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Egypt Politics among Elites
Military Politics
A major issue of Egypt's elite politics was the role of the
military in the state. Nasser's Free Officers founded republican
government and led Egypt's 1952 Revolution from above. Presidents
continued to be ex-military men. But as Egypt entered a
postrevolutionary phase, Sadat successfully demilitarized the state
and depoliticized the officer corps. Without losing control of the
military, Sadat was able to change it from the dominant leadership
group in the state into a professional force subordinate to legal
authority, radically curtailing its policy-making role, even in
defense matters. This change was paralleled by a deradicalization
that ended the army's role as "defender of the revolution" and as
defender of the Arab nation against imperialism.
Long-term developments that were maturing before Sadat took
power facilitated his effort. As many Free Officers acquired wealth
and married into great families, they were deradicalized. If the
Free Officers had originally been the vanguard of the rising middle
class against the traditional upper class, by the late 1970s senior
officers had become part of a new establishment. Many officers
blamed the 1967 defeat on Nasser, the Soviet Union, and socialist
measures. They resented Nasser's scapegoating of the high command
for the army's failures. In addition, because the defeat could
plausibly be blamed on military involvement in politics, it
discredited the military's claim to political leadership and
enhanced the prestige of nonpolitical professional officers. Nasser
stressed professional competence in the post-1967 reconstruction of
the army, and many officers themselves became impatient with
political involvement that could detract from the mission of
defending the front and recovering the land and honor lost in 1967.
The fall of scores of politicized officers in the succession
struggle with Sadat--in particular, the group around Marshal Abdul
Hakim Amir after the June 1967 War (Arab-Israeli war, also known as
the Six-Day War) and the Ali Sabri group--removed the most powerful
and politicized Free Officers and dissipated remaining radical
sentiment in the ranks of the officer corps. In the succession
struggle, Minister of War General Muhammad Fawzi stood with the
leftist Sabri faction and tried to mobilize the military against
Sadat by accusing him of selling out to the Americans, but Chief of
Staff General Muhammad Sadiq and the rest of the top brass stood
with Sadat and neutralized Fawzi. No doubt the military's stand was
affected by the unpopularity of Sabri's effort to build up the
state party as a counterweight to the military, his identification
with the unpopular Soviet advisory mission, and Sadat's promise to
reinstate officers unfairly blamed for the 1967 defeat. But the
long tradition of presidential authority established under Nasser
seemed the decisive factor in rallying the professional military to
Sadat's side. And this victory went far to reinforce the legal
supremacy of presidential authority over all other state
institutions.
Nevertheless, Sadat was thereafter embroiled in and won two
other power struggles with top generals who contested his defense
and foreign policies. In 1972 General Sadiq, then minister of war,
seemed to challenge presidential prerogatives. Sadiq considered
himself entitled, given his role in Sadat's victory and his Free
Officer status, to a share in decision-making power. He used
rewards, promotions, and the mobilization of anti-Soviet sentiment
in the army to build a personal power base. Sadat viewed Sadiq as
a mere member of his staff and saw his anti-Soviet advocacy and his
links with Libya's Colonel Muammar al Qadhafi, whom Sadat deeply
distrusted, as encroachments on presidential authority. Most
serious, Sadiq objected to Sadat's plans for a limited war in Sinai
to seize a strip of land across the Suez Canal as a prelude to
negotiations with Israel. Believing Egypt unprepared for such an
ambitious venture, he argued, in a tense meeting of the high
command, against any military action, a course untenable for Sadat.
Sadat's move against Sadiq was a classic example of his strategy of
control over the military. He waited until he had first expelled
the Soviet advisers, thus winning for himself the acclaim of antiSoviet elements and taking the wind out of Sadiq's sails. He
obtained the support of other top commanders, especially Chief of
Staff Saad ad Din Shazli, who had quarreled with Sadiq over
authority in the high command, rallied the field commanders by
accusing Sadiq of ignoring orders to prepare for war, and quickly
replaced Sadiq with General Ahmad Ismail Ali, a personal friend who
lacked political ambition. With the help of these allies, Sadat
foiled a pro-Sadiq coup attempt.
Not long after, Sadat faced another challenge, this time from
General Shazli. The two men quarreled over the conduct of the
October 1973 War, each holding the other responsible for the
Israeli breakthrough onto the west bank of the Suez Canal. After
the war, Shazli was a leading opponent of the decision to rely on
the United States at the cost of weakening Egypt's military ability
to take action. Sadat rallied the support of other top officers
against Shazli, including then Minister of War Ismail, Air Force
Commander Husni Mubarak, and Chief of Operations General Abdul
Ghani Gamasi. Shazli enjoyed considerable support in the military
but either would not or could not mobilize it before the high
command decimated his followers in a wave of purges from corps and
division commanders on down. While some of his top generals were in
the future to disagree with Sadat's policies, none would again
overtly challenge them, and when he chose to dismiss them, they
offered no resistance.
The army, however, was not free of disaffection. Some junior
officers who risked their lives in the "crossing" of the Suez Canal
believed Sadat sold out the gains won on the battlefield. There
were recurring signs of Nasserite and Islamic tendencies in the
ranks thereafter. But most officers remained loyal for several
reasons: the legitimacy Sadat won in the October 1973 War, in which
the army had redeemed its lost honor; the realization that the
alternative to Sadat might be another war in which this gain might
be sacrificed; and the privileges and new American weapons Sadat
lavished on the officer corps. The stake in infitah business
some officers acquired, the acceptance of professionalism among
most senior officers, and Sadat's practice of rotating senior
commanders had, by the end of his presidency, seemingly reduced the
military from leaders of the regime to one of its main pillars.
Under Mubarak the military remained a powerful corporate actor
in the political system, and the case of Minister of Defense Abdul
Halim Abu Ghazala manifested both the power and limits of the
military establishment. Mubarak was initially less careful than
Sadat to rotate military chieftains and to balance them with rival
officers or with strong civilian politicians. As a result, Abu
Ghazala, an ambitious politicized and conservative general,
appeared to establish unprecedented power and acknowledged status
as the number-two man in the regime. He positioned himself as
champion of arms spending, resisting all decreases in the defense
budget and pushing for greater autonomy for the armed forces in the
political system. He widened the role of the army in the economy,
making it a font of patronage, subcontracting to the private
sector, and establishing close relations between the Egyptian arms
industry and United States arms suppliers. Abu Ghazala also
presided over the growth of privileged facilities for the military,
a development that made him something of a hero in the ranks. He
appeared to stake out positions independent of the president,
apparently objecting to Mubarak's soft-line handling of the
Achille Lauro terrorist incident in October 1985. Whereas
the president sought to step back from the close alliance with
Washington, Abu Ghazala was known for his intimate connections to
influential Americans.
In 1987 the army had to be called out when the riots of the
security police left the government otherwise defenseless. Having
saved the regime, Abu Ghazala seemed to have strengthened his
position. He even carried influence in the appointment of cabinet
ministers. But Abu Ghazala lacked the crucial control over military
appointments to turn the army into a personal fiefdom; Mubarak,
waking up to the danger, had by 1987 positioned his own men as
chief of staff and as minister of war production. Perhaps aided by
Abu Ghazala's loss of American support over an arms smuggling
scandal, Mubarak had no difficulty removing him from his post in
1989. Generally, Mubarak tried to curb military aggrandizement that
diminished the civilian sector. The professionalization of the
officer corps, its tradition of respect for legal legitimacy, and
the reluctance of an army lacking in national vision or ambition to
assume responsibility for Egypt's problems all made it unlikely
that any top general could carry the officer corps in an overt
challenge to Mubarak.
Data as of December 1990
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