Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat

The Long Road Towards Peace

Gamal Abdel Nasser was succeeded by his vice-president, Mohammad Anwar al-Sadat, a companion of many years who many believed would be no more than a minor and transitory leader. They could not have been further from the truth.

Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat was born in a Delta village on December 25, 1918, the son of a clerk and a Sudanese woman. From his humble beginnings, Sadat eventually went on to graduate from the Military Academy in Cairo in 1938.

The young Sadat actively supported Misr al-Fatat (a nationalist youth movement). During World War II, he established links with German agents and was subsequently expelled from the Army and imprisoned. After the war, he was back in prison on charges of conspiracy to assassinate al-Nahhas and Amin Uthman, a pro- British Wafdist minister, but was acquitted in 1948. Sadat rejoined the Army and together with Nasser played a major role in the "Free Officers" coup to oust King Faruq. In 1969, Nasser appointed him vicepresident, but he showed little overall signs of ambition.

Sadat was no Puppet

In fact, Anwar Sadat owed his presidency to the fact that no one had ever believed he posed a threat to the power structure erected by Nasser. Prior to becoming president, he had even humbly acknowledged that he would not pretend to be a new Nasser, but would simply do as he was told by the regime and ensure that its directives were carried out. Yet appearances were deceptive. Sadat was no mere puppet, and charting his own course, he came to significantly alter the course of Egyptian history, confounding the Arab world in the process.

Reestablishing Diplomatic Links

Whereas Nasser had turned to the Soviet Union for military support and turned his back on the West, Anwar Sadat courted the West and reestablished diplomatic links with the United States that had been severed in the aftermath of the 1967 War. In July 1972, he ordered the expulsion of some 20,000 Soviet military advisors.

Furthermore, Sadat was not concerned with playing the pan-Arabist statesman, but chose to put national interests back at the top of the agenda. In 1971 he laid to rest the last vestiges of Nasser's dreams for a greater Arab state - no longer would the country be known as the United Arab Republic, but instead as the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Getting Back Sinai

Sadat's overriding concern was to get back Sinai, which had been lost to Israel in the 1967 War. Initially, he hoped that by distancing himself from the Soviet Union he would be in a better position to secure U.S. support to negotiate the return of the land. His overtures fell on deaf ears, however, and he became increasingly convinced that the only way to get Israel to the negotiating table was by threatening it militarily. In 1973, Anwar Sadat cast aside his doubts and put into action his plan of war, which he spent a year carefully nurturing.