Running From Defeat

Stunned beyond belief, shaken beyond admission, still unable to comprehend the disaster, the Arab world last week lurched violently between collapse and retribution. It could no longer make war, but refused to make peace. It had lost its armies, but was desperately determined not to lose its face. Instead, it indulged in an orgy of breast-beating, rationalizing, complaining and threatening that seemed intended to prove both that the Arabs had won the war and that someone else was to blame because they had lost it. "Defeat exists only for those who admit it," said Cairo's semiofficial newspaper Al Gumhu-ria. "We do not admit it."

TV From China. Despite such exercises in extended solipsism, the defeat could not be hidden. What was left of Jordan was swarming with refugees from the overrun west bank of the Jordan River. Amman's normal population of 300,000 was swelled by at least 100,000 refugees, many of whom arrived with their feet bleeding, their earthly possessions left behind. Schools, mosques and public buildings were converted into sleeping quarters, and thousands of refugees bedded down on sidewalks, in doorways or on the city's rocky hillsides. They foraged in garbage cans for food, which quickly became scarce --and, thanks to profiteering, impossibly expensive. King Hussein's government set up two refugee camps, and other Arab nations sent emergency relief shipments of food, clothing and money. With its usual spirit of Arab brotherhood, fanatic Syria detained a Lebanese government convoy of 70 trucks for twelve hours before allowing it to proceed to Amman.

No less grim was Cairo, which seemed seized at once by confusion, hysteria and dismay. Unshaven soldiers guarded major intersections and the Nile bridges. Walls were still plastered with tattered victory posters depicting the Egyptian eagle pouncing on the viper of Israel. For no apparent reason, there was a half-hour air-raid alarm during the lunch hour one day. Newsstands hawked such paperbacks as The Defense of Towns and Hoitse-to-House Fighting. The government warned that watches, cigarette packs and fountain pens found in the streets were probably booby traps dropped by Israeli planes. Only one of the city's three television stations was broadcasting, and it had been forbidden to carry such "imperialist" programs as Gunsmoke, had to make do with local talent and thrillers from Peking, including Women Locomotive Drivers in China.

The Egyptian people had not yet been told of the extent of the debacle. There were no announced casualty figures, no lists of wounded or missing, no mention of the fact that Israel held the east bank of the Suez. Egyptian officials evacuated part of the population of El Qantara, site of a bridge across the canal, to prevent townsfolk from seeing the stream of ragged, bandaged soldiers dragging homeward. But the troops returned with tales, and the marketplaces of Cairo buzzed with rumors. In the streets of Cairo, people spat on their own army officers.

"Attack, Attack & Attack." Defeat did not bring disaster to Arab political leaders. The Israeli attack on Syria seemed to have saved, for the time being at least, the wild-eyed Baathist regime of President Noureddin Attassi. Jordan's King Hussein, whose outgunned troops fought the Israelis for every inch of land, became the hero of all the Arabs. A cheering crowd in Amman converged on the King's Cadillac limousine, picked it up and carried it five yards to demonstrate their adulation. Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, a longtime enemy, paid tribute to Hussein's "personal courage."

The image of Nasser still burned bright in the eyes of the Egyptian masses. If ever a fellah needed a friend, it was now, and the masses believed that only "Jamal"--Nasser--could lead them to repel the enemy. Cairo police reported that in the few hours from the time that Nasser "resigned" and then changed his mind, a record number of suicides took place. When he heard of the resignation, a soldier guarding a Cairo bridge howled like a wounded animal, fired his machine gun into the Nile until it was empty.

Nasser's generals made convenient scapegoats for him. He dismissed eleven of them, including the commanders of his army, navy and air force and Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, his lifelong friend, brother-in-law and deputy commander-in-chief. Of course, the generals had not performed so brilliantly. They had convinced Nasser that Egyptian tanks could defeat the Israelis in two days. Boasted one dapper general just before the fighting broke out: "Montgomery was a good general, but a little cautious. Now as for me, I say attack, attack and again attack." He was last seen at a P.O.W. camp in Israel. When the shooting started, the troops at the front found themselves with no more than a day's supply of food, water and ammunition. Led by their officers, entire units broke and ran at the first sight of Israeli tanks. Of the 150,000 soldiers reportedly massed along the Sinai front, fewer than 30,000 stuck around long enough to do battle with the enemy.

The Egyptian military purges are apparently just beginning. All officers have been confined to their posts, all returning troops to their barracks. The generals and colonels who once flocked around Nasser's presidential villa have disappeared, their places taken by a clique of young captains and majors who have long been fed up with their high-living superiors. "For years, I have deprived the people for the army," Nasser told a friend last week. "But when the time came that I needed support, it was the people who gave it."

Many Arabs were still convinced that their prime enemies are the U.S. and Britain--along with Israel. Al Ahram, Nasser's favorite newspaper, charged that the CIA goaded Israel to attack, and that just before the war the Pentagon shipped Israel 450 warplanes, 400 tanks and 1,000 pilots and navigators. Throughout the Islamic world, Moslem mullahs proclaimed American and British products unholy. Libyan mobs destroyed liquor stores as symbols of Anglo-American "imperialism," and King Idris demanded that the U.S. abandon its Wheelus Air Force Base. Egypt and Syria closed their ports to U.S. and British ships; Sudanese and Iraqi dock workers refused to unload them.

Money Talks. Arab leaders figure that they can wield three economic weapons against the West. Each one, however, has a flaw.

The first is the Suez Canal, now blocked at both ends by scuttled Egyptian ships. Though Cairo says that they will not be removed until the Israelis retreat, the fact is that the Egyptians need the earnings of the canal ($250 million a year) as much as other nations need the passageway. Egypt's economy is a shambles, and the war has gravely worsened it. The nation has a foreign debt of more than $1 billion, an annual trade deficit of $500 million, and more than half of its cotton crop--its principal export--is mortgaged to Communist-bloc nations to pay for past shipments of military hardware. Food is becoming increasingly scarce. The government long ago decreed three meatless days a week, has told Egyptians to eat macaroni instead of their beloved rice, and now faces the prospect of a macaroni shortage unless it can find a way to import vast quantities of wheat.

The second weapon is money. Croesus-rich Kuwait alone has nearly $3 billion deposited in British banks, figures that by withdrawing that much, it could topple the pound sterling. Even if the Kuwaitis switched their accounts to Swiss banks (at lower interest rates), the Swiss would simply deposit most of the money in London's City, which alone is equipped to handle the Arab world's huge deposits.

The third weapon is oil. The Arabs refuse to ship any of their crude to the U.S. or Britain. Is that a real problem? The U.S. gets only 3% of its oil from Arab lands, could easily make that up by pumping more from its underused Texas wells. And the Arabs' friend, Russia, has already offered to sell Britain as much oil as it needs. The threat of nationalization of U.S. and British oil properties also seemed hollow. Though Algeria confiscated 13 U.S. oil companies last week, U.S. oilmen were still operating fairly freely in Egypt. In Saudi Arabia, the U.S.-dominated Aramco oil company resumed drilling.

Secret Talks. Some Arab moderates have already disclaimed the charge of U.S. involvement in the war, are anxious to maintain their ties to Washington. Tunisia's Habib Bourguiba is encouraging stranded tourists to visit his country. Even in Egypt, Foreign Office officials called in several Western European ambassadors last week, secretly asked them how Nasser could mend his relations with Washington without losing face. For all of Nasser's pro-Soviet posturing, the Communist Party is still outlawed in Egypt, and he does not want to plunge irrevocably into the Russian camp.

The Russians are also disenchanted with the Arabs. In one Middle Eastern capital after another, Russian diplomats were advising Moscow against wasting more MIGs or money on the Arabs. Just before the war started, high-level Soviet officers visited Egyptian positions and were horrified to find that tanks were placed too far forward, artillery was improperly positioned, and warplanes were lined up like sitting ducks. The Soviets reported all this in detail to the Egyptians, who chose to ignore the warning.

With or without Russian aid, however, all Arab nations intend to pursue the battle against Israel. Almost without exception, their leaders reject Israeli peace terms, swear that they will neither negotiate with the Israelis nor recognize their existence. Last week, in the face of devastating defeat, the Arabs were quoting to each other an old saying by Mao Tse-tung: "Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, but fight on to final victory."

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