`Amir's successors as Ministers of War, General Fawziy and then General Sadiq, continued the system. Power is attractive; who but a saint willingly renounces it; and how many armies contain saints? Personally, I had enough on my hands as Chief of Staff without delving into those areas. Besides, Sadiq and I had been friends for 30 years, since we were junior officers together. But a series of incidents, minor in themselves, led to confrontation between us.

        I was in my club, the Sporting Club, Heliopolis, chatting with a retired Egyptian ambassador who had given distinguished service to his country. Suddenly he told me that he could not get a visa to leave Egypt, even for a holiday, unless he got a letter of permission from the armed forces. The reason was that, 18 years before, he had been an officer. Baffled by such a silly regulation, I promised to explore. The Director of the Defense Intelligence Department confirmed it. When I told him to cancel it, he politely requested I discuss it with the Minister. Sadiq overruled me. In collaboration with the Director of the Defense Intelligence Department I learned the Minister operated a blacklist of officers forbidden to leave the country. To cancel the regulation would be to let them leave.  I suggested we give the list to the police department, which issues visas, and save thousands of manhours by letting non-blacklisted officers get visas in the usual way. Ah, Sadiq said, that would reveal there was a blacklist; "for security reasons" we must keep even its existence secret. The discussion ended. "For security reasons:" the alibi of any autocratic regime for any oppressive act.
 
 

 But that was the merest tip of the iceberg, the smallest fragment of the vast security apparatus that Egypt's political leadership commands.The rulers of Egypt have at their disposal three competing intelligence services. The Defense Intelligence Department (DID) which reports to the Minister of War. The National Intelligence Service(NIS)under the direct control of the President. And the Secret Investigations Department (SID), run by the Minister of the Interior. The first two have responsibilities outside the frontiers of Egypt. All three spy on Egypt's citizens, particularly in its armed forces.

        Despite the fortunes lavished on their equipment, their methods are primitive. Every agent of the DID, for example (I speak of DID because I came to see their products regularly) simply reports any rumor, tidbit, snippet of gossip he hears. The resulting melange is served up , on the desk of the President as "opinion in the armed forces." In one of my monthly meetings with field and staff commanders, I criticized this inanity. The Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Department was present, so I asked him: "If we really want to know opinion within the armed forces on something, why don't we go about it scientifically? Circulate a questionnaire among a properly selected sample? Announce the findings in polling fashion, instead of relying on this chaos of random gossip." The field commanders enthusiastically supported me. I doubt if there was one who had not at some time suffered as a result of lies, distortions or simple error which the Defense Intelligence Department had relayed to GHQ and to the President about them or their units.

        Having made the point, though, I knew there was no chance of its being taken. The Defense Intelligence Department is under the Minister of War. The Minister of War by and large does what the President wants. And what the President wants to create is rivalry. The reports of each service go to the President. If two report a rumor, while the third does not, it is at once suspected that there is a conspiracy in the third to suppress it. That's Egypt a land where the leadership does not trust the people.

        Yet men with much to offer Egypt have their careers, their whole lives ruined by the secret exercise of the arbitrary power this apparatus serves and encourages. Saadiq’s control of the Officers Department provides a classic example. As Chief of Staff I chaired the Senior Officers Committee, 15 generals responsible for the promotion, dismissal, punishment, and almost everything concerning senior officers except appointments to new jobs and transfers between districts. We took the job seriously, sometimes spending hours on a single case, with meetings perhaps lasting days, before deciding by majority vote. Our decisions were then passed to the Minister for approval I assumed as a matter of routine, since he could hardly overturn in five minutes what it might have taken us hours to decide. But no, on one or two officers' futures,Sadiq simply ignored the committee. When I objected, he replied that he knew more about them than the committee did though he never specified what, and it was his right to approve our work. In that case, I said, there was no point my wasting my time or that of 14 senior colleagues: "Why don't you do it yourself and save us the trouble?"

       But as one of the three key supporters of Sadat's coup,  Sadiq inevitably seemed impregnable. Equally inevitably, power went to his head. He was first flattered by it. I recall before one trip to Saudi Arabia he flourished a letter from Sadat telling King Faysal: "I have complete confidence in General Sadiq. Anything he says or promises he does in my name. You can speak and deal with him as if you were speaking or dealing with me." Then he was corrupted by it. He would travel in a Boeing requisitioned from our national airline with no concern for disrupted commercial schedules or loss of revenue. Favored officers would get free trips abroad and foreign medical treatment for illnesses quite adequately treated in Egypt, all the usual tricks to buy loyalty instead of earning it.

        By the end of 1971, an air of divine right was creeping into Sadiq’s manner. If he said something, it had to be correct. Even so, the problems between us might have remained personal and essentially petty but for the fact that Sadiq’s political views were equally intolerant. His extreme aversion to communism led him to believe that anybody with remotely good relations with the Soviet Union or its envoys was a communist and instantly a personal enemy.Sadiq’s hostility to communism blinded him to the distinction between communism as an ideology and the Soviet Union as a superpower with national and global interests. It also blinded him to the strategic fact of Soviet indispensability to Egypt. As our relations with the Soviet Union soured, Sadiq was only too happy to help the process.

        But our first foreign policy clash came, not over the Soviet Union, but over Egypt's needs from its Arab allies:

        November 27-29, 1971: The twelfth session of the Arab Collective Defense Council, meeting in Cairo. My first session as Assistant Secretary General of the Arab League for Defense (ASGALD). Undeterred by the brisk destruction of my first radical dream of a pooling of defense budgets, I put forward two projects. The first I had devised as another way of truly mobilizing Arab military power. The second was a straightforward technical exercise.

       Underlying the first, my modified mobilization plan, lay three hopes. I wanted to avoid the humiliation of front-line states having to beg for money to wage a struggle which, nominally, engaged Arabs everywhere. I wanted also to make those Arabs out of the front-line feel simultaneously proud and guilty: proud of playing a positive part in the battle, guilty when they set their part against the massive burdens of the front-line states. My third hope was to save money and, above all, time.

        The plan which I reckoned would realize all three hopes was simple. Ask for men not money. Money cannot fight. To turn cash into fighting capacity takes at least two to three years, often longer. And then it does not go far. A modern field unit is an extraordinarily expensive concern, with ever-increasing costs not merely of weapons, but in training and operation as well. (To train a pilot to minimum battle standard takes three to five years and costs at least a million dollars, even before the cost of buying and running the air force he is to join.)

        I had studied the forces of each Arab country, estimating what of value each could send to which front without raising internal security risks at home. My list cheered me:(see chart # one ; Al-Shazliy's Arab Collective Mobilization plan)
 
 
 

IRAQ: Two squadrons of Hawker Hunters (available for the Jordanian front); three squadrons of MIG-21s and one squadron of MIG-17s (available for the Syrian front); one armored division and one mechanized division (Jordanian front). SAUDI ARABIA: Two squadrons of Lightnings (Jordanian front). LIBYA: One squadron of Mirage Ills (Egyptian front).  ALGERIA: Two squadrons of MIG-21s and two squadrons of MIG-17s (Egyptian front).  MOROCCO:  One squadron of F-5s and one armored brigade (Egyptian front).

        It was a useful total: six fighter squadrons (five MIG-21s, one Mirage III); eight fighter-bomber squadrons (two Hawker Hunters, two Lightnings, three MIG- 17s and one F-5); an armored division; a mechanized infantry division and an independent armored brigade. Imagine my surprise when the man whose forces stood to benefit most bitterly opposed my plan, Egypt's own Minister of War.
 
 
 
 

        I had not told Sadiq of the project before presenting it to the Arab Collective Defense Council. I took my job as Assistant Secretary General of the Arab League for Defense seriously. I saw no reason why, wearing my inter-Arab cap, I should inform Egypt's minister before anyone else's. I was an officer serving Egypt, but I felt I had to distinguish between my nationality and my inter Arab obligations. Sadiq. felt differently. When I unveiled my project to the Arab Collective Defense Council session (selling it primarily on the time factor, keeping my more private reasons to myself) Sadiq. slipped me a note: "You are acting against the interests of Egypt." I disagreed and, discarding the slip, continued as before.

       Sadiq, furious, cornered me during the lunch break. "How can you ask for troops instead of money?" he raged. "We want money."

        "I am your minister," he said.

        "As Minister of War, I replied, "you certainly have authority over me as Chief of Staff. But you must know that authority does not extend to my function as Assistant Secretary General of the Arab League for Defense."

        "I know," I replied. "But I will not bargain away my freedom of action as Assistant Secretary General of the Arab League for Defense just to keep my job as Chief of Staff, and you must realize that."

        "I will report your conduct to the President," Sadiq shouted.

        "You can of course," I said.

       When the session resumed, my plan was agreed unanimously, since Saadiq could hardly stand against it in public. I was deputed to visit those countries that were to provide reinforcements to see the units were properly trained and equipped. I congratulated myself on a major victory.

       By comparison, my second proposal seemed literally easy sailing: a project to draw proper hydrographic charts of our Arab shores (shu`bat al-Misahah al-Bahariyah). The Arab littoral is more than 10,000 miles long, second only to the 12,400 miles of the Soviet Union's coast and just longer than that of the United States. Yes, I was chagrined to discover we possessed no good charts of our inshore waters. Arab navies were still navigating on charts inherited from the British and French, which were now out of date and inaccurate.

        I saw no reason why we should not draw new charts for ourselves, especially since for defense reasons we would want the largest scale charts to remain secret. Egypt had the hydrographers. It would not be costly. I  found we could get from Britain two vessels equipped for our purposes for £1.5 million sterling. Nor, as it happened, was money a problem. The Arab Unified Command had been created by an Arab summit in January 1964 but suspended in March 1967. Ever since it had slowly been liquidating itself; but £.3 million sterling was still deposited in the Command's name in Egyptian banks. The cash belonged to the Arab world: the Arab Collective Defense Council was the only authority that could approve the spending of it. I proposed we use the cash to finance the survey. My plan was immediately and unanimously approved. That, too, was to lead to confrontation with Sadiq.
 

(To be continued)