The Generals in Their Labyrinth
2018; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 35; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1215/07402775-7085568
ISSN1936-0924
Autores Tópico(s)Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
ResumoGeneral Tolba Radwan smokes another cigarette and watches from behind dark glasses as his entourage of fans squeeze in for selfies with Egypt’s latest military wonder. The general, now 70, is annoyed. When he was 26, he commanded dozens of soldiers on suicidal missions to defend his country. Now, he takes crowds of camera-toting families on battlefield tours. Behind Tolba burbles the New Suez Canal, a 22-mile-long tributary whose construction was spearheaded by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. The zinc-colored water cuts through the desert, which is bare except for the occasional “Long Live Egypt” mosaic and palm tree sticking out of the haze. The Suez Canal proper has belonged to the army since Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized it in 1956, and it is more than just the republic’s pride—the 150-year-old waterway is the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia, and Egypt’s main source of hard currency, bringing in about $3 billion a year. After Egypt plunged into an economic nosedive following the collapse of Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year regime, the New Canal promised to double the Suez’s revenue in less than a decade. While previous presidents had failed to raise sufficient funds for the extension, el-Sissi collected $8 billion in 10 days as Egyptians flocked to buy canal investment certificates. More than 25,000 Egyptian workers were hired to extract over 260 million tons of sand. In a way, it was a nostalgic assertion of independence. At a lavish inaugural celebration in 2015, the president, clad in military regalia, sailed down the canal below fighter planes tracing hearts in the sky. The country went into a nationalistic delirium. Three years later, it is still a popular destination. Several times a year, retired officials like Tolba lead trips to the canal and the battlefields beyond it, arranged by civilian associations that promote the army. Egypt is in an age of military idolization, and generals are its national heroes. Back in the eastern city of Ismailia, selfies finally over, Tolba stubs out his last cigarette and boards the bus to cross the canal.This country has been dreaming a soldier’s dream since 1952, when a coup toppled the monarchy and inaugurated what, until 2012, was an unbroken line of president-generals. The ambitions of such leaders have historically been formed at least partly in response to Israel, Egypt’s regional rival. Altogether, Egypt has fought four wars with Israel: in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. Most older Egyptians have strong memories of 1967, when Israel launched a surprise attack on Egyptian airfields, catching Nasser’s pilots off guard. Within six days, Israel had destroyed most of the Egyptian air force, occupied the Sinai Peninsula, and seized east Jerusalem and the West Bank from the Jordanians. It also captured Syria’s Golan Heights. Suddenly, Egypt’s powerful position among post-imperial states in the region receded. The republic sank into mass depression.The generation of generals who had been conscripted into fulfilling Nasser’s grand visions of modernizing the republic and prevailing over its enemies were stunned by this defeat. National morale remained low until 1969, when these troops were outfitted with Soviet supplies and sent back to the front lines. Officers like Tolba, who had bitter memories of 1967, were tasked with reclaiming both Sinai and the republic’s lost dignity. They did both in late October 1973, when the Egyptian army managed to cross Israel’s formidable Bar Lev defensive line along the eastern bank of the Suez Canal and lay claim to the territory. This was the fire that forged the 1973 generals. Tolba likes to recall how, with vengeance in their hearts, his men stormed the enemy outpost of Tabat Shagara.The victory reestablished the army’s status in Egypt. Returning young officers were celebrated as conquering heroes and showered with promotions, stipends, prestigious medals, lucrative state jobs, and army club memberships. Their armed forces IDs allowed them to cut traffic and dine at the state’s finest military clubs. But despite the outpouring of support, officers were barred from speaking publicly about the war by the military higher-ups, who feared that the public would be led astray by unnecessary bravura or, worse, contradictory accounts. Instead, the official narrative focused on presidents and their top generals. Hosni Mubarak, a former fighter pilot, was Commander of the Air Force when it launched a successful surprise attack on Israeli soldiers occupying the east bank of the Suez Canal in 1973. He became the star of the war, and after President Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981, Egypt’s fourth military president. Yet Mubarak’s ascent revealed the fault lines that had always run through the close relationship between the military and the government. Wary of the army’s influence, Mubarak began to remove generals from the limelight and depoliticize the army, instead encouraging officers to get involved in the state economy. While doing this, he consolidated power and reigned unchallenged until 2011, when mass protests swept him from office. Today, thanks in part to Mubarak’s initiatives, the army is a complex conglomerate, though no public information is available about its role in the Egyptian economy. Untaxed and often operating under the radar, its high-ranking members manufacture and sell everything from fuel to pasta. They own land, steel mills, shipping corporations, hotels, media outlets, bridges, and schools. A recent creation is a 1,300-foot-long BMX track outside Cairo, off-limits to cyclists without army security clearance.On the horizon, across the canal, the bayonet of an enormous concrete AK-47 impales the Sinai haze. This is one of many monuments dotting the landscape that commemorates Egypt’s 1973 victory. The two buses carrying Tolba and the tour group cross the Suez, smoothly pass through various military checkpoints, and head into the Sinai desert. Six miles and two monuments later—one a giant mosaic of the peninsula featuring protruding rockets, the other a helmet and bayonet—the pilgrimage arrives at Tabat Shagara, one of the eight outposts that comprised the Bar Lev defensive line. The trip was arranged by “Historians 1973,” an organization of amateur military historians that charges $8 for a day of site visits capped by a farewell feast at the Army Club in Ismailia. This kind of patriotic tourism came into existence after the 2011 revolution, giving the military another way to line its pockets. Around 50 Egyptians get off the buses, pay the 28-cent admission, and disperse to explore. These conquered fortifications are national memorials, sacred sites whose underground bunkers are still scattered with abandoned artillery and Israeli helmets. On pilgrimages to these former battlefields, returning generals like to talk about how many Israelis they killed, how they watched comrades plunge jets into enemy posts, and how much shrapnel they still carry in their bodies. Stories of martyrdom, violence, and dignity restored get the crowd going; they whistle and clap until palms go blue. Meanwhile, kids act out attacks on Israeli tanks and run around shouting, “die, Israeli dog, die.” A couple find a cozy spot on a canon overlooking decaying war memorabilia. Men take turns holding a bazooka and grinning at cameras. Bored sentries, unused to crowds of this size, watch with interest. Then the sun starts to melt into the sands, the army-themed music fades, and the barks of wild dogs fill the void. The battlefield descends into loneliness.In Egypt, the intensity of nationalistic fervor always corresponds to the existence of a threat. Until 1979, that threat was Israel; now, it is Islamists, who have opposed military presidents since the 1950s. In the 1970s, as religiosity was ascendant in Egyptian culture, Sadat loosened restrictions on the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, a sociopolitical movement founded in 1928. Less than a decade later, President Sadat was assassinated by Islamists for signing a peace treaty with Israel. Under Mubarak, his successor, terrorism became more prevalent. In the 90s, attacks like the Luxor massacre, where 62 tourists were killed at a popular archaeological site, spurred legislation that constricted political expression. Crackdowns continued, and by the end of the decade parliamentary politics was virtually irrelevant. Two years after Mubarak was ousted in the 2011 revolution, Egypt’s first non-military president, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, was removed by army-backed protests for enforcing Islamist policies. During his reign, terrorist attacks, particularly on churches and police stations, became even more frequent. When el-Sissi, the army chief under Morsi, won the presidency the following year, he was elected on an anti-terror campaign. He brought with him a specific brand of nationalism—one based on militarism, populism, and xenophobia. Invoking national security gave the government carte blanche to criminalize anyone: terrorists, liberals, belly dancers, homosexuals, photographers, and people who simply found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. El-Sissi represented an institution that had kept the country functioning peacefully for decades, and which was the only defense against terrorism. The most vulnerable Egyptians, those dependent on state support, embraced him, and the army rose on a wave of fear and pride. In thick of all this, the 1973 generals, throwbacks to a glorious moment in Egyptian history, were elevated as national heroes.As this was happening, Egypt was suffering from a major economic crisis. Fuel subsidies plummeted, and the value of the Egyptian pound fell by more than half. El-Sissi appealed to the army to expand their patronage in national enterprises, and military officials stepped in to address market shortages. Soon, they were selling everything from cancer medicine to baby formula to sugar (essential for sweetened tea, the national drink) at reduced prices. They crowded out other economic actors and private sector competitors. The details of the army’s economic activities remain, as always, a state secret, but the institution’s good standing with el-Sissi has helped Egypt draw in more international investment, especially from wealthy Gulf states, and has helped el-Sissi consolidate his grip on power. In one of his early presidential speeches, el-Sissi told the army, “You have no choice but to put your hands in mine to rebuild the Egyptian state.”“I was a naughty student,” grins General Mohamed Abu Bakr, 70, as he walks through the courtyard of his alma mater, a military school in Cairo’s northern Al Qubba district, a neighborhood once known for its mansions, now dwarfed by tall brick monstrosities. During the war, he was a supersonic fighter pilot, and he loves to recall how he would dive his MiG21 into the thick of dogfights. When he runs out of these stories, he’ll tell you about how he used to fly Sadat and Mubarak around until his retirement in the late 90s. The school is putting on a show for him and two other retired generals, who were invited to talk about their youthful military exploits. Uniformed boys stand at the ready. Outside, in scorching heat, a chain of students chant “Hooh! Hooh! Hooh!” and stomp around in circles of dust. General Mohamed walks, grand and indifferent, through a cordon of saluting boys into the classroom. The aviator points an index finger and declares that in 1969 he was the first to hit an Israeli Phantom, a U.S.-made jet superior to his beloved MiG21. Applause erupts. He urges students to listen to their teachers and avoid heroin; he warns that conspirators will target them to destroy Egypt’s future.Those boys, like all students enrolled in Egyptian schools, must study patriotism. The subject was introduced during the monarchy to train people in civic responsibility. After Nasser, however, it adopted a nationalistic cast. Army conquests took center stage. Students were taught to be loyal state subjects through vague manifestos about presidential achievements and military triumphs. Then, under Mubarak, civilian apathy set in and patriotism waned. This changed again in 2014, when el-Sissi, channeling Nasser, upgraded Egypt’s nationalistic vision to include new allies (the Gulf states, except Qatar) and foes (terrorists). Suddenly, Egyptians were mobilized into citizen missionaries. Nationalistic songs were swiftly released and heard on repeat everywhere from cafes to taxis. Children walked around in khaki uniforms. Officers were invited to lecture in nursery schools, teaching tiny listeners who didn’t yet know their alphabet about the various ways in which soldiers died in Sinai. El-Sissi’s government established the Tahya Misr (Long Live Egypt) fund, calling on patriots to support the Egyptian economy. A popular slogan, “the Army and the people are one hand,” popped up on highways posters, in military establishments, and at Bar Lev sites. Ordinary people who shuffled between dusty state jobs and domestic hardships were offered the chance to be part of history. Out of hope and despair, many accepted.With the unemployment rate above 13 percent, many young boys at the school aspire to join the military hierarchy, which brings with it a guaranteed job. Some of them will be sent to work in factories or clubs, or will be enlisted to help el-Sissi realize his grand ambitions, like building a million housing units and a Vegas-like “new capital” outside Cairo. Others will be trained to fight the Islamic State in North Sinai, or dispatched to forgotten corners of the country. Only a few will become supersonic fighters like Mohamed. In the classroom, a woman takes the mic: “If the army wants to eat my children’s food and take over my home, I will still love it.” The students applaud again. After the usual round of photos and hugs and shouts of el-Sissi’s campaign catchphrase, “Long Live Egypt!” Mohamed quietly leaves.Hundreds of minarets poke through the morning smoke above the citadel that overlooks Old Cairo. This where Mohamed Ali, founder of the monarchy that ruled Egypt from the 1800s to 1952, ordered his predecessors, the ruling Mamluks, to be massacred. The generals are waiting for Ahmed Mansoury, a 70-year-old pilot who claims he can break ribcages with his bare hands. They exchange pleasantries and assemble for photographs with the people there for a tour. There is the toothless yet fiery Major Samir Nouh, who once attacked an Israeli outpost and killed 30 soldiers in one go, a feat he still boasts about. There is General Ismail Bayoumi, who lost his right arm in an explosion as his battalion crossed Bar Lev. According to his comrades, the press, and his business card, he is the “Bar Lev Vanquisher.” There is General Mohamed Rabea, who is leading this trip to the Mohamed Ali Citadel. Finally, there is Mohamed, the aviator, and Ahmed Atteya Allah, a state journalist-turned-military historian who first assembled these generals a decade ago. Mansoury never arrives.While official statistics about these trips are not made public, the generals embark on many of them every year to promote patriotism and sacrifice, and to create a legacy of their own before they die. Sometimes they travel to battlefields, schools, or military-owned auditoriums; other times to sports clubs, state libraries, or even the Pyramids, where General Rabea uses the Russian he learned in the military to win over foreign tourists. The aim of this particular trip is to fight terrorism. The group consists of around 50 people, including a woman clad from head to toe in the Egyptian flag. Patriots ask questions about the generals’ conquests, to which they receive shouted answers and pointed fingers: I killed this many enemies, I watched a friend sacrifice himself, the war took my humanity! The boys filming the generals get visible goosebumps. These testimonies will later be posted on Facebook with titles like “long live the heroes.” The procession moves through corridors where Mohamed Ali’s army slaughtered nearly 500 Mamluks and into a prison that held Islamists and Communists until it was converted into a tourist attraction, a royal palace-turned-army museum. Like any military museum in Egypt, bravery is the unifying theme, and 1973 is the centerpiece, though certain thorny historical truths are conveniently excluded. Military records are filtered to reflect the interests of the state. One will not find, for instance, mentions of the Communists, who participated in the 1952 coup and were then sent to Nasser’s prison camps. Nor will visitors find any leftist or Soviet publications, which Nasser ordered the secret service to seize out of fear that they might incite riots at state factories. (One can now find leftist Arabic magazines in Egypt, but only outside of official channels.) The debate among historians these days is how to include, if the Ministry of Education agrees, the 2011 and 2013 revolutions in school textbooks. Mubarak’s collapse has also meant that the generals are free to publish their own testimonies—with the army’s approval. General Mohamed is currently working on his, occasionally teasing TV hosts with promises of disclosing “secrets, dangerous secrets.”At the Citadel, General Rabea gathers the group, which now also includes a few Russian onlookers, and tells them that the generals’ military pedigree is over 3,000 years old, going back to the powerful pharaoh Ramses II. He also mentions the generation of commanders that preceded his own, whose names adorn Egyptian streets. Every day, hundreds of commuters pass through General Abdel Moneim Reyad Square in central Cairo, named after a commander killed in an Israeli raid, where a cacophony of microbus drivers shout, pee, and hunt for clientele. There is also the 6th of October district outside Cairo, not to be confused with the 6th of October bridge that bisects the city, and the 15th of May bridge (the day of the attack on Israel in 1948) that shadows 26th of July street (commemorating the 1952 coup). Those main bridges, which also double as lovers’ nests, are just a small fraction of the military’s territorial markings. And their reach goes beyond just naming rights: The generals control the country’s infrastructure, from the streets to the metro stations (demonstrators arrived at Tahrir through Sadat station), to the bridges and inter-city highways, where military police collect tolls. Their influence ripples throughout the country. There is, however, one general whose name has been scratched out of public memory—Hosni Mubarak.“Sadat has arrived!” The dead leader struts into a packed auditorium at Cairo’s Opera House. People rush at him with smartphone cameras. Nature blessed this impersonator with the bone structure and wiry physique of the late leader; the rest he carefully crafted himself: Sadat’s trademark mustache, rectangular vintage glasses, his preferred gallabeya and robe, and, of course, his signature wit. After building a TV career impersonating the ex-president, this actor has seen his star rise amid the recent nationalistic euphoria. This free event is for “the mothers of martyrs,” whose sons died in recent military clashes. The celebration is chaotic: Folk dancers perform, leukemia patients recite poems about life and death, and a man dressed as a leopard gives interviews on live TV. The small auditorium is packed with dozens of joyful attendees. Events like this one provide people with a sense of stability and meaning—and give them an occasion to celebrate with entertainers and war heroes. Sadat joins the dancers onstage and pretends to puff a pipe, the late president’s leitmotif. The generals in the front row watch him indifferently. After all, they met the man himself. “May God have mercy on you, oh president!” someone shouts. Sadat grabs an el-Sissi impersonator, who has just arrived, and the duo cut their way through cameras and hands to get to the stage. “Take it easy on [el-Sissi], he is still new,” Sadat deadpans.Before 2011, the generals found comfort in each other’s company, meeting to privately reminisce about past conquests, both military and romantic. These days, their gatherings are mostly arranged by pro-Army youth groups that informally preach the “1973 spirit.” One such organization is the Association Friends of the Warrior Development, founded by historian Ahmed Atteya. When not out with the generals, Atteya sits in a dusty library above an algae plantation at a state research center in Cairo. Back in the mid-90s, he stumbled on a newspaper article about one of the 1973 heroes, who became the subject of his first book. It did not create any ripples in literary circles—none of his books have—but it did prompt him to start his association. Only two years old, it now has over 200 members. Generals were accepted automatically, and others were admitted on the basis of patriotic activism. Its goal is “to transmit the generals’ sacrifices to future generations.” “History is of two kinds,” Atteya tells me, “one by authority and the other of the people, and the two never agree.” The 1973 war is one such example; thanks to the secrecy surrounding official records, the public may never be certain about what actually happened.Professor Khaled Fahmy, a historian who splits his time teaching between Cambridge in the U.K. and the American University in Cairo, has spent many hours battling the bureaucracy of the National Archives. Unlike Ahmed, he is a believer in the 2011 revolution and has published articles critical of the generals. He believes that the army’s current resurgence is based on fear rather than genuine affection. Since 1952, Khaled says, politics and the public mentality have been gradually militarized and censored, to the extent that “we [civilians] do not have any original military sources since our war with Israel in 1948, and everything that was published is not based on Egyptian sources.” But this does not mean the army lacks sources of its own, he adds—military records are kept at the National Archives, with access granted only to select individuals. Fahmy is at odds with Ahmed in most regards, but one thing the scholars do agree on is the fact that the army’s presence in Egyptian public life has increased since 2013—for better or worse.Ever since Nasser discovered that radio could reach illiterate listeners across the region, the media has been under state control. After 2011, el-Sissi cracked down on any reporting deemed offensive to the army or police. Anti-military shows were cancelled, and journalists prosecuted. To fill in the gaps, the generals suddenly had to dust off their old war stories. They get especially busy in October, when the 1973 anniversary rolls around. At one show commemorating the victory, Mansoury, the retired aviator, marched into a TV studio in Cairo’s media city with his helmet under his arm. “She [the helmet] fought with me and saw sweat, death, and blood and now is the only thing left,” he declared. Egyptian media loves the grandiose and shocking, and Mansoury, who has a serious thing for drama, is in demand. He earned a reputation as a “crazy pilot” for a wartime incident in which he dove to low altitude and then rocketed back into the sky through a cloud of sand, escaping a pack of Israeli fighter jets. On another sortie, he engaged with six phantom jets—an event he likes to call his “final death maneuver,” though death is “a coward,” he says, and did not claim him. For acting as a “knight fighting for the sake of God” he was later given the highest Order of the Republic, a medal awarded by the president himself.After sitting for interviews with several talk shows, Mansoury takes his beloved helmet and drives back to his apartment. He lives alone, surrounded by scattered medals and collages of newspaper clippings featuring him and his supersonic jet, which he still refers to as his “mistress.” He sleeps in a coffin-sized cot in the living room, claiming that it will prepare him for the afterlife. Sometimes he’ll visit his old MiG 218040, which is rusting away at the October War Panorama, an army-run memorial inside a cylindrical building in an affluent part of Cairo. The central mural depicts, in melodramatic detail, the Bar Lev breach as painted by a team of North Korean artists. Viewings are accompanied by a sound and light show. Mubarak inaugurated the memorial in 1989 and it originally contained a tribute to him—a large mosaic styled after The Last Supper in which the former president, pointing at maps spread out on a table, briefs Sadat and the Chief of Army Operations. Behind them stand the other members of the Supreme Command. After 2011, Mubarak was removed from his mosaic. Outside, engineless MiGs jut skyward from pedestals. One of them is Mansoury’s mistress.Today, the fan base of the 1973 generals spans the older people who grew up under Sadat’s military triumphalism to the young people who were raised with the military pomp of Mubarak’s peacetime. Egypt is a country of 90 million people, and to many of them, though they never saw war, the army’s familiar bear hug is a welcome return, a bulwark against unstable democracy. Yet there are some, and particularly those who took to the streets for the 2011 revolution, with more mixed feelings. Hand in hand, the generals and President el-Sissi say that Egypt is at war against a shape-shifting threat. Sometimes it takes the form of homegrown terrorists, other times, foreign conspirators plotting to divide the country. It is an unconventional war, waged on the battlefield of public opinion, and its ending will likely decide Egypt’s future. But for now, the present is being written with an eye to the past.
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