Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation - Hardcover

Khalil, Ashraf

3.96

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9781250006691: Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250006694 ISBN 13: 9781250006691

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2012

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A definitive, absorbing account of the Egyptian revolution, written by a Cairo-based Egyptian-American reporter for Foreign Policy and The Times (London), who witnessed firsthand Mubarak's demise and the country's efforts to build a democracy In early 2011, the world€™s attention was riveted on Cairo, where after three decades of supremacy, Hosni Mubarak was driven from power. It was a revolution as swift as it was explosive. For eighteen days, anger, defiance, and resurgent national pride reigned in the streets---protestors of all ages struck back against police and state security, united toward the common goal of liberation.But the revolution was more than a spontaneous uprising. It was the end result of years of mounting tension, brought on by a state that shamelessly abused its authority, rigging elections, silencing opposition, and violently attacking its citizens. When revolution bloomed in the region in Jan

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About the Author:

ASHRAF KHALIL has covered the Middle East for the The Times (London), The Economist, Foreign Policy, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and the Middle East edition of Rolling Stone. He worked as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in the Baghdad and Jerusalem bureaus and has been based in Cairo for most of the last fifteen years.

1

The Accidental Dictator

Imagine for a moment that President George Bush (the first) had suddenly died in office, leaving Dan Quayle—a national punch line who nobody thought would ever wield any real power—as president of the United States. Then imagine that nearly three decades later, that same perceived lightweight was still running the country; that an entire generation of Americans had never known any other leader; that he and Marilyn Quayle were busily renaming public buildings, bridges, and libraries after themselves; and that president-for-life Quayle was seemingly grooming one of his children to continue the family business of running the country.
If that seems far-fetched, it’s not too far from the reality that Egyptians had been living through for nearly three decades. Put simply: Hosni Mubarak’s era as Egypt’s modern-day pharaoh was never supposed to happen. One of the core ironies of Mubarak’s twenty-nine-year death grip on Egypt was that he stumbled into what was probably the most important and influential job in the modern Middle East entirely by accident.
It’s a reality that became abundantly clear from the very beginning of the eighteen-day uprising in the winter of 2011 that finally toppled Mubarak. Once protesters succeeded in shattering the police state that had kept him in power, it became immediately clear that there really was no Plan B. Mubarak’s regime, in its final days, fell back on a parade of antiquated, insincere rhetoric, uninspired and tone-deaf concessions, and finally, one last effort at vicious violence in a desperate attempt to retain control.
It all served to underscore that hiding behind the truncheons and tear gas of the Central Security riot police was an intellectually bankrupt and cynical blank space of a regime. That’s why there was a distinct undercurrent of bitterness and shame mixed in with the euphoria and the resurgent sense of empowerment coursing through the Cairo streets that February, when Mubarak meekly left the stage.
The sentiment was something approaching: “I can’t believe we let these guys run our lives for decades.”
* * *
Mohammed Hosni Mubarak rose to power as much because of what he wasn’t as for any particular gifts he possessed. Longtime observers describe him as a sort of Middle Eastern dictatorial Forrest Gump, constantly advancing through a series of happy accidents—being in the right place at the right time.
President Anwar Sadat, who began his reign in 1970, promoted Mubarak from among the ranks of his senior generals due, as much as anything, to his deficiencies. He wasn’t regarded as ambitious or particularly intelligent. He wasn’t a plotter or a politician. In essence, he wasn’t a threat. In an interview early in his reign, Mubarak once quipped that his highest professional ambition had been to one day serve as Egypt’s ambassador to the United Kingdom.
“He was just the guy in the back of the photo behind Anwar Sadat that we never thought would be president,” said Hisham Kassem, a longtime Egyptian human rights activist and independent publisher. “Basically Sadat wanted somebody to secure the loyalty of the military. He just wanted one of the top generals. Mubarak was the least charismatic and the least interested in politics. So it went to him. Believe me, nobody thought he was going to stick around for thirty years.”
Born into a middle-class family (his father was a mid-level Ministry of Justice official) in rural Menoufeya Province on May 4, 1928, young Mubarak had entered the military straight out of high school, and rose through the ranks of the Air Force as a fighter pilot and aviation instructor, eventually becoming commander of the Egyptian Air Force.
His defining moment came in October 1973 when Sadat launched a surprise attack across the Suez Canal and into the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had occupied since 1967’s Six-Day War.
The conflict ended in a military stalemate. By the time a ceasefire was declared, the Israeli forces had recovered from their initial shock and were starting to seize the momentum and advance on Cairo. But psychologically and strategically it was a massive victory for Sadat. The sight of Egyptian troops bravely crossing to the east bank of the canal in the teeth of entrenched Israeli Bar Lev Line helped exorcize the deep emotional traumas of the Six-Day War, when Israel thoroughly trounced multiple Arab armies and permanently stained the legacy of Sadat’s predecessor, the iconic Gamal Abdel Nasser. Strategically, the conflict frightened Israel enough that Sadat was later able to negotiate with the Jewish state from a position of strength.
Mubarak came out of the 1973 conflict a war hero, although there were, in later years, allegations that his actual strategic role in the conflict was retroactively exaggerated. “There were ten or twelve other [military commanders] who played a larger role,” said Hassan Nafaa, a Cairo University political science professor who emerged in Mubarak’s final years in power as a prominent regime critic. Whatever the truth, Sadat packaged his air force commander as one of the faces of victory and promoted him to vice president in 1975.
Sadat and his prot�g� were a study in contrasts. Sadat was wily, bold, vain, and mercurial—prone to emotional instability and temper tantrums, but also undeniably clever. Mubarak was none of the above.
For several years, Mubarak lurked in the shadows behind the charismatic Sadat, a vaguely recognizable face standing behind the president as he delivered a speech or met with foreign dignitaries. He was handsome in a stocky, square-jawed sort of way, looked good in a suit, and seemed to be one of the few who were privy to Sadat’s inner counsels. But beyond that he didn’t make much of an impression on either the local or international stage. There’s a common story (possibly apocryphal) that when Henry Kissinger first met Mubarak with Sadat, he thought Mubarak was some sort of junior aid, not the country’s vice president. Even within local military circles and in the public eye, he was dwarfed by more charismatic figures such as powerful defense minister Abdel Halim Abu Ghazala.
On October 6, 1981, Sadat was killed by an Islamist cell inside his own army, ironically during a parade to commemorate his 1973 military victory. The preceding years had seen Sadat demonstrate his trademark tendency for both bold unilateral moves and thin-skinned impetuousness. In the wake of the 1973 war, Sadat stunned the nation and the region by suddenly launching open peace negotiations with Israel. His landmark decision to visit Jerusalem on November 20, 1977, led to the Camp David Peace Accords with Israel and to Egypt’s near-total isolation from the rest of the Arab World.
Sadat’s gambit placed Egypt firmly in the American camp during the height of the Cold War, ensuring an annual flow of billions in U.S. aid that continue to this day. But it also inflamed local hostility toward Israel and made Egypt a regional pariah. In 1979, the Arab League expelled Egypt and moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. While Sadat was hailed internationally as a bold statesman, he was regarded in the Arab world as having repudiated Nasser’s vision of Arab nationalism and cut a deal to place Egypt’s interests above those of the wider Arab community.
Domestically, he became increasingly oppressive and erratic in response to his critics; in September 1981, he launched a massive internal crackdown, rounding up and imprisoning more than fifteen hundred perceived dissidents. The victims included not just militant Islamists—regarded as the primary threat—but intellectuals and activists of all ideological stripes. Even the Coptic Christian Pope Shenouda III was placed under house arrest in a monastery, and dozens of priests were arrested.
But Sadat’s crackdown missed a jihadi cell within his own army led by Lt. Khaled Islambouli. When the assassins struck, Mubarak was standing right next to Sadat. Despite the presidential reviewing stand being peppered by bullets and grenades, Mubarak miraculously managed to escape with just a minor hand injury. It’s an enduring testament to Mubarak’s lack of regard by the nation that there was never any serious speculation that he had been in on the plot. Despite being the most obvious beneficiary of Sadat’s assassination, many Egyptians simply refused to believe he was clever or ambitious enough to pull off—or even conceive of—a coup.
In the wake of Sadat’s assassination, there was no guarantee that Mubarak would automatically ascend to the presidency. A handful of senior military leaders could have laid claim to the throne, particularly the aforementioned Defense Minister Abu Ghazala, but also senior general Saad Mamoun and Kamal Hassan Ali, the Foreign Minister and former head of intelligence.
Kassem, the independent publisher, calls it yet another happy accident that smoothed Mubarak’s path into the presidential palace. If Sadat had died of a heart attack or in a plane crash, he posits, the Mubarak era never would have started in the first place.
“Abu Ghazala had a towering presence. He was much more popular and publicly known than Mubarak,” Kassem said. “I think he would have succeeded Sadat if only Sadat hadn’t been killed in a military parade. That’s what made Abu Ghazala’s ascension politically impossible. The conspiracy theory would have prevailed that Abu Ghazala killed Sadat.”
Instead, a slightly stunned nation suddenly found itself under the leadership of a lightly regarded nonentity. But despite being widely perceived as not really up to the job, Mubarak entered the presidency on a moderate wave of public goodwill. Once again, he benefited from what he was not. Sadat groomed and elevated M...

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