Story Post XXXV: End of the Egyptian Civil War
#35
2009
Rice University (Go Owls). The Bush Institute for Public Policy presents a lecture: Egypt in Transition.
“The Egyptian Civil War would not officially end until mid-1984. After an initial period of heavy conflict lasting approximately ten weeks, things cooled down to something like an armed and sporadically violent negotiation.
“At first Sadat’s plan was to wait the rebels out, trusting that their supplies would rapidly dwindle and the enemy would simply capitulate. But Ghazala’s alignment with Libya dashed those hopes. While he didn’t technically join the Soviet sphere, he welcomed support from Gaddafi as a brother Arab against Sadat, whom he cast as an appeaser of the imperialists and a friend to Israel.
“While the Egyptian people were dubious about their Libyan neighbors at the best of times, Ghazala’s rhetoric struck home for many. Civil unrest increased, even as the military conflict began to calm down. This forced Sadat to step up his support for the National Unity Movement, made up of secularists and moderate Islamists seeking to establish a representative democracy.
“NUM marches were encouraged, and the entity became a conduit for both domestic and international aid. This more than anything else soothed the populace in Sadat’s territory. Sadat went so far as to form an electoral reform commission made up of NUM representatives and foreign observers, though he stipulated that no action on this front would be permitted while the internal security of Egypt was threatened.
“The two sides in the conflict reached out peace feelers as early as August of 1982. Permanent negotiations began in December of that year and would remain in session throughout the conflict, even as both sides conducted raids on each other and jockeyed for position. Both sides balked at the prospect of having foreign fighters on their soil, seeing it as a threat to their post-war legitimacy. And so the fighting dragged on, an almost wholly Egyptian affair.
“Which isn’t to say that the international community was entirely kept out. The US and NATO heavily patrolled the Eastern Mediterranean. Libyans established training camps in the Western Desert, ostensibly to reinforce Ghazala but mostly used to train independent Jihadis. The Jihadis, while largely Egyptian, were increasingly international, and became the main anti-government fighting force in the south of Egypt after Ghazala’s forces surrendered Aswan.
“All in all, the strategic situation only slightly favored Sadat, and the stalemate might have continued indefinitely were it not for the inherent weakness of Ghazala’s leadership. Ghazala himself had never served on the front lines in the October War, something he saw at the time and later as a political move to keep him from winning any laurels and becoming a threat to Sadat. As he moved closer to Libya and began to outright damn Sadat’s leadership, he made more and more elaborate criticisms of the conduct of the October War and the treacherous peace that followed.
“However, many in his camp were of course veterans of the conflict, and didn’t take kindly to having their service dragged through the mud. They certainly hadn’t gotten into this conflict out of any personal loyalty to Ghazala; he was simply a senior official willing to serve as their face.
“Ghazala’s ousting was a relatively well-managed affair, as far as coups go. A purge of about 200 loyalists was quietly carried out in March of 1983, at which point we can assume (but cannot confirm) that he agreed to step down. His responsibilities were incrementally reduced, and by September he was living in Tripoli, serving as little more than a mouthpiece for the rebellion.
“But removing one piece from the cabal of rebelling officers proved too much for the shaky coalition. The end phase of the Civil War, beginning roughly in February of 1984 saw the rebels splinter into factions that spent more time fighting each other than Sadat’s forces.
“Sadat finally took the offensive, and the mopping up was completed by June. Several thousand rebels took refuge in Libya and were folded (often uncomfortably) into the ranks of the Jihadis. Tens of thousands more were detained by the Egyptian government. Sadat began a systematic purge of the military, neutering its ability to exercise political power, setting up a legal framework to maintain absolute civilian control over the armed forces, and granting additional powers to the national gendarmerie to make them the sole provider of domestic protection to the Egyptian people.
“But now he also found himself in a trap of his own making: the people were clamoring for elections.”
2009
Rice University (Go Owls). The Bush Institute for Public Policy presents a lecture: Egypt in Transition.
“The Egyptian Civil War would not officially end until mid-1984. After an initial period of heavy conflict lasting approximately ten weeks, things cooled down to something like an armed and sporadically violent negotiation.
“At first Sadat’s plan was to wait the rebels out, trusting that their supplies would rapidly dwindle and the enemy would simply capitulate. But Ghazala’s alignment with Libya dashed those hopes. While he didn’t technically join the Soviet sphere, he welcomed support from Gaddafi as a brother Arab against Sadat, whom he cast as an appeaser of the imperialists and a friend to Israel.
“While the Egyptian people were dubious about their Libyan neighbors at the best of times, Ghazala’s rhetoric struck home for many. Civil unrest increased, even as the military conflict began to calm down. This forced Sadat to step up his support for the National Unity Movement, made up of secularists and moderate Islamists seeking to establish a representative democracy.
“NUM marches were encouraged, and the entity became a conduit for both domestic and international aid. This more than anything else soothed the populace in Sadat’s territory. Sadat went so far as to form an electoral reform commission made up of NUM representatives and foreign observers, though he stipulated that no action on this front would be permitted while the internal security of Egypt was threatened.
“The two sides in the conflict reached out peace feelers as early as August of 1982. Permanent negotiations began in December of that year and would remain in session throughout the conflict, even as both sides conducted raids on each other and jockeyed for position. Both sides balked at the prospect of having foreign fighters on their soil, seeing it as a threat to their post-war legitimacy. And so the fighting dragged on, an almost wholly Egyptian affair.
“Which isn’t to say that the international community was entirely kept out. The US and NATO heavily patrolled the Eastern Mediterranean. Libyans established training camps in the Western Desert, ostensibly to reinforce Ghazala but mostly used to train independent Jihadis. The Jihadis, while largely Egyptian, were increasingly international, and became the main anti-government fighting force in the south of Egypt after Ghazala’s forces surrendered Aswan.
“All in all, the strategic situation only slightly favored Sadat, and the stalemate might have continued indefinitely were it not for the inherent weakness of Ghazala’s leadership. Ghazala himself had never served on the front lines in the October War, something he saw at the time and later as a political move to keep him from winning any laurels and becoming a threat to Sadat. As he moved closer to Libya and began to outright damn Sadat’s leadership, he made more and more elaborate criticisms of the conduct of the October War and the treacherous peace that followed.
“However, many in his camp were of course veterans of the conflict, and didn’t take kindly to having their service dragged through the mud. They certainly hadn’t gotten into this conflict out of any personal loyalty to Ghazala; he was simply a senior official willing to serve as their face.
“Ghazala’s ousting was a relatively well-managed affair, as far as coups go. A purge of about 200 loyalists was quietly carried out in March of 1983, at which point we can assume (but cannot confirm) that he agreed to step down. His responsibilities were incrementally reduced, and by September he was living in Tripoli, serving as little more than a mouthpiece for the rebellion.
“But removing one piece from the cabal of rebelling officers proved too much for the shaky coalition. The end phase of the Civil War, beginning roughly in February of 1984 saw the rebels splinter into factions that spent more time fighting each other than Sadat’s forces.
“Sadat finally took the offensive, and the mopping up was completed by June. Several thousand rebels took refuge in Libya and were folded (often uncomfortably) into the ranks of the Jihadis. Tens of thousands more were detained by the Egyptian government. Sadat began a systematic purge of the military, neutering its ability to exercise political power, setting up a legal framework to maintain absolute civilian control over the armed forces, and granting additional powers to the national gendarmerie to make them the sole provider of domestic protection to the Egyptian people.
“But now he also found himself in a trap of his own making: the people were clamoring for elections.”
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