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Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen. Hazem Kandil
Читать онлайн.Название Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781781684566
Автор произведения Hazem Kandil
Издательство Ingram
Amer did not want to replace the president, but aspired to having equal power. So instead of enhancing the army’s fighting capacity, Amer devoted himself to transforming it into “a state within a state” through the help of his security aides. He treated the military as a personal fief, promoting officers based on their loyalty to him, rather than to Nasser or the state. To keep the president on his feet, Amer’s security men provided him with a regular stream of attempted plots they claim to have foiled (such as an alleged plot in April 1957 involving British operatives and eight army officers). The aim was to make Nasser too anxious to carry out a military shake-up against their will.22 So what had originally begun as an attempt to secure the revolution in 1954 had been gradually transformed into securing the dominance of the present military leadership. Nasser’s only hope now was to persuade Amer to leave the military on his own accord, an impossible task by any measure.
The president thus turned to the next best option: acting on the advice of the PBI director, Samy Sharaf, he tried to create his own secret network within the army. Quickly realizing that the officer corps was effectively sealed off by Amer’s security apparatus, Sharaf shifted his effort to the Military Academy, which was headed by a relative of his, the future war minister Muhammad Fawzy. By the end of 1956, Sharaf had recruited six cadets. Their mission was to lie low until they graduated, then actively build a network loyal to the president once they joined the service. After a few meetings, however, the field marshal’s security men picked them up, and after a fiery confrontation with Nasser, the organization was disbanded. Another PBI operative, Hassan al-Tuhami, decided to bug Amer’s phones on his own initiative. Again, Amer’s alert security apparatus found out, and Tuhami was not only dismissed, but also exiled to Vienna for an entire decade.23
Exposed and increasingly on the defensive, Nasser now became entrapped in a cat-and-mouse game with his field marshal. To ease Amer’s suspicions, Nasser surrendered a bit of ground by appointing the OCC director, Salah Nasr—the field marshal’s right-hand security man—as head of the GIS in May 1957, and Nasr’s OCC deputy Abbas Radwan as interior minister in October 1958. But in order to protect himself, Nasser employed the former GIS director Aly Sabri at the PBI to capitalize on his contacts at the agency to neutralize Nasr. The president also anticipated Nasr’s official takeover in May by appointing two confidants (Amin Huwaidi and Sha’rawi Gomaa) to senior positions at the GIS in February. He then convinced Amer to appoint the second-tier Free Officer Colonel Shams Badran as the new OCC director, replacing Nasr. Badran had been acting as liaison between the presidency and the military, and Nasser hoped he would deliver the military back to him. In addition to all these tactical precautions, Nasser was ultimately reassured by the fact that Zakaria Muhi al-Din, the architect of the entire security apparatus, was unofficially supervising all civilian security agencies, regardless of who was in charge at GIS or the Interior Ministry. The president’s safeguards, however, soon came to nothing. Sabri clashed with Sharaf and had to be reallocated, and the shrewd Nasr not only refused to begin his tenure unless the GIS became independent of Zakaria’s hegemony, he also isolated Nasser’s men, Huwaidi and Gomaa, forcing them to move to the PBI in a few months, before proceeding to ally the GIS with the military-based security group.24 Now all military and civilian security organs (except for the president’s own PBI) came under Amer’s control. Worse still, the field marshal won over Badran, Nasser’s supposed spy. Badran relished the fact that his new boss’s laissez-faire management style, which sharply contrasted with Nasser’s tight-leash supervision, would grant him virtual control of the entire military.
By 1958, Nasser’s position within the security community had considerably deteriorated. That same year, however, presented Nasser with a golden opportunity to sway Amer away from command. The centerpiece of Nasserist foreign policy was Arab nationalism, a policy aimed at uniting all Arab countries under one body (like his European neighbors to the north were striving to do themselves). The first step of this long-term plan was to merge Egypt and Syria, the closest two Arab countries (in institutions and temperament) into one state: the United Arab Republic. To kill two birds with one stone, Nasser decided to combine the expansion of Egyptian influence abroad with the consolidation of his power at home, and so he kicked his friend-turned-rival upstairs by appointing him governor of Syria, now renamed the Northern Sector. The field marshal agreed, believing he would now have his own country to run. But the union lasted for only three short years. This was a disaster for Amer on many levels: first, it was his trusted Syrian aide-de-camp (Abd al-Karim al-Nahlawy) who organized the anti-Egyptian coup that dissolved the union; second, Syria’s new leaders shipped Amer back to Cairo on September 28, 1961, in a humiliating fashion (rumor has it, in his undergarments); third, his military commanders again failed to fly troops to Syria fast enough to avert the coup; and finally, one of the factors that fueled the secession was that he allowed his men to run rampant all over the Syrian corps. Shaken by this spectacular blunder, Amer tendered his resignation, which Nasser accepted with great relief. Three days later, the president reappointed Zakaria as interior minister, demoting Radwan to minister without portfolio, and was preparing for a similar move against Nasr at the GIS. But in January 1962, before Nasser could catch his breath, Zakaria and Sharaf uncovered a military plot to reinstate Amer and dismiss the president if he attempted to resist.25 It was clear that the field marshal’s men were not ready to surrender their boss. Amer’s ejection from the military had to wait.
This time Nasser had to improvise. In September 1962, he told Amer he intended to rule Egypt collectively through a twelve-member Presidential Council, which would include both of them, in addition to some old RCC colleagues and a few civilian ministers. To join the council, however, Amer had to resign and accept the appointment of Muhammad Fawzy, director of the Military Academy, as the new commander-in-chief. Nasser’s real intention, as he later confessed to Fawzy, was to isolate his unruly field marshal with a sleight of hand from the corps.26 Amer reluctantly agreed, not knowing exactly what he was getting into. During the council’s first meeting, on September 18, Nasser announced the appointed of Aly Sabri (his close security associate) as prime minister, and reminded Amer to submit his resignation as agreed. Instead, Shams Badran, the OCC director, came to see Nasser the next day to inform him that after consulting with his men, the field marshal had decided to stay on. A furious Nasser insisted that Amer carry out his part of the deal, and all Badran managed to secure from him was an extension. After a couple of months, Badran turned up with a letter of resignation. As the president skimmed through the lines, he quickly realized it was a ploy—and a quite dangerous one. In the letter, which Badran claimed had “somehow leaked” to the officer corps and the press, Amer said he was stepping down because Nasser adamantly pursued the path of dictatorship: “What you should be working for now is democracy … I cannot imagine that after all this time, after eradicating feudalism and manipulative capitalism, after the masses have placed their trust in you unreservedly, you still fear democracy.” On that same day, before Nasser could recover from the shock, paratroopers demonstrated outside his house with their machine guns pointed toward the presidential residence. The PBI also informed him that Nasr at the GIS was plotting something big with the general staff. A few days later, Badran carried to the president a new message from the field marshal: Amer would not resign unless Nasser pledged in writing to establish democracy. The president had no choice but to negotiate with Amer. A meeting was set for December 11. The field marshal began by stressing that the political security of the armed forces depended on him personally, and that any attempt to remove him from office would lead to disaster. Amer followed his not-so-subtle threat with a list of demands that included promoting him from commander-in-chief to first vice president and deputy supreme commander of the armed forces (Nasser holding nominally the title of supreme commander), in addition to undivided control over the military’s financial and administrative affairs. Realizing at this point that challenging Amer would certainly provoke a coup, the president retreated.27
So basically the Presidential Council gambit backfired. The field marshal not only emerged unscathed, but also his position improved