An expanded UAR?

[Onyx]

The United Arab Republic was created by Nasser, how united Syria into the UAR, but it merely collapsed by next year (Or a few months? Im not good at Arab History).
But could Nasser actually expand the UAR into lets say North Africa? Libya and Tunisia?

[The Kiat]

I'm no expert on Arab history either, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. When the French and British carved up the Arab region of the Ottoman Empire after the Great War, what did they use to base their regions, and the borders of the modern states? I mean, they are all Arabs (except the Kurds) so why couldn't they live in a single state? Since the Arabs of Iraq seem to put more basis on religion than nationality, would all the Sunni not be able to live in a single state? I don't know why it didn't work, maybe ideological differences in Egypt and Syria.

[Lord Brisbane]

The reason it fell apart was because Nasser totally dominated it and the Syrians were fed up with Nasser and Co. bossing them about.

If Nasser tries to expand it, it would likely just collapse in much the same way as Egypt would try and totally dominate the structures put in place.

[Masri]

IOTL Iraq was interested in joining and tried to join the union in 1960-61. The UAR was itself a part of the United Arab States which was the UAR and N. Yemen. Seeing as N. Yemen was basically an Egyptian puppet at the time it probably wouldn't have taken too much for it to have it join the UAR itself instead.

Egypt, Syria and Libya were all members of the Federation of Arab Republics from 1972-'77 so if the UAR had survived it is possible Libya may have sought to join at some point. Less likely but still plausible would be Sudan which has had long ties to Egypt in the past.

[Lord Brisbane]

If that happened, could we see maybe a possible Sudanese civil war between the Arabic north and the African south? Especially since the North would be bolstered by development from Egypt, further increasing the North/South divide and agrivating already existing tensions between the North/South of the country?

[Chris S]

Originally Posted by Lord Brisbane

If that happened, could we see maybe a possible Sudanese civil war between the Arabic north and the African south? Especially since the North would be bolstered by development from Egypt, further increasing the North/South divide and agrivating already existing tensions between the North/South of the country?

Wasn't Sudan already in a civil war between north and south during the 1970s? I think it was their first civil war.

[Masri]

Originally Posted by Lord Brisbane

If that happened, could we see maybe a possible Sudanese civil war between the Arabic north and the African south? Especially since the North would be bolstered by development from Egypt, further increasing the North/South divide and agrivating already existing tensions between the North/South of the country?

The Sudanese Civil war had already begun before the formation of the UAR. As to how the UAR leadership might act if Sudan did join I would assume that they would be pretty brutal. South Sudan vs. North Sudan turned out to be a pretty even fight but I don't think that the South can stand up to the full weight of the Egypt, Syria and maybe even Iraq and Libya.

[Jimbrock]

There were loads of unions of arabs countries running through all the names you can think of (federation, united republic, united kingdom, etc.) Any of those could have worked.