CHAPTER ONE: THE LOST WAR
"To
serve its purpose, the military must be given a worthy government to defend."
Luwa'
'arkan harb Muhammad Nagiyb
When
the calf is thrown, as we say in Arabic,
the
knives begin to fall. So many knives have
fallen on King Faruwq already that I can take no pleasure
in adding to their number here. I would prefer to ignore the past and confine
myself to the present and the future. But since the present begins in the
past, as the future begins in the present, I must begin my story by casting
a backward glance at the sorry reign of the deposed King of Egypt.
In
1936,
when young Faruwq Fuw’ad ascended the throne left
vacant on the death of his father, Fuw’ad, I prayed to God
that he might prove to be the exemplary ruler that our suffering country
so badly needed. Faruwq, in Arabic, means One Who Carefully
Distinguishes between Right and Wrong. As the years went by, however, it
became increasingly apparent that Faruwq was incapable of
living up to his name. Far from being a better ruler than his father, he
was so much worse that in time Fuw’ad name began to acquire
an unmerited luster.
The
nadir of Faruwq’s reign was reached in 1948. In that
year, while Egypt was embroiled in a hopeless war in Palestine,
he chose to divorce his Queen in a double ceremony in which the young Shah
of Iran, Muhammad Rida, also divorced his Empress,
who was one of Faruwq's five sisters. Faruwq,
though he was only twenty-eight at the time, had degenerated to
such an extent that he no longer knew or cared where his interests lay.
Corruption ruled in every public office. Egypt had become the epitome
of that was wrong with the Eastern world.
Egyptian
landowners, instead of paying their taxes, bribed the civil service to
accept a fraction of what they owed the government. Instead of investing
their savings, legal or illegal, in productive enterprises in Egypt,
they either exported their savings or invested them in inflated urban and
rural real estate. The result was a land boom in the midst of unprecedented
suffering on the part of the great majority of Egypt's 22,000,000
people-suffering
that an irresponsible, corrupt, and impoverished government was neither
willing nor able to remedy.
The
laws of economics were as perverted as the laws of men. Rising prices in
the towns and cities were accompanied by rising unemployment. Except in
the building trades, there were few jobs open to anyone, and there were
almost no jobs open in any field to the increasing numbers of young people
graduating from the high schools and universities
(see Appendix # 1). Conditions in the
countryside were even worse.
The higher the price of cotton, the higher the price of land; and the higher
the price of land, the higher the rents exacted from the tenant farmers,
whose real income was shrinking with every month that passed. justice hid
its head. Men who were honest and courageous enough to attempt to improve
conditions were continually being thwarted. A few were to be found in every
profession, but, for reasons peculiar to Egypt, they were most numerous
among the military. Except for the royal family, there was no aristocracy,
and the landowners' and traders' sons who
might have led the Armed Forces were too busy enjoying their wealth to
be bothered with military service. The officers' corps in consequence was
largely composed of the sons of civil servants and soldiers and the grandsons
of peasants. I was myself the grandson of a peasant on one side of my family
and the grandson of a colonel on the other.
My
father was an Egyptian Army captain employed in the Sudan civil
service. We officers, though no longer peasants ourselves, were deeply
in sympathy with the plight of the peasants whose sons made up our ranks.
A few of us, of course, had been corrupted by bribery and lost to the national
cause. But the great majority remained true to our calling, which was the
defense of the nation, and for that reason we were more incensed than other
professional groups at what was happening to our country.
The
purpose of the military is not to govern but to defend those who govern
from their enemies,
foreign and domestic. There have been
times in the history of almost every country, however, when it has become
impossible for the military to remain aloof from politics. To
serve its purpose, the military must be given a worthy government to defend.
If the government it is asked to defend is manifestly indefensible, as
it was in Egypt, the military must either resign itself to the prevailing
corruption or intervene in civil affairs long enough to establish a government
that will respond to the legitimate needs and desires of the nation.
This
is what the military movement has attempted to do in Egypt. We seized
power because we could no longer endure the humiliations to which we, along
with the rest of the Egyptian people, were being subjected. For most of
us the breaking point was our inexcusable defeat in Palestine, but
for some of us it occurred much earlier. My own breaking point was reached
in 1942, when King Faruwq surrendered to a dictatorial
British ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson (now Lord Killearn),
who had surrounded his palace with troops and tanks (see
Appendix # 2). I
was then a lieutenant colonel of infantry. The King refused to accept
my proffered resignation, and from then on I remained in the Army more
or less against my will.
Lampson's
shabby treatment of the King of Egypt was but one of many factors
that eventually caused us to revolt. ‘Ibrahiym `Attallah's
abuse of his authority was another. General `Attallah, our Chief
of Staff, was a nepotistic and playboy who shamelessly accepted gifts
from those who wanted favors done at the Army's expense. He rewarded those
of his subordinates who were willing to flatter his vanity and humiliated
those whose self-respect prevented them from doing so. The result was the
abortive conspiracy organized by Muhammad Rashad Mihanna
in 1947.
Mihanna,
who was then a major of artillery, was thirty-nine years old. I
was a full colonel at the time and all of forty-six. I was therefore
thought to be much too old to be taken into the plotters' confidence. Had
they seen fit to consult me, however, I would have opposed their plot on
the ground that it was premature. They lacked the popular following necessary
to succeed. I was engaged, moreover, in a conspiracy of my owned- conspiracy
to unite the Egyptians and the Sudanese in an effort to free both countries
from British tutelage-and I feared that Mihanna's conspiracy
would only delay the results that my friends and I, in our own way, were
working to achieve.
Mihanna's
plot was eventually discovered by `Attallah's spies. The conspirators
were arrested, but the charges against them were never pressed, presumably
for fear of revealing the corruption that flourished in the Army's supply
services. Mihanna and his henchmen were released and `Attallah
was retired in the hope of restoring the Army's morale in time for Egypt
to intervene successfully in Palestine. Unfortunately, `Attallahs
successor as Chief of Staff, `Uthman al-Mahdiy,
was so afraid of incurring the King's displeasure that he failed even to
investigate, much less prosecute, the grafters who would contribute so
heavily to our defeat.
(To be continued)
*
Appendix
# 1
*Appendix
# 2
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