Former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser died on 28 September 1970, a few hours after the end of the Arab summit held to address the Black September conflict between the then Palestinian resistance and king Hussein of Jordan. Having spent almost 18 years as the charismatic leader of Egypt and the whole Arab world, Nasser was considered by many as the embodiment of Arab nationalism in its heyday of the 1950s and 1960s. According to US academic James Jankowski, “no Egyptian before or after stirred popular enthusiasm throughout the Arab world to the degree Nasser did after 1955-1965; it is questionable if any Arab leader in the 20th century was ever seen as embodying the hopes and aspirations of politically articulate Arabs as did the Egyptian president after 1956.” However, pan-Arabism was not a Nasserite invention. Rather, its early beginnings can be traced back to the early decades of the 20th century, when Egyptians started to identify themselves with the grievances of the other Arab peoples in areas like Palestine, Syria, Libya and so on. Among the elites, there was a growing consciousness of the importance of the Arab dimension for Egypt, first in achieving its independence and second in the arrangements that would take place after it. Egypt's participation in the 1948 War against Israel represented a climax of this growing sense of solidarity with the Arab people in Palestine that started after the Balfour Declaration, made by British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour in 1917. Commentator Michael Doran has highlighted that for some such elites, “Egyptian dominance meant driving out Britain, which meant frustrating its Hashemite proxies in Iraq and Jordan, which meant joining the wider Arab attack on infant Israel.” What seems astonishing is that some contemporary writers are still questioning Arab nationalism as an appropriate identity for Egyptians, even demanding its omission from the draft of the country's new constitution. On 28 September nine years earlier in 1961, Nasser suffered an important shock as a result of the dissolution of the United Arab Republic with Syria, the first and only Arab union of the modern age. Nasser was severely traumatised by the Syrian secession from the union, which represented the first setback on Nasser's path after a decade full of achievements on the local, regional and global levels. Some historians have emphasised that Nasser was reluctant to go for a fully-fledged political union with Syria within the complex socio-political context of the time. Historian Robert Stephens has highlighted the fact that “the major factor for the Egyptian leader was that Syria could not be allowed to drift into either of the competing Cold War blocs,” while P J Vatikiotis, one of Nasser's harshest critics, emphasised an additional factor behind Nasser's acceptance of the union with Syria, stating that it had come about as a result of Nasser's “personal disposition and apparently genuine sympathy with the Arab cause.” The union was intact for almost three years, and it gave Syria a high degree of political stability. Nevertheless, it did not spare the country the endless foreign conspiracies that culminated in the secession itself. After the end of the union with Egypt, Syria passed through a prolonged period of protracted political instability, marked by a series of military coups that ended with former Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad assuming power a few weeks after Nasser's death in 1970. On the other hand, Egypt under former presidents Anwar Al-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak embarked on a different path that was diametrically opposed to the Nasserite model of state and society. Under the rule of the Al-Assad dynasty, Syria has been transformed into a sectarian oligarchy that has become dependent on the support of two patrons, Iran and Russia, on the regional and the international levels. On a regional level, the changes have been tremendous, resulting in the Arab context becoming the playground for a long array of regional and global actors with different and possibly conflicting agendas. In September 2013, both Egypt and Syria are at a crossroads, and each has been pursuing its own steps independently from the other. The Syrian crisis has also become the target of various regional or global actors. These two crises have been the outcome of decades of political, cultural and economic stagnation. Today's actors on the Syrian stage are essentially the same as those during the Cold War, save for a shifting alliance with Iran and the replacement of the former Soviet Union by Russia. The US, Turkey, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have been on the stage since the late 1940s, playing various roles over the decades. Though the current crisis in Syria has been intensely violent and has seen the unprecedented intervention of foreign powers, the risk posed by the presence of Islamist militants has been the most destabilising and has had the most serious consequences. Within the context of this unfolding tragedy what has been missing has been the role of Egypt in addressing the regional issues that have emerged over the last 40 years. For example, in 1957 Nasser sent a contingent of Egyptian troops to Syria in order to support it against a potential Turkish incursion. Perhaps the last time that Egypt played such a regional role was during the 1973 October War, when Egyptian and Syrian armies were able to obtain the only Arab military victory over Israel. Since this glorious event, Egypt has been disengaging from the role it played in the 1950s and 1960s, if not earlier. Egypt's historical role in the Arab world was reduced under Mubarak, such that his regime contented itself with performing the role of peace-broker between the Arab states and Israel. One of the most important lessons of the Syrian secession was the indispensable role of the Egyptian leadership as exemplified by Nasser during the crisis. Many analysts across the political spectrum have criticised Nasser's approach during the crisis, however. In the early days of the secession, the Syrian unionists and even those supporting the union in the army were ready to fight against the secession, and there were calls for an Egyptian military intervention to put an end to the secession, including from Syrian military bases outside Damascus. Nasser actually ordered Egyptian forces to be dispatched to the Syrian port of Latakia. However, Nasser refrained from using force against the Syrian army after he had analysed the situation, stating that “at this time I feel that it is not mandatory that Syria remains a part of the United Arab Republic.” Courageous leadership and statesmanship were expressed by Nasser during the 1961 secession crisis. If anyone should be aware of the lessons of this today, it is Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, who has been doing everything possible to remain in power and has linked the continued existence of Syria as a state to the continuation of his regime. There has recently been an increasing nostalgia for Nasser and the Nasser period in Egypt, with portraits of the former leader being raised during the revolutionary demonstrations on 30 June. Similarly, the analogy made between Nasser and Minister of Defence General Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi has been within the context of reverence for each man's respective contribution. Such nostalgia for Nasser reflects Nasser's deserved place in the Egyptian collective consciousness. While Nasser died 43 years ago and since then many things have changed, his legacy has been immune from the changes that have taken place in the region.
