Not Quite Mandalay - The Suez Emergency
Flying Pig
The Canal Before 1951
Even when Ferdinand de Lesseps set out to build the canal in 1854, he knew that he was far from the first to do so. In ancient times the Pharaohs had built waterways to connect the River Nile - Egypt's most important waterway, the source of almost all of its food supply and its link with a large amount of Africa - to the Red Sea. This link enabled a large expedition in the time of Hatshepsut to Punt, either in Somaliland or Arabia, which brought back that country's produce of incense and myrrh trees and established Punt as a major trading partner for Egypt. Darius I of Persia had tried to re-open the canal while Egypt was a Persian territory, and he succeeded in doing so until approximately the time of Caesar. The Arabs had again re-opened the canal by 700 AD, but by 1000 AD it was choked with sand and once again useless to sea traffic.
Napoleon Bonaparte knew of the existence of this former waterway in 1798 and so he took on his expedition to Egypt a vast cadre of archaeologists, engineers and map-makers in order to find where it might have once ran, hoping that by re-opening the passage he would be able to gain a huge logistical advantage over the British enabling him to seize their colonies in the Far East, including their Indian holdings. He drew up plans to build a canal very similar to the modern one, however fortunately for Britain his scientists had measured the ground poorly and concluded that the Red Sea was 33 feet higher than the Mediterranean, which meant that any canal would need locks and as such be very expensive. Until 1854 there was a land route by which the British transported post and supplies between India and Europe, but they opposed the creation of a canal for fear that it would harm their trade in the east.
The situation changed in that year when de Lesseps, a former French diplomat and good friend of the Egyptian viceroy Sa'id Pasha, obtained permission from the latter to build a canal open to ships of all nations. In 1858 he offered shares to raise funds for the venture: the British refused and organised a boycott of the company leading to 44% of the shares going to the Egyptian government and the rest predominantly to French investors. Despite British opposition to the canal - not least because of de Lesseps' use of slave labour to build it- it was opened in 1869 and in that year some three-quarters of the vessels using it flew a British ensign. During the 1870s Pasha's successor sold his country's shares to the Disraeli government in London for £4 million pounds, establishing Britain's influence over and stake in this already vitally important waterway.
The canal provided Britain with a short sea route to its vast empire, and only grew in importance with the dawn of the twentieth century and the use of oil in seagoing vessels; allowing a short sea route from the UK to the oil-fields of Persia. The British drew the vast majority of their oil from this region and so the canal became vital for the protection of British interests around the world; without it Britain would be totally unable to sustain its use of oil, which was rapidly becoming even more important as a fuel, in times where North Sea oil was undiscovered and the US was a minor international producer of the substance.
So important was it seen by the British government that with the outbreak of the Great War they declared Egypt a British protectorate and stationed troops from the UK and India to defend the canal. They were pressed into action in the February of 1915 when Turkish troops attacked the canal; however this attack came to nothing and by 1916 their lines were deep in the Sinai desert to prevent any further trouble; which never came thanks to the political instability of the Turkish Empire and TE Lawrence's efforts at harassing the Turks in that region. It was agreed in 1936 that Egypt would become an independent state and that British troops would remain in the canal zone for twenty years - which served Egyptian interests well as they were worried about Italian aggression against their strategic waterway, which would give Italy a link to its new Abyssinian colony - at which point their presence would be re-assessed and potentially re-negotiated.
During the Second World War Egypt came under attack from the other direction; German and Italian troops coming from Libya in a bid to seize control of the country and the canal, which was transporting Indian, Australian and New Zealander troops to the war in Europe. The Allies under Montgomery managed to turn the Axis, under the command of Erwin Rommel, at the battle of El Alamein and subsequently out of the African continent completely in 1943.
Egyptian Aggression 1951-4
The British had not had entirely good relations with the Arab world ever since their failure to reward adequately their service during the Arab Revolt against the Turks during the Great War, but when signing the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 they had reasonably expected that Egypt would allow their troops to remain in 1956. With the changing political situation after the Second World War, Britain and France increasingly lost international influence to the USA and the USSR, and the Egyptians began courting Russian assistance to their development, dramatically changing the status quo. This came to a head in 1951, when the Egyptians declared that they were tearing up their treaty with the British.
As can be expected, the government in London did not take this very well and refused to withdraw, citing their rights under the treaty and hoping that the sheer mass of the base at Suez - one of the largest in the world - would be enough to ensure that Egypt could not do anything against them. Furthermore, they were confident that their closest allies, the Americans, would side with them against the Soviet-sympathising Egyptians, forcing them to back down. This stand-off fuelled the already simmering flames of nationalism and anti-British sentiment in the Egyptian populace created by the British partition of Palestine; giving the Jews a homeland in the Arab heartlands - a sentiment which the Egyptian government far from discouraged. British withdrawal from the canal was not in the question from 1950; when the 1st Infantry Division stationed there were put on stand-by to move against Iran after the latter nationalised British-owned oil-fields there, and although this alert was cancelled it proved to London that their presence in the region was vital to secure their own supplies of oil as well as British and European trade with the Australasia, Africa and the Far East.
It was from this time that the canal zone became known among British troops as a highly dangerous posting; Egypt had begun as long ago as 1949, following British refusal to re-negotiate the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, to issue propaganda - hoping to distract the people from its own failings and poor administration - urging its citizens to harass the 20,000 British troops stationed there. The British government saw the fragility of the situation and realised that such an important base could not be left to the inept Egyptians, and so resolved to stay the full length of their treaty rights until 1956. The Egyptians, probably encouraged by Britain's show of restraint against Iran, decided to move aggressively, proclaiming a union with the Sudan under their own royal house.
Very quickly the British saw that the situation was escalating; Egypt had closed road and rail links to the British base and riots, stabbings, arson and overturned vehicles were now a common sight to the families of the troops stationed in the canal zone. The government declared in response the 'Suez Emergency'; shipping 6,000 troops from the 3rd Infantry Division and the 16th Independent Parachute Brigade along with 170 tonnes of stores and 330 vehicles to their base in ten days, which remains to date the largest mobilisation of the British Army in times of peace. This brought the total number of British servicemen stationed in that region to 80,000; meaning that the British had enough force in the area to occupy both Alexandria and Cairo. Indeed, plans - called Operations FLAIL and RODEO - were set up to do just that in the event of a full-scale war. The Egyptians continued to harass the troops stationed at Suez by attacking the water filtration plants there which provided the vast majority of drinking water for the British base. Britain acted to avoid a further attack by demolishing a local village, which of course provided huge propaganda value to the Egyptians.
Trouble continued to escalate; on 25 January 1952 shots were fired as British troops attempted to disarm an unruly Auxiliary Police Unit in Ismailiah, resulting in the deaths of 42 Egyptians and massive anti-British riots in Cairo, which in turn led to the deposal, on 23 July. of King Farouk and the installation in his place of President Muhammad Naguib as leader of the Arab Republic of Egypt. As a result of continued attacks on vehicles moving along the Old Cairo Road, British troops moved out into the desert and in response Egypt moved divisions into Cairo and Alexandria, with one division moved to the south of the British lines, five miles from the border of the Canal Zone, available to launch a flanking attack. There were no exchanges of fire between the two sides, although for the two-and-a-half weeks British troops were warned to beware of Improvised Explosive Devices which the Egyptians would leave in piles of camel dung, hoping that a soldier would come along and clear it up. British paratroopers on the ground reported that Egyptian Centurion tanks would occasionally get with range of the infantry's PIAT (Projector Infantry Anti-Tank), but were unwilling to engage for fear of the battle becoming, as the Americans say, a turkey-shoot.
Britain was keen, despite Egyptian actions having reached a state of war in all but the most strictly formal sense, to restore amicable relations with the Egyptians and so adopted something of a policy of appeasement towards them in 1953 until 1954; agreeing in 1953 that in exchange for Egypt's abandonment of its claims over the Nile Valley region of Sudan Britain would abandon its rule of that country by 1956. While the British were unwilling to lose their vital outpost in Suez, they recognised that the base was useless without local co-operation and were keen to avoid the expense of a full-on war and so, after a long period of negotiation throughout which British troops suffered countless terrorist attacks - often ordered by the Egyptian government - in October 1954 an agreement was reached for the phased evacuation of British troops from the canal zone. Britain would retain the base for twenty years, leaving behind a team of technicians to maintain it and teach the inexperienced and inept Egyptians that trade, and also the British would keep the right to return their troops to the canal for seven years. The base would also be re-occupied by Britain in the event of an attack on Egypt, Turkey, or the Arab League.
Nasser Frustrates of the British 1954-6
Despite what seemed a possible end to the crisis, the new Egyptian president Nasser was himself in a fairly tenuous position at home and so he, like other governments of his country before, tried to re-direct the anger of his people upon the British. From 1954 onwards he embarked on a programme of trying to thwart at every turn British interests in the Middle East and to establish Egypt and himself as the head of the Arab world. In particular he opposed the Baghdad Pact - an organisation set up by the British to align the Middle East against the USSR and provide for the common defence of that region- aligning his country with the regional power of Saudi Arabia in order to ensure that Syria, Jordan and the Lebanon stayed out of the Pact. His greatest blow to British influence came when he sponsored riots in Amman, the capital of Jordan, which caused the king of that country to dismiss the British commander of his armed forces, Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot-Glubb, throwing British policy in the Middle East into disarray.
Furthermore he ended Egyptian reliance on western armaments by negotiating an arms deal with Czechoslovakia, which also gave the USSR considerable and growing influence in that region since other Eastern Bloc powers began to sell arms to Egypt's army. This caused the USA to regard Egypt with growing suspicion; as it was wary of the Soviets gaining influence over what it regarded as a strategically vital second front against Russia. As a result of this Nasser came to be regarded - especially in the UK - as a dictator and a danger to Western interests. As such relations between the two countries continued to deteriorate.
Britain looked to the US for support in their aims to rein Nasser in, however they seemed unwilling to be drawn and the other regional power of Saudi Arabia - whose royal family was strongly opposed to the Hashemite family which dominated the Baghdad Pact - was equally unhelpful. Although equally opposed to Nasser as the British were, the Americans also strongly disliked European colonialism and preferred the idea of the Middle East being dominated by a pro-US Egypt than Britain.
Events came to a head in the Spring and Summer of 1956 when Nasser recognised the People's Republic of China, causing America to withdraw funding for the Aswan Dam, which they believed beyond Egypt's economic means. In order to raise the money for his project, Nasser decided to nationalise the Suez Canal and on 26 July gave a speech to that effect, during which he used the code-word Ferdinand de Lesseps; which was an order for Egyptian troops to take control of the canal. The British realised at this point that they could not afford to remain passive; and so they began to plan in secret, jointly with the French who had lost their lucrative shares in the canal, for an invasion of Suez and a re-capture of the canal to avoid the total collapse of British prestige in that region.
War Planning
It was at Sèvres, just outside Paris, that the governments of Britain, France and Israel agreed on their plan to invade Egypt. The French and British both needed to defeat Nasser in order to ensure their continued influence over North Africa and the Middle East respectively, and Israel was worried that an Egyptian-controlled Suez would mean restrictions on its shipping through the Straits of Tiran and compromise its southern border with an already hostile state. These considerations meant that for the powers concerned diplomacy was no longer an option, however the USA did not see it that way and was strongly opposed to the use of force. As such the Sèvres meeting went ahead in secret, although all sides took away a signed copy of the agreement at Israeli insistence to ensure that Israel would not be abandoned midway through the invasion.
The plan was that Israel would invade from the north, and the British and French would intervene under the pretext of separating the combatants and ensuring that the international law keeping the canal open to ships of all nations was maintained. The pact said that if the Egyptians did not agree to the occupation of the canal, Anglo-French troops would commence military operations against Egypt and Israel would be given free rein to wreak havoc in that country. If the two sides agreed to separate, the British and French would decide that Egyptian control of the canal was too tenuous to work and that the zone needed to be placed back under Anglo-French administration. The Americans, it was hoped, would side with their European and Israeli allies against a pro-USSR Egypt and so Nasser would be forced either to surrender the canal or lose it by force.
Operation KADESH, the Israeli invasion plan, was centred around for objectives: the port city of Sharm el-Sheik from which the Egyptians were blockading the Straits of Tiran and so denying Israel access to the Red Sea, the Egyptian-occupied but nominally Israeli Gaza Strip, the capital of Sinai at el-Arish, and the strategic crossroads and dam at Abu Ageila. Gaza had been chosen as a target both because of its use for training Islamic terrorists and because Israel thought that its position meant that Egypt would be able to use it as a base to harass the advancing Israeli troops. It was believed that the capture of these two, along with the military hubs at el-Arish and Abu Ageila, would cause the Egyptian army to collapse completely and fall back out of Sinai. Some Israeli troops were also to be stationed along the Jordanian border, since that country was allied to Egypt and was thought likely to launch an attack in support of the latter.
The Attack on Port Said
On 29 October the operation began with the 890th Parachute Battalion of the Israeli Defence Force dropping at Parker's Memorial in the strategically valuable Mitla Pass. At the same time, fighter aircraft used wings and propellers to cut all telegraph and power lines in the Sinai, crippling Egyptian communications. The 809th was to seize the pass quickly, pending a push by the rest of its brigade - led by a certain Ariel Sharon - to consolidate the Israeli gains.
Meanwhile, other ground units were storming into Sinai: the 9th Infantry Brigade advanced quickly down the eastern side of the peninsula towards Sharm el-Sheik, which they enveloped and rapidly caused to surrender without any losses. The 4th Brigade moved to attack Abu Ageila. Sharon's brigade managed to link up with the paratroopers on the 30th, having taken a vital strategic pass en route. Although Israeli plans were to not advance beyond the passes, meaning that they would be able to hold Sinai relatively easily against an Egyptian counter-attack, Sharon decided to order his paratroopers to attack the heavily-defended position on the Jebel Heitan, which although an Israeli victory was the scene of much bloodshed and a dark stain on Sharon's reputation.
While all this had been going on, the British and French had been bringing troops to Malta and Cyprus in preparation for their own attack. These included large number of aircraft and a grand total of five carriers. They sent the planned ultimatums to Egypt and Israel on the 30th October, and the following day launched what was called Operation MUSKETEER with a massive bombing attack. Nasser retaliated by sinking all 40 civilian ships currently in the canal, which rendered it useless to shipping until the following year. That night, British ships set off from Malta carrying the task force; coming under attack en route from the Egyptian frigate Domiat; which was destroyed by two British vessels in under six minutes. The Royal Navy came under attack separately on the 3rd November when Israeli jets mistook HMS Crane in the Gulf of Aqaba for an Egyptian blockade runner and opened fire on her, at the cost of one jet.
The task force made landfall under the cover of darkness on the 5th November with a parachute drop by 3 PARA on the el-Gamil Airfield. During the drop the paratroopers captured large amounts of Egyptian weaponry - Soviet AK-47s, which many of them preferred over their SMLE rifles - and ammunition. They were very impressed by the colour-coding on the rounds; red for tracer, blue for armour-piercing and green for (technically illegal) explosive rounds - of course, the meanings of these were discovered in true paratrooper fashion by firing off whole magazines of them to see what would happen.
At first light the next day the Royal Marines of 42 and 40 Commando came ashore along with C Squadron of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment, storming the beaches to heavy fire support from off-shore gunnery. The attack had been heavily reported in the British press and so, not wishing for too much more information to be leaked, the marines are reported to have taken a certain journalist that was embedded with them aside and to have explained that if he leaked anything more to his superiors then he would be 'invited' to lead the charge onto the beaches. As it happened, the British were very lucky that the beach was not mined; no Special Boat Service team had been sent in to check probably for political considerations. 3 PARA made contact early in the day with the remainder of the allied forces, and were ordered to advance into the nearby city of Port Said to link up with the landing troops, under fire support from HMS Ceylon. Their overall objective was to reach the canal zone before the inevitable call of ceasefire so that they would be in a strong position should fighting break out again, however despite moving 40 kilometres they ended up just short of their final objective at Ismailiah; bunkering down at el-Cap.
In addition to the marines' attack, French troops of the 2nd Colonial Parachute Regiment, fresh from active service in Algeria, and British paratroopers from the Guards Independent Parachute Platoon dropped in to attack the bridges of el-Raswa, while 45 Commando made the first helicopter-borne assault in history from HMS Theseus into the city. British forces were further re-enforced by the disembarkation of more troops, including 1 PARA and several units of line infantry, and the deployment of 500 paratroopers of the Foreign Legion. By midday the city of Port Said had suffered huge damage from determined Egyptian resistance and heavy use of firepower on the British side, both from the ships of the Royal Navy and aerial bombing from the RAF - but the British forces had achieved all of their D-Day objectives. During the day, nine awards were made to 3 Commando Brigade for their gallantry in action. In all the allies lost 205 men, of which 189 were Israeli. Casualty figures for the Egyptians were never reliably established, but are estimated to be in excess of 600. The parachute drops on that day were the last by British troops until 1 PARA jumped into Afghanistan in 2010.
The World Reacts
In spite of the thunderous success of the military operation, such a brazen attack on what was a sovereign state could not pass without comment from the international community. Britain and France had vetoed two motions of the UN on 30 October calling for Israel to withdraw from Sinai, however a special emergency session was called to give recommendations to end the fighting on 1st November which called for an immediate ceasefire on the second. It came as something of a shock to the British that this proposal had been tabled by the USA, whose hand had somewhat been forced by the Hungarian Revolution happening simultaneously: they felt unable to condemn to Soviet Union's interference in domestic affairs there while turning a blind eye to British, Israeli and French aggression in Egypt. Over the next few days, a UN unit called the United Nations Emergency Force was set up to keep the peace in Sinai.
The British were under huge pressure from all sides. They had requested emergency credit from the IMF in order to recoup the losses of oil and money from the closure of the canal, which the USA refused to grant while the British Army did not adhere to a ceasefire agreement. In addition, President Eisenhower gave orders to the Treasury to prepare to sell their holdings in Sterling Bonds, which would have severely devalued the British Pound and massively hurt the UK economy to the point where Britain would no longer be able to import enough food and fuel to sustain its own population. Finally, Saudi Arabia refused to sell oil to Britain, and NATO powers refused to sell to the UK oil which had come from Arab countries: without Suez open, Britain was now facing a serious crisis on all sides. As such, and without consulting Britain's allies, the Prime Minister Anthony Eden called a ceasefire at 2345 hours that night.
International views of the crisis changed markedly on 7 November when the Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, gave a speech to the Knesset in which he claimed victory in rather arrogant terms, hinting that he would annex the entire Sinai. This caused international outcry for allied troops to withdraw to increase markedly, and later that day another proposal was passed at the emergency session for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Egypt. The Soviet Union threatened to intervene in Egypt's favour, and to attack allied troops: the allies, knowing that America would not help them if they did so, were forced to begin pulling out. Their troops would be replaced by UNEF soldiers by 22 December.
The Legacy of Suez
It is often said that Suez marked the point when Britain ceased to be a global superpower and was relegated along with France to a 'second division' of international politics. While it is undeniable that the events showed European inability to confront the USSR alone; the two superpowers had in fact been ahead of the colonial empires for some time; even as war ended in 1945 it was becoming clear that the Soviets and Americans would dominate the political stage of the next half-century. The Suez Emergency, rather than causing the transfer of influence, was simply a signal of a new world order which had existed for some time.
In Britain, the crisis was hugely influential on both domestic and international politics. Anthony Eden resigned as Prime Minister following pressure both from his colleagues and President Eisenhower, and increasingly British policy became less concerned with the projection of influence abroad. In the Middle East, the British military was now concentrated around the port of Aden - which controlled access to the Red Sea from the other side - the island of Cyprus and in Iraq; still very much able to intervene in that region if required as evidenced years later during the First Gulf War.
Eden's successor, Harold Macmillan, pressed the decolonisation agenda forward with great haste; partly out of recognition that Britain's empire was no longer adequate backing for acting as a great imperial power. After Suez, Britain never tried to impose its will on a foreign country without explicit support from the USA. Despite what was seen as a betrayal at home by the USA, British relations with that country did not actually suffer in the long term and the two quickly resumed their status as the closest of allies. Indeed, Eisenhower said many times after the crisis that he greatly regretted acting against the allied forces there; especially since allied success in Suez would almost certainly have prevented the costly Arab-Israeli wars that wracked the region in the next few decades.
Unlike Anglo-American relations, French esteem of the USA never recovered from the Suez crisis. De Gaulle had already grown to deeply distrust the Americans over their refusal to provide promised assistance during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, part of the 1954 war in Indochina, and Suez proved to his mind that Britain and the US could not be trusted to act in French interests. This was an important factor in his decision to withdraw from NATO in 1966 and insistence on a completely independent nuclear deterrent for France. France also, without telling the USA or Britain, gave to Israel vital equipment for creating its own nuclear weapons.
