.
But Eden does not expect his desire for war
to be confirmed in writing. "We returned late that night and took the
document to him in No. 10 and his immediate reaction
was, 'Oh my god, I never expected it to be signed'." When this document finally emerged,
forty years later, it confirmed how a British Prime Minister
had deceived the world and deliberately engineered a war
in the Middle East.
On October the 29th, the Israelis land a parachute brigade
deep in the Sinai, as agreed at Sev. Nasser is awoken at 4am
and told the news. "You can take that he was surprised
and not surprised. We were predicting
that there would be an action against Egypt, but we have
no information from Israel." But the Israeli advance towards the canal
is a fake,
designed purely to convince the world that the canal is threatened.
"It was about 40 kilometers from the canal or 45 kilometers.
But when you look at big maps then you can say
the drop was not far from the canal. There was enough to fulfill the needs of the
British to say
the canal is threatened."
"We didn't go into the motives and consideration of
France and England because our aims were clear."
The Israeli forces concentrate instead
on destroying the Egyptian army in Sinai which they have long seen as a threat
to Israel's security. The attack takes Nasser's commanders by surprise.
They are quickly overwhelmed and forced to retreat.
The following day, Britain and France
issue their ultimatum as planned at Sev, Israel and Egypt are to cease fighting
or the two Western powers will intervene. Eden knows
this is an ultimatum that Nasser cannot accept.
On the evening of the 30th of October, the ultimatum expires.
Shortly afterwards, Nasser hears planes in the skies above Cairo.
"I was with the Indonesian ambassador and there were the air warning
and then
came the blackout. I listened
and there was the jet airplanes and I said to the Indonesian
ambassador these are British."
Now Nasser realizes just how much Eden is prepared to gamble.
"I hadn't thought at all that Britain would do
any attack against us because it was clear
that any attack against us would effect
the British position all over the Arab countries.
And would mean the end of the British relations and
influence in the Middle East.
As the bombs fall, a frightened Egyptian population
rush to join civilian militias. "Most of us,
the young people, decided that we're going to defend the country."
"We really didn't know what we're gonna do because our training was very cursory.
It included one clip of live ammunition. When we joined,
first thing they did was they give us those cases of Kalashnikov rifles
right out of the boxes with Greece, and they said, 'Okay, here is your rifle.'"
This makeshift civilian army
now waits for the arrival of British paratroopers.
"You hear a lot of fire, people flying
rifles and firing in the air. We don't-
you know, everybody is a parachutist, you know. Any noise you think somebody had just
come from sky. So it was a very very
tense moment and we were scared."
But Cairo, where Talaat Badrawi and other volunteers are waiting
is not the target for the British paratroopers assault. Port Said,
at the mouth of the canal, is where Britain will begin the reconquest
of Egypt.
After five days of aerial bombardment, 668 British paratroopers land in Port Said.
The city quickly finds itself under occupation,
but its population is determined not to give Eden the easy victory
he has anticipated. "And then they landed,
the British landed in Port Said.
So of course we wanted to wipe them out."
"All the people have
arms and guns and machine guns. They shoot at the airplanes
and every Egyptian people are ready to sacrifice himself
in order to- to defend his country." As the resistance mobilizes,
the British Prime Minister is insisting to the world
that his actions are right, legal, and morally sound.
"All my life, I've been a man a man of peace.
Working for peace, striving for peace,
negotiating for peace
and I'm still the same, with the same conviction,
same diversion to peace.
But I'm utterly
convinced the action we have taken is right."
As Eden is speaking,
Port Said is burning.
"There were two streets
I'm Abbas Street and Adadi
Street. These were mainly slums of wooden huts.
So they shot powder
at this homes and they were all set ablaze. One would see so many
homes burned, from the start to the end of the street.
This homes were all burned.
I saw corpses down the streets that nobody
could bury and they brought small wagons,
usually used to sell vegetables, and put six
or seven corpses on every wagon to take them to the graveyard,
in order to be buried there and I saw two corpses
which were flattened to the ground all together.
They were crushed by tanks."
The war is barely a week old, hundreds of Egyptian civilians have already been
killed in the bombing campaign
and more die in the street fighting that follows.
it is at this point that Eden hopes a terrified Egyptian population
will rise up to overthrow Nasser. "They do not understand what Egypt
is. They were completely wrong. The Egyptians were- all of them- were
where at one heart behind Nasser."
"When they feel a foreign threat,
people come together and that's what happened exactly."
The Egyptian Armed Forces may be hopelessly outgunned,
but Nasser and his government remain in Cairo.
Plans are made to begin a guerrilla war,
should the army be overwhelmed. "A popular army
to fight in the canals, in the streets, in the countryside, in the ports."
"We were hiding
arms all over the villages, everywhere in Egypt;
So even if the troops, they came to invade Egypt, we will fight- we
will resist."
And to prevent the British taking the canal,
Nassar orders ships to be sunk and the canal blocked.
Eden's invasion has succeeded in obstructing the very waterway
is trying to save and that is in the Prime Minister's only miscalculation.
The Suez Crisis suddenly increases the temperature
of the Cold War. "Burning buildings and bitter street fighting,
signal the release of long, pent-up resentment."
2,000 kilometers away, in Budapest,
the Soviet Union's empire in Europe is threatened by a popular uprising.
"The red star has been ripped, the hated symbol of communism is effaced
where ever found." Nikita Kruschev
sees his ally Nasser coming under attack in Cairo
and realizes that Soviet prestige appears to be crumbling
on two continents. "He feels
that the West is taking advantage of him when he is down,
that that British and the French are watching his troubles in eastern Europe
and see that they have an opportunity to deal with one of his allies now because
he is distracted.
His reaction was the reaction of political leader
who is fearful, surprised, and
angry at the same time. Kruschev
uses the city of Budapest to send a bloody message to the West,
as recent research has uncovered.
"We have the Politburo minutes and it makes clear
what's going on here. He wants to send a signal to them that no, Soviet Union is as
powerful as ever.
You cannot mess with me, either in the Middle East
or in Eastern Europe." Then
Kruschev ups the stakes. Lacking conventional forces in the Middle East
to help, Egypt against the British and French
he threatens the West with the doomsday option. "He
said to the world that, don't be surprised
if the consequences of your actions is that nuclear weapons will fall on
London and Paris.
This was the first time they had
ever made a nuclear threat." Suddenly,
it looks like Eden's adventure in Egypt is going to end in Armageddon.
"Somebody had a radio and we heard of that-
that the Russians were threatening
to drop bombs on London, and the Chinese might be about to join in
too. And that moment I did think, this is really going to be
the third world war.
The threat of nuclear war
concentrates minds in Washington, where President Eisenhower is already furious
with the Prime Minister.
"United States was not consulted in any way about
any phase of these actions. Nor were we informed of them
in advance." "He was so angry with the British,
I mean, he was really angry with the British. they'd gone
around his back and colluded with these other guys."
In front of the world, the American Secretary of State
condemns his country's oldest ally. "I doubt that any
delegate ever spoke from this forum with as heavy a heart
as I have brought here tonight."
"Eden had the
awful realization
that he had totally misjudged the American aspect of the affair."
Eden's plans are unraveling fast. He is not anticipated this level of hostility
from the Americans,
nor from his own people. "If he is sincere in what he is saying, then he is too stupid to be a prime minister."
"There was demonstrations in London as big as demonstrations in Egypt."
"And there is only one way in which that they can even begin to restore that tarnished reputation. And that is to get out, get out, get out!"
The world sees photographs which show in grisly detail
the effects of the war on the Egyptian people. As opposition across the world
mounts,
moral in Port Said soars. "People around the world we're backing
you. In the West, we had the public opinion with Egyptians."
And Eden realizes he has fatally miscalculated the reaction
of the Egyptian population to invasion. "If you ask me,
where they afraid? Yes, we were all afraid, because nobody likes to die.
We used to live a daily natural life, but with little commodities.
Limited food but people would stay
at cafes, listening to the radio, encouraging people to resist -
very special atmosphere."
Nasser refuses to go into hiding. He determines instead to rally his people
after Friday prayers at Cairo's
ancient Al Azar mosque.
"We will fight from house to house, from village to village. We will fight and never surrender.
We will fight rather than live humiliated. We will fight to the last drop of blood. We're building our country, our history, our future.
In London, Eden is feeling the strain. He has failed to win the hearts and minds
of the Egyptian people.
Nasser is more popular than ever and now comes the decisive blow.
Britain's currency reserves have been hemorrhaging since the bombing campaign
began,
as dealers all over the world dump sterling. "In those days,
Britain was the banker of the sterling area. Britain saw
immediate danger over the bottom falling out of that."
When Eden appeals to the Americans for financial help,
President Eisenhower makes sure there will be no room for misunderstanding
this time. "Eisenhower's was quite firm, he said as soon as you agree to get out
and really are getting out, we willl help you, but not a minute before."
On the 6th of November,
after nine days of war, Eden has no choice.
With British troops having advanced little over 10 miles down the canal,
the Prime Minister reluctantly calls a cease-fire. If the United Nations will take over
this police action,
we shall welcome, indeed we prefer
that cause to them."
The arrival of United Nations contingents at Port Said
causes a sensation that nearly develops into a riot by excitable Egyptians.
"Of course,
I was jumping with joy. When the last British soldier left,
we used to say, "Go to hell." Plans are made for United Nations troops to
replace the British and French on the ground.
The cease-fire is a humiliating climbdown for Eden
and his commanders. "I have to say
that most of the offices in the regiment
took it as a mortal blow. I think it was
very, very hard all professional soldiers who'd gone into this
enterprise in good faith, thought that this was going to be the final
roar of the British lion and suddenly found it it was just a sort of a
mingy little squeak that achieved nothing." For the prime minister,
the pressure of failure is unbearable. With Britain facing a winter fuel crisis
because of the closure of the canal,
he leaves the country for Jamaica, his health and career
crumbling. So anthony, at the moment of departure may we ask you how you're feeling?"
"The main thing I'm feeling
is that I'm deeply sorry to have to leave
the country at this time."
Five weeks later, he is back but not for long.
Eden never returned to frontline politics and his reputation never recovered from
taking Britain to war in the Middle East
under false pretenses. Britain's reputation was equally damaged.
"Well it was a total utter disaster
and it took us twenty years
to recover our rightful position as someone who was not
lord and master in that area, but a friend
to those states which will emerge after many centuries when we and the French
had ruled the roost." In Egypt,
the Suez Crisis was the making of Nasser. "The 23rd of December,
1956 [unintelligible].
It was the first day of the liberation of Port Said
and the whole city was out to celebrate victory."
"At that time, he was, you know, he was God, I have to tell you."
"President Nasser is a historic hero."
In the aftermath of the Suez Crisis,
Nasser was fated all over the Arab world. Here at last was a leader who could
stand up to the West
and win. "And the Arabs at that time
started to realize that Nasser was hero,
who was sent by god
to retrieve the Arabs from
many years of subordination." "Nasser,
in a sense, was a big winner but with a win which set him up
to be an awfully big loser because Nasser eventually came to believe his own
propaganda that
he had won a great battle." A little over 10 years later,
Nasser decides that he is strong enough to settle old scores with the Israeli
invaders of 1956.
"In 1967, he said, 'Last time,
we were fighting Israel, Britain, and France. We won then,
this time, Israel is alone."
It is an appalling misjudgment. "In the Sinai desert,
in the wake of Egypt catastrophic retreat, line Nasser's
wrecked tanks. The whole world hopes, that from great victory and utter defeat, wisdom
will emerge and bring lasting peace
to this part of the world."
But instead of peace coming to the Middle East,
the unresolved issues at the 1967 war,
the West Bank, and Gaza Strip, still poison the region today.
The end of the Suez Crisis was also the moment a new power decided to take
center stage
in the Middle East. Within weeks at the end of the war,
President Eisenhower, convinced that the British and French could no longer be
trusted to protect Western interests in the region,
announces a fight for change in American policy.
He concludes that what the Middle East needs is more American involvement
not less. The Eisenhower doctrine said we're going to safeguard any country
which is threatened by Communism within the Middle East. That's the old idea of
you're either with us in Washington or with us in Moscow and cuts out a third way
for Arab Nationalism.
The very factors which lead the Americans keep their distance
from Britain's in moving to aggressively against Nasser in 1956,
they lose sight of those." "The occasion
has come for us, to show our deep respect for the rights
and independence of every nation, however great,
however small. We seek not violence, but peace.
It is a policy which echoes from Suez
to today. "States like these
and their terrorist allies constitute an
axis of evil. I will now wait on a bench while dangers gather.
The United States of America will not permit
the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us
with the world's most destructive weapons."
"This is not the time to falter, this is the time for this house to give a lead,
to show that we wil,l stand up for what we know to be right
to show that we will confront the tyrannies
and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk."
"The fact of the matter is
that Iraq could turn out in the long run to be a Suez fifty years later.
But where as that will take years to find out with Iraq, with Suez,
we found it out within a matter of weeks."
Ordinary Egyptians have drawn their own lessons from the Suez Crisis.
"There is a great difference between resistance
and terroism.
I was a patriot, defending my country.
The spirit of resistance is deeply rooted
in our country and in the area."
"When the US and Britain went into Iraq
with the idea of being accepted with open arms and so on,
that was a very stupid idea. I mean
where did they ever come up with that idea. I don't know. They could have looked at the
history books; they could have looked at the Suez Crisis, you know.
Which is after all, it's only fifty years ago and they
could have learned that this will never happen, it will never happen.
You know, people will defend the country they would defend their land."
"I am a human being, I have dignity. I don't
except any foreigner to dominate me or at else,
I am a slave. Right or wrong?"