As Egyptians look forward to an alternative political future, the country’s military is repositioning itself as an interim
Photographed by Reuters
ruler preparing the way through a critical transition.
After besieged President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, the Supreme Council of Egyptian Armed Forces took charge of the country, committing itself to transfer power to a civilian government.
On Monday, military rulers pledged to oversee the amendment of the Constitution. On Tuesday, the military spokesman saluted the martyrs who lost their lives during the uprising.
The imposed curfew has not been rigidly implemented and soldiers have often been seen fraternizing with protesters.
And on Tuesday, army officials told journalists they weren’t interested in extending their rule and would like to see the transition period end within six months.
All of which has given the military unprecedented popular support and helped it reclaim its central role in Egyptian political life, according former Lieutenant General Mohamed Ali Belal, speaking to Al-Masry Al-Youm.
However, the military’s position has not always been without challenge, particularly in the recent past.
Regime-army tensions
Since 1999, Mubarak’s son Gamal, 47, who spent 11 years working at Bank of America in Cairo and in London, claimed an increasingly prominent role in the nation’s political life.
Analysts say that Gamal eased the way for business friends to gain senior positions in the NDP and in the cabinet of Ahmed Nazif, the former prime minister sacked by Mubarak following the first four days of massive protests.
“In the last six years, people who were close to the army witnessed a silent uproar within the military over the rise of Gamal and like-minded businessmen, as they were imposing a hegemony over banking, industry and even the media,” Abdullah al-Senawy, a leftist writer and outspoken critic of the toppled Mubarak regime, told Al-Masry Al-Youm in a phone interview.
The military, a key economic actor in Egypt which has utilized its sovereignty over wide areas of land to develop malls, gated cities and holiday resorts, objected to the capitalist practices of Gamal’s businessmen associates, who sold off national land, assets and resources to foreign corporations, according to Paul Amar, professor of global and international studies at the University of California.
Al-Senawy once wrote how Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, 75, expressed his disagreement with the members of the NDP Policies Secretariat, calling them “a bunch of American boys.”
In an April 2007 US embassy cable, an Egyptian parliamentarian told American diplomats that “Gamal increasingly views Tantawi and [Egyptian General Intelligence Service] EGIS head Omar Suleiman as a threat to his presidential ambitions,” adding that Tantawi’s days–as well as Suleiman’s–could be numbered.
The MP, according to the diplomatic memo, also “alleged that Tantawi recently told him, in confidence, of his deepening frustration with Gamal.”
“Both Tantawi and Suleiman are loyal to Mubarak and the former president couldn’t risk removing them because he simply couldn’t guarantee the loyalty of the generals of the second row in the army,” said al-Senawy.
Another source of dispute was the rising influence of the Ministry of Interior over the internal political landscape, especially with the Interior Ministry’s growing budget, which was competing with that of the military.
“The army perceived [former Interior Minister General Habib] al-Adly as the minister responsible for cracking down on opponents and paving the way for Gamal to succeed his father,” said al-Senawy.
Gamal, who regularly attended military celebrations with his father, sitting among high-ranking military commanders, had allegedly been trying to get closer to some of the army strongmen such as the presidential guards, but the influential presidential guards were more loyal to the traditional commanders of the army, according to al-Senawy.
Now in command of the country, Egypt’s military rulers hope the political system will be reshaped in such a way that they can’t be subject to any attempts to marginalize them, as they perceived happened with Mubarak’ son.
The power of the military
Despite any temporary marginalization, the Egyptian army has remained a consistent powerhouse of the state throughout the years.
All four Egyptian presidents since the overthrow of the monarchy in the early 1950s have come from the military, which has ever since played a pivotal role within domestic politics.
The army quelled bread riots in Egypt in 1977 and halted a rampage by policemen over pay in 1986.
During Mubarak’s reign, former military generals occupied many posts, such as governors or consultants for the government.
Despite a more liberalized media industry with less red lines and taboos, the military remained a sheltered area for coverage. Previously, approval from the military was a must to publish any story about the army.
Egypt’s modern army was built in the early years of the 19th century and has been at the heart of power since mid-ranking army officers seized power following the 1952 coup d’état.
Later, the army fought four wars, all with Israel, in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973.
Later, according to the CIA factbook, “Egypt played a key role during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis. President Mubarak helped assemble the international coalition and deployed 35,000 Egyptian troops against Iraq to liberate Kuwait. The Egyptian contingent was the third-largest in the coalition forces, after the US and UK in the aftermath of the Gulf war.”
As of September 2010, Egypt’s army is the fifth main contributor of troops to UN peacekeeping operations. The army contributes with 5458 military personnel in five African countries (in addition to Nepal and the Western Sahara), according to UN figures.
The Egyptian army is the tenth largest in the world, with more than 468,000 personnel (army 340,000, navy 18,500, air 30,000, and air defense command 80,000), in addition to a reserve of 479,000, according to the 2010 Military Balance, issued by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
With its estimated US$4.56 billion defense budget in 2010, Egypt’s military is the “strongest among its immediate neighbors in Africa, but is substantially lower than the budgets of its two Middle-Eastern neighbors, Israel and Saudi Arabia,” say Jane’s Information Group, a military-specialized think tank based in London.
Relationship with the US
Experts argue it’s unlikely the army will change its stance concerning its strategic links with the United States during or following Egypt’s transitional period.
“You have to note that the current Egyptian commanders are the architects of this growing strategic relationship. They view Washington as a main supply for weapons that keep Egypt maintaining a balance of power with Israel,” Lieutenant General Belal told Al-Masry Al-Youm.
Army commanders told the nation on Saturday that they would respect all treaties signed by Egypt, a move to reassure Israel and Washington.
“Their [the army's] stance toward Israel is the same. The military is a professional institution. The army knows that those treaties are binding and they were protecting them. It’s not expected that the army will make any change to such agreements,” added Belal.
Since its peace deal with Israel, Egypt’s military has been the biggest recipient of US military aid after Tel Aviv, receiving nearly US$36 billion in military assistance–an annual installment of US$1.3 billion.
In addition to that, Egypt’s army has built closer ties with US through joint training operations such as the bi-annual Operation Bright Star exercises.
At the time of the protests, the Pentagon was hosting Sami Anan, chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces, and other senior Egyptian military personnel for annual bilateral defense talks.
Leaked US diplomatic cables revealed how Washington has viewed with anxiety the role of the Egyptian army.
“The idea that the military remains a key political and economic force is conventional wisdom here,” said a US diplomat in an embassy cable from July 2009, released by WikiLeaks.
“However, other observers tell us that the military has grown less influential, more fractured and its leadership weaker in recent years,” the cable added.
Diplomatic cables also demonstrate disagreement between the two allies over military assistance and strategy.
The US has sought “to interest the Egyptian military into expanding their mission in ways that reflect new regional and transnational security threats, such as piracy, border security, and counterterrorism,” said one memo dated 21 December 2008, also released by WikiLeaks.
“But the aging leadership, however, has resisted our efforts and remained satisfied with continuing to do what they have done for years: Train for force-on-force warfare with a premium on grounds forces and armor.”
Future roles
Now, with the army disposing of the threat posed by Mubarak’s son and his likeminded affiliates, questions remain unanswered about what roll it will play in the future.
“This depends on how much success we witness during the transitional period,” said al-Senawy. “If we succeed in building a parliamentary system with reasonable presidential power, the army will find itself faced by a new legitimacy based on democratic choices.
“In such a context, the state will have full supervision over the army and its main duties, such as protecting the nation as well as protecting the Constitution. The whole military institution would be subject to parliamentary oversight, so there is nothing to fear in this regard.”
@almasryalyoum
While Jon Alternman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies warnsof a 1952-style military rule, where the army replaces the revolution’s momentum, Steve Negus writes that the current situation is incomparable.
“The military did not depose Mubarak on its own initiative, but because a mass protest movement had made the country ungovernable.”
For Negus, the military can only relinquish power as promised because, unlike the 1952 army initiative, it doesn’t have any other legitimacy to rely on, such as putting an end to the British colonial rule.
For Negus and other experts, the work of democrats becomes crucial in defining the terms according to which the army will relinquish its current position–something military leaders have assured the Egyptian people it intends to do as soon as possible.
