Zwei Jahre nach Beginn
der Revolution in Ägypten dringen erste Berichte aus dem inneren Kreis von
Präsident Hosni Mubarak über die dramatischen Tage, die zum Sturz des Diktators
geführt haben, an die Öffentlichkeit. Sie geben erste Einblicke über das Verhalten
des schwerbedrängten und offensichtlich bereits stark vom Alter gezeichneten
Herrschers, sowie dessen machthungrigen Sohn Gamal und andere engste Berater,
aber auch die Position des späteren Militärherrschers Feldmarschall Tantawi. Wie
wollen den im „Foreign Policy Magazine” publizierten Artikel unseren
Lesern nicht vorenthalten.
------
The Egyptian Revolution Through Mubarak's Eyes
Insider
accounts are shedding new light on the 18 days that brought down a pharaoh.
BY DAVID
KENNER | JANUARY 24, 2013
CAIRO - It
was Jan. 19, 2011, and Hosni Mubarak's regime was strong and confident. The
Egyptian president was playing host to an array of Arab presidents at his
beachside resort in Sharm el-Sheikh. Hundreds of construction workers had been
evacuated from the area, lest they mar the spectacle.
But those
listening carefully could make out the first rumblings of discontent. The
Tunisian foreign minister had to scramble back to Tunis hours before the
summit's opening, as his country dealt with the fallout of a revolution that
had already toppled its long-serving dictator. And Egyptian Facebook pages were
spreading news of demonstrations on Jan. 25, which would seek to replicate the
drama of the Tunisian revolution on the streets of Cairo.
As the
summit drew to a close, Mubarak headed to the airport to see the foreign
dignitaries off. Trailing closely behind him were Egyptian Foreign Minister
Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Omar Suleiman, Mubarak's feared domestic enforcer. Aboul
Gheit asked Suleiman if he had raised the potential protests with the
president; the intelligence chief replied that he had left Mubarak alone during
the summit, but that it was high time to discuss the issue.
When the
last dignitary had left, Suleiman approached the president and told him that he
had a very important topic to discuss. It was then that Mubarak learned of the
uprising that would sweep him from power in a few short weeks.
At the
time, however, Mubarak was nonplussed. "The president didn't show much
interest," Aboul Gheit wrote in his recently published memoir, My
Testimony. When Suleiman suggested a meeting with top officials to coordinate
responses to potential protests, Mubarak "didn't respond, and didn't react
in a way that we understood as suggesting he was worried."
Two years
after the Jan. 25 protests, the small clique of officials around Mubarak is
finally starting to go public about the debates within the Egyptian government
as the revolution unfolded around them. In addition to Aboul Gheit's account,
top Egyptian officials gave their account of the unrest in journalist Bradley
Hope's Last Day of the Pharaoh. Both tales provide a glimpse into the tensions
at the very top of the Mubarak regime and the reason it failed to crush the
protest movement.
Mubarak, in
all these former officials' stories, is portrayed as a largely passive figure
-- a leader who was at the mercy of the last person to offer his advice.
"The president is very old, and consequently he is dependent on the vision
of Gamal Mubarak," Aboul Gheit wrote, referring to Mubarak's younger son,
who had been conspicuously active in the presidential palace since the
beginning of the uprising. Gamal, he added, "stays with [the president]
all the time in the palace or in the house."
Such
explanations could be an effort by high-ranking officials to deflect blame away
from the Egyptian state and on to their bureaucratic rivals. But the accounts
are remarkably consistent: Hossam Badrawi, then the top official of the ruling
political party, told Hope he had convinced Mubarak to relinquish power on Feb.
9 -- but the president then reversed his decision after being confronted by
Gamal and other members of his inner circle. He would relent two days later.
President Barack
Obama's administration reached out to Aboul Gheit on several occasions to
express its views on how the Mubarak regime should handle the crisis. The
Egyptian foreign minister believed the U.S. government was attempting a good
cop-bad cop approach: "The White House appears very strict against the
government, while [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton and the State Department
show some flexibility," he told Suleiman.
The
intelligence chief replied, "It is the traditional distribution of
roles."
As the revolution
gained momentum, Aboul Gheit describes a regime paralyzed by infighting. On
Jan. 31, he attended the swearing-in of the new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, a
career military man brought in to restore order. Mubarak, he says, was bored
and quiet: "He pretended to be very busy reading some papers."
Other
players, however, were already maneuvering to protect their interests. Mohamed
Hussein Tantawi, then defense minister and the future head of the military
junta that would replace Mubarak, informed Aboul Gheit at the ceremony that the
military would not sacrifice its reputation to preserve Mubarak's rule.
"Some told me that people are talking about using the army to control the
situation by force," Tantawi said sternly, according to Aboul Gheit.
"And I said from my side the army doesn't strike people at all, or else it
will lose its legitimacy."
Gamal,
meanwhile, was intent on protecting Mubarak's hold on power, whatever the cost.
Gamal was widely believed to have designs on the presidency himself -- though
the aging dictator denied that he would orchestrate Gamal's inheritance of
power. "Do you think I'm crazy?" Aboul Gheit wrote that Mubarak told
him. "To put my son ... my son ... in this jail? Impossible."
While Gamal
indisputably played a powerful behind-the-scenes role, Mubarak resisted efforts
to place him in the public eye. Aboul Gheit wrote that he suggested to the
president in 2010 that Gamal run for a seat in parliament. At the time, the
opposition Muslim Brotherhood held nearly 20 percent of parliament, though
their presence would be decimated in the 2010 election, which was widely viewed
as rigged.
"This
is nonsense," Mubarak responded sharply. "They will cut him into
pieces. Don't you know what is happening in parliament?"
On Feb. 1,
with the police forces helpless to control the swelling protests, Mubarak
delivered a late-night speech announcing that he would not run for another term
in office. "[The speech] was late ... it was late ... and then I fell asleep,"
Aboul Gheit writes, mirroring the frustrations of many protesters. The foreign
minister was awakened afterwards by a phone call from Gamal, who said that the
speech had sparked a "new spirit" and popular sympathy for Mubarak.
Gamal,
however, had overestimated the sea change. On Feb. 2, Aboul Gheit was ensconced
in his office in the Foreign Ministry when he looked out the window to see a
crowd, interspersed with horses and camels, moving toward Tahrir Square. His
phone rang: "They are going to burn the country." shouted a relative.
"The unity of Egypt will be gone!"
It was the
beginning of the Battle of the Camel - a failed attempt by regime loyalists to
clear the square by any means necessary. The cavalry charge with horses and
camels, as well as attacks with stones and Molotov cocktails, left 11 Egyptians
dead and more than 600 injured.
But the
attack also marked the beginning of the end for the Mubarak regime. Aboul Gheit
frantically called Suleiman to discuss the bloodshed in Tahrir: The two
officials agreed that the president now had no choice but to step down.
Suleiman, however, said that he could not say this publicly -- he would be
accused of forcing Mubarak out in order to ascend to the presidency himself.
From this point, the fractures within Egyptian regime widened quickly. Aboul Gheit
recounted a conversation with Suleiman, in which the intelligence chief said
"there was a real plan" to make Gamal as president, but that
"the national security apparatus will not agree on this" and that he
would not work for Gamal. "They want to get rid of me, and they exerted a
lot of effort in this respect," Suleiman added. Aboul Gheit added that he
believed Suleiman was referring to Mubarak's wife, Suzanne.
This
conversation may also contain a hint for understanding why Suleiman was shunted
aside by the military establishment after Mubarak's fall. The intelligence
chief suggested that there was a disagreement between him and Tantawi over
Gamal, saying that in the event Mubarak's son became president, "it is only
Tantawi who will work with him." In any event, Suleiman's bombastic
statements blaming foreigners for the uprising and claiming that Egypt was not
ready for democracy had made him extremely unpopular among the protesters - and
a liability to any transitional government.
By Feb. 9,
Mubarak's position was clearly untenable. At this point, Badrawi -- after
receiving Suleiman's blessing -- was granted a one-on-one meeting with Mubarak.
"Mr. President, I see in front of me an image of [Nicolae]
Ceaucescu," Badrawi said, referring to the Romanian dictator, a former
friend of Mubarak's, who had been executed by firing squad during the country's
anti-Communist revolution.
"You
mean they are going to kill me?" Mubarak asked.
"Probably,
yes." Badrawi responded.
"I am
ready to die for my country," the president said.
According
to Badrawi, Mubarak soon opted for a better course: He agreed to delegate power
to Suleiman and pave the way for early presidential elections. This path out of
the crisis, however, was quickly undermined by Gamal and other loyalists in the
president's inner circle.
Even as the
regime crumbled, Gamal embarked on a last-ditch attempt to preserve his
father's rule. On Feb. 10, Mubarak announced that he would give another speech,
in which he was widely expected to announce his resignation.
"It
was late ... it was late," Aboul Gheit wrote. "And then the statement
came, but it did not have anything good in it. And I understood then that the
son of the president was trying to shape the statement so that it pleased
everyone."
Egyptian
protesters, shocked that Mubarak was attempting to cling to power, took to the
streets in huge numbers on Feb. 11, dubbed the "Friday of Departure."
Aboul Gheit said that he spent the morning working the phones between Suleiman
and Shafiq, trying to negotiate Mubarak's exit. Suleiman told him that the
president would retreat to his home at Sharm el-Sheikh -- where he had first
learned of the protest movement -- that day, before noon prayers.
In an
attempt to salvage the situation, Suleiman summoned Aboul Gheit to a meeting at
Cairo's Ittahadeya Palace at 1 pm. The palace, however, was besieged by
protesters -- the army warned that it could be stormed at any moment, and the
officials had to relocate to a nearby military base. "And finally I came
to the logical conclusion: The world has changed," wrote Aboul Gheit.
A three-way
conversation between Mubarak, Suleiman, and Tantawi laid bare the disagreements
between the formerly tightly knit officials at the top of the Egyptian
government. Suleiman first received a call from Mubarak, who had by then relocated
to Sharm el-Sheikh, in which the president ordered him to tell Tantawi that he
had been granted the power to oversee the administration of the country. When
informed of the order, however, the defense minister balked: "I understood
from the phone call that Tantawi doesn't want to put the army in office,"
Aboul Gheit wrote.
Suleiman
then told Mubarak that he needed to appeal directly to Tantawi. In the end, he
and Shafiq headed in person to the Defense Ministry to inform the military
chief of his new role. His job done, Suleiman delivered the announcement that
charted the first, tentative steps of Egypt's post-Mubarak future.
"In
the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, citizens, during these very
difficult circumstances Egypt is going through, President Hosni Mubarak has
decided to step down," the once all-powerful intelligence chief declared.
"May God help everybody."
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