Egypt's Complicated History : From Gamal Abdel Nasser to Hosni Mubarak | All Parts (1-3)

Best known for his charisma in pan-Arab populism, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser enraptured listeners with his radio broadcasts and inspired enormous pride inside the North African country and well beyond its borders. At the height of his power during the 1960s, Nasser was known in the West mostly as a regional troublemaker, a gangster of sorts, and a dangerous dictator. Nasser's humiliation of the old colonial powers in his country gained him respect not just at home but abroad, across the region; people rallied behind his anti-colonial furor.

Inspired by Nasser, Iraq's Free Officers Movement usurped their monarchy in 1958. Muammar Gaddafi ousted Libya's pro-Western king, expelled some 25,000 Italians occupying the country, and kicked out the United States and British military bases from the country. Although his propensity to charge forward and take risks allowed him to further his vision for his country and bolster Egypt's role in the region, it was also what marked his end, as he rushed into a war without assessing the costs and benefits. It is said that Gamal Abdel Nasser was blinded by his pride and large dreams.

This episode is part one of a three-part series on the history of Egypt through the lives of three of its former leaders: Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar El Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak.

Gamal Abdel Nasser was a man from humble beginnings. He was born in a mud-brick house on an unpaved street in the village of Benha in the Nile Delta, where his father was in charge of the local post office. Life in Benha was difficult, as the town had little money and Nasser's family had even less. Many of the people in the village were either unemployed or were employed but still struggling to make ends meet. The fact that Nasser was raised in one of the many underdeveloped areas of Egypt, experiencing poverty and lack of basic services, would gradually shape his mindset and vision for the future of his country.

A few years later, Nasser went to live in Cairo with an uncle who had just been released from a British prison. By that time, Egyptian nationalist unrest had forced an end to the British protectorate over Egypt. Throughout its history, Egypt had been ruled by many different actors, such as the Mamluks, the Ottoman Empire, and the descendants of Muhammad Ali. Also, French and British colonialism was influential in Egypt; France and Britain competed for Egypt, and the British continued what the French started in the country. The British colonial administration made sure to decrease the education and health budget because they did not want to train Egyptian elites but servants. There was also a vast difference between the rich and the poor; finance and trade were in the hands of the Italians, Syrians, and Armenians, but not Egyptians. Egyptians believed that they couldn't control anything in their territory, which to them was unacceptable.

In 1922, Egypt was recognized as a sovereign state under a constitutional monarch, King Fuad, and in 1923 a new constitution was drawn up. However, more changed in theory than in practice; the British High Commissioner maintained an influential role, and Britain reserved the right to manage Egypt's defense against external attack, protect foreigners and minorities in the country. The result of all of this was an unstable balance of power between the king, the British High Commission, and the parliament, which was dominated by the nationalist Wafd party. It was in this nationalistic environment that Gamal Abdel Nasser was growing up. It was a time when the spirit of nationalism and anti-colonialism permeated throughout Egypt. Though his family shied away from the burgeoning nationalist movement, the young Nasser would find himself in its midst. Gamal was constantly in trouble with school teachers, some of them British, and he took part in many anti-British street demonstrations. One day he came across an anti-British protest, which he joined. Nasser would end up in prison alongside other rioters.

By the time he finished school in 1936, and having passed his exams by the skin of his teeth, Nasser was the chairman of the executive committee of Cairo Secondary School students and was so involved in politics that he spent only 45 days actually in school. In 1937, Nasser joined the military academy to train as an army officer. While serving in the Egyptian Army, Nasser met three fellow officers, including Anwar El Sadat, who would later succeed him as president. Nasser became especially close with Sadat, who was also the son of an impoverished laborer and who had also turned to joining the military with dreams of achieving great change in Egypt.

In 1939, Nasser and several other young officers founded a revolutionary nationalist group, which they called the Free Officers Movement. Though it did not start out as the well-structured organization that it would become in the 1950s, this group was intended to be a loosely organized, secretive association composed of junior officers in the Egyptian Army. Initially, their principal aim had been to rid Egypt of Britain's military presence, but they had since become convinced of the need to remove the Egyptian monarchy as well. At that time, the King of Egypt, now King Farouk, had come to represent the old imperialism as much as the British did. But we'll touch on King Farouk and the monarchy a little bit later.

In the Second World War, Nasser was posted to Sudan, where he saw little action. In 1942, however, when he returned to Cairo, an incident occurred which he later identified as being formative for him. On this particular occasion, when the British feared that the Egyptian King Farouk was backtracking on his allegiance to the Allied cause in the war, the British High Commissioner, Miles Lampson, sent a battalion of troops and armored cars to surround the palace. King Farouk was told to choose a new prime minister as instructed or abdicate from the throne. Nasser, like many Egyptians, began to boil with anger because it became very obvious that it was the British who were pulling the strings in Egypt. As a result, Gamal Abdel Nasser decided to step up his revolutionary activities with the Free Officers.

More impetus for Nasser was to come from his experience in 1948. That year, he served as a major in the First Arab-Israeli War. The war began when Israel declared itself an independent state following the United Nations partition of Palestine. Protesting this move, five Arab countries, including Egypt, attacked Israel on 12 July 1948. Nasser was lightly wounded, and by August his brigade was completely surrounded by Israeli forces in the Faluja pocket. Yet, despite this challenge now facing them, Nasser's brigade refused to surrender. Diplomatic negotiations between Israel and Egypt finally led to the ceding of Faluja to Israel. And though Nasser and his troops had failed to maintain control of Faluja, they became national heroes in the eyes of many Egyptians.

When Egypt was defeated in this war as part of this coalition of forces, it was the last straw for Nasser and his fellow officers. To them, the military defeat was a national embarrassment, and most of the blame was placed at the door of the monarchy. Egypt's King Farouk had succeeded his father for the first time in 1936. In the face of overwhelming poverty, social, economic, and political needs, the Royal House began to be seen as self-serving, corrupt, and unprincipled, more concerned with its own importance and wealth than with the development needs of the nation. In the rural areas, there were outbursts of violence as impoverished peasants rebelled against feudal landowners. Though King Farouk was oblivious to it, the old order in Egypt was on the verge of collapse.

King Farouk was himself arrogant, spoiled, and pampered from birth. At one point, Miles Lampson, the British High Commissioner, described him as uneducated, lazy, untruthful, irresponsible, and vain. King Farouk was one of the richest men in the world and was famous for his spending sprees and massive appetite. His fortune included the largest landholding in Egypt, four palaces, two yachts, 13 private aircraft, 200 cars, and allegedly the world's largest collection of pornography, including an album of semi-nude photographs found under his pillow. He was addicted to pleasure-seeking. Now, even though there was a lot of strife and many disgruntled people in Egypt, King Farouk was supremely confident of the loyalty of his generals and of his control of the army as well as his position as monarch. However, his scandalous and grotesquely self-indulgent lifestyle and the belief that some of his closest associates had profited by supplying defective weapons and ammunition to the forces had eroded the army's loyalty by 1952.

Before Nasser and the Free Officers took power, Egypt was ripe for revolution. The excesses of the British military occupation, the blatant interference of the British Embassy in the political affairs of the country, the out-of-touch nature of King Farouk, as well as the humiliating defeat of the Egyptian Army a few years earlier, among other things, all had contributed to provoking Egyptians of all classes, except the ruling class, to seize control of their own destiny.

In July of 1952, King Farouk was made aware that a small group of dissident officers within the army was planning a coup. On the morning after receiving the warning, Farouk installed a new prime minister and appointed his brother-in-law as minister of war, telling him to round up the cool conspirators. After being tipped off that moves against them were imminent, Nasser and his Free Officers decided to advance the time of the revolution, which was supposed to take place in 1955. The decision to attempt the coup seems to have been taken on the morning of 22 July 1952. At midnight, some 200 officers and 3,000 troops took control of the army headquarters and arrested senior officers. The three officers then went on to occupy the airport, the Cairo broadcasting station, and the telecommunications center. Military tankers could be seen patrolling the streets of Cairo. The officers faced no opposition, and at 7:00 a.m. on 23 July, El Sadat announced a takeover on Cairo radio. During this time, King Farouk was at the Ras El Tin Palace by the Western Harbor in Alexandria. Nasser's right-hand man, Sadat, as well as other Free Officers, favored the immediate public execution of the king and other powerful royals. However, Nasser did not favor this move, and so he guaranteed King Farouk safe passage into exile.

The revolution that Nasser and his fellow fighters had all dreamed about had finally become a reality. On 18 June 1953, the Egyptian monarchy was officially abolished, and the Republic of Egypt was declared, with General Muhammad Naguib as its first president. Naguib enjoyed greater respect from the people due to his high rank in the army and his stellar military record and political reputation. The general was the perfect face of the government while Gamal Abdel Nasser worked in the shadows, keeping himself locked up in his private office, commanding the newly established Revolutionary Command Council. However, political disagreements soon erupted between Naguib and Nasser, leading to a power struggle between the two. General Naguib started to see himself as a savior, becoming quite popular. However, Nasser and the Free Officers did not like the situation. In addition to this, Naguib wanted slow changes in Egypt, while Nasser wanted immediate political and economic reforms. Nasser had also promised the army a greater role in the government. Also, because Muhammad Naguib was older than his colleagues, consulting them was hard for him.

On 17 April 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser was nominated as prime minister, while General Naguib remained president. In the midst of the struggle between Naguib and Nasser, other powerful political forces sought to claim power in Egypt. One such organization was the Muslim Brotherhood, which sought to return Egypt to a conservative version of Islam. In 1954, an assassin, allegedly from the Muslim Brotherhood, opened fire on Nasser but missed. Though Nasser was unharmed, General Naguib was implicated in the plot, as evidence emerged that he had been in contact with the Muslim Brotherhood and even promised to support the group in case they managed to overthrow the existing regime. In the aftermath, Nasser forced General Naguib to resign, and by the end of 1954, Nasser had cemented his authority as the lead leader of the Free Officers in the country.

In the wake of this episode, the Free Officers cracked down on all who opposed them, arresting thousands. They also declared the Muslim Brotherhood movement a terrorist organization, and anyone caught associating with it would have committed a capital offense of treason. In January of 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the promulgation of a constitution under which Egypt became a socialist state with a one-party political system and with Islam as the official religion. In June of that year, 99.9% of the 5 million Egyptians voting marked their ballots for Nasser, the only candidate for president. The constitution was also approved by 99.8% of the electorate. Nasser's constitution permitted women to vote and forbade discrimination against women on the basis of gender.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser inherited an exploitative agrarian economy that was in shambles prior to the revolution. Less than 6% of Egyptians owned more than 65% of the land in Egypt, while less than 0.5% of Egyptians owned more than 1/3 of all fertile land. Many people in Egypt were landless, illiterate prisoners working the cotton fields. They lived in a state of indignity, a condition that looked, in some ways, close to slavery, with no end in sight. Life expectancy for men was less than 40 years on average, with women doing slightly better. In all aspects of life, nothing was really working properly. But when he came to power, Gamal Abdel Nasser's promise to Egyptians was life with dignity. The 1952 agrarian reform law began the process of a major land redistribution program to rectify the centralization of land ownership in the hands of the wealthy. The law limited land ownership to around 200 acres, and there was distribution of previously unobtainable plots of land to landless farmers. In addition, the property of the royal family was confiscated, and the money was used to build hospitals and schools in rural areas and fund infrastructure projects.

Nasser's socialism extended education, healthcare, and employment opportunities to all sectors of Egyptian society through a program of massive state-led industrialization. The Nasser government also seized control of key industries such as tobacco and cement, coming to control a third of the whole economy. This whole process angered Britain and France, which had previously controlled the Egyptian economy. The expansion and reformation of the education system became one of the revolutionary regime's urgent objectives. Education under Nasser was expanded and made free for Egyptians in 1962. This provided opportunities for social mobility, poverty alleviation, and access to higher education for the first time in their lives. Millions of poor, seeking marginalized citizens had a reasonable chance to improve their lives. But in return, Egyptians gave up their political freedom; political participation, fair electoral processes, impartial jurisprudence, independent media, and civil liberties were stifled by the Nasser regime. Any voice that was suspected to contradict Nasser and his causes, as well as any threat to the singularity of national authority, was intolerable. President Nasser silenced opposing media voices through imprisonment and torture, and in 1960, media was nationalized. Some top editors resigned in protest as they saw the media become a mouthpiece for the government. The Nasser regime violently attacked political parties on the belief that they would weaken the goals of his revolution by giving platforms to opposing groups. For instance, the Wafd party, the strongest political group under the British-controlled Egyptian monarchy, was effectively destroyed by Nasser. And, like I said before, the Muslim Brotherhood was declared illegal, and anyone suspected of belonging to it was detained. Through the recruiting and planting of informers, particularly on college campuses, and the torture or detention of any opposition, the Nasser regime successfully created a tangible fear throughout society.

Egypt was strategically important, being the bridge between Africa and Asia. Even more importantly, the Suez Canal, which passed through its territory, was the main trading link between Europe and the East. The Suez Canal was built under the supervision of the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps and was run jointly by a British-French organization. The British and French used Egyptian labor to build it, and thousands of Egyptians died in the process. In the 1950s, it was still so important to the British that they had 70,000 troops stationed in the Canal Zone. Also, at the height of the Cold War, the British and the Americans tried to persuade Nasser's government to join an anti-Soviet alliance. However, Nasser was not interested. Gamal Abdel Nasser wished to stay independent of any pro-Western alliance. This neutral stance made the Western Powers suspicious because they saw things through Cold War eyes—that is, if Egypt was not for them, they suspected it might be against them.

In the wake of the Second World War, the Egyptian military had begun pressing the British to end their colonial-era military presence in the Canal Zone. However, it was also agreed that British officials would continue to operate the canal. This whole setup was intolerable to many Egyptians, as they saw it as an example of British imperialism. They felt they could only be truly independent once the British had left. At the same time, Nasser's armed forces also engaged in sporadic battles with Israeli soldiers along the border between the two countries, and the Egyptian leader did nothing to conceal his antipathy towards Israel.

It was also around this time, in 1956, that the United States and Britain backtracked on a promise to provide funds to Egypt for construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile River, in light of an Egyptian arms deal with the Soviet Union. And so, supported by Soviet arms and money, and furious with these countries, on 26 July 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, the joint British enterprise which had owned and operated the Suez Canal since its construction in 1869. President Nasser argued that tolls from the ships passing through the canal would be used to pay for the Aswan Dam. The Suez Canal, never far from the news in its 87 years of history, hit the headlines like a bombshell when, without a hint of warning, Egypt's Premier, Colonel Nasser, announced that his country was taking it over; the profit was to be used to complete the Aswan Dam, the huge project from which Britain and America recently withdrew their offers of financial aid. Although Nasser offered full economic compensation for the company, the British and French governments, long suspicious of Nasser's opposition to the continuation of their political influence in the region, were outraged by the nationalization.

The British, during secret military consultations, sought the support of the French, who believed that Nasser was supporting rebels in the French colony of Algeria. They also sought the support of Israel for an armed assault to retake the canal. It was the Israelis who struck first. On 29 October 1956, two days later, British and French military forces joined them. The Soviets and their leader, Nikita Khrushchev, eager to exploit Arab nationalism and gain a foothold in the Middle East, railed against the invasion and threatened to rain down nuclear missiles on Western Europe if the triple Israeli, French, British force did not withdraw. The United States stepped into this crisis, and the then-President Dwight Eisenhower and his administration warned the Soviets that reckless talk of nuclear conflict would only make matters worse. They also cautioned Nikita Khrushchev to refrain from direct intervention in the conflict. Dwight Eisenhower and his secretary of state also issued stern warnings to the French, British, and Israelis to give up their campaign and withdraw from Egyptian soil. Eisenhower was upset with the British in particular for not keeping the United States informed about their intentions. The United States threatened all three nations with economic sanctions if they persisted in their attack. The threats of the United States worked; British and French forces withdrew by December, and Israel finally bowed to United States pressure, relinquishing control over the canal to Egypt. The Suez Canal was reopened in March of 1957. British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned two months after withdrawing British troops.

The Suez Canal episode greatly enhanced Gamal Abdel Nasser's prestige in the Arab world. Arab cities erupted in anti-Western demonstrations and riots; Nasser's name was chanted, and Arab governments came under huge pressure to bring their policies into line with Egypt. Gamal Abdel Nasser's charisma, his perceived victory over the Suez Canal, and the predominance of Cairo radio contributed to an ever-rising tide of Arab nationalism. Especially ambitious was his plan to unite the Arab world into a single unified state. This plan was meant to undo the post-1918 colonial borders which had fragmented the region and carved it into several entities. President Nasser oversaw the unification of Egypt and Syria as the United Arab Republic, of which he became president. However, in 1961, Syria withdrew from the entity following a military coup, leaving Egypt on its own. President Nasser's assertiveness on the international stage sometimes amounted to imprudence, according to his critics. In 1962, he dispatched troops to back revolutionaries in Yemen against Saudi-backed royalists. Unfortunately, this mission was an epic fail for Nasser and Egypt.

In the spring of 1967, Nasser lamented that the war in Yemen had become his Vietnam. He subsequently explained how the conflict spiraled out of control. Over the course of five years, from 1962 to 1967, Nasser lost more than 10,000 men and squandered billions of dollars. With his reputation damaged, Nasser was in search of a new cause that would once again revitalize the revolution and mobilize millions of people. This new cause became the liberation of Palestine. However, it was something of a tall order, as neither Egypt nor its neighbors were truly ready for the effort.

In 1967, increased Arab-Israeli tension led Egypt to mobilize its forces and demand the withdrawal of United Nations peacekeepers from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Egypt and a few other Arab nations prepared for a united strike against Israel. However, Israel preempted the attack, beginning the Six-Day War with the destruction of Egypt's air force on 5 June 1967. During this Six-Day War, Israel delivered a decimating blow to Nasser. The nations of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria lost key territories during this war. Israel's decisive victory included the capture of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Old City of Jerusalem, and parts of Syria's Golan Heights. Egypt's casualties from the war numbered more than 11,000, with 6,000 for Jordan and 1,000 for Syria, compared with only 700 for Israel in just six days. Nasser's grand ideas of pan-Arabism were crashed in the aftermath of this military disaster. President Nasser attempted to resign, but popular demonstrations and a vote of confidence by the Egyptian National Assembly persuaded him to remain in office. His decision to remain in power set off a wave of dancing and cheering among the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who had thronged the streets of Cairo.

Unknown to the Egyptian people, President Nasser was very sick. Compounded by the stress of the war, his mild case of diabetes spiraled out of control. By 1969, he was diagnosed with hyperinsulinemia, atherosclerosis, moderate obesity, as well as other chronic conditions. On the evening of 28 September 1970, Egyptian radio and television abruptly began to broadcast recitations of the Quran. This was a familiar sign that something of great significance had gone terribly wrong. Later that evening, a broken and tearful Vice President Anwar El Sadat appeared on television. Though he tried to say something meaningful, all he managed to say was that Nasser was greater than words. Gamal Abdel Nasser had died from a heart attack. He was 52 years old.

President Nasser was succeeded by Anwar El Sadat, a fellow Free Officer, and whose story I'll cover in part two of this series.

On a beautiful sunny day in March of 1979, as thousands of Egyptians awaited in anticipation, a plane landed in Cairo. Moments later, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stepped out, welcomed by thunderous cheers from an overjoyed crowd. He had just returned to his country from Washington, D.C., where, five days earlier, he had signed a historic treaty with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and United States President Jimmy Carter, bringing an end to three decades of unending hostilities between Israelis and Egyptians. Since 1948, Egypt had joined other Arab states and gone to war with Israel on four occasions; all of them were ultimately unsuccessful in fully defeating Israel, and Egypt, of all the Arab states, experienced the heaviest losses, both in human casualties and financially. As with many historic moments that inspired significant change, not everyone was supportive of Sadat's peace efforts. Only two years after the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by members of an Islamic fundamentalist group in October of 1981.

This episode of African Biographics is part two of a three-part series on the history of Egypt told through the lives of three of its former leaders: Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak.

Born into a family of 13 children on 25 December 1918, Anwar Sadat grew up among average Egyptian villagers in the town of Mit Abu al-Kuma, 40 miles to the north of Cairo. By the time of his birth, Egypt had become a British colony. His grandmother instilled in Sadat a great love for Egyptian history by telling stories of Arab power and pride before the British came to occupy the country. From an early age, Sadat was an avid reader; among the books and newspapers he devoured were accounts of Mahatma Gandhi's struggle against the British in India, a struggle Sadat admired and later sought to emulate.

Anwar Sadat's political ascendance began with his matriculation in the military academy. As a result of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, access to the military academy was no longer restricted to the upper class. For the first time, the National Military Academy was opened to boys of the working class. The effect was to bring together in the military the very groups that were most politically active in Egypt and most eager for a change in the status quo. These sons of clerks, low-ranking officers, and small businessmen brought into the officer corps the anti-colonial fervor then prevalent on the streets of Cairo. At the military academy, Anwar Sadat met Gamal Abdel Nasser, beginning a long political association that eventually led to the Egyptian presidency.

In the years after he entered the academy, Sadat was active in many political movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, the fascist Young Egypt, and a secret military group called the Free Officers, which sought to liberate Egypt from British influence. In the early 1940s, during the Second World War, the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, and their ally Italy began invading Libya, forcing Britain to send Egyptian troops to defend the western border of British territory. However, some Egyptian soldiers, including Sadat, wanted to side with the Nazis in exchange for help in removing British control from Egypt. And so, in 1941, Sadat and other officers started to plan a revolution with the assistance of the Nazis. When the British discovered Sadat's plans, he was stripped of his military rank and was arrested.

While languishing in jail, Sadat learned English by reading newspapers and books, and he also learned German from another inmate. After two years in jail, Sadat tried to escape; his first attempt failed, but his second, in 1944, was successful. Hiding from the authorities, he lived as a fugitive, using the name Muhammad, growing a beard to disguise his face, and working as a garage mechanic. Anwar Sadat soon resumed his plans to overthrow the British control of Egypt. He planned one assassination attempt on Egypt's prime minister at the time, but the effort was unsuccessful. Another assassination attempt, this one successful, resulted in the death of Egyptian political leader Amin Osman Pasha, who supported a union between Egypt and Britain. For his part in the assassination of Pasha, Sadat was again sent to jail.

In January of 1946, Anwar Sadat endured two years in prison before his trial, in which he was found not guilty. Upon his release, Anwar Sadat resumed his political activities, and in 1950, Gamal Abdel Nasser asked Sadat to join the Free Officers Movement. This revolutionary movement had grown considerably while Sadat was in prison. On 23 July 1952, the Free Officers Movement staged a coup, overthrowing the Egyptian monarchy. Anwar Sadat was chosen to announce the coup leaders' initial proclamations on the radio. As a group, the three officers were largely unknown to the Egyptian public. Four months after the coup, Sadat was in no way visible among them at first, but as time passed he took on a public role as a fiery propaganda chief for the revolution. He was named editor of Al-Gumhuriya, the daily paper established as a regime mouthpiece. In 1953, Sadat became an outspoken opponent of Western imperialism, with Gamal Abdel Nasser soon strengthening his hand and pushing out the opposition. Sadat loyally supported the powerful leader as factional politics swirled within the leadership of the three officers. From the purge of General Muhammad Naguib in 1954 to the dismissal of the military leadership after the disastrous Six-Day War of 1967, Anwar Sadat appeared detached from the action; insulting caricatures of him appeared in the press, and jokes circulated about the lack of esteem Sadat enjoyed among his colleagues. Although he was named speaker of the National Assembly in 1959 and vice president in 1969, very few people took him as a serious contender for power. But I'll touch on this later. Meanwhile, while working with Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sadat learned the dangerous game of politics in a world of superpower rivalries. Their most important trial came over the Suez Canal, which President Nasser nationalized in 1956. In a coordinated effort, the British, French, and the new nation of Israel launched an attack on Egypt, hoping to reestablish control over the canal. The war ended only after the United States pressured its allies to withdraw. Egypt emerged from the war a hero of the non-aligned countries, having successfully resisted colonial powers and maintained its control of the Suez Canal. However, Gamal Nasser's prominence in the Arab world suffered greatly from the debacle of the Six-Day War of June 1967. In this war, the Israeli military completely destroyed the Egyptian Air Force.

Forces swept through the Sinai Peninsula to the Suez Canal, obliterating the Egyptian Army. The war resulted in the Israeli occupation of what remained of historic Palestine, as well as the Egyptian Sinai desert and the Golan Heights from Syria, in a matter of six days. The Israeli Army delivered a huge setback to the forces of three Arab countries and occupied territory that was three and a half times its size. A peace agreement was finally reached between Israel and the Arab nations, but Israel refused to give back any of the land taken over during the war, including Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

The Six Day War ruined the confidence of the Egyptian government and military, and Anwar Sadat himself remained locked up in his home for days after the ceasefire. The devastation from the war also threatened to bankrupt the Egyptian government. Internal squabbling among Arab nations and the growing Palestinian movement eventually strained Gamal Abdel Nasser's abilities to the limit. In 1969, Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose health was quickly failing, appointed Anwar Sadat as vice president of Egypt. President Nasser died nine months later from a heart attack, and Anwar Sadat was elected president on October 15, 1970.

When he succeeded Nasser, Anwar Sadat was completely unknown and untested. Both Egyptians and international diplomats wondered what type of leader Sadat would make. It has been widely reported that the United States CIA estimated that Sadat would last no longer than six months in office before a stronger leader emerged. Well, Sadat began to define his presidency within days of taking office by making changes to policies that Nasser had set up. For instance, Sadat stopped the routine wiretapping of officials and also allowed news media to publish and broadcast without fear of censorship.

Anwar Sadat surprised everyone with a series of intelligent political moves by which he was able to retain the presidency and emerge as a leader in his own right. He launched what he called the Corrective Revolution on May 15, 1971, through which he embarked on purging the government and security forces of all neophytes, especially those who were pro-Soviet. Sadat first removed Ali Sabri, the chief of the air defense system, who was known to have close ties to the Soviet Union. Next, another top official, Sharawi Gomaa, was dismissed, triggering a mass resignation of top-level government officials who were loyal to both Sabri and Gomaa. Unexpected to those people who resigned, Anwar Sadat swiftly accepted their resignations, made the news public, and placed the entire group under house arrest that very night. Anwar Sadat formed a new government, filling the now-empty positions with those he deemed were loyal to Egypt first, rather than the Soviet Union or their own self-interests. The move against these once-powerful figures won him cheers from the populace.

Sadat's popularity soared even further when he cut back the powers of the much-hated secret police and set about dismantling the police state created by Gamal Abdel Nasser and his pro-Soviet advisors. Moreover, he gave the Islamists autonomy in return for political support. Sadat appropriated the title of "Believer President," arranged for the mass media to cover his praying at mosques, and began and ended his speeches with verses from the Quran. Anwar Sadat also encouraged the growth of Islamic student associations, promoted Islamic courses in schools, and reached an understanding with the Muslim Brotherhood, allowing it to function publicly once more as long as it forswore violence. President Sadat also reversed foreign policies that isolated Egypt from all but the Soviet Union, and he also returned property and industry to private owners.

Unfortunately, domestic and international crises presented Anwar Sadat with seemingly insurmountable problems. The Egyptian economy continued to reel from the war with Israel, and the Egyptians' continuing relationship with the Soviet Union deteriorated as the Soviets proved to be unreliable allies. When pressed for more military support to replace the devastation of the Six Day War, the Soviets simply ignored Anwar Sadat's requests. In a bold move, which soon became his trademark, Anwar Sadat expelled the Soviets. The move to expel the Soviets was so unexpected that it surprised even the United States, as Sadat had asked for nothing from the United States in exchange for expelling the Soviet advisors. Sadat's overall objective was to reduce Egypt's dependency on a single foreign power. This grand gesture to expel the Soviets solidified Egyptian internal support at a time when the average Egyptian was suffering greatly.

The biggest trial facing Anwar Sadat was dealing with the aftermath of the Six Day War with Israel. Upon taking power, he began peace talks with Egypt's longtime foe, Israel, almost immediately. Initially, Israel refused Sadat's terms, which proposed that peace could come if Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula. Behind the scenes, however, Sadat was plotting to retake the Egyptian Sinai if the Israelis continued to refuse the Egyptian peace initiative. Anwar Sadat and Syria's Hafez al-Assad built a military coalition to retake their territory. In 1973, on October 6, 1973, the day of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Anwar Sadat struck just after 2 p.m. The Egyptian and Syrian armies, with advanced Soviet weapons, launched a two-front offensive on Israel from the north and the south. President Sadat ordered his forces to cross the Suez Canal in a surprise attack that broke through Israeli defense lines in occupied Sinai, with Syrian forces invading Israel from the east through the Golan Heights. The coordinated attack drove the Israelis back with heavy casualties on both fronts. Indeed, the Israelis had been caught unaware. Israel lost more than one-third of its Air Force, and many of its soldiers had died on the battlefield. Although they were now on the back foot, the Israelis managed to stage a counter-offensive. They also mobilized two armored divisions, which soon turned the Syrian advance into a retreat. The Israelis advanced, capturing territory deep inside Syria. As a result, units from the Iraqi, Saudi, and Jordanian armies joined the fight on the Syrian front to face the counterattack. Still, the Israelis managed to achieve significant gains, advancing to within 35 kilometers of Damascus, Syria's capital, and occupying new territories to bring to the bargaining table. Both the Soviet Union and the Americans began airlifting arms, including tanks and artillery, to their allies as their stockpiles began to run out.

On October 16, ten days after the start of the war, Israeli forces under the command of Ariel Sharon managed to penetrate Egyptian and Syrian defense lines and came within a shocking distance from Cairo, the Egyptian capital city. The counterattack by the Israelis majorly turned the tide of the war in favor of the Israelis, and the fighting came to a stalemate on October 17. The Arabs decided to use a different tactic: oil. The Arab oil-producing countries, under the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), decided to reduce oil production by 5%. They pledged to maintain the same rate of reduction each month thereafter until the Israeli forces were fully withdrawn from all Arab territories occupied during the 1967 June War and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people were restored. The Arab countries also enforced an embargo on the United States, suspending oil supply. The reduction in oil production and supply led to major oil price hikes around the world. Soon enough, "No gas" signs were seen at filling stations throughout the world. All of this caused the United States to reassess its support for the war. By the last week of October, the two sides were ready and willing to accept a ceasefire deal. The general feeling that prevailed in the Arab world, and especially in Egypt, was that of a great victory. Anwar Sadat's popularity was at an all-time high, even though the Israelis had eventually regrouped and won back most of the lost ground. With this war, Sadat had shattered Israel's image of invincibility. In the process, the Egyptians restored their national honor by regaining some of their territory and by avoiding defeat. Anwar Sadat was hailed as the "Hero of the Crossing," referring to his crossing of the Suez Canal to regain the Sinai.

In the aftermath, President Sadat met with the United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, and agreed to a ceasefire and withdrawal that would be supervised by the United Nations, but soon arguments about the withdrawal broke out between Egypt and Israel. Henry Kissinger had to conduct separate talks with each side until Egypt and Israel signed a final ceasefire agreement in January of 1974. Still, despite the ceasefire and disengagement agreements, full peace was still far from being achieved. Though short-lived, the Yom Kippur War created a new momentum for peace, both in Egypt and in Israel. These pressures coincided with continued domestic problems in Egypt. The deteriorating economy in Egypt, accompanied by a growing distance between the rich and the poor, led to internal strife, riots, strikes, and attacks on the rich. Because of the weakening economy and increasing domestic strife, Anwar Sadat was convinced that peace with Israel would reap rewards for Egypt. He used his political capital from the 1973 War to initiate peace talks with Israel.

In a speech to the Egyptian parliament in 1977, President Sadat affirmed his desire to go anywhere to negotiate peace with the Israelis. He even affirmed that he would go to the Israeli Parliament to speak for peace. In turn, the Israelis responded with an invitation to do just that. Sadat's speech to the Israeli Parliament initiated a new momentum for peace. When he finished his speech, he was met with thunderous applause, both from the Israeli Parliament and from the Israeli population. President Sadat returned to Cairo and was welcomed by an electrified population and a parliament that was nearly in full agreement to endorse his actions beyond question or doubt. Sadat's visit to Jerusalem was one of the greatest milestones of the 20th century, becoming a cornerstone in the modern history of the Middle East. But in the months that followed, negotiations with Israel, again facilitated by the United States, stalled again over the Palestinian issue and territorial disputes. But a breakthrough soon came in September of 1978, with the hope to finally settle a peace treaty once and for all. United States President Jimmy Carter invited Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David in the United States for eleven days. The three leaders negotiated, discussed, and argued. Finally, on September 17, 1978, the two sides, Israel and Egypt, were able to agree on a framework for peace. In short, this framework stipulated that Israel would execute a full withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula over a three-year period, while Egypt would develop full peaceful relations with Israel. The fact that there would be transitional agreements established for the West Bank and Gaza and for continued discussion over the status of Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the occupied territories was also included. Egypt would also allow free passage for Israeli ships through the Suez Canal. This framework was an essential step in the peace process, and it ultimately led to the March 1979 signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The treaty ended the state of war that had existed between the two nations since 1948. Together with Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1978.

Peace with Israel was not without its costs. Sadat could not convince the Arab world that the Camp David Accords dealt justly with legitimate Palestinian rights. This led to the loss of financial support from the Arab states, which in turn resulted in economic hardships in Egypt. While Sadat's popularity rose in the West, it fell in Egypt because of internal opposition to the treaty and deteriorating economic conditions. Sadat's new relationship with the West and this peace treaty generated considerable domestic opposition, especially among fundamentalist Muslim groups. To them, the peace accord with Israel was commonly regarded as an opportunist capitulation to Israel and the United States that left the occupied Palestine territories of the West Bank and Gaza in the lurch. For some of the Egyptian Islamic fundamentalists, the peace deal with Israel was evidence presented on the world stage that Anwar Sadat needed to be removed from office at any cost. At the same time, President Sadat reacted to growing opposition to his regime by resorting to authoritarian rule and outright repression. In his most draconian move, in September of 1981, President Sadat ordered the arrest of more than 1,500 people from across the political spectrum: Islamic activists, lawyers, doctors, journalists, university professors, and political opponents.

A few weeks later, on October 6, 1981, it was a sunny day when President Anwar Sadat, dressed in army uniform, witnessed a military parade to commemorate the success of his October 1973 battle. During the celebration, Anwar Sadat looked up at the sky where the Egyptian Air Force Mirage jets were flying while army soldiers and troop trucks paraded by. Suddenly, a military truck containing a kill squad stopped in front of the tribune. An army officer, Khaled Islambouli, an officer in the Egyptian Army, was the first to exit the vehicle. He began shouting and gesticulating angrily at President Sadat. In response to the commotion, Anwar Sadat stood up and shouted back to confront the young soldier. At this point, Khaled Islambouli threw explosives at the stage where Anwar Sadat and his aides were sitting before returning to the vehicle to grab his weapon and shoot directly at the president. His colleagues who had stayed in the truck followed suit and began shooting. These weapons that they had brought to the parade were supposed to be just for show, but the assassins managed to smuggle in bullets for their AK-47 assault rifles. President Anwar Sadat was killed during this process. He was 63 years old. President Sadat was succeeded by his vice president, Hosni Mubarak, who went on to rule Egypt for three decades and whose story I'll cover in part three of this series.

This was Hosni Mubarak, the autocratic ruler of Egypt, whose three decades in power came to an abrupt, bloody climax in 2011 after a popular revolt swept across the Arab world. Mubarak's ascent was atypical. Unlike Iraq's Saddam Hussein or Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Mubarak did not partake in a military coup or otherwise gamble life and limb in order to attain power. Instead, he was simply Egypt's second-highest-ranking government employee, whose last promotion came because of a vacancy at the top back in October 1981 when assassin's bullets killed Anwar Sadat at a military parade and propelled Hosni Mubarak to Egypt's highest office. No one dreamed that he would fill it for longer than his two predecessors combined. Yet Mubarak's tenure lasted longer than other presidents preceding him in Egyptian history. The strict security measures, surveillance, and inspection methods Mubarak used had an effect on this. This episode of African Biographics is part three of a three-part series on the history of Egypt, told through the lives of three of its former leaders: Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak. [Music]

Hosni Mubarak (Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak), better known as Hosni Mubarak, was born on May 4, 1928, in a tiny, poor village in northern Egypt, in the province of Minya. The future president did not have a glamorous childhood due to the socioeconomic state of his family. His father was a minor government bureaucrat and a stern disciplinarian, while his mother was a housewife who was highly conservative and highly traditional. While little is known of Mubarak's early years and his relationship with his family, certain incidents, such as his mother's documented attempt to take his son to court in 1960 for refusing to pay her escalating medical bills, or the heavily rumored media ban he imposed on his own brother, may help paint a clearer picture of who Hosni Mubarak was as a person during his early and later years. Mubarak was considered a private person. For instance, as a young military officer, he kept his family and hometown a private matter. Even when he became president, Hosni Mubarak insisted on keeping his private life out of the public domain. Hosni Mubarak was also known to lead a strict life with a fixed daily schedule that began at 6:00 a.m. In his younger days, close associates often complained of his schedule, which began with a workout in the gym or a game of squash. By most accounts, in his early life, Mubarak was a hardworking student. From his difficult childhood, he only desired to leave his town and join the military in order to have a respectable life. For someone of Mubarak's limited means and social status, the pathways to social mobility were few, and the military was one of them. This is why, after completing his high school education, 19-year-old Mubarak left Minya Province for Cairo to join the military academy.

Hosni Mubarak received Egypt's finest military education, graduating from the National Military Academy in 1949. One of his dreams was to become a pilot, and so when the Air Force Academy announced it would be accepting applicants from the military academy, Mubarak applied and was one of the twelve students accepted into the academy. At the Air Force Academy at Bilbeis, Hosni Mubarak trained to be a fighter pilot. He thrived during his time there and loved what he did. One of his classmates described him as a natural commander and that control and precision were two of his strongest traits. Anwar Sadat, who I covered in part two of this series, first met Mubarak in 1950 while the latter was stationed at an air base in the Sinai Peninsula. Legend has it that Sadat was so impressed with the young pilot that he recorded his name in a little notebook. Although Hosni Mubarak was not invited to join Nasser and Sadat's secret faction of Free Officers, his career went into overdrive after their successful coup against the monarchy. After graduating, Mubarak taught at the Air Force Academy until 1959, a year after his marriage to 17-year-old Suzanne Thabet. He then traveled to the Soviet Union to participate in a series of pilot training programs before joining the Frunze Military Academy in the Soviet Union in 1964. The young officer returned to Egypt in 1965 and began to rise through the ranks of the Egyptian Air Force. He played a vital role in the 1967 Six-Day War and also in the 1973 Yom Kippur War as an instructor. During the Six-Day War, these pilots were one of only a handful of Egyptian air squadrons that were left largely intact, as most pilots and soldiers were killed in the Israeli preemptive strike on the Arab Air Forces. All of this showed Mubarak's excellent leadership skills, which led to him being promoted as the Director of the Air Force Academy months after the war. By 1972, the now-President Anwar Sadat promoted Hosni Mubarak to serve as Deputy Minister of Defense as well as Air Force Chief. At the age of 44, Mubarak was appointed commander of the Air Force by Sadat and acquitted himself well during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In this war, Hosni Mubarak took part in planning and designing the successful joint Egyptian-Syrian surprise offensive launched against Israel. In fact, Mubarak was the mastermind of a 20-minute Egyptian air attack that destroyed 90% of its Israeli targets. The general feeling that prevailed in the Arab world, and especially in Egypt after the Yom Kippur War, was that of a great victory. Due to his role in the war, Mubarak was perceived as a war hero and a dedicated commander. By 1974, Mubarak was a full Air Marshal and was admired by his military peers.

His life changed dramatically in April of 1975. On this particular occasion, President Anwar Sadat invited him to his home for dinner. His wife, Suzanne Mubarak, reportedly thought her husband was going to be named to an ambassadorship. Instead, President Sadat appointed Hosni Mubarak to the vice presidency. Later, Mubarak admitted that he had been disinclined to take the job. His sons, he said, were unhappy to learn that their father would no longer be commanding fighter jets. Many Egyptians were also surprised by President Sadat's decision to appoint Mubarak as vice president. It was an unexpected choice, as Mubarak had no experience of politics and no popular base. However, he had the all-important endorsement of the military high command. He was unquestionably loyal, hardworking, and down-to-earth. As President Anwar Sadat became increasingly interested in personally negotiating with Israel in the late 1970s, Mubarak began to take more control over Egypt's internal affairs. The president authorized him to run weekly cabinet meetings, as well as the country's intelligence services, oversee the development of Egypt's nuclear energy program, and to undertake other duties of the president's office. In subsequent years, Hosni Mubarak was active in most of the negotiations involving Middle Eastern and Arab policy. By 1978, Mubarak had also become the vice chairman of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Egypt's largest and most powerful political party. The era of President Sadat was tumultuous. During his time in power, there was the May 1971 Corrective Revolution, the opening to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the bread riots of 1977. President Sadat, whose 1973 Yom Kippur victory had redeemed his own and the nation's pride, decided to win back Egypt's Sinai Peninsula by a peace agreement with Israel. So, in quick succession, President Sadat made trips to Israel, as well as to Camp David in the United States. This was followed by the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Unfortunately, Egypt was ostracized by the rest of the Arab world, for they considered this peace treaty with Israel an act of betrayal. While Sadat's popularity rose in the West, his new relationship with the West, as well as his peace treaty, generated considerable domestic opposition, especially among fundamentalist Muslim groups. At the same time, President Sadat reacted to growing opposition to his regime by resorting to authoritarian rule and outright oppression. In his most draconian move, in September of 1981, President Sadat ordered the arrest of more than 1,500 people from across the political spectrum, ranging from Islamic activists, lawyers, doctors, journalists, university professors, as well as his political opponents. On October 6, 1981, during a parade commemorating the 1973 Yom Kippur War, soldiers dismounted from army trucks and assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in a hail of gunfire and grenade explosions. His vice president, Hosni Mubarak, who was standing beside him and was injured in the attack, assumed the presidency a week later.

It has been said by some people that President Sadat virtually signed his own death warrant by making close relations with the Israelis and the Americans, by bringing Egypt out of the Arab world in a certain sense. "How do you feel about that? Somebody has to sacrifice, believe me. Not all the Arab world are against the peace process. I know very well, and don't ask me any further questions about that. Not a single country has any other alternative. We are not throwing ourselves in the hands of Americans or any other country all over the world." After this unexpected elevation, Hosni Mubarak's main task was to stabilize a country traumatized by years of upheaval. The new president, Hosni Mubarak, tried to contain the disaffections that had surfaced in the last year of Sadat's regime. For instance, he announced the end of the reign of the privileged minority that had dominated the invigorated private sector during the years of Sadat. Mubarak also released Sadat's political prisoners. More than 1,500 political prisoners jailed by Anwar Sadat were freed, while the regime vigorously prosecuted the Islamic militants who had plotted the late president's assassination. In this regard, shortly after Sadat's death, Egypt imprisoned more than 2,500 religious fundamentalists suspected of working against the government. At the beginning, Hosni Mubarak showed that he was going to be tolerant of opposing political parties and candidates and also making Egypt less authoritarian than it was under Anwar Sadat. In addition, Hosni Mubarak relaxed censorship of the press. While total freedom was not guaranteed, Egyptians saw more press freedom under Mubarak during his early presidency than under Sadat. However, to preserve stability and security, President Hosni Mubarak came to rely on emergency laws that had been imposed after Sadat was killed. These emergency laws remained in place throughout his tenure. The emergency laws put broad restrictions on civil liberties, curbing the right to assembly and allowing for arrest and detention without charges. The emergency laws under President Mubarak resulted in tens of thousands of people being held without charge or trial, often in appalling conditions. Mubarak's regime argued that these draconian measures were necessary to combat Islamist terrorism, which came in waves during the decades of Mubarak's rule. "I have to put it before a military court so as to finish as quickly as possible, because the normal courts have lots of cases. It will take a very long time, which will make everything much more complicated. But we are not violating the law or the Constitution under any circumstance. Let me just—I'll touch on this terrorism later on in the video."

One of the main challenges facing Hosni Mubarak was Egypt's economy, which was in the doldrums throughout the 1980s. Egypt was plagued by severe unemployment, inflation, and stagnation, with a population of 55 million growing by another million every eight months. Improving the economy was a tall order. Since the mid-1980s, the four chief sources of foreign exchange and revenue—oil, tourism, Suez Canal transit fees, and remittances from Egyptian workers abroad—had been battered by the sharp drop in oil prices, as well as the recession in the Gulf. Egypt found itself scrambling for credit simply to import wheat for bread and other basic daily staples. These adverse conditions were compounded by mounting foreign debt. But in some of his very first speeches, President Mubarak did frankly and perceptively identify Egypt's economic shortcomings. The president did try to remedy matters by launching a campaign against corruption and bribery, which he identified as a cause of Egypt's ruin. In these early years, Hosni Mubarak presented himself as an honest manager, not associated with special interest groups, family networks, and political cliques, seeking only the interest of the country at large. In these early years, the government was known for efficiency and its no-nonsense approach to work. The regime fixed infrastructure and provided new roads, sewage facilities, and telephone circuits. By the time Mubarak was pushed from office in February of 2011, Egyptian life expectancy had reached developed-world levels. Birth and infant mortality rates had also dropped significantly, while childhood immunization rates for tuberculosis, diphtheria, tetanus, and the like were in the 96 to 98% range. When Mubarak took the oath of office in October of 1981, they had been roughly half that. The literacy rate in Egypt also improved markedly by a variety of measures. Egyptians were collectively better off for the three decades of Mubarak's rule. Unfortunately, most of these achievements were overshadowed by high population growth rates, deficient administration for public services, and corruption, which over time became rampant at various levels of government. Also, not everyone in Egypt shared in the development that Mubarak enabled, especially during his final years in power. The development was uneven, or perceived to be uneven. It is not hard to understand why, given the ubiquitous high-end cars and all other types of conspicuous consumption among Egypt's elite, juxtaposed against a huge section of the population that was failing to even make ends meet. At the same time, Mubarak's regime became heavily reliant on the billions of dollars in annual aid that the United States dutifully paid to ensure Egypt would protect United States regional interests, chiefly Israel's security amid its ongoing occupation and settlement of Palestinian land. Early on, when Mubarak assumed power, the United States was afraid that he would apply pressure to change the status quo on issues like the Israeli occupation of Palestine or even backtrack on the close relationship Sadat had established with Washington. Luckily for the United States, Mubarak did not backtrack on this. Mubarak leveraged this circumstance to increase United States aid to Egypt from around $900 million to about $1.2 billion annually, with some sources reporting it to be in the region of about $2 billion annually. In exchange, Hosni Mubarak maintained the peace with Israel, and Cairo hosted numerous conferences between Israeli, Palestinian, and Western officials. Despite other leaders accusing him of being a sellout, Mubarak didn't seem to care. He invested these funds into ensuring his own survival, building a state-of-the-art military and expanding the reach and powers of the ruthless and much-feared secret police. The money was also spent on the government's food and fuel subsidy programs, which formed the basis of an unwritten social contract between the president and the population, which was as long as bread remained cheap, few people complained publicly when Mubarak locked up members of the Muslim Brotherhood or blatantly rigged elections in his favor. Hosni Mubarak also put much of that windfall towards creating new patronage networks and enriching his own family. A 2014 report released by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights showed that during the last ten years of Mubarak's rule, poverty rates continued to rise despite the country's steady economic growth. During the 2011 uprising, a widely circulated report suggested that the Mubarak family fortune could be as high as $70 billion, offering some clues as to where much of that growth in Egypt, as well as the aid money, had gone to.

During his early years as president, Mubarak struck a moderate tone, neither backing away from the peace with Israel nor loosening ties with the United States. "Our discussions were warm and frank, as discussions between good and trusting friends should be. They strengthen our sense of common purpose in working for regional peace and security. There was basic agreement on the critical issues our nations face in the Middle East and Africa. We discussed the urgent need to achieve a just and comprehensive peace for the Middle East, which would permit…" By pursuing that steady course, he was able to prevent any delay in the return of the occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egyptian sovereignty in April of 1982. However, these solid beginnings were undercut when Israel invaded Lebanon in June of 1982, only five weeks after the Jewish state's final withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. The invasion was perceived as an Israeli attempt to destroy Palestinian nationalism, and Mubarak was accused by his foes of allowing Israel to exploit Egypt's disengagement. However, Hosni Mubarak's cautious policies did…

Enable Egypt to repair his relationships with most of the moderate Arab states. He also started his presidency by talking with Arab leaders and reestablishing Egypt as part of the Arab world. By 1983, Arab countries began to restore their ties with Egypt due to Mubarak's persistent diplomatic efforts. For instance, Hosni Mubarak built a bilateral relationship with Iraq's Saddam Hussein. As a result, Egypt was Iraq's ally during the 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq War.

In 1987, Hosni Mubarak ran for reelection and he won his second six-year term. The president won the election easily, with 97% of the vote. That year, at an Arab Summit, each government was authorized to restore diplomatic relations with Egypt as it saw fit. Iraq, which had been a leading critic of Sadat's peace with Israel, but by then was in a protracted war with Iran, took that opportunity to purchase military supplies from Egypt. While it took some time, in 1989 Egypt was readmitted to the Arab League at the initiative of Iraq and Yemen. Egypt had been expelled from the Arab League in 1979. Furthermore, the Arab League returned its headquarters to Cairo after it was moved to Tunisia in 1979. All of this meant that Egypt had regained its place in the Arab world, and Hosni Mubarak was praised by many Egyptians. This reconnection was essential because Egypt heavily relied economically on the Arab states. So now Egypt and Hosni Mubarak were back at the helm of Middle Eastern Egypt's leadership role.

Egypt's leadership role was manifest in the Persian Gulf crisis that followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, consequently resulting in a 7-month long Iraqi military occupation of the country. In this case, Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, claimed that Kuwait was stealing Iraqi petroleum through cross-border slant drilling into Iraq's Ruma oil field. Saddam Hussein also accused Kuwait of other attacks on the economy of Iraq. This invasion of Kuwait by Iraq triggered panic and confusion across the Middle East. The Egyptian government condemned the invasion, and Hosni Mubarak believed that Iraq's actions were a danger to the stability of the whole region and that Saddam Hussein needed to be stopped. In turn, President Mubarak led other Arab states in supporting the Saudi decision to invite the aid of the United States-led military coalition to recover Kuwait. This 1991 United States-led war to reverse Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait proved to be a turning point for Mubarak and Egypt. As a reward for the country's participation in the campaign, $20 billion in outstanding national debts were wiped clean, allowing Egypt to aggressively solicit new loans and foreign investments. Due to the state of Egypt's economy at the time, the forgiving of the debt was significant for its economy and people. In this way, Hosni Mubarak won a reputation as an international statesman, and his country enjoyed the material favor of the oil-rich countries.

At the end of his presidential term in 1993, President Mubarak further campaigned for peace in the region. He helped Palestine and Israel negotiate a bilateral agreement known as the Oslo Accords. In helping spread peace in the Middle East, the Mubarak regime further strengthened their relationship with the United States. In fact, Hosni Mubarak was a key United States ally for his three decades in power. Islamists had a noticeable impact in Egypt since the 1980s, in part as a result of the policies pursued by President Mubarak in the early years after he came to power. Two types of Islamists would prove to be an issue throughout Mubarak's three-decade tenure, and these were the jihadists and reformists. The jihadists were led primarily by Gamaa Islamiya and the Islamic Jihad movement, with the aim of easing the tensions that had been created by Sadat's policies in September of 1981, as well as consolidating the legitimacy of the new regime. Hosni Mubarak set out to create a broad national front against the threat posed by these Islamist extremists. The president did this by tolerating the reformists led by the Muslim Brotherhood and other moderate political forces. Following this, the Muslim Brotherhood began to participate in formal politics. They were so successful in gaining control of unions for doctors, pharmacists, engineers, and lawyers that the Mubarak regime changed the election rules to block the Muslim Brotherhood from dominating those groups.

As I've mentioned, the Muslim Brotherhood was not Egypt's only Islamist movement. During the 1990s, radical Islamists increased their violent attacks against the Mubarak regime, as well as Coptic Christian minorities and foreign tourists, particularly in Upper Egypt. It was around this time that Hosni Mubarak's term of office was coming to an end in 1993. According to the Constitution of Egypt, he wasn't allowed to run for a third term. However, the parliament controlled by Mubarak's NDP amended the constitution in order for him to run for reelection. During this term, Hosni Mubarak escaped two assassination attempts. The first attempt came in 1995 when he was traveling to Ethiopia for a meeting of the Organization of African Unity. On this particular day, which was 26 June 1995, Mubarak flew to Addis Ababa, and while leaving the airport, he and his convoy were ambushed by an Egyptian Gamaa Islamiya squad. Luckily, prior to the trip, Mubarak's intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, had suggested that he have his own bulletproof car flown to the summit in Addis. Just after the airport, I left the airport suddenly, I found the blue van blocking the road, and somebody just flat on the ground, and machine guns started firing at me. It was shocking. What's that? Then I realized that there are bullets coming to our car. It is an armored car, so I was not afraid at all that anything could come in. One bullet came in. The Egyptians were surprised at this attempt, and panic gripped the entire country when the news broke out. When the president arrived in his country, many Egyptians happily greeted him as they expressed their gratitude for his survival.

After the 1995 assassination attempt against Mubarak in Ethiopia, his regime cracked down heavily on all Islamist groups. Although it had renounced violence, the Muslim Brotherhood paid a price too; hundreds of its members were imprisoned, some were tried in military courts and received long prison terms. The deadliest terrorist attack during the Mubarak era was carried out in Luxor, where more than 60 people, mostly foreign tourists, were killed. This was in 1997. This attack in Luxor shocked the country, as it terrified Egyptians and undermined the tourism business. It cost the economy billions of dollars as the tourism industry took a dive after the attack. The onus was now on President Mubarak to prove to his people and individuals around the world that his country was safe and free of attacks. Using the emergency laws, Mubarak unleashed mass arrests and military courts to cut through Egypt's Islamists. To achieve all of this, the president banked largely on the security operators as represented by the interior ministry and specifically the State Security Investigation Service Agency. At its peak, the much-feared State Security Investigations agency had over 100,000 employees and was believed to be responsible for hundreds of cases of torture and other abuses, such as arbitrary arrests and detentions. During this time, the police force is said to have increased to over a million personnel by 2002 from around 150,000 in the 1970s. As a result, Egypt under Mubarak's rule became an archetypal police state, with security forces given free reign to arrest and torture who they wanted.

The Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition forces continued to persevere politically; however, for instance, the Muslim Brotherhood won 17 seats in the 2000 parliamentary elections, despite alleged electoral fraud. In the elections of 2005, Mubarak allowed the brothers to freely participate, and they achieved an unprecedented electoral victory amid American and European pressure on Mubarak's regime to democratize. The Muslim Brotherhood's candidates had won 88 out of the 444 contested seats and emerged as the largest opposition bloc in the People's Assembly, which was dominated by Mubarak's NDP. Some people believed that this was the beginning of democracy in Egypt. Almost immediately, however, the Mubarak regime clamped down on the group by imprisoning its leaders, sentencing them in military courts, and confiscating their businesses. Mubarak's regime wanted to send a message to future opposition candidates. Furthermore, while the regime claimed that the election was honest, Egyptians were well aware that the regime had rigged these elections. Over the next 5 years, Mubarak and his government restricted political space generally.

During Mubarak's fourth term, the idea of succession arose, particularly in 2000 when the nation of Syria experienced a father-son presidential transition after the death of Syria's Hafez al-Assad. His son, Bashar al-Assad, became the leader of the country. It was around the same time that Mubarak's son, Gamal, named after Gamal Abdel Nasser, began to be more involved politically. It became quite apparent that Hosni Mubarak's prime fixation had shifted towards creating the conditions to allow his son to inherit the presidency upon his father's eventual death. In addition, in 2002, rumors of Gamal becoming the next president became more evident as he was appointed to a significant position in the NDP. To add on to all of this was that Mubarak had never appointed a vice president during his time in power, leaving many to wonder who would lead the country after his departure. Gamal Mubarak was unpopular with many Egyptians who felt that he symbolized the corrupt business elite, the gap between the rich and poor, as well as the continuation of nepotism at the detriment to democracy. Towards the end, the elder Mubarak sidelined elements within the military thought to be hostile to his hereditary project. Before the Arab Spring, a number of articles circulated suggesting that the generals were not happy with the fact that Hosni Mubarak was grooming his son, Gamal, to succeed him. Whilst the elder Mubarak had a career in Egypt's Air Force, Gamal was not a military man. As an outsider, it could not be guaranteed that he would protect the army's monopoly over the economy, the revenue it reaped from the restaurants, clubs, factories, and hotels they owned.

During Mubarak's final term in office, it became more evident that Egyptians were dissatisfied with their president, country, and government. President Mubarak began to witness hundreds of riots in which demonstrators often tore down public images of him. Many Egyptians were fed up with the unjust conditions in their country. They were upset with many problems, including high prices, police brutality, and government corruption. The rapid growth of Egypt's population had also made the government subsidies impossible to sustain. By the late 2000s, the country's population of about 80 million was double what it was when Mubarak assumed power in 1981. Other people in Egypt stated that the regime was getting old as Mubarak failed to satisfy the needs of his people, especially the younger generation. They felt that President Mubarak was disconnected from the people and that the representatives in parliament did not accurately represent the people as they were illegitimately elected by the regime. The general consensus was that the regime reportedly rigged elections and deprived the Egyptian people of their voice in selecting their leaders and their representatives. After every demonstration, President Mubarak claimed that he listened to the people and understood their desires; however, little was done by the president or the regime to improve the conditions. He offered nothing tangible that could inspire hope. Instead, the crashing social and economic conditions, widespread corruption, and the gap between the haves and have-nots fueled the anger that many Egyptians felt towards his regime. At the same time, however, some Egyptians, mostly older individuals, stood by Mubarak. They supported him because of his stable leadership that was unlike previous presidents. They feared that Egypt would become unstable if Mubarak stepped down from the presidency.

And then came the Arab Spring. Days after a popular uprising in Tunisia forced President Ben Ali from power, protests against Hosni Mubarak's regime erupted on 25th January 2011. The protests appear to have been organized by networks of individuals communicating via social media, bypassing the leadership of Egypt's established opposition groups. Thousands of protesters poured into Tahrir Square in Cairo, chanting slogans against corruption, political repression, and poverty. Protests erupted in other cities throughout the country, with especially violent clashes taking place in Suez and Alexandria. As the demonstrations progressed, Egypt's established opposition groups increased their participation. The Muslim Brotherhood, the opposition group with the greatest popular support in Egypt, also announced that it would participate in the demonstrations. Day after day, Tahrir Square was flooded with more people than the day before. The protesters also escalated their demands. They chanted, "The people want the fall of the regime!" They burned pictures of President Mubarak to show their frustration with his regime and their desire for an end to his presidency. Police stations and NDP buildings throughout the country were attacked or set on fire by demonstrators. In a move that the regime believed would end the protest and answer the demands of the people, on 29th January, for the first time in his presidency, Hosni Mubarak appointed a vice president. He appointed Omar Suleiman, his intelligence chief, as vice president of Egypt. Unfortunately for the regime, some Egyptians claimed that Mubarak's appointment of a vice president came too late and it was just a way to distract the people from their main demand for the resignation of Mubarak. Meanwhile, as the protests were happening, the Egyptian military's stance toward the protest and the Mubarak regime remained uncertain. Army units in downtown Cairo refrained from using force against the demonstrators, and in some cases, soldiers and officers appeared to signal their solidarity with the crowd. On 31 January, the army announced on state television that it would not use force against demonstrators.

Under increasing pressure as demonstrations intensified, Hosni Mubarak appeared on Egyptian state television again on 1 February. In the televised speech, he affirmed that he appointed the prime minister to engage in dialogue with protesters and called on parliament to amend articles 76 and 77 of the Egyptian Constitution. These articles would allow for candidates outside the National Democratic Party to run for office and limit a president's term in leadership. Additionally, Mubarak promised that when his term came to an end in September of that year, neither he nor his son Gamal would run for the presidency, but still he refused to resign immediately as the protesters demanded. Hosni Mubarak's announcement was immediately followed by some of the most brutal violence since the protests began. A crowd of pro-Mubarak protesters fought anti-government demonstrators in Tahrir Square. We do have breaking news tonight from Cairo where, after a day of unprecedented violence, the night gives way to armed chaos. The Egyptian military stood neutral as pro- and anti-Mubarak crowds exchanged punches and rocks and flaming bottles of gasoline throughout the day, but how will they respond now that bullets are flying through Liberation Square? It is the most frightening moment yet in the capital of America's biggest Middle East ally. These clashes resulted in the deaths of five people, and it is estimated that about 1,500 people were injured.

Under continued pressure to step down immediately, Mubarak gave a televised speech on 10 February. He promised that he would hand power to his prime minister, reform the constitution, and cancel the emergency law once the crisis eased. Hosni Mubarak reiterated that he would stay as president until September because the country needed him for a transition to democracy. The president hoped that his speech would put an end to the protest, but this didn't work. The people persisted. On 11 February, as protesters frustrated by Mubarak's refusal to step down assembled at locations around Cairo, including the presidential palace, it was announced that Hosni Mubarak and his family had departed Cairo for a resort town on the Red Sea peninsula where he maintained a residence. That evening, Vice President Omar Suleiman appeared on state television to announce that Mubarak had stepped down. "President Muhammad Hosni Mubarak has decided to waive the office of the President of the Republic and instructed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to run the affairs of the country. May God protect Egypt." The announcement was met with jubilation among the crowds of protesters in Cairo. [Applause]

Hosni Mubarak's humiliation did not end after he stepped down. Following his departure, the Egyptian government began to investigate allegations of corruption and abuse of power within the Mubarak regime, questioning and arresting several former officials and business leaders with close ties to Hosni Mubarak. Calls for the investigation to focus on the former president himself intensified, fueled by reports that the Mubarak family had amassed a fortune worth billions of dollars in overseas accounts. On 10 April 2011, the public prosecutor announced that Hosni Mubarak and his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, would be questioned by investigators. On 3 August 2011, Hosni Mubarak appeared in public for the first time since stepping down as his trial commenced in Cairo amid heavy security. Mubarak, reportedly suffering from poor health, was wheeled into court in a hospital bed. He appeared alert during the hearing, denying all charges against him. In June 2012, an Egyptian court found Mubarak guilty of complicity in the deaths of demonstrators and sentenced him to life in prison. He was acquitted on charges of corruption. In November 2014, an Egyptian court dismissed charges against Mubarak in the killing of protesters on the grounds that the court's jurisdiction had been invalidated by a 3-month delay in the prosecutor's filing of the original indictment against Mubarak in 2011. After a final trial, Hosni Mubarak was acquitted in 2017 and released from detention in January 2020. The former Egyptian leader underwent surgery for an unknown ailment. He remained in intensive care until his death on 25 February 2020. He was 91 years old. Don't forget to like and share the video if you enjoyed it. Thank you all for tuning in. This has been Tentacle for African Biographics. Until next time, cheers. Have a good [Music] one.