Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen. Hazem Kandil

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СКАЧАТЬ call for desperate measures, two of these officers-turned-security-men, Shams Badran and Abbas Radwan, convinced a reluctant Nasser to allow them to offer the imprisoned artillery officers their freedom in return for helping to put down the cavalry uprising. The two then quickly sealed the deal and informed their boss, Salah Nasr, that the artillery was at his service. Nasr, who got wind of the impending cavalry mutiny from one of his informers hours before it took place, wasted no time: he advised Nasser to meet with the dissidents at the Green Mess Hall to try to defuse the situation; meanwhile, he sent out agitators to other services to portray the cavalry’s call for democracy as a ploy aimed at delivering the country to Khaled’s Communists.⁶⁰ As soon as Khaled left GHQ, Nasr made his move:

      I ordered my old 13th Infantry Battalion to surround cavalry headquarters, and the freshly released artillery officers to block tank outlets. I then asked [Aly] Sabri [the air force captain who joined the new security elite] to send jets roaring at low altitudes over the besieged officers for intimidation. Meanwhile, I dispatched Tuhami and five intelligence officers to detain Naguib at artillery headquarters. When Amer discovered I had ordered troop movements without his approval, he called me into his office, grabbed my shirt, and screamed hysterically, with his gun pointed at me: “I will kill you! I will not allow the country to descend to chaos! I am the commander-in-chief, not you!” But as soon as I assured him that everything was under control, and that the revolution was now safe, he calmed down. At this point, Khaled dashed into the office, asking who ordered the siege against the cavalry. I asked him to warn his colleagues that if they did not disperse they would be bombed to the last man. Finally, I ordered the Military Police to storm in and detain the leaders of the mutiny. By the end of the day, the situation was resolved. I ordered Radwan, my assistant, to keep an eye out and went home to get some sleep.⁶¹

      To everyone’s surprise, however, the pendulum swung back in the other direction. Few people were aware of the overnight confrontation that was taking place around cavalry headquarters, but what everyone woke up to on the morning of February 27 was a communiqué by the minister of national guidance, RCC member Salah Salem, declaring Naguib’s removal. The minister claimed that the former president was never part of the Free Officers Movement, but was placed in charge out of respect for his age, and that lately, driven by a clear inferiority complex, he had demanded dictatorial powers. Immediately, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Cairo chanting: “To prison with Nasser! No revolution without Naguib!” The size of the uprising was so overwhelming that even Nasser’s security associates admitted that repressing it might result in a bloodbath. Salah Salem rushed back to GHQ, screaming that the mob almost turned his car upside down and that they must be appeased before they set the country on fire. The Muslim Brotherhood, Naguib’s allies, were the main force behind the demonstrations, as the Brotherhood member, and one of the junior organizers of the uprising, Mahmoud Game’ confessed.⁶² A cornered Nasser was forced to reinstate Naguib to the presidency as well as the chairmanship of the RCC. But the situation was not exactly back to square one: empowered by the people’s revolt, the cavalry called for another meeting, on March 4, 1954, insisting that the military withdrew from politics. Naguib’s triumphant return to office on the crest of popular support and with the backing of the army’s strongest service provided him with a golden opportunity to strike against his rivals. Yet he preferred reconciliation, and to demonstrate his goodwill, he appointed Nasser as prime minister. This proved to be his undoing.

      THE NEW REGIME CONSOLIDATES POWER

      Nasser’s spies immediately set to work. In three days, the security organs rounded up thousands of those who participated in the uprising. Before the week was over, the RCC carried out its greatest bluff in the form of the March 5 Decrees, which called for the election of a constitutive assembly in three months to draft a new democratic constitution, and lifted the ban on political activity and ended censorship of the press. Naturally, the RCC’s sudden change of heart aroused Naguib’s suspicions, but he had no choice but to go along, otherwise the council would have accused him of opposing democracy. By way of securing himself against a possible plot, though, he demanded on March 8 the right to appoint senior officers down to brigade commanders (to undercut Amer); the right to veto cabinet decisions (to keep Nasser in check); and a popular referendum on his presidency (to legitimize his post). When the RCC accepted without discussion, Naguib became even more disconcerted. But again he did nothing, giving Nasser the benefit of the doubt and convincing himself that maybe the latter believed his Liberation Rally could be quickly reorganized into a political party capable of winning the coming elections.⁶³ Soon, however, the subsequent March 25 Decrees made it clear that a plot was simmering. The new decrees revoked all restrictions on old-regime parties, and prohibited Free Officers from partaking in elections. Formally, the decrees spelled the end of the revolution. In reality they were a veiled call to action by all those who stood to lose by the restoration of the old order: officers who participated in the coup and feared punishment; peasants who benefited from land redistribution; workers who preferred dictatorship to the domination of liberal capitalist parties; the petty bourgeois that had barely begun to enjoy the breakdown of the rigid social hierarchy; and the Muslim Brothers who feared the return of the powerful al-Wafd Party. Again, the most vulnerable stratum was the security elite, for as soon as censorship was lifted, the press launched a concerted campaign against their abuse of power and demanded their trial. According to one artillery officer, these decisions were widely understood within the corps as an invitation to carry out another coup.⁶⁴ Pro-democracy officers and popular forces felt outmaneuvered: their goal was to move forward, not backward; they aspired for a new and reformed democracy, but the March decrees promised the return of the old corrupt one. Forced to choose, they found themselves unwittingly coalescing against the return to democracy.

      We know from Nasr’s memoirs that he was the mastermind behind the March decrees. His aim was to provoke “a revolution against the [pro-democracy] revolution.”⁶⁵ To neutralize popular opposition, he advised Nasser to cut a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood. After a short negotiation with the imprisoned general guide, the organization agreed to abandon Naguib in return for releasing its detainees and renewing its precoup alliance with Nasser. On March 26, Nasser followed the release of five hundred Brotherhood detainees with a highly publicized visit to the general guide to show respect. Four days later, the guide denounced in a press conference the old party system, and thereafter ignored Naguib’s pleas for support, refusing to return his calls or receive his envoys. Naguib bitterly complained that for days, every time he called the guide, the latter was in the bathroom.⁶⁶ The movement was clearly led to believe that Nasser was finally ready to give it its due.

      In believing so, the Islamist movement was not entirely naïve. Nasser, who had joined several political groups in the 1940s to explore them from within, became a member of the Brotherhood shortly before the 1948 war—out of political expediency rather than ideological affinity. We know that the first five-member cell of the Free Officers, formed in September 1949, was entirely composed of Brotherhood members (Nasser, Khaled, Abd al-Mon’iem Abd al-Ra’ouf, Kamal al-Din Hussein, Hassan Ibrahim), and that those who joined later were Brotherhood collaborators (notably, Amer, Sadat, and ‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi). We also know that Nasser and Khaled went even further and joined the Brotherhood’s Special Order—the movement’s secret militant arm.⁶⁷ In addition, Nasser’s involvement in training Brotherhood militants was well documented by the famous incident on May 25, 1949, when he was interrogated for seven hours by Prime Minister Ibrahim ‘Abd al-Hady, Chief of Staff Osman al-Mahdy, and Director of the Political Police Ahmed Tal’at regarding an army training manual that was found with the Brotherhood militia in Palestine with his name on it. Nasser got off the hook with great difficulty by alleging that he lent it to an officer who was later killed in action and maybe they found it on him. The Brothers adhere to an even more enticing story, which traces their relationship with Nasser back to 1941 when Major Mahmoud Labib was charged with creating an Islamist base in the army. On his deathbed, Labib entrusted the list of members of the Brotherhood’s Committee of Free Soldiers in the Army to Nasser. After he passed away in December 1951, Nasser ran the committee for his own purposes.⁶⁸ This was confirmed by Naguib’s claim that the Brothers helped Nasser directly in creating the Free Officers.⁶⁹ СКАЧАТЬ