The New Middle East (13 page)

He lumped together every nation and everyone living in them as being in a state of ignorance. ‘Such a society is to be counted among
jahili
societies, although it may proclaim belief in God and permit people to observe their devotion in mosques, churches and synagogues.’ And what should be done about these ignorant ‘backward societies’? ‘[P]hysical power and jihad’ should be used ‘for abolishing the organisation and authorities of the
jahili
system’.
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Qutb had stepped over the line that few Muslims care to cross. He had got into the business of ‘Takfir’. That is the word used when one Muslim accuses another of apostasy. Qutb gave future generations of violent extremist Sunni Muslim groups like al-Qaeda the right, in their own minds at least, to decide who was or was not a good Muslim, and the permission to wage war against the Muslims who failed to meet the extremists’ criteria. By definition these fringe fanatics were few and far between, and in the years that followed the publication of
Milestones
had very little impact on the world. But the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan drew them all together in one place where they formed alliances, then the Internet enabled them to stay in touch, find more recruits and spread their message of intolerance and hate.

Sayyid Qutb was silenced on the gallows in the early hours of the morning on 29 August 1966, though his words still resonate among extremist jihadi groups today. He had been briefly released from prison and then rearrested for being involved in another plot to kill Nasser. His final words, spoken through the hood placed over his head, were the Islamic Profession of Faith: ‘There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.’
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His death under Nasser’s rule was to change the life of one fifteen-year-old boy who in turn would take the lives of many others. Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri was living in one of Cairo’s then leafy southern suburbs.
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He too would join the Brotherhood. Then, inspired by Qutb and by his anger over the execution, he helped form the militant Al-Jihad Group. ‘Sayyid Qutb’s call for loyalty to God’s oneness and to acknowledge God’s sole authority and sovereignty was the spark that ignited the Islamic revolution against the enemies of Islam at home and abroad. The bloody chapters of this revolution continue to unfold day after day,’ wrote al-Zawahiri while he was the deputy leader of al-Qaeda and presumed to be hiding in a cave complex in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks.
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Nasser was the greatest foe the Muslim Brotherhood would face, because he had a vision for Arab society that competed with theirs. But when he suffered a heart attack in September 1970 that vision died with him. There would never be another Arab leader to match him, though the likes of Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein would try. The importance of his passing was acknowledged even by some of the men who hated him most. ‘The myth of the Leader of Arab nationalism who would throw Israel into the sea was destroyed,’ wrote Ayman al-Zawahiri. ‘The death of [Nasser] was not the death of one person but the death of his principles . . . and the death of a popular myth that was broken on the sands of Sinai.’
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From here the Brotherhood began to slowly rebuild and rejuvenate. It needed to adapt to survive. There were many peaks and troughs in the coming decades, but the curve was upward. The army by contrast was beginning its gradual decline. It was still incredibly powerful, however, said a secret US embassy cable, ‘following the military’s poor performance in the 1967 war . . . officers began a descent out of the upper ranks of society’.
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But, says the former Muslim Brotherhood youth leader Muhammad al-Qassas, the crushing by Nasser left its mark on the Ikhwan leadership, and it is a legacy they still struggle with today.

They learnt a painful lesson under Nasser. They thought they were very strong and had lots of followers, but when the regime came to crush them the Egyptian people did not support them. The Muslim Brotherhood leadership were jailed at a young age and Qutb was hanged. Therefore the leadership today doesn’t trust the people. Most of them still live in fear from the experience of this era, although some now don’t. However, the latter don’t have the upper hand in the group now.

‘We’re suffering two plagues at one time. First Nasser dies. Then we get Sadat,’ was the joke doing the rounds in Cairo when Anwar Sadat assumed the presidency after Nasser’s death.
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Nasser was a tough act to follow, and in the beginning nobody thought Anwar Sadat was up to the task. He’d always been regarded in military circles ‘as Nasser’s “poodle” or “Colonel Yes” ’.
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He was described as ‘shattered by Nasser’s death’, so much so that he fainted during the funeral.
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Eight months later, though, he had turned the tables on all his detractors. On 15 May 1971 Sadat carried out what became known as his ‘Corrective Revolution’. He locked up all his Nasserite opponents in the government and finally had the confidence to start having pictures of the great man replaced in the government offices with ones of himself.
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‘There was nothing in President Sadat’s long career as a Nasser loyal lieutenant to suggest that he was the man who would take Nasser’s Egypt to bits,’ wrote the
Economist
in May 1971 under the headline ‘The Man Least Likely’.
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Sadat’s actions seemed so ‘blatantly pro-American’ that leftist groups were ‘naturally convinced that the whole affair is a Central Intelligence Agency plot’.
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His philosophy, such as it was, was neatly summed up by another jibe doing the rounds at Sadat’s expense. ‘When Sadat’s car came to a fork in the road, his chauffeur asked him which way to turn, left or right? He asked the chauffeur which direction Nasser would take, and was told he would turn to the left. Sadat thought, then told the driver: “Okay, then signal left and turn to the right.” ’
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Because he was held in such low esteem by the Nasserists, Sadat tried to use the Islamists as a counterweight. Just a few months into his presidency he started releasing some of the Brotherhood members from prison. Many were part of the Special Apparatus, and they came out of prison a much tougher bunch than when they went in. They had no time for al-Hodeibi and they prised what was left of the movement away from him.
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One of the first things Sadat did was try to win back some of Egypt’s lost pride. After two years lobbing artillery rounds at one another, on 6 October 1973 Egypt launched an attack on the Israeli forces that were still holding the Sinai since the 1967 war. The attack took place on the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The Israelis were caught completely by surprise, and though they eventually won the war there was fury in the country that it had been so ill prepared. Although in their hour of need the US had come to the Israelis’ rescue with arms and ammunition, Sadat could still present the war as a victory of the Egyptian forces thwarted only by an unfair intervention by the United States.

But by the time this war was fought the Arab states had a new weapon, which may not have frightened Israel, but scared the pants off its closest ally America. Oil.

On the eve of the 1973 ‘Yom Kippur War’ there was very little slack between oil production and demand in the world economy. The Arab world’s reaction to the American rescue was to hit them back where it hurt, in their gas tanks. The Arab states now knew just how much political power oil had given them. The ‘Oil Shock’ would bring the world’s economy to its knees and profoundly change the power dynamics in the region.

The 1973 war began to level the playing field in the Middle East. As the largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia emerged as a key player. The US now saw that it had to be actively and constantly involved to make sure that those with the most influence in the region understood where America considered its interests lay. But insuring those interests now also meant managing the Arab world’s concerns too, not just Israel’s. From this point until the uprisings of 2011, Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the three immediate go-to countries for every American president who dealt with the region’s problems.

Like all the Arab dictators before and since, Anwar Sadat believed his own hype. If the 1973 war hadn’t worked to get back the Sinai from Israel, then he was going to try peace. He first hinted that he was ready to do the unthinkable in a speech on 9 November 1977. He told the Egyptian People’s Assembly: ‘I am ready to go to their country, even to the Knesset itself, and talk with them.’ Ten days later that is exactly what he did.

Sadat is remembered around the world for being the first Arab leader to sign a peace treaty with Israel. The deal agreed with Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin and overseen by President Jimmy Carter eventually won them all a Nobel Peace Prize.
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This award is often given to an individual who symbolises a broader peace movement. Anwar Sadat’s prize was an exception. His actions symbolised absolutely nothing about the wider Arab world, because hardly anyone agreed with his overtures to Israel. By going to Jerusalem to speak before the parliament he was recognising the state’s right to exist. It is hard now to appreciate just how ground-breaking his move was. Equally staggering is the way in which he totally ignored the wishes of most of his people and the wider Arab world. It was a trait that would persist with his successor.

The Egyptian president had already signalled which side of the Cold War he wanted to be on. He had kicked out 5,000 Soviet advisers the year before, after his pleas to them for more weapons fell on deaf ears. It was a chance for America to make friends with Egypt again.

In April 1974 Kissinger told President Nixon: ‘Egypt has made an enormous turn in its foreign policy – from war to peace. Sadat is the first leader to commit his country to peace on terms other than the extermination of Israel . . . He has also broken the Soviet link . . . Sadat has to demonstrate to his people that the new policy has benefits and that he has ties to the United States.’
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But the closer Sadat moved towards Washington, the further it took him from the people he ruled.

The maxim ‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law’ could have been designed for the Middle East. And when Sadat came to power Israel was still in possession of the Sinai Peninsula. Sadat believed the longer that lasted, the harder it would be to retrieve it.
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The peace treaty that Sadat eventually signed with Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

If the peace deal won Sadat international acclaim, he drew his sense of worth in Egypt from the war of 1973, and in particular the first act of that conflict known as ‘The Crossing’, when Egyptian soldiers managed to seize the east bank of the Suez Canal from the Israelis after they launched their surprise attack. As this is still the closest any Arab state has ever come to winning a war with Israel, the bold move is still celebrated in Egypt today. In terms of establishing his authority in the country it was as important a moment for Sadat as nationalising the Canal had been for Nasser. Each year on that day the ‘Hero of the Crossing’ Anwar Sadat bathed in the glory of his shining hour with a national holiday and a military parade. It provided a little light relief for a nation that, after the peace deal, was totally isolated from its Arab neighbours. Egypt was not allowed back into the Arab League until 1989.

At the parade held on the morning of 6 October 1981 Sadat was sitting to the left of his vice-president Hosni Mubarak, who had won fame in the same conflict as an air force pilot. The men were in the front row of the podium as their soldiers drove by. Both were in full military regalia and they had just watched five fighter planes spewing coloured jet streams fly by when the first grenade was thrown. Seconds later gunmen leaped from one of the army trucks and started shooting into the stand. Sadat was shot several times and declared dead a few hours later after being airlifted to hospital. His assassination was caught on video camera and immediately broadcast around the world. Hosni Mubarak can be seen being whisked away by security men while Sadat lies dying on the floor. A few hours later he announced to the nation that Sadat was dead.
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There was gunfire that day in Lebanon too, but it was part of the public jubilation that erupted across the Arab world as they celebrated Sadat’s demise.
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The Americans sent three former presidents to join a host of international mourners. All but one of the Middle East’s Arab states, tiny Oman, boycotted the funeral.
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