What next for Egypt?
Roger Cooper
Anwar Sadat, hailed in the West as one of the greatest statesmen of the age, was buried last Saturday, and three days later his heir-apparent was predictably confirmed as Egypt's new president. But the tensions caused by the assassination have not subsided.
Ironically, it was the West that mourned Sadat most deeply. His own people, banned from the funeral on grounds of security, were conspicuously unmoved, and there Were none of the scenes of frenzied grief that marked the passing of President Nasser or the great singer Umm Kulthum. Professional mourners, who can be hired by the hour in Cairo for fashionable funerals, performed creditably for the foreign press corps, but true grief was only to be seen in a few faces.
It has never been made clear whether Sadat's historic peace mission to Israel in 1977 was entirely his initiative or whether it was an American inspiration. The White louse was certainly quick to stage-manage the delicate drama that culminated in the Peace treaty. Egyptians, particularly the generation that stood to suffer most from the interminable Arab-Israeli conflict, apPlauded the peace process, but once it became clear that the rest of the Arab world Would never cease to consider it a sell-out of the wider Arab cause, and particularly of Palestinian rights, the mood changed, and Sadat's gloss wore off. Egyptians were glad to get their lost territory (and oil-fields) back, but they missed being at the centre of the Arab world. Friendship with Israel was a poor substitute. Few Egyptians, in fact, have taken advantage of the right to visit Israel, although the flow of tourists from Israel has been considerable. The EgYp-. tians, in other words, want the benefits of the peace treaty without the disadvantages. President Hosni Mubarak will undoubtedly try to achieve this difficult goal. Known for his anti-Communist views, 'lespite or perhaps because of his two spells In the Soviet Union training as an air force officer over 20 years ago, he is unlikely to want to return Soviet-Egyptian relations to the cordiality of Nasser's day, but is praginane enough to realise that Sadat's uncritical espousal of Western ideology at the expense of traditional values was the single tnain. cause of his unpopularity. Mubarak tlialr In time try to loosen ties with the West, rs least superficially, as well as those with rrael, but cannot do so until the third and handover of occupied Sinai takes race next April (or rather is scheduled to jake place). With Sadat dead, the hawks in Jerusalem are already questioning the Wisdom of completing the peace treaty. In the short term, then, Mubarak, still by nature a military man rather than the politician or statesman Sadat became, will have to continue his mentor's policies. His immediate reaction was in fact repressive. He proclaimed a one-year state of emergency before the need for it had even been felt. Then, with serious rioting raging in the southern town of Assyut, where over 100 deaths were reported, and trouble in some of the slum areas of the capital, he went ahead with a referendum to confirm himself in office (there were no other candidates and all opposition leaders were in jail or exile), although the constitution allows a 60-day period for this. He ordered a 'witchhunt' in the armed forces, purging hundreds of officers on vague charges of being religious fanatics. His defence minister, General Abu Ghazala, announcing that all four of the assassins were alive and would probably be tried and executed shortly, expressed the wish that their bodies could be left hanging in public for a week.
If returning Egypt to democracy is not uppermost in the minds of the generals in Egypt, it is at least the stated goal of the general who claims obliquely to be behind the killing, the former chief of staff General Sa'd-el-Din Shazly, now living in selfimposed exile in Algiers and Tripoli. It was General Shazly who masterminded the start to the 1973 war, with Egypt's moraleboosting thrust across the Suez Canal — the anniversary of which Sadat was celebrating when he died. Sadat pushed on too far, in Shazly's view, enabling the Israelis to counter-attack. He was sent into virtual exile as ambassador to London and Lisbon, and three years ago turned openly against Sadat when he formed his hybrid opposition group, the Egyptian National Front. Shazly was quick to claim credit for the death of Sadat, but was more moderate than most of the Arab rejectionists, talking of political freedom rather than revolution.
Few observers in fact credit Shazly with real political influence. His close links with Colonel Gaddafi discredit him in the eyes of most Egyptians, much as their ties with Iraq discredited exiled Iranian politicians like Shahpur Bakhtiar when the Gulf War began. Despite some popularity in the armed forces Shazly is generally thought to be motivated by his personal vendetta with Sadat rather than true patriotism.
The threat to Mubarak's position does not come from Shazly's ramshackle National Front, more a broadcasting organisation than a political threat, or from the anti-Egyptian stance of both moderate and extremist Arab states, but from the religious fundamentalists at home. Of the four main political groups that dominated Egyptian politics in the pre-Nasser period, the Muslim Brotherhood is today the most powerful. Operating through so-called Islamic Societies, it strives to turn Egypt (and other Arab states) into pure Islamic communities, and has often used assassination in its so far unsuccessful attempts to seize power. There are probably a million or more hard-core supporters of the movement, many as disciplined and fanatical as the Islamic fundamentalists who killed Sadat, and it is this ideology, not Shazly's, that was behind the assassination. All but about 200 of the 1,500 people arrested in the 3 September crackdown were deeply involved in fundamentalist politics, and Mubarak is unlikely to release them until he feels much more secure.
President Mubarak is a tough personality, popular with the armed forces for his part in the 1973 war, when his revamped air force proved a match for the Israelis. He will not shrink from repression if he feels it necessary for his survival, as it apparently is. His vision may be narrower than Sadat's, but this will not be a disadvantage to his regime in the coming months. Certainly the Israelis and the Americans will go out of their way to smooth his path in the negotiations leading up to the final phase of the bilateral side of Camp David. The Americans might even be expected to put pressure on the Israelis to make some concessions on Palestinian rights, although President Reagan's failure to endorse the unexpectedly pro-PLO stance of his two predecessors last weekend is not an encouraging sign. Yasser Arafat's remark in Japan that the PLO factor was the heart of the Middle East equation is undeniably true.
But the support for Egypt from the United States and Israel could in the longer term be counter-productive. A kiss from Begin could be the kiss of death for Mubarak, as it was for Sadat, and war games with the Pentagon provide no defence against enemies at home. There is little Mubarak can do to distance himself from the Americans or the Israelis without jeopardising that coveted final tract of desert, but the Americans at least should see how vulnerable they are making their strategically vital client-state.
Previous page
