Anwar Sadat
Mohammed Anwar Al Sadat محمد أنورالسادات | |
|---|---|
| File:Sadat5.jpg | |
| 3rd President of Egypt | |
| In office October 15, 1970 – October 6, 1981 | |
| Preceded by | Gamal Abdel Nasser |
| Succeeded by | Hosni Mubarak |
| Personal details | |
| Born | December 25, 1918 Mit Abu Al-Kum, Al-Minufiyah, Egypt |
| Died | October 6, 1981 Cairo |
| Nationality | Egyptian from Al Menofeia |
| Political party | Arab Socialist Union (until 1977) National Democratic Party (from 1977) |
Field Marshal Mohammed Anwar Al Sadat (Arabic:محمد أنورالسادات) in (December 25, 1918 – October 6, 1981) was an Egyptian soldier and politician, who served as the third President of Egypt from October 15, 1970 until his assassination on October 6, 1981. He is considered in Egypt and in the West to be one of the most influential Egyptian and Middle Eastern figures in modern history.
Early life
Sadat was born in Mit Abu Al-Kum, Al-Minufiyah, Egypt, to a poor Egyptian-Sudanese family, one of 13 brothers and sisters. His father was Egyptian, his mother was Sudanese. He graduated from the Royal Military Academy in Cairo in 1938 and was appointed in the Signal Corps. He joined the Free Officers Movement, committed to freeing Egypt from British control.
During World War II he was imprisoned by the British for his efforts to obtain help from the Axis Powers in expelling occupying British forces. He participated in the 1952 coup which dethroned King Farouk I. When the revolution erupted, he was assigned to take over the Radio networks and announce the outbreak of the revolution to the Egyptian people.
In 1964, after holding many positions in the Egyptian government, he was chosen to be Vice-President by President Gamal Abdal Nasser. He served in that capacity until 1966, and again from 1969 to 1970.
During Nasser's Presidency
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During the reign of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sadat was appointed Minister of State in 1954. In 1959 he assumed the position of Secretary to the National Union. Sadat was the president of the Parliament (1960 - 1968) and then as Vice President and member of the Presidential Council in (1964). Sadat was reappointed as Vice President again in December 1969. After Nasser died of a heart attack the following year, Sadat gave a speech to the nation that relayed the tragic news. He managed to attain the Presidency by clearing out his opponents in what the state-owned media termed The Corrective Revolution.
He survived the turmoil of Nasser's times by loyal obedience to him.
Sadat ascended to the presidency after Nasser's death by very clever means. Considered nothing but a puppet of the former President, Nasser's other cronies settled on Sadat as someone they could easily manipulate. For months, he was known as the donkey as he learned to control the levers of power. Nasser's past supporters were well satisfied for six months until Sadat instituted the The Corrective Revolution and purged Egypt of most of its other leaders and other elements loyal to Nasser.
Presidency
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 as 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 1967 war, 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 the thousands at this time). It was for those reasons that Sadat expelled the Soviet military advisors from Egypt and proceeded to whip his army into shape for a renewed confrontation with Israel.
In 1973, Sadat, together with Syria, led Egypt into the Yom Kippur War with Israel, and succeeded early on in regaining parts of the Sinai Peninsula, which had been conquered by Israel during the Six-Day War (see Bar Lev Line). However, three divisions of the Israeli army (IDF) led by General Ariel Sharon eventually pushed into Egypt and entrapped the Egyptian Third Army. It was at this time that Egypt's ally the Soviet Union demanded a cease-fire.
While the territorial gains of Egypt in this war were limited, approximately 15 km into the Sinai desert in the first few days of the war, Sadat's initial victories eventually led to regaining and reopening the Suez canal through the peace process with Israel in the years that followed, and restored Egyptian morale. Israelis now recognized Egypt as a formidable foe. Sadat, therefore, restored Egypt's political significance in the eyes of Israel with this attack. For many years after, Sadat was known as the "hero of the Crossing".
On November 19, 1977 Sadat became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel when he met with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, and spoke before the Knesset in Jerusalem about his views on how to achieve a comprehensive peace to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which included the full implementation of U.N. Resolution 242 and Resolution 338. He made the visit after receiving an invitation from Begin and once again sought a permanent peace settlement (much of the Arab world was outraged by the visit, due to their widespread view of Israel as a rogue state, and a tyrannical symbol of imperialism). This visit went against the U.S. and Soviet Union’s intentions, which were to revive the international Geneva Conference. In 1978, this resulted in the Camp David Peace Agreement, for which Sadat and Begin received the Nobel Peace Prize. However, the action was extremely unpopular in the Arab and Muslim World. Egypt was at that time the most powerful of the Arab nations and an icon of Arab nationalism. Many hopes were placed on Egypt to help extract concessions from Israel for the displaced Palestinians and others in the Arab world. By signing the accords, Sadat left the other Arab nations (who were reluctant to engage into such détente politics towards Israel) hanging by themselves, and steered Egypt toward Israel and the United States. This was seen as a betrayal of his predecessor Nasser's pan-Arabism, destroying visions of a united Arab front.
In 1979, the Arab League suspended Egypt's membership in the wake of Egypt's peace agreement with Israel; the League moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. It was not until 1989 that the League re-admitted Egypt as a member, and returned its headquarters to Cairo. Many believed that only a threat of force would make Israel negotiate over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Camp David accords removed the possibility of Egypt, the major Arab military power, from providing such a threat. As part of the peace deal, Israel withdrew from the Sinai peninsula in phases, returning the entire area to Egypt on April 25th 1982.
Assassination
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The last years of Sadat were marked by turmoil and corruption allegations to Sadat and his family. Sadat promised the Egyptians prosperity after the peace treaty with Israel. That was empty words and false promises.
Near the end of his presidency, most of Sadat advisors resigned in protest of his internal policies. The mysterious deaths of the Defense Minister Ahmed Badawi and 13 senior Egyptian Army officers in a helicopter crash on March 6, 1981 near the Libyan border increased the public anger on Sadat and his policy. The main questions about the crash were: how did the pilot survive the crash without any injury and how did the 14 generals use the same helicopter despite the Egyptian army regulation that does not allow two generals to use the same car or helicopter together?
General Badawi commanded the Egyptian Third Army in Sinai in the 1973 war. There were rumors that the Defense Minister issued an ultimatum to President Sadat to change his internal policies before the accident.
In September 1981, Sadat cracked down on intellectuals and activists of all ideological stripes, imprisoning communists, Nasserists, feminists, Islamists, Coptic Christian clergy, university professors, journalists, and members of student groups. The arrests totalled nearly 1,600, receiving worldwide condemnation for the extremity of his techniques. Meanwhile, internal support for Sadat disappeared under the pressure of an economic crisis and Sadat's suppression of dissidents.
On October 6, the month after the crackdown, Sadat was assassinated [1] during the annual 6th October 1973 victory parade in Cairo. The assassination was carried out by army members who were part of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization. They opposed Sadat's negotiations with Israel, as well as his use of force in the September crackdown.
A fatwa approving the assassination had been obtained from Omar Abdel-Rahman, a cleric later convicted in the U.S. for his role in the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Sadat was protected by four layers of security and the army parade should have been safe due to ammunition-seizure rules, however the officers in charge of that procedure were on hajj to Mecca.
As air force Mirage jets flew overhead, distracting the 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 rifle rounds. Sadat was shot in his head when he stood and he fell to the floor; people around him tried to protect him by throwing chairs to cover him from the bullets. The assassination operation took around 2 minutes. Two of the attackers were killed and the others were arrested by the military police on-site. The assassin Khalid Islambouli shouted "Death to Pharaoh!" as he ran towards the stand and then fired at Sadat. He was later found guilty of the crimes and executed in April of 1982. As the crowd of dignitaries scattered, many were wounded, including James Tully, the Irish Minister for Defence, and four US military liaisons. This was the first time in the Egyptian history that the head of the Egyptian state was assassinated by Egyptian citizens.
In the ensuing firefight, seven people were killed, including the Cuban ambassador and a Coptic Orthodox bishop, and 28 were wounded. Sadat was then rushed to a hospital, but he was declared dead within hours. He was succeeded by his Vice-President Hosni Mubarak, who was injured in his hand during the attack. Sadat's funeral was attended by a record number of dignitaries from around the world, including a rare simultaneous attendance by three former U.S. presidents, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon. No Arab leaders attended the funeral apart from Sudan's President Gaafar Nimeiry. Sadat was buried in the unknown soldier memorial in Cairo.
Over three hundred Islamic radicals were indicted in the trial of assassin Khalid Islambouli, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, Omar Abdel-Rahman, and Abd al-Hamid Kishk. The trial was covered by the international press and Zawahiri's knowledge of English made him the de facto spokesman for the defendants. Zawahiri was released from prison in 1984, before travelling to Afghanistan and forging a close relationship with Osama Bin Laden. In October 31, 2006 the nephew of the late President Anwar Sadat was sentenced to a year in prison for defaming Egypt's armed forces, less than a month after he gave an interview accusing Egyptian generals of masterminding his uncle's assassination.
Family
Sadat was married twice. He divorced Ehsan Madi to marry half-Egyptian/half-British Jehan Raouf (later known as Jehan Sadat), who was barely 16, on May 29, 1949. They had three daughters and one son. Jehan Sadat was the 2001 recipient of the Pearl S. Buck Award. Anwar Sadat's autobiography, In Search of Identity, was published in the USA in 1977. Currently, Mrs. Sadat is an Associate Resident Scholar at the University of Maryland where The Anwar Sadat Chair for Development and Peace was established and fully endowed in 1997 to honor her husband's legacy. A nephew, Talaat Sadat, was imprisoned in October 2006 for accusing the Egyptian military with complicity in his uncles' assassination.
Media portrayals of Anwar Sadat
In 1983, Sadat, a miniseries, aired on U.S. television with Academy Award-winning actor Louis Gossett, Jr. in the title role, though it was temporarily banned by the Egyptian government due to historical inaccuracies as reported by a former officer in the Ministry of the Interior, Ahmed Y. Zohny, who was a Ph.D candidate at The University of Pittsburgh at the time. The two-part series earned Gossett an Emmy nomination.
The first Egyptian depiction of Sadat's life came in 2001, when Ayam El-Sadat (English: Days of Sadat) was released in Egyptian Cinemas. The movie was a major success in Egypt, and was hailed as Ahmed Zaki's greatest performance to date. [2]
Sadat is a minor character in Ken Follet's "Key to Rebecca".
Books by Anwar Sadat
Anwar Sadat authored many books during his life. These include
- The Full Story of the Revolution (1954)
- Unknown Pages of the Revolution (1955)
- Revolt on the Nile (1957). (The revolt of the army officers.)
- Son, This Is Your Uncle Gamal - Memoirs of Anwar el-Sadat (1958) (A book about Gamal Abdel Nasser)
- In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (1978). (The story of his life and of his country after 1918.)
References
- Meital, Yoram. Egypt’s Struggle for Peace: Continuity and Change, 1967-1977.
- Jos Finklestone. "Anwar Sadat", Routledge, 1 edition, June 30, 1996".
- John Waterbury. "The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes, Princeton Univ Pr, Limited Ed edition, May 1983"
External links
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