Egypt and Syria merged into one country in 1958, and it lasted three years
In January 1958 a delegation of Syrian officers flew to Cairo uninvited and asked Egypt to absorb their country. Within weeks the United Arab Republic existed, with Gamal Abdel Nasser as president. Syria walked out after a 1961 coup, yet Egypt kept the name for another decade.
Pan-Arab feeling ran high in Syria, and Nasser had become a hero across the Arab world after the 1956 Tripartite Aggression. By 1957 Western governments feared Syria was drifting toward communism, and Syrian leaders came to see full union with Egypt as the best shield. Nasser reportedly hesitated at first, then set blunt terms: a referendum, the dissolution of all parties and the army's withdrawal from politics. Syrian elites disliked the last two conditions but, squeezed between Western and Soviet pressure, judged a merger the least bad choice. Voters in both countries approved on 21 February 1958, and the union, founded on 1 February, got its president the next day.
Unity proved lopsided. A provisional constitution created a 600-seat National Assembly with 400 members from Egypt and 200 from Syria, and banned parties, including the Ba'ath Party that had championed the merger. Egyptians increasingly filled senior Syrian posts: seven of the thirteen top jobs in Syria's industry ministry, for example. Syrian officers resented taking orders from Egyptians, land reform hurt Syrian farming, and one Syrian minister complained that Egyptians had spread everywhere like octopuses. Egypt itself fared better, with GNP growth of 4.5 percent.
Neighbours reacted fast. Jordan and Iraq formed a rival Arab Federation on 14 February 1958, but a military coup overthrew Iraq's monarchy that July, and British and American troops landed in Jordan and Lebanon to hold back pro-Nasser forces. Lebanon slid into civil conflict between supporters and opponents of the new republic until Nasser met the incoming president Fouad Chehab and assured him he had no designs on Lebanese territory.
Syria seceded after its 1961 coup, and a loose confederation with Yemen also dissolved that year. Egypt went on calling itself the United Arab Republic until Anwar Sadat formally dropped the name in September 1971. Short as it was, it is regarded as the first genuinely integrated union of two Arab states in the modern era.
Source: United Arab Republic
