On the sixth of October 1981, Anwar el Sadat reviewed the troops on the anniversary of the 1973 war. When all of a sudden a vehicle veered out of the marching column, men stormed out throwing hand grenades and firing with machine guns. Many were wounded and eleven dead, among them Anwar Sadat. Those men were uniformed men, which means they belonged to the Egyptian Army. Again this means that the Egyptian President was assassinated by his own army. Thus, many questions occur; who why etc. In order to find the answers, one has to dive into the life, events and history of this distinguished, controversial character, on whose tomb was carved, ” A man who lived for principles and died for peace.”
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Muhammad Anwar Al Sadat (25december1918-6 October 1981) was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination on 6 October 1981. He was a senior member of the free officers group that overthrew the Muhammad Ali Dynasty in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, a close confidant of Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom he succeeded as President in 1970. He was born on the 25th of December 1918 Mit Abu al-Kum, Egypt. Died on the 6th of October 1981 (aged 63). In his eleven years ruling as president he changed Egypt’s direction, departing from some of the economic and political principles of Nasserism by reinstituting the multi-party system and launching the Infitah. His leadership in the October war of 1973 and the regaining of Sinai made him an Egyptian hero. His visit to Israel and the eventual Israel-Egypt peace posthumously, but was an act enormously unpopular with the Arab world and Islamists, and resulted in Egypt being expelled from the Arab League.
Plotting against British Rule and King Farouk
As a schoolboy, Sadat frequently demonstrated against the British, who occupied Egypt at that time. His heroes were all nationalists: Mahatma Gandhi, Adolf Hitler, Ataturk, and Egyptians Saad Zaghlul, Mustafa Kamil, and Mustafa Nahhas. He also admired a peasant martyr from Dinshaway (near Mit Abul Kom) whom the British had executed in 1906.
One result of the 1936 treaty which Prime Minister Nahhas signed with the British was the opening of the military academy to lower middle class youths like Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat graduated from the academy in 1938 and was posted to Manqabad in Upper Egypt. There he first met Nasser, a leader by nature, serious and somewhat aloof. The enthusiastic young officers talked politics, debating the best way to rid their country of the British.
In 1939 Sadat entered the Signal Corps. While Nasser was off in the Sudan, Sadat plotted direct action against the British. Occasionally he met with Hassan Al-Banna, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group of religious zealots who wanted to root out Western and secular influences and turn Egypt into a theocracy.
Axis forces based in Libya pushed into Egypt in 1941, hoping to seize the vital Suez Canal. In the following year the British arrested Sadat for plotting with two German spies who were living in a Nile houseboat and trying to send information to Rommel’s army. Escaping from jail in October 1944, Sadat hid out until the end of the war which made it safe for him to resurface. He then participated in an unsuccessful attempt on the life of former Prime Minister Nahhas, who had cooperated with the British during the war. Sadat’s role in the killing of Amin Osman, an Anglophile politician, landed him back in jail in January 1946. Sadat’s friendship with King Farouk’s private doctor linked him to the Iron Guard, a secret palace organization which struck at the king’s enemies.
The trial of Sadat and others in the Amin Osman case was overshadowed by the outbreak of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The principal defendant escaped; Sadat and the others were acquitted and released. After dabbling in business schemes for a year or two Sadat won reinstatement in the army. He reestablished contact with Nasser’s circle, which were now calling themselves “Free Officers” and planning to overthrow the corrupt and inept government. The riots of January 1952 destroyed foreign-owned businesses throughout Cairo and completed the public’s disillusionment with the king and the old politicians.
Nasser summoned Sadat to Cairo from his post in Sinai on the evening of July 22, 1952. But finding no further message from his chief, Sadat took his family to the movies and nearly missed the coup. However, it was Sadat who broadcast the news of the coup to the public on the morning of July 23. King Farouk was sent into exile and Brigadier Mohamed Naguib served as the Free Officers’ front man until Nasser broke with him and put him under house arrest in 1954.
The posts Sadat held during the Nasser years were not quite at the center of power. He edited the regime’s newspaper, al-Gumhuriya. He served as secretary-general of the Islamic Congress and of the National Union, the forerunner of the Arab Socialist Union and Egypt’s only political party. During the 1960s he was speaker of the National Assembly. Sadat, along with Field Marshall Abdel Hakim Amer, bears much of the responsibility for Egypt’s disastrous involvement in the Yemeni civil war (1962-1967). Then Egypt’s defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War nearly destroyed Nasser’s regime. Aware of his ill-health and of plots against him, Nasser named Sadat vice president at the end of 1969. Nicknamed “Major Yes-Yes” for his acquiesces to Nasser’s wishes; Sadat had outlasted most of the other Free Officers who might have inherited the presidency.
During Nasser’s presidency
During the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sadat war appointed Minister of State in 1954. In 1959, he assumed the position of Secretary to the National Union. Sadat was the president of the National Assembly (1960-1968) and then vice president and member of the presidential Council in 1964. He was reappointed as vice president again in December 1969.
Presidency
After Nasser’s death in 1970, Sadat succeeded him as President, but it was widely considered that this presidency would be shortly lived. Viewing him as having been little more than a puppet of the former President, Nasser’s supporters in government settled on Sadat as someone they could easily manipulate. Nasser’s supporters were well satisfied for six months until Sadat instituted the Corrective Revolution and purged Egypt of most of its other leaders and other elements of the Nasser era. In 1971, Sadat endorsed in a letter the peace proposals of UN negotiator Gunnar Jarring which seemed to lead to a full peace with Israel on the basis of Israel’s withdrawal to its pre-war borders. This peace initiative failed as neither the United States nor Israel accepted the terms discussed then.
Sadat likely perceived that Israel’s desire to negotiate was directly correlated to how much of a military threat they perceived from Egypt, which after the Six-Day war of 1967, was at an all time low. Israel also viewed the most substantial part of the Egyptian threat as the presence of soviet equipment and personnel (in thousands at this time). It was for those reasons that Sadat expelled the Soviet military advisers from Egypt and proceeds to whip his army into shape for a renewed confrontation with Israel.
6th October War
On the sixth of October, 1973 the shattering, unexpected news broke and spread all over the world. A war was launched by the Egyptian army against the Israeli’s putting an end to the latter occupation of some Egyptian and Syrian lands. The long-awaited victory was achieved. Bar Lev line was devastated, and the legend of the invincible Israeli army was dispelled. Using petrol as a weapon was for the first time declared in this war by King Faisal, the king of Saudi Arabia. This bold, decisive and wise action had indirect tremendous effects on that war, as it was an ingenious way of forcing the leaders of many (if not all) countries to change their over supportive policy towards Israel. The glorious triumph of Egypt and Syria following the 1973 war, restored dignity throughout Egypt and the Arab World, and for years Sadat was known as the “hero of the crossing.” “Without faith you might just as well commit suicide.” Those words were stated by Sadat reflecting his belief in God and himself which are weapons no non-believer can fight. Besides, self confidence is the last thing Anwar Sadat lacked. Being announced by that faith and confidence, Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel and speak before the Knesset in Jerusalem seeking a permanent peace settlement.
The Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty
The Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978 led to a negotiated peace between those two nations signed in Washington DC on March 26, 1979, the first between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors. Israel had a consistent policy since it’s founding in 1948 that called for direct, one-to-one negotiations as the method of resolving disputes with the Arab countries, but until Sadat brought Egypt to the table no Arab country had been willing to even talk to Israel.
Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for their historic agreements. However, the initiative was far from universally popular in other Arab countries or even Sadat’s own country, Egypt. Other Arab nations, and especially the Palestinians, saw Egypt’s agreement with Israel as a stab in the back, leaving them weaker and with less bargaining leverage against Israel. Without Egypt, the “united Arab front” had no credibility. Sadat became isolated in the Arab world and increasingly unpopular at home, conditions that finally led to his assassination in 1981.
Since the signing of the treaty, Egypt has stood by its commitments, even after President Sadat was assassinated by Muslim extremists. The Israel-Egypt peace pact was denounced by all other Arab states and no further progress was made toward an end the Israel-Arab conflict until the Madrid Conference in 1991.
Unpopularity and conspiracy theories
The last years of Sadat’s reign were marked by turmoil and there were several allegations of corruption against him and his family. In January 1977, a series of ‘Bread Riots’ protested Sadat’s economic liberalization and specifically a government decree lifting price controls on basic necessities like bread. 120 buses and hundreds of buildings burned in Cairo alone. Dozens of nightclubs on the famous Pyramids Street were sacked by Islamists. Following the riots the government reversed itself and recontrolled prices. Near the end of his presidency, most of Sadat’s advisors resigned in protest of his internal policies. The deaths of the Defense Minister Ahmed Badawi and 13 senior Egyptian Army officers in a helicopter crash on 6 march 1981 near the Libyan border increased the public anger at Sadat and his policy.
C:UsersSaifDesktopnEO_IMG_DSC_7083.jpg Sadat’s Tomb, with a memorial of the Unknown Soldiers.
Islamistis were enraged by Sadat’s Sinai treaty with Israel, particularly the radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad. According to interviews and information gathered by journalist Lawrence Wright, the group was recruiting military officers and accumulating weapons, waiting for the right moment to a launch “a complete overthrow of the existing order” in Egypt. Chief strategist of El-Jihad was Aboud el-Zumar, a colonel in the military intelligence whose “plan was to kill the main leaders of the country, capture the headquarters of the army and State Security, the telephone exchange building, and of course the radio and television building, where news of the Islamic revolution would then be broadcast, unleashing-he expected- a popular uprising against secular authority all over the country.”
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Assassination and aftermath
On 6 October 198, the month after the crackdown, Sadat was assassinated during the annual victory parade in Cairo. A fatwa approving the assassination had been obtained from OmarAbdel-Rahman, a cleric later convicted in the U.S for his role in 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Sadat was protected by four layers of security and the army parade should have been safe due ammunition-seizure rules. However, the officers in charge of that procedure were on hajj to Mecca.
As air force Mirage jets flew overhead, distracting crowd, a troop truck halted before the presidential reviewing stand, and a lieutenant strode forward. Sadat stood to receive his salute, whereupon the assassins rose from the truck, throwing grenades and firing assault rifles rounds. The attack lasted about two minutes Photographer Bill Foley captured one of the last shots of a living Sadat. The photograph is titled “The Last Smile.” The lead assassin Khalid Islambouli shouted “Death to pharaoh!” as he ran towards the stand and shot Sadat. After he fell to the floor people around Sadat threw chairs on his body to try to protect him from bullets. Eleven others were killed, including the Cuban ambassador, an Omani general and a Coptic Orthodox bishop, and 28 were wounded including James Tully, the Irish minister of defense, and four U.S military liaison officers. Sadat was then rushed to a hospital, but was declared dead within hours. This was the first time in Egyptian History that the head of state had been assassinated by an Egyptian citizen. Two of the attackers were killed and the others were arrested by military police on-site. Islambouli was later found guilty and was executed in April 1982.
Maybe now, we became able to find sensible answers to the previously mentioned questions; who why etc. In addition, we get to fully understand the words engraved on his tomb and how appropriate they are. He was really a man who “lived for principles and died for peace.”
Quotes Said By Anwar Al Sadat
“Fear is, I believe, a most effective tool in destroying the soul of an individual – and the soul of a people.”
“Many people seek after what they do not possess and are thus enslaved by the very things they want to acquire”
“There is no happiness for people at the expense of other people”
“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.”
“You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.”
” Russians Can give you arms but only United States can give you a solution.”
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