Wikileaks Publishes Assessment of Egyptian Military

The latest round of Wikileaks on Egypt isn't just about the Mubarak succession. There's also a discussion of an even more taboo subject (in Egypt at least): the Egyptian military. A 2008 cable from Ambassador Scobey sums up discussions with academics about the state of Egypt's military. The academics included unnamed figures from the Al-Ahram Center, Cairo University and AUC. I hope for their sake their anonymity is not too compromised, especially for those in the government-funded institutions. That's the problem here: lots of Egyptians will tell you exactly what they told the Embassy, but the release of the cable could jeopardize their jobs. I only link to it because it's already out there: online at the above link, written about by Le Monde yesterday (article is in French), and there's even a #wikileaksEgypt hashtag on Twitter. Since the document's out, my own commentary shouldn't compound the harm. (See the previous post and this one for more on my attitude toward Wikleaks.)

Here are some key passages:

A series of recent conversations with academics and other civilian analysts reveals their sense that while Egypt's military is in decline, it nevertheless remains a powerful institution.

. . . An American University in Cairo (AUC) political science professor with family ties to the officer corps told us that the military reached its peak of influence in the late 1980's before the ouster of the recently deceased former Defense Minister Abu Ghazalah, who was dismissed because of his growing political popularity. He asserted that since 1989, the MOD's influence in Egyptian society has been gradually waning, and the privileged social position of its elite members has been in decline as society's respect for the military fades. One political-military analyst at the GOE-funded Al-Ahram Center who is a retired general noted that military salaries have fallen far below what is available in the private sector, and that a military career is no longer an attractive option for ambitious young people who aspire to join the new business elite instead.

A senior Cairo University political science professor opined that before the 1967 war, military officers were "spoiled," and constituted a social elite. Following the military's poor performance in the 1967 war, he said, officers began a descent out of the upper ranks of society that accelerated after Abu Ghazalah's ouster in 1989. Since Abu Ghazalah, a senior AUC political science professor noted, the regime has not allowed any charismatic figures to reach the senior ranks. "(Defense Minister) Tantawi looks like a bureaucrat," he joked. The AUC professor described the mid-level officer corps as generally disgruntled, and said that one can hear mid-level officers at MOD clubs around Cairo openly expressing disdain for Tantawi. These officers refer to Tantawi as "Mubarak's poodle," he said, and complain that "this incompetent Defense Minister" who reached his position only because of unwavering loyalty to Mubarak is "running the military into the ground." He opined that a culture of blind obedience pervades the MOD where the sole criteria for promotion is loyalty, and that the MOD leadership does not hesitate to fire officers it perceives as being "too competent" and who therefore potentially pose a threat to the regime.

There is a lot more, on the military's continuing economic role, resistance to economic reforms, etc., but nothing students of Egypt won't have encountered before if they've studied the issue. It's worth a read though, now that it's public.