The New Middle East Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.’ 56
    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’. 57
    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. 58 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” ’. 59 He was described as ‘shattered by Nasser’s death’, so much so that he fainted during the funeral. 60
    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. 61 ‘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’. 62 Sadat’s actions seemed so ‘blatantly pro-American’ that leftist groups were ‘naturally convinced that the whole affair is a Central Intelligence Agency plot’. 63
    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.” ’ 64
    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. 65
    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