The relationship between Egypt and Syria has been marked by periods of close cooperation and unity, as well as times of tension and divergence. From ancient times to the modern era, these two nations have played significant roles in the Middle East, and their interactions have often shaped the region's political landscape. Here's a look at the historical evolution of the Egypt-Syria alliance.
Ancient and Medieval Times
During the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt occupied parts of southern Syria and fought wars against local Levantine groups. Eventually, Egypt would fall to the Assyrian Empire in 673 BC. Egypt and Syria would later be provinces of the Roman and Byzantine empires, before the Islamic conquests. Egypt and Syria would remain important lands of the early caliphates, such as the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, and Ottoman caliphate.
Ottoman Era and the Rise of Muhammad Ali
During the times of the Ottoman Empire, Napoleon invaded Egypt and Syria. After Napoleon was defeated, a power vacuum emerged in Egypt, and Ottoman general Muhammad Ali Pasha took control of Egypt and declared war on the Ottomans for control over Syria. Though he was successful, Syrian peasants revolted against Egyptian occupation.
Post-WWI Relations
British influence in Egyptian affairs grew over time, so by 1914, Britain was able to replace the pro-Ottoman Khedive of Egypt Abbas II with the pro-British Hussein Kamel, who declared Egypt independent from the Ottomans and allied with the British, joining World War One against the Ottomans, with assistance from Syrian rebels. During the war, the British and the French colluded to divide Ottoman ruled Arab lands. The Syrian and Egyptian governments post-WWI retained positive relations. Syria and Egypt were signers of the Alexandria Protocols and later founders of the Arab League. Both nations participated in the 1948 war against Israel, but would suffer a defeat to Israel. This defeat would leave shock-waves in Egyptian and Syrian politics, as well as Arab politics as a whole.
The United Arab Republic (1958-1961)
One of the most significant chapters in the history of the Egypt-Syria alliance is the formation of the United Arab Republic (UAR). The United Arab Republic (UAR; Arabic: الجمهورية العربية المتحدة, romanized: al-Jumhūriyya al-ʿArabiyya al-Muttaḥida) was a sovereign state in the Middle East from 1958 to 1971. It was initially a short-lived political union between Egypt (including Egyptian-governed Gaza) and Syria from 1958 until Syria seceded from the union following the 1961 Syrian coup d'état. The republic was led by Gamal Abdel Nasser as the Egyptian president. The UAR was a member of the United Arab States, a loose confederation with the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, which was dissolved in 1961.
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Pan-Arab sentiment was traditionally very strong in Syria, and Nasser was a popular heroic figure throughout the Arab world following the 1956 Tripartite Aggression. There was thus considerable popular support in Syria for union with Nasser's Egypt. In mid-1957, Western powers began to worry that Syria was close to a Communist takeover; it had a highly organized Communist Party and the newly appointed army's chief of staff, Afif al-Bizri, was a Communist sympathizer. This caused the Syrian Crisis of 1957 after which Syrians intensified their efforts to unite with Egypt.
Nasser told a Syrian delegation, including President Shukri al-Quwatli and Prime Minister Khalid al-Azm, that they needed to rid their government of Communists, but the delegation countered and warned him that only total union with Egypt would end the "Communist threat". According to Abdel Latif Boghdadi, Nasser initially resisted a total union with Syria, favoring instead a federal union.
On 11 January 1958, the Syrian Chief of Staff Afif al-Bizri headed a Syrian delegation composed of military officers which came uninvited and unannounced to Cairo. The delegation was received by Egyptian Chief of Staff Abdel Hakim Amer and petitioned for a Syrian-Egyptian union. Nasser's final terms for the union were decisive and non-negotiable: "a plebiscite, the dissolution of parties, and the withdrawal of the army from politics". While the plebiscite seemed reasonable to most Syrian elites, the latter two conditions were extremely worrisome.
They believed it would destroy political life in Syria. Despite these concerns, the Syrian officials knew it was too late to turn back. Caught between Western and Soviet pressures, the members of the elite in Syria viewed the merger with Egypt as the least bad option to insulate from either side. Egyptian and Syrian leaders signed the protocols, although Azm did so reluctantly.
Nasser became the republic's president and very soon carried out a crackdown against the Syrian Communists and opponents of the union. Advocates of the union believed that Nasser would use the Ba'ath Party for ruling Syria. Unfortunately for the Ba'athists, it was never Nasser's intention to share an equal measure of power.
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Nasser established a new provisional constitution proclaiming a 600-member National Assembly with 400 members from Egypt and 200 members from Syria, and the disbanding of all political parties, including the Ba'ath. Nasser gave each of the provinces two vice-presidents, assigning Boghdadi and Abdel Hakim Amer to Egypt and Sabri al-Asali and Akram al-Hourani - a leader of the Ba'ath - to Syria. Though Nasser allowed former Ba'ath Party members to hold prominent political positions, they never reached positions as high in the government as did the Egyptian officials.
During the winter and the spring of 1959-60, Nasser slowly squeezed prominent Syrians out of positions of influence. In the Syrian Ministry of Industry, for example, seven of the top thirteen positions were filled by Egyptians. In the General Petroleum Authority, four of the top six officials were Egyptian. In the fall of 1958, Nasser formed a tripartite committee, consisting of Zakaria Mohieddin, al-Hawrani, and Bitar to oversee the affairs in Syria.
In Syria, opposition to union with Egypt mounted. Syrian Army officers resented being subordinate to Egyptian officers, and Syrian Bedouin tribes received money from Saudi Arabia to prevent them from becoming loyal to Nasser. Also, Egyptian-style land reform was resented for damaging Syrian agriculture, the Communists began to gain influence, and the intellectuals of the Ba'ath Party who supported the union rejected the one-party system. Mustafa al-Barudi, the Syrian Minister of Propaganda, stated that 'the smallest member of the (Egyptian) retinue thought that he had inherited our country.
In Egypt, the situation was more positive, with a GNP growth of 4.5 per cent and a rapid growth of industry. The union was interpreted by the other nations of the world as a major threat to Jordan. Syria was seen as a source of instigation and shelter for Jordanian plotters against King Hussein. Egypt's own status as a state unfriendly to Western influence in the region (and thus to the close relationship between the British, in particular, and the Jordanian and Iraqi monarchies) added to the pressure. Hussein responded by proposing to Faisal II of Iraq a Jordanian-Iraqi union to counter the UAR; such a union formed on 14 February 1958, as the Arab Federation.
In nearby Lebanon, President Camille Chamoun, an opponent of Nasser, viewed the creation of the UAR with worry. Pro-Nasser factions in the country were mostly Muslims and Druze, while the Christian Maronite population generally supported Chamoun. These two sides began clashing, culminating in a civil war by May 1958. The former favoured merging with the UAR, while the latter feared the new country as a satellite of Communism.
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On 14 July 1958, Iraqi army officers staged a military coup and overthrew the Kingdom of Iraq - which had just previously united with Jordan to form the rival Arab Federation. Nasser declared his recognition of the new government and stated that "any attack on Iraq was tantamount to an attack on the UAR". The next day British special forces and US marines landed in Lebanon and in Jordan, respectively, to prevent the two countries from opening up to pro-Nasser forces. To Nasser, the revolution in Iraq opened the road for Arab nationalism.
Although most members of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) favoured joining Iraq with the UAR, the new prime minister Abdul Karim Qasim disagreed. Later in July, the American government convinced Chamoun not to seek a second term. This allowed the election of Fouad Chehab as Lebanon's new president. Nasser and Chehab met at the Lebanese-Syrian border and Nasser explained to Chehab that he never wanted unity with Lebanon, but only that the country not be used as a base against the UAR.
After the overthrow of its Hashemite monarchy in 1958, Iraq became the Arab state most supportive of the UAR. Iraq sought to join the union; however, in 1959 Qasim cancelled the unity talks. After Qasim's overthrow in 1963 the union idea resurrected with the proposal of Egypt, Iraq, and Syria reforming the UAR. A new flag was proposed, with three stars symbolizing the three states constituting the proposed union. However, the plan for a tri-partite union never materialised. Iraq continued to use the three-star flag and later adopted it as the national flag.
In June 1960, Nasser tried to establish economic reforms that would bring the Syrian economy more in line with the strong Egyptian public sector. However, these changes did little to help either economy. Rather than shift growth toward the private sector, Nasser embarked on an unprecedented wave of nationalizations in both Syria and Egypt. These began in July 1961, without consulting top Syrian economic officials.
The entire cotton trade was taken over by the government, as well as all import-export firms. Nasser announced the nationalization of banks, insurance companies, and all heavy industry, 23 July 1961. Nasser also extended his social justice principles. The land limit was reduced from 200 to 100 feddans. Interest rates for farmers were dramatically reduced to the point of elimination in some cases. A ninety percent tax was instituted on all income above £E10,000. Workers and employees were allowed representatives on management boards. They were also given the right to a twenty-five percent share in the profit of their firm.
Instead of a federation of two Arab peoples, as many Syrians had imagined, the UAR turned into a state completely dominated by Egyptians. Syrian political life was also diminished, as Nasser demanded all political parties in Syria to be dismantled. In the process, the strongly centralized Egyptian state imposed Nasser's socialistic political and economic system on weaker Syria, creating a backlash from the Syrian business and army circles, which resulted in the Syrian coup of 28 September 1961, and the end of the UAR.
According to Elie Podeh, "...this unity scheme was successful in consolidating the shaky Syrian identity. Despite the economic difficulties, what truly produced the demise of the UAR was Nasser's inability to find a suitable political system for the new regime. Given his socialist agenda in Egypt, the Ba'ath should have been his natural ally, but Nasser was hesitant to share power. Though Amer allowed some liberalization of the economy to appease Syrian businessmen, his decision to rig the elections of the National Union (the single party which replaced the Ba'ath), with the help of Colonel Abdul Hamid Sarraj (a Syrian army official and Nasser sympathizer), antagonized Ba'athist leaders. The Ba'ath Party won only five percent of the seats on the higher committees, while the more traditional conservative parties won a significant majority.
Sarraj was appointed the head of the National Union in Syria, and by the spring of 1960 had replaced Amer as the chair of the Syrian Executive Council. The immense increases in public sector control were accompanied by a push for centralisation. In August 1961 Nasser abolished regional governments in favour of one central authority, which operated from Damascus February through May and from Cairo for the rest of the year. As a part of this centralisation, Sarraj was relocated to Cairo, where he found himself with little real power. Without any close allies to watch over Syria, Nasser was unaware of the growing unrest of the military.
On 28 September a group of officers staged a coup and declared Syria's independence from the UAR. Though the coup leaders were willing to renegotiate a union under terms they felt would put Syria on an equal footing with Egypt, Nasser refused such a compromise. He initially considered sending troops to overthrow the new regime, but chose not to once he was informed that the last of his allies in Syria had been defeated. In speeches that followed the coup, Nasser declared he would never give up his goal of an ultimate Arab union.
The UAR adopted a flag based on the Arab Liberation Flag of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, but with two stars to represent the two parts of the UAR. From 1980 to 2024 this was the official flag of Syria. If it existed today, the United Arab Republic would be the 25th largest nation on the planet (Egypt is 30th and Syria is 88th). It was comparable in size to South Africa, and twice the size of France. A team representing the United Arab Republic competed at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.
Flag of the United Arab Republic
The Aftermath of the UAR
In 1963, a Ba'athist coup in Syria overthrew the Syrian government and talks between Egypt and Syria over unification returned, with Syria signing the Cairo Charter, promising an eventual union with Egypt. However, the Ba'athist government in Syria was more concerned over consolidating its rule than speedy unification and fears of a return to Egyptian domination caused Syria to back out of the Cairo Charter. In July 1963, a coup attempt took place in Syria, orchestrated by Nasserist officers with the support of Egyptian intelligence.
Syria's President Hafez al-Assad and Gamal Abdel Nasser
The Six-Day War and the October War
From 5 to 10 June in 1967, Israel invaded Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War. Syria stood by Egypt during the Six-Day War of 1967, which resulted in Egypt losing the Sinai Peninsula and Syria losing the Golan Heights to Israel. In 1973, Egypt and Syria launched the October War on Israel with a coordinated attack to retake the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.
The 2-week-long war ended with Egypt regaining the east bank of the Suez Canal in Sinai but Syria losing even more territory to Israel, leaving the Israeli army threatening to capture Damascus. Egypt recovered partial sovereignty over the Sinai Peninsula in 1978, but only after agreeing to recognize Israel. Anwar Sadat, who reversed many of the socialist reforms enacted under Nasser, extended diplomatic recognition to Israel despite their ongoing occupation of lands seized in 1967. Israel maintained an occupation of these territories and created illegal settlements. After 1994, the Palestinian Authority, created by the Oslo Accords, established a degree of Palestinian civil administration in Gaza.
Israel retreated from Gaza in 2005 was not followed by resumption of control by Egypt.
Post-Camp David Accords
After Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat's peace treaty with Israel in the Camp David Accords, Egypt was expelled from the Arab League. After Sadat's assassination in 1981, Hosni Mubarak became president of Egypt.
After the Arab Spring and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, relations became extremely strained. The Muslim Brotherhood is a banned organization and its membership is a capital offense in Syria. Diplomatic relations were restored, and the embassies reopened after Morsi was removed from office just weeks later in July 2013.
In late November 2016, some Arab media outlets reported that Egyptian pilots arrived in mid-November to Syria to help the Syrian government in its fight against the Islamic State and Al Nusra Front. This came after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi publicly stated that he supported the Syrian military in the civil war in Syria. However, several days later, Egypt denied it has a military presence in Syria.
However, Egypt was still a vocal supporter for the Russia Intervention and supporter for Bashar al-Assad, the latter of which is alleged by the United States to have sent military aid to, which Egypt denies. In November 2016, Sisi said that he supported the presidency of Bashar al-Assad in Syria for the sake of stability. He also said that his nation's priority is "supporting national armies", which he said included the Syrian Armed Forces.
He also said regarding Egypt's stance in the conflict: "Our stance in Egypt is to respect the will of the Syrian people, and that a political solution to the Syrian crisis is the most suitable way, and to seriously deal with terrorist groups and disarm them,". Egypt's support for a political solution was reaffirmed in February 2017. Egypt has also expressed great interest in rebuilding postwar Syria, with many Egyptian companies and businessmen discussing investment opportunities in Syria as well as participation in the reconstruction effort.
On 27 February 2023, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry arrived in Damascus and met with President Bashar al-Assad and express his country’s solidarity with Syria following the earthquake. The visit to Syria was the first by a high-level Egyptian official since the start of the US-backed war. On 19 May 2023, on the sidelines of the 2023 Arab League Summit, the presidents of both countries met and held a conversation about bilateral relations.
President Sisi said more once that Egypt welcomed Syrians to live withing the society as ‘dear guests’ who are living among us as citizens. In September 2021, President Sisi said that Egypt hosts more than five million refugees from different nationalities from all around that world and never thought of building a refugee camps, as all refuges are receiving same services as Egyptians themselves.
President Sisi reiterated Egypt’s solidarity with Syria and its brotherly people in this calamity. The aid ship came as part of the Egyptian efforts to help deal with the consequences of devastating earthquake that hit southern Turkey and Syria on Feb. Earlier in February, the president ordered dispatching five military planes to deliver urgent medical relief supplies to earthquake-hit Syria and Turkey. Further, an Egyptian ship loaded with about 500 tons of relief materials arrived in Syria's Lattakia Port on Monday to help deal with earthquake effects and support relief efforts.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry visits Syria following the earthquake in February 2023
The relationship between Egypt and Syria has seen many phases, from ancient interactions to modern political alliances. The UAR remains a significant moment, reflecting the aspirations and challenges of Pan-Arab unity. Today, despite past conflicts and differences, both nations continue to engage in diplomatic and cooperative efforts, navigating the complexities of the Middle East together.
Here's a table summarizing key events and periods in the Egypt-Syria alliance:
| Period/Event | Description |
|---|---|
| Ancient Egypt | Egyptian dynasties control parts of southern Syria. |
| Ottoman Empire | Both regions under Ottoman rule, Muhammad Ali's invasion. |
| Post-WWI | Positive relations, founders of the Arab League. |
| United Arab Republic (1958-1961) | Union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser, eventual dissolution due to Syrian coup. |
| Six-Day War (1967) | Syria supports Egypt, both lose territory to Israel. |
| October War (1973) | Coordinated attack on Israel, Egypt regains Sinai, Syria loses more land. |
| Camp David Accords | Egypt's peace treaty with Israel strains relations. |
| Modern Era | Fluctuating relations, recent support from Egypt during the Syrian Civil War. |
What Was The United Arab Republic? - International Policy Zone
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