by Guy Arnold
MOROCCO AND TUNISIA
As the violence escalated in Algeria from 1954 onwards France felt obliged to accelerate moves towards independence in the neighbouring states of Morocco and Tunisia in the hope (unfulfilled) that this would appease the Arab world and so make France’s continued hold on Algeria easier to maintain. In fact, once they were independent both countries provided support for the FLN in Algeria and France was obliged to construct barbed-wire frontier barriers to prevent Algerian nationalists moving back and forth across these borders.
In 1939 the Moroccans rallied to the cause of France and in 1942 to the Free French Movement. The Istiqlal Party (Party of Independence) was formed in 1943. It demanded full independence for Morocco with a constitutional form of government under Sultan Muhammad ibn Yusuf. Demands for independence were low level for some time after the end of the war but tensions between traditionalists and modernists came to a head in 1953. Sultan Muhammad, who supported the nationalist movement, fell out with the French administration and then, in May 1953, a number of conservative Pashas and Caids asked for his removal and backed the traditionalist leader Thami al-Glawi, the Pasha of Marrakesh, to replace him. Berbers from the countryside moved on the towns in the Pasha’s support. As a result, on 20 August 1953 the Sultan agreed to go into exile in Europe but not to abdicate. There were assassination attempts against Muhammad in both 1953 and 1954. Meanwhile, a prince of the Alawi house, Muhammad ibn Arafa, had been appointed Sultan. There were outbreaks of violence through 1954 and into 1955 when Sultan Muhammad ibn Arafa renounced the throne. On 5 November 1955 Muhammad ibn Yusuf was again recognized as Sultan of Morocco and returned to the country from exile. On 2 March 1956 a joint Franco-Moroccan declaration stated that the French protectorate that had been established in 1912 had become obsolete and that the French government recognized the independence of Morocco. France undertook to provide aid to Morocco and to assist in the re-assertion of Moroccan control over the zones of Spanish influence. On 12 November 1956 Morocco became a member of the United Nations.
The pre-independence years in Tunisia were more fraught than in Morocco. After the fall of France in 1940 Tunisia came under Vichy rule; Bizerta, Tunis and other ports were used by Germany and Italy to supply their armies in Libya. The defeat of the Axis in Africa in 1943 saw the restoration of French authority. The Bey of Tunisia, Muhammad al-Monsif, was accused of collaboration and deposed, to be replaced by his cousin, Muhammad al-Amin, who was to rule until 1957. Nationalist agitation for political change, which had been growing throughout the 1930s, was renewed in 1944 but French repression forced the principal nationalist, Habib Bourguiba, to leave Tunisia and establish himself in Cairo. Bourguiba had created the Neo-Destour (New Constitution) Party in 1934.
In 1945, according to a decree issued by the Bey, the French reorganized the Council of Ministers and the Grand Council, which was an elected body with equal French and Tunisian representation, and extended its authority. However, in 1946 the nationalists made an unequivocal demand for independence at a meeting of their national congress. In 1949 Bourguiba returned to Tunisia from Egypt and the following year the Neo-Destour Party proposed the transfer of sovereignty and executive control to Tunisians, with a responsible government and a prime minister appointed by the Bey. The French responded reasonably to these requests and a new Tunisian Government was formed in August 1950 with equal numbers of Tunisian and French ministers. The object of the new government, it was stated, would be the restoration of Tunisian authority in stages in co-operation with France. The European settlers, who represented 10 per cent of the population, opposed all these moves towards independence and more especially in 1951 when the French advisers to Tunisian ministers were removed. These advances, however, collapsed towards the end of 1951 due to a combination of settler opposition and French procrastination.
There were strikes and demonstrations at the beginning of 1952 and in February Bourguiba and other nationalist leaders were arrested on orders of the new resident-general, Jean de Hauteclocque. Violence then spread throughout the country and France responded by imposing military rule. The Neo-Destour Party was proscribed and France then produced new reform proposals. Neo-Destour, however, took its case to the United Nations General Assembly. Further reforms were halted in response to increasing acts of terrorism on the one hand and French repression on the other. However, in December 1952 the Bey, under threat of deposition, signed new French reform proposals but these were repudiated by Neo-Destour. A secret settler counter-terrorist organization, the ‘Red Hand’, was formed and during 1953 the country came close to civil war.
On 18 June 1954 Pierre Mendes-France was elected prime minister in Paris on promising to make peace in Indo-China within a month. His election and promise followed the surrender of the French at Dien Bien Phu on 7 May that year. African deputies supported Mendes-France with enthusiasm since he showed a genuine interest in reaching an understanding with overseas peoples on their own terms. He succeeded in making peace in Vietnam. Mendes-France then began negotiations that would lead to full internal self-government in Tunisia and he allowed Bourguiba’s outlawed Neo-Destour Party to come to power. It was over this policy that the government of Mendes-France was overthrown in February 1955. 9 However, talks between the two sides were resumed in March 1955 and a final agreement was signed in Paris on 2 June.
The agreement gave Tunisia internal autonomy while protecting French interests and leaving foreign affairs, defence and internal security in French hands. Although the majority of the Neo-Destour Party supported this agreement, it was opposed by the extremist wing headed by the exiled Salah ben Youssef, the Communists and the settlers. A split then occurred between the main Neo-Destour Party, led by Bourguiba who had returned to Tunisia in June 1955, and the extremists under Salah ben Youssef, who had returned in September. In October ben Youssef was expelled from Neo-Destour and in November the party Congress confirmed the expulsion of ben Youssef, reaffirmed the position of Bourguiba as party president and accepted the agreement with France while restating its demand for total independence. Following clashes between the two factions of Neo-Destour and the discovery of a plot to prevent the implementation of the agreement, ben Youssef fled to Tripoli in January 1956. Bourguiba began negotiations for full independence at Paris and in a protocol of 20 March France formally recognized the independence of Tunisia. A transitional period followed. Elections were held on 25 March in which the Neo-Destour party won 98 seats in the legislature. Bourguiba became prime minister on 11 April. In the immediate period after independence relations between Tunisia and France deteriorated because France held on to its base at Bizerta to facilitate its war in Algeria, while Bourguiba’s attempts to broker a peace that would allow Algeria to achieve independence were not acceptable to France.
THE SUDAN
In 1924 Britain had launched its ‘Southern Policy’ in the south of Sudan. This had two objectives: to prevent the rise of nationalism, which had already taken root in Egypt, from spreading from Northern Sudan to the south and thence to British East Africa; and to separate the three southern provinces from the rest of the country with a view to their eventual assimilation by the governments of the neighbouring British territories into a great East African Federation under British control. Muslims from the north who were then in the south of Sudan were evicted and a strict regime of permits was introduced to prevent other northerners coming south. In 1948 a legislative assembly was created for the whole of Sudan. Two political groups emerged and one of these, led by the Umma party and supported by the Mahdists, decided to support the colonial (British) government because they suspected Egypt’s motives. The other group, led by the Khatmiyye, stood for ‘The Unity of the Nile valley’ and close cooperation with Egypt. This group distrusted British intentions.
The 1952 revolution in Egypt changed all the plans that had been formed by the British and Egyptians for Sudan. The new Egyptian regime of army officers disowned the King and the pasha class for whom ‘The Unity of
the Nile Valley under the Egyptian crown’ had been an article of faith and the way was cleared for the settlement of the Sudan question between Egypt and Britain. The British position had been to insist that it meant to secure self-determination for the Sudanese as opposed to imposing upon them unity with Egypt as the Egyptians had long desired. Many Sudanese, in any case, would have resisted union with Egypt by force. The new Egyptian regime declared that it was equally willing to grant the Sudanese the right of self-determination. As a consequence of this changed situation an Anglo-Egyptian declaration was signed in 1953, which provided for the Sudanisation of the police and civil service and the evacuation of all British and Egyptian troops over three years in preparation for independence. An international commission supervised elections and the National Unionist Party (NUP) won them with the result that in January 1954 its leader Ismail el-Azhari became the first Sudanese prime minister. The Egyptians had supported the NUP in the elections on the assumption that el-Azhari favoured a union with Egypt. By the time the British and Egyptian troops had been withdrawn Sudanisation was well under way and el-Azhari, who had shifted his position somewhat, made plain that he stood for total independence. Most members of the NUP, in any case, had regarded solidarity with Egypt as a means to an end and not as an end in itself. Further, any suggestion of union with Egypt would have been violently opposed by the Mahdists.
In August 1955 southern troops at Juba mutinied as the prelude to an attempted revolt by the South in which 300 Northern Sudanese officials, merchants and their families were massacred. The disorders were confined to Equatorial Province and did not spread to either Upper Nile or Bahr el Ghazal provinces. Although order was restored the problem of the relations between the South and the North remained unsolved. The representatives of the South said they would only vote for independence if a federal form of government was fully considered and a promise to this effect was made. Although the agreement of 1953 had prescribed a plebiscite and other pre-self-determination procedures, el-Azhari, with the support of all parties, now ignored these conditions and on 19 December 1955 the Sudanese parliament unanimously declared Sudan to be an independent republic. Faced with this fait accompli Britain and Egypt recognized the independence of Sudan and this was formally celebrated on 1 January 1956.
EGYPT AND THE SUEZ CRISIS
The close British relationship with Egypt over a period of 80 years began in violence with the bombardment of Alexandria by a British fleet in 1882 and ended in violence with the Anglo-French invasion of the Canal Zone in 1956. The British withdrawal from Egypt and the ignominious collapse of the 1956 attempt to regain control of the Suez Canal marked a turning point in the story of African independence and the end of British pretensions to big power status alongside the United States and the Soviet Union. Suez represented the last British attempt to impose its will on Third World countries by old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy. Britain and France, the two greatest colonial powers, were defeated by Nasser’s Egypt, which, in extraordinary circumstances, was supported by both the United States and the Soviet Union, the world’s two superpowers.
On 23 July 1952 the ‘Free Officers’ seized power in Cairo and forced King Farouk to abdicate (he went into exile on 26 July). They then invited Ali Maher, the veteran politician, to form a government under their control. However, another government under General Muhammad Neguib soon replaced that of Maher although real power remained with the nine officers of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). On 18 June the monarchy was abolished. Meanwhile, land ownership had been limited to 300 acres a family so that at a stroke the power of the old feudal classes was destroyed. On the abolition of the monarchy the Revolutionary Command Council declared Egypt to be a republic and General Neguib became its first president, prime minister and chairman of the RCC. Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser, who to this point had remained in the background, although he was the real leader of the Free Officers, became deputy prime minister.
A power struggle followed between the Free Officers and Neguib who was essentially conservative in his politics. He was relieved of his posts, except the presidency, on 24 February 1954 while Nasser became prime minister and chairman of the RCC. In October 1954, following an assassination attempt against Nasser by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, its leaders and several thousand of its supporters were arrested; in subsequent trials a number of its members were sentenced to death. The event marked the downgrading of the Brotherhood and the beginning of a long confrontation between Nasser and his political successors and the extreme or conservative Islamicists. On 14 November 1954 Neguib was accused of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood, relieved of his final post as president and placed under house arrest. Nasser became the acting head of state.
In the meantime, Egypt had relinquished its claim to a joint Egypt/Sudan monarchy while an Anglo-Egyptian agreement of 12 February 1953 ended the Condominium over Sudan and offered the Sudanese the choice of independence or union with Egypt. Although Egypt had believed that Sudan would opt for a union, the overthrow of Neguib, who was half-Sudanese, as well as the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood had the effect of heightening old Sudanese suspicions of Egypt’s motives. A second Anglo-Egyptian agreement of 19 October 1954 provided for the withdrawal of all British troops from the Canal Zone over a 20-month period. Nasser, once in full control, sought influence for Egypt in three areas: the Islamic world, the African world and the Arab world. He also was to play a prominent role in the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, which led to the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement, and he led Arab opposition to the formation of the Cold War-inspired Baghdad Pact of 1955.
In September 1955 Nasser announced an arms deal with Czechoslovakia, a member of the Communist bloc, and this angered the US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles who adopted the approach that a country was either ‘with us or against us’. Nasser also sought funds for his cherished development project, the Aswan High Dam, which was to supply power and extend irrigation for the needs of the country’s rapidly increasing population. In February 1956 the World Bank offered a loan of US$200 million for the dam on condition that the United States and Britain lent a further US$70 million and that the Nile riparian states agreed to the construction of the dam. Egypt would provide local services. However, over the following months, growing Cold War strains, Nasser’s avowed policy of non-alignment and opposition to the Baghdad Pact, and acceptance of arms from Czechoslovakia between them persuaded the United States and Britain, followed by the World Bank, to withdraw their offers of aid for the dam on 20 July. On 26 July, in reaction to their withdrawal, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, claiming he would use the canal dues to finance the Aswan High Dam. The Suez Crisis followed. After prolonged and fruitless negotiations by Britain and France to retain a measure of control over the Canal, the two countries entered into a secret conspiracy with Israel’s Prime Minister David ben Gurion. On 29 October Israeli forces occupied the Sinai Peninsula up to the Suez Canal. The next day Britain and France called on Israel and Egypt to cease hostilities and allow their forces – temporarily – to occupy Port Sudan and Ismailia. Egypt refused. At the United Nations Britain and France vetoed US and Soviet resolutions calling upon them to refrain from the use of force. Anglo-French air operations against Egypt began on 31 October and land operations on 5 November. On 6 November, after only 24 hours, Britain’s Prime Minister Anthony Eden, under intense US pressure, called a halt to the invasion. A UN peacekeeping force was rapidly assembled and put in place on 15 November, allowing the British and French to withdraw their forces. The Israelis withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula but retained control of the Gaza Strip and Sharm el-Sheikh which commanded the sea approach to Eilat, until they also relinquished control of these two regions, again under intense US pressure.
Despite defeat by the Israelis and invasion by Britain and France, Nasser emerged with immense prestige throughout the Arab world, as though he rather than the two superpowers had defeated Britain and France. For the next ten years his influenc
e and the impact of the Voice of Cairo radio in subsequent Arab and African independence struggles were to be among the most important political factors in the Middle East and in Africa. For Britain the failure of Suez was traumatic, bringing to an abrupt end the illusory period 1945–56 when it had behaved as one of the Big Three with the United States and the Soviet Union. The failure of the joint intervention also led to a deterioration in Anglo- French relations and subsequent French suspicion of the US-UK Anglo-Saxon alliance. Above all, it marked the decline in world influence of the two major imperial powers just as pressures for independence mounted and, by providing a much-needed fillip to nationalists everywhere, accelerated the process of decolonization. Finally, the Suez Crisis led to an increase in Soviet influence in the Middle East and Africa as the USSR undertook to build the Aswan High Dam in the place of the British, Americans and World Bank.
ANGLO-FRENCH RIVALRY IN AFRICA
A factor of permanent importance before, during and after the independence era in Africa was the rivalry between Britain and France, the two great imperial powers, which stretched back to the days of the Scramble for Africa. They vied with each other to demonstrate that the systems they bequeathed their colonies, when finally they were obliged to grant independence, were superior to one another’s. At the same time they were allies in sympathy with each other because of the necessity to decolonize. Both, as declining imperial powers, nevertheless wished to perpetuate what influence they commanded. However the subject of imperialism is viewed, the retreat from Africa for Britain and France was hard to accomplish and provoked bitter emotional regrets that were often paralleled by efforts to hold on longer than made political sense. Racism was the worst legacy of imperialism. Superior power allowed the European nations to carve up Africa, and the subsequent control of colonial peoples gave rise to the belief on the part of Europeans that they were innately superior and, therefore, had some special right to rule over other peoples. Such a belief was especially strong in the colonies of white settlement such as Algeria, Kenya and South Africa. This sense of superiority, combined with the settler determination to hold on to a lifestyle that was the direct result of imperialism, produced a resistance to change that in places was to prove explosive, bloody and bitter.
