Introduction: The Arab World Meets Bandung

In April 1955, as the leaders of twenty-nine newly independent states gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, one figure stood out among the delegates from the Arab world — Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s thirty-seven-year-old prime minister.  Barely three years after seizing power in Cairo, Nasser was already emerging as the defining voice of Arab nationalism.  The Bandung Conference gave him a platform to link the Arab struggle against imperialism with the broader Afro-Asian movement.

The Bandung Conference, hosted by Indonesia’s President Sukarno, was the first large-scale gathering of postcolonial leaders from Asia and Africa.  Its aim was to assert the moral and political independence of newly decolonised nations and to resist entanglement in the Cold War’s superpower blocs.  For the Arab world, still fragmented by colonial legacies and riven by competing monarchies and republics, Bandung offered something new — a vision of solidarity beyond empire that could re-situate the Middle East within the rising Global SouthGlobal South Full Description:The Global South is a term that has largely replaced “Third World” to describe the nations of Africa, Latin America, and developing Asia. It is less a geographical designator (as it includes countries in the northern hemisphere) and more a political grouping of nations that share a history of colonialism, economic marginalization, and a peripheral position in the world financial system. Bandung is often cited as the birth of the Global South as a self-aware political consciousness. Critical Perspective:While the term implies solidarity, critics argue it acts as a “flattening” concept. It lumps together economic superpowers like China and India with some of the world’s poorest nations, obscuring the vast power imbalances and divergent interests within this bloc. It risks creating a binary worldview that ignores the internal class exploitations within developing nations by focusing solely on their external exploitation by the North.
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For Nasser and his contemporaries, Bandung became the springboard from which Arab nationalism could enter global diplomacy.  It linked Cairo, Damascus, and Algiers to Delhi, Jakarta, and Accra.  Yet as this article will show, the Arab engagement with Bandung was complex and often contradictory.  Arab states arrived with divergent interests — revolutionary republics like Egypt and Syria sat alongside conservative monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen.  Still, the conference marked the start of a shared Afro-Asian, and later Afro-Arab, diplomatic identity that would profoundly shape both Arab politics and the wider Non-Aligned Movement.

Nasser and the Bandung Moment

Egypt’s presence at Bandung was both symbolic and strategic.  As a former British protectorate and the largest Arab country, it embodied both anti-imperialist struggle and regional ambition.  Nasser’s delegation, led by Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi, used the conference to test Cairo’s claim to leadership of the Arab and African worlds.

At Bandung, Nasser aligned himself with Jawaharlal Nehru, Zhou Enlai, U Nu, and Sukarno in calling for peace, neutralism, and self-determinationSelf-Determination Full Description:Self-Determination became the rallying cry for anti-colonial movements worldwide. While enshrined in the UN Charter, its application was initially fiercely contested. Colonial powers argued it did not apply to their imperial possessions, while independence movements used the UN’s own language to demand the end of empire. Critical Perspective:There is a fundamental tension in the UN’s history regarding this term. While the organization theoretically supported freedom, its most powerful members were often actively fighting brutal wars to suppress self-determination movements in their colonies. The realization of this right was not granted by the UN, but seized by colonized peoples through struggle..  His speeches emphasised the need to end Western military pacts such as the Baghdad Pact, which Britain and the United States were then promoting in the Middle East.  Egypt, he argued, would not become “a pawn in the Cold War.”  This defiance impressed many delegates, particularly those from Asia and Africa who faced similar pressures from the superpowers.

Bandung also helped Nasser consolidate his domestic legitimacy.  Upon returning to Cairo, state media presented him as a leader of the “new Afro-Asian world,” equal to Nehru and Zhou Enlai.  Historians such as Robert Vitalis and Fawaz Gerges note that Bandung elevated Nasser’s international stature just months before the Suez Crisis would turn him into the Arab world’s undisputed hero.

But Egypt’s engagement at Bandung was more than symbolism.  It was at Bandung that Nasser began formulating his foreign-policy doctrine of positive neutralism — a term he borrowed from Nehru but infused with Arab revolutionary meaning.  Positive neutralism rejected military alignment with either bloc but allowed active cooperation with both when in Egypt’s interest.  It was, as one contemporary observed, “neutrality with teeth.”

Pan-ArabismPan-Arabism Full Description:Pan-Arabism is a nationalist ideology asserting that the Arabs constitute a single nation. Championed at Bandung by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, it advocates for the political and cultural unification of the Arab world, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, to resist Western imperialism. Critical Perspective:At Bandung, Pan-Arabism functioned as a sub-imperialism. Critics argue that under Nasser, it became a vehicle for Egyptian hegemony, attempting to subordinate the distinct national interests of other Arab states to Cairo’s foreign policy. Furthermore, its focus on ethnic and linguistic unity often marginalized non-Arab minorities (such as Kurds or Berbers) within the region, reproducing the very exclusion it claimed to fight.
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Bandung came at a pivotal moment in the Arab world.  The 1950s were a decade of upheaval: nationalist movements were challenging old colonial spheres in North Africa, while the Palestinian question and Western oil interests dominated Middle Eastern politics.

In this environment, Pan-Arabism — the belief in a single Arab nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Gulf — found new energy.  Nasser’s Egypt positioned itself as the movement’s engine.  Bandung provided international validation for this project, situating Arab unity within the larger family of Afro-Asian solidarity.  In Bandung’s corridors, Nasser met leaders from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the Maghreb, and discussed supporting liberation movements in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.

For North African nationalists, still under French rule, Bandung was transformative.  The Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) gained crucial diplomatic exposure there: though Algeria was not yet independent, its cause was raised by both Egypt and Pakistan.  Within two years, Cairo became the FLN’s principal external base.  Historian Matthew Connelly describes Bandung as the “diplomatic debut” of the Algerian revolution.

At the same time, Bandung catalysed cooperation between Egypt and Asian powers.  Nasser forged working relationships with India and China, two states outside the Western alliance system.  Zhou Enlai’s charm offensive at Bandung, where he assured wary Muslim leaders of China’s respect for Islam, helped open Sino-Arab relations.  This would bear fruit a decade later, as China became a major supporter of Arab liberation movements.

In sum, Bandung gave Pan-Arabism an Afro-Asian dimension.  It tied the Arab cause to the broader narrative of decolonisation, elevating it from a regional ideology to part of a world movement against imperialism.

The Conservative Arab States and the Bandung Divide

Yet not all Arab regimes embraced Bandung’s radical implications.  Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and Yemen approached the conference with caution or outright suspicion.  These conservative monarchies, often dependent on Western protection and oil revenues, feared that Bandung’s rhetoric of non-alignment masked a leftward tilt.

Iraq, under the Hashemite monarchy, was particularly wary.  It joined the British-sponsored Baghdad Pact in 1955, just months after Bandung — effectively aligning itself with the Western bloc.  Egypt denounced this as a betrayal of Arab independence, and the split between Cairo and Baghdad deepened into an ideological war between “revolutionary” and “reactionary” Arab states.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, sent no official delegation to Bandung.  The Kingdom’s leadership distrusted secular nationalism and worried that Nasser’s message of Arab unity would threaten its religious authority.  The same fear applied to Yemen’s Imam Ahmad, who ruled a conservative theocracyTheocracy Full Description:Theocracy represents the absolute fusion of religious and political hierarchies. In this system, there is no separation between the laws of the state and the laws of God. Civil legal codes are often replaced or heavily informed by scripture, and the administration of the state is carried out by the clergy. Legitimacy is not earned through elections or inheritance, but through the interpretation of divine will. Critical Perspective:Critically, theocracies fundamentally alter the nature of political dissent. By equating the will of the state with the will of God, any opposition to the government is framed not as legitimate political disagreement, but as blasphemy or heresy. This structure places the ruling elite above human accountability, often justifying authoritarian control over the private lives, morality, and bodies of citizens under the guise of spiritual salvation..

These divisions underscored the fragmentation of the Arab world.  Bandung’s call for Afro-Asian solidarity did not erase the profound social and political differences within the Arab League.  Instead, it exposed them.  Nasser’s Egypt would soon use the Bandung platform to rally a revolutionary “Arab Cold War” against the monarchies — a struggle that would define Middle Eastern politics for two decades.

Bandung, Suez, and the Birth of the Non-Aligned Movement

The Suez Crisis of 1956 was the real test of Bandung’s legacy in the Arab world.  When Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, Britain, France, and Israel launched a military invasion to reclaim it.  Yet global opinion — shaped partly by Bandung’s anti-imperialist ethos — turned decisively against the aggressors.  The United States, Soviet Union, and many Afro-Asian states condemned the invasion.

Bandung’s network of solidarity helped Nasser rally global support.  India and Indonesia led diplomatic protests at the United Nations, and newly independent African states voiced strong opposition to Western aggression.  The crisis ended in humiliating retreat for Britain and France and transformed Nasser into a global symbol of resistance.

The aftermath of Suez also set in motion the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), formally launched in Belgrade in 1961 by Nasser, Tito, and Nehru.  The intellectual and moral foundations of NAM were laid at Bandung, but Suez gave it urgency.  For Nasser, NAM offered an institutional framework to project Arab and African solidarity on the world stage.  Egypt hosted the first Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in Cairo in 1957 and became the movement’s de facto Arab hub.

From Cairo, Nasser expanded his reach beyond the Arab world.  He supported anti-colonial struggles in Algeria, Kenya, and the Congo, and backed liberation movements in Asia.  Egypt’s “Voice of the Arabs” radio broadcast revolutionary messages from Morocco to the Gulf.  The Bandung SpiritThe Bandung Spirit Full Description:The Bandung Spirit refers to the intangible atmosphere of optimism, solidarity, and peaceful coexistence that characterized the 1955 conference. It denotes a specific diplomatic approach based on consensus-building, non-interference, and the prioritizing of shared post-colonial struggles over ideological differences. Critical Perspective:Historians often view the “Spirit” as a romanticized myth that papers over the deep cracks present at the conference. In reality, the conference was rife with tension between pro-Western nations (like Pakistan and the Philippines), communist nations (China), and neutralists (India). The “Spirit” was often a diplomatic fiction maintained to present a united front to the West, masking the fact that many attendees were actively suspicious of one another’s territorial ambitions.
Read more became the soundtrack of Arab modernity — a fusion of nationalism, socialism, and anti-imperialism.

Pan-Arabism Meets Afro-Asianism

Bandung also reshaped how Arabs viewed Africa.  Before 1955, much of the Arab political elite had regarded sub-Saharan Africa through colonial lenses — as peripheral or separate from the “Arab nation.”  Bandung forced a re-evaluation.  Egypt and Sudan shared the Nile; Algeria and Morocco were part of Africa as well as the Arab world.  The Afro-Asian alliance blurred these boundaries.

Nasser seized the opportunity to present Egypt as both an Arab and African power.  He championed African liberation at the United Nations and opened Cairo to freedom fighters from across the continent.  In 1963, when the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was founded, Egypt’s Bandung-era diplomacy helped make it one of the organisation’s pillars.

However, this new Afro-Arab solidarity was not without tension.  Some African leaders, such as Ghana’s Kwame NkrumahKwame Nkrumah Full Description:The U.S.-educated activist and charismatic leader who founded the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and became the first President of independent Ghana. He was a leading theorist of Pan-Africanism and “scientific socialism,” advocating for the total liberation and unification of Africa. Under his leadership, Ghana became a symbol of Black self-determination and a haven for the global Black freedom struggle. Critical Perspective:Nkrumah’s legacy is a study in the tension between revolutionary vision and governance. While he successfully broke the back of British colonial rule through mass mobilization, his later turn toward authoritarianism via the Preventive Detention Act and his debt-heavy industrialization projects created the internal fractures that, combined with Western intelligence interests, led to his 1966 downfall.
Read more and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, worried that Arab nationalism could overshadow African priorities.  They respected Nasser but rejected what they saw as Cairo’s paternalism.  Still, Bandung had forged enduring intellectual links: the concept of “South–South cooperation” owes much to the Bandung-Cairo connection.

The Arab Left and the Expansion of the Bandung Ideal

Within the Arab world, Bandung’s message resonated most strongly with leftist and revolutionary movements.  Arab socialists, Ba‘athists, and communists saw Afro-Asian solidarity as confirmation that their struggles were part of a worldwide anti-imperialist front.

Syria and Iraq’s Ba‘ath Party, founded in the 1940s on the slogan “Unity, Freedom, Socialism,” drew ideological energy from Bandung’s anti-imperial consensus.  When the Ba‘ath came to power in Syria (1963) and Iraq (1968), both regimes declared their allegiance to the Non-Aligned Movement.  In practice, however, these governments were divided — sometimes aligning with Moscow when convenient, sometimes courting Western aid.

Meanwhile, the Algerian revolution turned Bandung’s rhetoric into reality.  During the war of independence (1954–62), Egypt, India, and China gave the FLN diplomatic and material support.  At the 1961 Belgrade Conference, newly independent Algeria stood proudly among the founding NAM members — a direct legacy of its Bandung debut six years earlier.

Elsewhere, Yemen’s 1962 republican revolution — inspired by Nasserism — triggered the first major proxy conflict between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, a clear example of how Bandung-era ideals collided with regional rivalry.  While Egypt sent troops to defend the Yemeni republicans, Saudi Arabia backed the royalists, each claiming to uphold the true spirit of Arab freedom.

Bandung’s Limits in the Arab World

By the late 1960s, the Bandung dream was fading.  The 1967 Arab–Israeli War dealt a devastating blow to Nasser’s prestige and the credibility of Pan-Arabism.  Egypt’s defeat exposed the limits of rhetoric and the vulnerability of states that had defined themselves against imperialism but remained militarily weak.

At the same time, oil-rich monarchies such as Saudi Arabia began to eclipse the revolutionary republics as financial powers within the Arab League.  Their conservatism and alliance with the West further diluted the Bandung spirit.

Scholars such as Piero Gleijeses and Fred Halliday have argued that by the 1970s, Arab non-alignment had become largely rhetorical.  Egypt’s successor under Anwar Sadat pivoted toward the United States, signing the Camp David Accords in 1978 — a move that symbolically severed Egypt from its Bandung past.  Other Arab states oscillated between Cold War patrons.  Libya under Gaddafi adopted radical Third-Worldist language but often pursued unilateral agendas.  The fragmentation of Arab politics mirrored the broader disintegration of the Non-Aligned Movement itself.

The Bandung Legacy in Arab Diplomacy

Despite these setbacks, Bandung’s imprint on Arab diplomacy endured.  Egypt remained an active NAM member throughout the 1970s and 1980s.  The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) drew heavily on Bandung’s language of anti-colonial struggle to frame its case at the United Nations.  When the PLO gained observer status in 1974, its representatives explicitly invoked the Bandung and Belgrade declarations as precedents for self-determination.

Arab intellectuals also kept the Bandung flame alive.  Writers like Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, and Anouar Abdel-Malek connected postcolonial critique to the experience of Bandung — the idea that the Global South could define its own modernity.  In universities across Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut, Bandung was taught not just as an event but as a worldview: the belief that the formerly colonised could cooperate across cultural and continental lines.

Even in contemporary Arab politics, traces of Bandung’s ethos remain.  The rhetoric of “South–South cooperation” reappears in Arab discussions of BRICS, the African Union, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.  Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco all invoke Bandung’s memory when articulating partnerships with Asia and Africa.  As historian Vijay Prashad notes, the “Bandung spirit” has become a kind of moral touchstone — invoked whenever leaders seek to recall a time when the Global South dared to speak in one voice.

Conclusion: Bandung, Nasser, and the Unfinished Project

The Arab world’s engagement with Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement was both transformative and contradictory.  It gave Arab nationalism a global dimension, connecting Cairo’s revolution to Delhi, Jakarta, and Accra.  It enabled Egypt to claim leadership of a new postcolonial world order and provided a platform for anti-imperialist diplomacy from Algeria to Yemen.  Yet it also revealed deep divisions — between republics and monarchies, secularists and Islamists, radicals and pragmatists.

Bandung’s ideals could not survive the Cold War’s brutal logic or the internal weaknesses of postcolonial states.  Still, its legacy endures in the intellectual imagination of the Arab world.  The dream that the formerly colonised could cooperate to shape history — first voiced in the halls of Bandung — continues to inspire calls for a more equitable international order.

For the Arab world, as for the rest of the Global South, the Bandung moment remains a reminder of what was possible: a fleeting instance when solidarity, rather than subordination, seemed to define the postcolonial future.