The Great Powers and the Arab World • 321
economy. Even the Ba'th chafed when Nasir insisted that it, like all other Syr¬
ian parties, must be absorbed by his new single party, the National Union.
For a while, Nasir drew nearer to the West, mainly because Iraq had re¬
pudiated his backers in favor of the communists. But the USSR was playing
a growing role in the UAR economy, and Nasir came to believe that state
planning and control of all major industries would be needed to fulfill his
promise to double the national income during the 1960s. In his July (1961)
Laws, he nationalized nearly all factories, financial institutions, and public
utilities in Egypt and Syria; reduced to about 100 acres (42 hectares) the
maximum landholding allowed an individual; and limited the salary that a
UAR citizen might earn. These laws angered bourgeois Syrians so much
that two months later an army coup in Damascus ended their union with
Egypt. Soon after that, the UAR (as Egypt continued to be called, in case
Syria rejoined the union) ended its federation with Yemen, after its imam
had allegedly written verses satirizing the July Laws. At the end of 1961,
Nasir, the leader who still aspired to unite the Arab world, stood alone.
Arab Socialism and Nasir's Comeback
The tide of Nasirism had receded. Egypt now looked inward and focused
on building a new order under Arab socialism. Nasir convened a "National
Congress of Popular Forces" to draw up what he called the "National Char¬
ter," published amid great fanfare in 1962. A new single party, the Arab So¬
cialist Union, replaced the flagging National Union, and half the seats in its
national council were earmarked for workers and peasants. Workers were
put on the managing boards of some nationalized companies. For the first
time in Egypt's history, a worker and a woman took charge of cabinet min¬
istries. If his socialist experiment spurred economic growth and social
equality, Nasir reasoned, other Arab countries would imitate Egypt. Defy¬
ing political isolation, he adopted a new slogan: "Unity of goals, not unity
of ranks."
The first sign of a change was Algeria's independence in July 1962 after a
bitter eight-year struggle against France. Algeria's leader, Ahmad Ben Bella,
supported Nasir and all revolutionary Arab causes. The second sign was the
revolution that broke out in Yemen that September, only a week after the
old imam had died and Prince Badr had taken over. A group of military of¬
ficers seized power in San'a and proclaimed Yemen a republic. Elated,
Egypt's government hailed the new regime and assumed that Badr had
been killed. In fact, he and his followers had fled to the hills, where monar¬
chist tribesmen were ready to fight for their imam (who, as his title implies,
was a religious as well as a political leader). They were backed by the Saudis,
