CHAPTER 1: The Accidental Dictator

Imagine for a moment that President George Bush (the first) had suddenly died in

office, leaving Dan Quayle—a national punch-line who nobody thought would ever wield

any real power—as President of the United States. Then imagine that nearly three

decades later, that same perceived lightweight was still running the country; that an entire

generation of Americans had never known any other leader; that he and Marilyn Quayle

were busily renaming public buildings, bridges, and libraries after themselves; and that

President-for-life Quayle was seemingly grooming one of his children to continue the

family business of running the country.

If that seems far-fetched, it’s not too far from the reality that Egyptians had been

living through for nearly three decades. Put simply: Hosni Mubarak’s era as Egypt’s

modern-day Pharaoh was never supposed to happen. One of the core ironies of

Mubarak’s 29-year death-grip on Egypt was that he stumbled into what was probably the

most important and influential job in the modern Middle East entirely by accident.

It’s a reality that became abundantly clear from the very beginning of the 18-day

uprising in the winter of 2011 that finally toppled Mubarak. Once protesters succeeded in

shattering the police state that had kept him in power, it became immediately clear that

there really was no Plan B. Mubarak’s regime, in its final days, fell back on a parade of

antiquated insincere rhetoric, uninspired and tone-deaf concessions and, finally, one last

attempt at vicious violence in a desperate attempt to retain control.

 It all served to underscore that hiding behind the truncheons and tear gas of the

Central Security riot police was an intellectually bankrupt and cynical blank space of a

regime. That’s why there was a distinct undercurrent of bitterness and shame mixed in

with the euphoria and the resurgent sense of empowerment coursing through the Cairo

streets that February, when Mubarak meekly left the stage.

The sentiment was something along the lines of: “I can’t believe we let these guys

run our lives for decades.”

Mohammed Hosni Mubarak rose to power as much because of what he wasn’t as

for any particular gifts he possessed. Longtime observers describe him as a sort of Middle

Eastern dictatorial Forrest Gump, constantly advancing through a series of happy

accidents—being in the right place at the right time.

President Anwar Sadat, who began his reign in 1970, promoted Mubarak from

among the ranks of his senior generals due, as much as anything, to his deficiencies. He

wasn’t regarded as ambitious or particularly intelligent. He wasn’t a plotter or a

politician. In essence, he wasn’t a threat. In an interview early in his reign, Mubarak

once quipped that his highest professional ambition had been to one day serve as Egypt’s

ambassador to the United Kingdom.

“He was just the guy in the back of the photo behind Anwar Sadat that we never

thought would be president,” said Hisham Kassem, a longtime Egyptian human rights

activist and independent publisher. “Basically Sadat wanted somebody to secure the

loyalty of the military. He just wanted one of the top generals. Mubarak was the least
charismatic and the least interested in politics. So it went to him. Believe me, nobody

thought he was going to stick around for 30 years.”

Born into a middle-class family (his father was a mid-level Ministry of Justice

official) in rural Menoufeya province on May 4, 1928, young Mubarak had entered the

military straight out of high school and rose through the ranks of the Air Force as a

fighter pilot and aviation instructor, eventually becoming commander of the Egyptian Air

Force.

His defining moment came in October 1973 when Sadat launched a surprise

attack across the Suez Canal and into the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had occupied

since the 1967’s Six-Day War.

The conflict ended in a military stalemate. By the time a ceasefire was declared,

the Israeli forces had recovered from their initial shock and were starting to seize the

momentum and advance on Cairo. But psychologically and strategically it was a massive

victory for Sadat. The sight of Egyptian troops bravely crossing to the east bank of the

canal in the teeth of entrenched Israeli Bar Lev Line helped exorcize the deep emotional

traumas of the Six Day War, when Israel thoroughly trounced multiple Arab armies and

permanently stained the legacy of Sadat’s predecessor, the iconic Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Strategically, the conflict frightened Israel enough that Sadat was able to later negotiate

with the Jewish State from a position of strength

Mubarak came out of the 1973 conflict a war hero, although there were, in later

years, allegations that his actual strategic role in the conflict was retroactively

exaggerated. “There were 10 or 12 other (military commanders) who played a larger

role,” said Hassan Nafaa, a Cairo University political science professor who emerged in
Mubarak’s final years in power as a prominent regime critic. Whatever the truth, Sadat

packaged his Air Force Commander as one of the faces of victory and promoted him to

Vice President in 1975.

Sadat and his protégé were a study in contrasts. Sadat was wily, bold, vain and

mercurial—prone to emotional instability and temper tantrums but also undeniably

clever. Mubarak was none of the above.

For several years, Mubarak lurked in the shadows behind the charismatic Sadat, a

vaguely recognizable face standing behind the president as he delivered a speech or met

with foreign dignitaries. He was handsome in a stocky, square-jawed sort of way, looked

good in a suit, and seemed to be one of the few who were privy to Sadat’s inner counsels.

But beyond that he didn’t make much of an impression on either the local or international

stage. There’s a common story (possibly apocryphal) that when Henry Kissinger first met

Mubarak with Sadat, he thought Mubarak was some sort of junior aid, not the country’s

vice president. Even within local military circles and in the public eye, he was dwarfed

by more charismatic figures such as powerful Defense Minister Abdel Halim Abu

Ghazala.

On October 6 1981, Sadat was killed by an Islamist cell inside his own army,

ironically during a parade to commemorate his 1973 military victory. The preceding

years had seen Sadat demonstrate his trademark tendency for both bold unilateral moves

and thin-skinned impetuousness. In the wake of the 1973 war, Sadat stunned the nation

and the region by suddenly launching open peace negotiations with Israel. His landmark

decision to visit Jerusalem on November 20, 1977 led to the Camp David Peace Accords

with Israel and Egypt’s near-total isolation from the rest of the Arab World.
 Sadat’s gambit placed Egypt firmly in the American camp during the height of the

Cold War, ensuring an annual flow of billions in US aid that continue to this day. But it

also inflamed local hostility toward Israel and made Egypt a regional pariah. In 1979, the

Arab League expelled Egypt and moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. While

Sadat was hailed internationally as a bold statesman, he was regarded in the Arab world

as having repudiated Nasser’s vision of Arab nationalism and cut a deal to place Egypt’s

interests above those of the wider Arab community.

Domestically, he became increasingly oppressive and erratic in response to his

critics; in September 1981, he launched a massive internal crackdown, rounding up and

imprisoning more than 1,500 perceived dissidents. The victims included not just militant

Islamists—regarded as the primary threat—but intellectuals and activists of all

ideological stripes. Even the Coptic Christian Pope Shenouda II was placed under house

arrest in a monastery, and dozens of priests arrested.

But Sadat’s crackdown missed a jihadi cell within his own army led by Lt. Khaled

Islambouli. When the assassins struck, Mubarak was standing right next to Sadat. Despite

the presidential reviewing stand being peppered by bullets and grenades, Mubarak

miraculously managed to escape with just a minor hand injury. It’s an enduring testament

Mubarak’s lack of regard by the nation that there was never any serious speculation that

he had been in on the plot. Despite being the most obvious beneficiary of Sadat’s

assassination, many Egyptians simply refused to believe he was clever or ambitious

enough to pull off—or even conceive of—a coup.

In the wake of Sadat’s assassination, there was no guarantee that Mubarak would

automatically ascend to the presidency. A handful of senior military leaders could have
laid claim to the throne, particularly the aforementioned Defense Minister Abu Ghazala,

but also senior general Saad Mamoun and Kamal Hassan Ali, the Foreign Minister and

former head of intelligence.

Kassem, the independent publisher, calls it yet another happy accident that

smoothed Mubarak’s path into the presidential palace. If Sadat had died of a heart attack

or in a plane crash, he posits, the Mubarak era would have never started in the first place.

“Abu Ghazala had a towering presence. He was much more popular and publicly

known than Mubarak,” Kassem said. “I think he would have succeeded Sadat if only

Sadat hadn’t been killed in a military parade. That’s what made Abu Ghazala’s ascension

politically impossible. The conspiracy theory would have prevailed that Abu Ghazala

killed Sadat.”

Instead, a slightly stunned nation suddenly found itself under the leadership of a

lightly regarded non-entity. But despite being widely perceived as not really up to the job,

Mubarak entered the presidency on a moderate wave of public good will. Once again, he

benefitted from what he was not. Sadat groomed and elevated Mubarak because he

wasn’t as charismatic and ambitious as some of the military peers; Egyptians cautiously

embraced him, at first, purely because he wasn’t Sadat.

Life under Anwar Sadat was an exhausting roller coaster ride for many. He

launched bold initiatives, switched camps between the US and Soviet Union on a whim,

responded harshly to almost any sort of criticism, restructured the economy away from

Nasser’s socialist model, and dragged the country into sometimes unpopular directions.

Mubarak was stolid, cautious, and a little unimaginative—qualities that made him a
much-needed calming influence in those early years. He seemed disciplined, hard

working and sincere--the Good Cop to Sadat’s unstable and irrational Bad Cop.

“Mostly, the people were just happy that Sadat was gone. Either way, the general

feeling was that [Mubarak] wouldn’t last long,” said Nafaa.

“He was all right at the beginning. People felt he was cautious and trying to move

the country forward,” said Mohammed ElBaradei, the former head of the International

Atomic Energy Agency, who later emerged as one of Mubarak’s most high-profile

critics. At the time of Mubarak’s ascension, ElBaradei had just left the Egyptian Foreign

Ministry and was in New York beginning what would become a 30-year career with the

United Nations. Decades later, he would meet Mubarak several times as head of the

IAEA. ElBaradei said he found President Mubarak “extremely friendly and informal” but

felt that, “He had no sense of a grand vision or imagination.”

In typical Egyptian fashion the Mubarak jokes started immediately. Dark humor is

one of the defining Egyptian characteristics and nobody is spared. My father, who

immigrated to the US in 1968, often told me that Nasser would deploy intelligence

officers in coffee shops across the country just to monitor the jokes being swapped over

tea and shisha pipes. Nasser era jokes typically centered on the brutal way his internal

security forces dealt with dissidents. Sadat was subjected to an endless stream of jokes

about his long-rumored passion for hashish and about how Kissinger had repeatedly

outsmarted him during the Nixon years.

In Mubarak’s case, most of the jokes revolved around his perceived lack of

intelligence. He was instantly dubbed La Vache Qui Rit or “The Laughing Cow,” after a

popular brand of French packaged cheese available in every market.

 Here’s an example of an early-period Mubarak joke:

The new president conducts an official visit to a prototype Ministry of Agriculture

cattle ranch that breeds livestock from around the world.

The director takes him around and shows him the first animal, "This is a Friesian

from Holland, Mr. President", then the second, "This is an angus steer from America,"

then the third, "This is a water buffalo from India," and so on,... Somewhere along the

tour, Mubarak stops and points asking, "and what is this one?" The guide answers

sheepishly, "This is a mirror, Mr. President."