Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen - Hazem Kandil

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Naguib—too worried about tarnishing his reputation—preferred a more roundabout approach. Instead of relying on loyal officers, he encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood to endorse him in their discussions with the British and the Americans. Between May 1953 and January 1954, the Muslim Brotherhood representatives Munir Delah and Saleh Abu-Raqiq conducted two rounds of talks with Mr. Evans and Mr. Creswell of the British embassy, in which they mentioned that Naguib would be a better guardian of democracy.38 Those talks overlapped with another seven rounds with the Americans, between May and August 1953, in which the Brotherhood’s general guide, Hassan al-Hudaybi himself, participated. In one meeting, on June 4, the Brotherhood envoy Mahmoud Makhlouf tried to promote the president by claiming: “Naguib would be willing to sign a secret understanding with the US. The Moslem Brotherhood would support such a move. [But] Opposition might be encountered from Abdel Nasser.” On their July 17 meeting, the general guide relayed that he and Naguib supported the “withdrawal of the military from the government and their replacement by a coalition of ‘good men’ from the various political parties.”39

      There were several problems with this approach. For one thing, the Western powers, as we have seen, were not particularity enthusiastic about democracy. The fact that Naguib was negotiating through an Islamist movement was an additional turn-off. But the biggest problem was that the president was quite reserved with his own representatives. Naguib recounted several unsolved difficulties during his secret talks with the Muslim Brotherhood between December 1953 and March 1954 through his secretaries Samy and Riyad and the Brotherhood dignitaries Hassan Ashmawi and Munir Delah. While he wanted to reestablish democracy, they wanted a package deal in which Naguib would remain president, provided he appointed a pro-Brotherhood chief of staff, Major General Rashad Mehanna from the artillery. Naguib confessed to his press secretary Samy that he was noncommittal because he never imagined the Brotherhood would turn against him; he neglected the fact that a return to democracy would mostly benefit the liberal al-Wafd Party, not Islamists.40

      Naguib’s main shortcoming, though, was that he developed no organization within the army, let alone the new security regime being assembled under his nose. It is true that his pro-democratic stance had the support of the bulk of the officer corps, but he did not try to coordinate their actions, preferring to pass down orders through official channels rather than create a network of loyal officers. Even when artillery and cavalry officers begged him in August 1952 to do just that, he turned them down, fearing that fractures within the military would push the country to the brink of civil war. Naguib’s viewpoint, as he later confided to the head of the Republican Guard, Abd al-Muhsin Abu al-Nur, was that he had no need to weave conspiracies; he was the highest-ranking officer in the realm, let alone president of the republic and chair of the RCC; he thus expected officers to obey him unconditionally.41 Despite Samy’s repeated pleas that his boss build a political power base within the corps, a Naguib dazzled with the aura of authority insisted that it was beneath him as a major general to reach out to junior officers; he also held that it would serve him better to professionalize rather than further politicize the corps.42 He also underestimated his rival’s influence among officers, refusing to acknowledge that a colonel with an “undistinguished public presence”—as he referred to Nasser in his memoirs—could threaten him.43 In his heart, Naguib counted on the support of the people, rather than the military. But even that was difficult to preserve despite the energy he devoted to building his popular charisma, simply because Egyptians were tired of the old system and wanted a strong leader to reform the country. As Naguib himself later confessed, the people wanted “an Egyptian Ataturk,” a role he was unwilling to play.44 Nasser, on the other hand, did not waver.

      BETWEEN TWO MUTINIES

      One is tempted after comparing Nasser’s and Naguib’s power strategies to conclude that the latter was clearly outmaneuvered from the start, that the result of their power struggle was decided before it had even begun. Not only was Nasser in control of the new security organs and the country’s only mass party, but he also succeeded at winning the favor of a major world power, the United States. Nasser’s problem, however, was time: he had scarcely enough of it to bring the military in line and subdue the old political forces. Thus, mutiny spread among officers, first in the artillery (in January 1953) and then in the cavalry (in March 1954). Army dissidents cared little about Nasser or Naguib as such; their aim was to establish democratic rule, and they rallied around Naguib because he sympathized with their position. Nasser’s victory seemed impossible considering that by virtue of their equipment and firepower the artillery and cavalry were the most formidable services in the Egyptian army. Also, the second mutiny was backed up by vast popular demonstrations orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and including scores of liberals and Communists. How could the budding security establishment keep such a massive force in check?

      (i) The Artillery Mutiny

      The first episode in this rapidly unfolding power struggle began with the artillery mutiny. A major bloc within the artillery corps longed for the resumption of parliamentary life, which required withdrawing the military to barracks and handing over power to an elected civilian government. They believed that the coup was meant only to purge political parties of corrupt elements, remove the obstinate king, and force the British to evacuate Egypt. Once these tasks were established, full-fledged democracy should ensue. Also, as a privileged service working with advanced equipment, artillery officers (like their counterparts in the cavalry, and unlike those of the most rudimentary service, the infantry) were professional-minded and eager to turn their attention back to military duties. The ongoing purges and the undermining of military discipline in the name of political loyalty doubtlessly offended their professional temperament. They also held a grudge against Nasser after discovering that his appointment of the admired artillery colonel Rashad Mehanna to the three-member Regency Council, established after the king’s exile to run the country until the crown prince reached the proper age, was meant to sidetrack rather than promote him. In June 1953, Egypt became a republic and all the vestiges of monarchism, including the Regency Council, were abolished. To add insult to injury, Mehanna was discharged that October and placed under house arrest for allegedly conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood. Nasr admits that Nasser feared the charismatic Mehanna, the first officer to form secret cells within the army back in the 1940s, and plotted his removal from power.45

      On December 14, 1952, the artillery captains Muhsen Abd al-Khaleq and Fathallah Ref’at submitted a petition to Nasser on behalf of their colleagues demanding that the RCC be reconstituted to allow each service equal representation, and that each branch should elect its own representatives to the council. The petitioners added, threateningly, that they could not accept overthrowing one king only to be ruled by fourteen (alluding to the RCC members). To explore the depth of their dissent, Nasser asked them to sketch a blueprint of the political system they envisaged, advising them to print it at Military Intelligence headquarters for discretion. The artillery officers did not swallow the bait. Instead, these suspicious requests convinced them that Nasser and his collaborators were beyond reform and must be removed at once. Between December 30 and January 7, they held four secret meetings with fifteen other colleagues from the artillery, in addition to a handful of cavalry officers, to plan a countercoup. They also met the Muslim Brotherhood’s general guide twice to assure his organization’s support. Their plan was to arrest all RCC members (except Naguib) during one of their weekly meetings, using units from the 1st Artillery Brigade, which was stationed a couple of blocks away from RCC headquarters, then seize control of the capital using the 2nd Artillery Division and Artillery School companies, before declaring a short transitional period, under Naguib, to draft a new constitution and prepare for elections.

      Samy Sharaf, an artillery lieutenant whose brother was one of the participants, tipped the Military Intelligence Department, and was rewarded with membership of the agency. On January 16, Zakaria Muhi al-Din apprehended thirty-five culprits, tried them summarily, and sentenced twelve of them to prison, including Mehanna, by March 19.46 As soon as the ringleaders were detained, five hundred artillery officers met at their service headquarters and threatened to use force to free their colleagues. To deescalate the situation, Zakaria promised to release them after they had spent a mere three years in prison. In a letter from prison, Captain Abd al-Khaleq maintained that the failure of the artillery’s countercoup paved the way for dictatorship under Nasser

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