CHAPTER ONE: THE LOST WAR
EPISODE FIVE
"to
rise above the issue of personalities, so long the curse of Egyptian politics,
and to work together as a disciplined unit in the interests of the nation
as a whole."
Liwa'
'Arkan Harb Muhammad Nagiyb
In June I was again
placed in command of the Senior Officers' School. Although I had by then
been twice decorated with the Fuw'ad Star, my promotion
to the rank of major general was still being withheld. But I was in no
mood to complain. I had survived wounds that might well have been fatal
and I was becoming interested in a new secret organization that promised
to bring about an Egyptian renaissance.
One of my former staff
officers, a young major named Muhammad `Abd al-Hakiym
`Amir, had often visited me in the hospital. Now he began
to come to see me in my office at the Senior Officers' School. He told
me that he and several of his friends were eager to erase the stigma
of our defeat in Palestine and wanted me to advise them. I
promised to help in every way I could. The officers with whom I had been
associated since 1942 were now meeting regularly to discuss ways
and means of forcing Faruwq to purge the Army of the grafters
who were still in control of our supply services. But we had yet
to agree on a plan of action and I was beginning to lose my patience.
One day `Amir
brought a friend of his to see me. He was another young major whom I remembered
having met at Falluwgah, in Palestine. His name was
Gamal
`Abd al-Nasir. I soon realized, though neither of them told
me so, that Gamal `Abd al-Nasir was the leader
of their organization (see appendix #3)
and that he had come to see me in order to weigh
`Amir's
estimation of my character. `Abd al-Nasir was then thirty-one;
`Amir
was two years younger.
It was a strange reversal
of roles for a senior officer to be examined, however respectfully, by
two of his juniors, but I was not displeased. I was coming to the
conclusion that Egypt's salvation depended on its junior officers.
Even the best of our senior officers, with few exceptions, were lacking
in determination. What was needed, I thought, was the fire of youth,
checked by an older head.
`Abd al-Nasir
seemed to agree with me. Before long he and `Amir began to
call at my house by night. Sometimes I would be late for our appointments
and would arrive to find `Abd al-Nasir's little car, a black
Austin, waiting at the comer. My house is on shaariy` Saa`iyd,
the last side street leading off shariy` Tuwman
Bay which ends in a traffic circle a block away. On the traffic
circle is a night club called the Hilmiyah, Palace. Whenever
I was late, in order to avoid arousing the suspicions of the police,
`Abd
al-Nasir and `Amir would pretend to be waiting
for someone in the night club.
Usually they came
to see me alone, but sometimes they were accompanied by Salah
Salim, another young major, whose premature baldness made him
look much older than his thirty years. `Abd al-Nasir,
a dark man with a long, straight nose, was the largest and heaviest of
the three. `Amir, though tall, was thin and wiry,
while Salim was about my size and weight. The three of them
wore mustaches, as I did myself, and Salim, whose eyes were
bothering him, often wore dark glasses [1].
(see
caption below)
After numerous meetings
had revealed that we were in agreement on all basic issues, `Abd al-Nasir's
invited me to join the Dubat al-'Ahrar
or Free Officers, the secret organization of which he was the founder
and president. I agreed to do so. Of the nine members of the original executive
committee, I was to meet only five before the Revolution, and I was
not to succeed `Abd al-Nasir as its president until
after the burning of Cairo in January 1952 `Abd al-Nasir,
as I later learned, had been hoping that General Sadiq would
also join the committee, in which event he would have become its president.
But Sadiq declined, for fear of compromising his position,
and so, at `Amir's insistence, I became the president of
the Free Officers in his stead. If I had been as much of a public
figure as Sadiq was, following the Palestinian War, I would
probably have declined myself. It would have done him no good in
his open struggle with Haydar and the others to have been
accused of plotting against the government. As it was, he was always
sympathetic to our movement, and from time to time he gave us valuable
assistance.
In August 1949,
while still a brigadier, I was appointed director general of the Frontier
Corps, the military side of which consisted Of 3000 soldiers, mostly
Sudanese, and ninety-six officers, mostly Egyptians. The civil side
consisted of several hundred police officers and men plus the civilian
administrators of the various deserts that make up ninety-seven per
cent of the area of Egypt.
The military side of
the Frontier Corps, as I knew from experience, was the best of all our
Armed Forces, and I was proud to return to it as its director general.
I would have been happier, of course, if I had been promoted, but
perhaps it was just as well that I failed to become a major general until
1930.
Had I been promoted when I should have been, I might have become
the Chief of Staff, and, as such, I would have had to defend the King
against my will. As it was, I was so disgusted with his behavior
by the time I became a full general that I was ready to revolt at any
time. Hence my feeling that the King and his cronies, by delaying my promotion,
were unconsciously preparing me for the role that I would be called
upon to play in 1932. I was by then completely devoid of any sense
of loyalty to a regime that had so often betrayed the Egyptian people.
Secret work was by
no means new to me. I had been a member of one or another secret organization
ever since 1919, and in 1923 I had joined the White
Banner [1] . This was a group
that had helped to prevent the British from converting Egypt
and Sudan into two separate colonies.
In joining the White
Banner, I had sworn on the Qur’an to guard its secrets
with my life. Secrecy among the Free Officers, was such as to appeal to
the Egyptian people. As president of the executive committee, I acted
as the movement's commander in chief; `Abd al-Nasir, who
assumed the title of secretary general, acted as its chief of staff.
Both of us were responsible to the committee, which later became the Council
of the Revolution, and neither of us acted, for a long time, without its
unanimous approval. Whenever differences arose between any of its
members, they were referred to the Council as a whole. The Council would
meet for as long as necessary to reach a unanimous decision, even
though it sometimes took us ten or twelve hours to do so. The council's
decisions were final and, except toward the end, were never discussed outside
its secret meetings. We were thus able, for nineteen months, to rise
above the issue of personalities, so long the curse of Egyptian politics,
and to work together as a disciplined unit in the interests of the nation
as a whole.
(End of the first chapter "The lost
war", chapter two will follow: "A Son of the Nile".)
(To be continued)
The Free Officers
in the 1948 Palestine war (The siege of Falluwgah)
*Appendix
# 3
[1]Picture
showing jubilant Free Officers in a show of solidarity (from left
to right) Major Salah Salim,
Major
general Muhammed Nagiyb and
colonel `Abd al- Nasir.
[2] The
white banner "al-Luwa' al-'Abayd" was a secret national
organization headed by `Aliy `Abd al-Latiyf a Sudanese officer
calling for the Union of Egypt and the Sudan.
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