Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen - Hazem Kandil

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for the moment, but the army still had not lost its resolve; a much bigger mutiny was in the works.

      (ii) The Cavalry Mutiny

      After subduing the artillery, the stage was set for an even greater challenge to Nasser’s plan to stay in power. For one thing, tensions began rising between an increasingly distrustful Naguib and Nasser’s faction. After complaining, during an RCC meeting on December 20, that the media was deliberately ignoring his speeches, council members hurled insults at Naguib, accusing him of trying to hijack the revolution. Then, on February 23, 1954, RCC members decided to hold their weekly meeting at Nasser’s office without inviting the president. When Naguib, who was actually present in the building, objected, he was asked to go home. The aim was to convince him to accept his figurehead role. But the attempt backfired two days later when Naguib raised the stakes and resigned, declaring that his military honor forbade him from presiding over “a state of informants” run by a security coterie trained by CIA and ex-Gestapo operatives.48 Naguib confessed to his legal counselor that his resignation was aimed at arousing the people and the soldiers, which it eventually did.49 Feeling threatened, the security branch began to roll. Acting on their own initiative, Nasr, director of the OCC, and the head of the Republican Guard, Abu al-Nur, replaced the guard unit stationed outside the president’s house with soldiers from Nasr’s 13th Infantry Battalion, and detained guard officers loyal to Naguib. With Naguib unarmed, Nasser called his bluff, not only accepting his resignation on February 26 but also placing him under house arrest after claiming to the press that he was becoming unbearably dictatorial and corrupt.50

      What Nasser did not expect, however, was that Naguib’s resignation would trigger a cavalry mutiny, followed by a vast popular revolt. Like their colleagues in the artillery, cavalry officers felt that the RCC was driving the country toward dictatorship rather than reformed democracy, and was going to entangle the military in politics irrevocably. When Naguib announced his intention leave, cavalrymen formed an eight-member delegation, led by captains Ahmed al-Masri and Farouk al-Ansari, to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the RCC on February 26 before the president’s resignation was declared, whereby Naguib would head an interim civilian government that would write a new constitution and supervise elections before the end of the year. Nasser and his associates expressed their concern that implementing democracy prematurely would bring back reactionary forces. At which point, the delegation withdrew from the talks and called for a sit-in at the cavalry mess hall, the so-called Green Mess Hall. Three hundred officers heeded the call, and units from the 4th Armored Division, the army’s strategic reserve force, began surrounding the military general headquarters (GHQ), which was right across from the Green Mess Hall. The dissidents demanded Naguib’s reinstatement, Amer’s dismissal, the dissolution of the RCC, and the immediate transition to democracy. Nasser rushed to the hall to convince the officers to call off the strike. He was accompanied by Hassan al-Tuhami and his security men to secretly record the names of the agitators. But his attempt was foiled when the strikers refused to admit any of the operatives to the hall, and asked that Nasser come alone. Following a heated debate during which the mutinous officers accused RCC and security officers of corruption and abuse of power, the encircled Nasser exclaimed: “Who gave you the right to speak for the people?” to which one of the cavalrymen responded: “We are the parliament of the people until a parliament is formed.” Thoroughly intimidated, especially after hearing tank movements outside the hall, Nasser pledged to fulfill all their demands, including the dissolution of the RCC and the creation of a new government under Naguib and the cavalry’s RCC representative, Khaled Muhi al-Din. He then headed back to RCC headquarters, informed the council of his decisions, and dispatched Khaled to Naguib’s house in the early hours of February 27 so that the pair could take charge.51 Nasser was so disturbed that he asked his family to evacuate the house immediately. His wife, Tahiya, remembered how he frantically told her that cavalry units might be on their way to bomb the house.52

      It seemed for a moment that it was all over, that the power struggle had ended with Nasser’s defeat. But the tide soon turned. “It took only one hour,” as Khaled bitterly reported, “for the situation to reverse completely. It was during the sixty minutes that passed between my trip to Naguib’s house and back that everything turned upside down.”53 Scholars who examined this critical juncture usually interpreted what followed as a Nasser-orchestrated maneuver, but a close examination of the memoirs of some of those involved reveals that it was the nascent security group that took the lead, and Nasser simply went along. In fact, we know from a future conversation between Nasser and Khaled that the former’s thinking at that stage was set on the impractical plan of returning to the army, lying low for a while, and then plotting another coup.54 It was the security men, who realized that democracy would cut their promising new careers short, who pulled the strings that night and tilted the balance in Nasser’s favor. The infantry officer Gamal Hammad, who drafted the Free Officers’ first communiqué after coming to power, was present at GHQ as the events unfolded and described how Nasser was a mere spectator during that bold counterattack.55 This was also the view of the three officers who were at the receiving end of this security-coordinated strike: Naguib, Khaled, and the cavalry mutiny leader Ahmed al-Ansari. Naguib noted how the press was already documenting human rights violations and asking for reprisal. It was only natural for security officers, he said, to understand that the resumption of democratic life “would mean their end, that they will be held accountable for what they did.”56 Khaled recalled warning Nasser that an intramilitary confrontation could escalate into a bloodbath, but the latter responded submissively: “I no longer understand what is going on.”57 Ansari, in a letter from prison to Hammad, blamed himself for taking Nasser’s word instead of arresting him and his associates. Nasser’s integrity, Ansari continued, was beyond reproach, but cavalrymen underestimated the ferocity of the new security elite who stood to lose from democracy; they were the ones who paved the road to authoritarianism; they were the real conspirators.58 This last sentence acquires greater significance in light of Sadat’s claim that Nasser had initially defended democracy during the first RCC meeting on July 27, 1952, but it was the power-hungry security coterie he thought would protect the revolution that ended up controlling it.59

      So if it was not Nasser who called the shots, then who did, and how? Emphasizing how desperate times call for desperate measures, two of these officers-turned-security-men, Shams Badran and Abbas Radwan, convinced a reluctant Nasser to allow them to offer the imprisoned artillery officers their freedom in return for helping to put down the cavalry uprising. The two then quickly sealed the deal and informed their boss, Salah Nasr, that the artillery was at his service. Nasr, who got wind of the impending cavalry mutiny from one of his informers hours before it took place, wasted no time: he advised Nasser to meet with the dissidents at the Green Mess Hall to try to defuse the situation; meanwhile, he sent out agitators to other services to portray the cavalry’s call for democracy as a ploy aimed at delivering the country to Khaled’s Communists.60 As soon as Khaled left GHQ, Nasr made his move:

      I ordered my old 13th Infantry Battalion to surround cavalry headquarters, and the freshly released artillery officers to block tank outlets. I then asked [Aly] Sabri [the air force captain who joined the new security elite] to send jets roaring at low altitudes over the besieged officers for intimidation. Meanwhile, I dispatched Tuhami and five intelligence officers to detain Naguib at artillery headquarters. When Amer discovered I had ordered troop movements without his approval, he called me into his office, grabbed my shirt, and screamed hysterically, with his gun pointed at me: “I will kill you! I will not allow the country to descend to chaos! I am the commander-in-chief, not you!” But as soon as I assured him that everything was under control, and that the revolution was now safe, he calmed down. At this point, Khaled dashed into the office, asking who ordered the siege against the cavalry. I asked him to warn his colleagues that if they did not disperse they would be bombed to the last man. Finally, I ordered the Military Police to storm in and detain the leaders of the mutiny. By the end of the day, the situation was resolved. I ordered Radwan, my assistant, to keep an eye out and went home to get some sleep.61

      To everyone’s surprise, however, the pendulum swung back in the other direction. Few people were aware of the overnight confrontation that was taking place around cavalry headquarters, but what everyone woke

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