Egyptian uprising became the No 1 topic of the world media. After the Jasmine revolution in Tunis, leading newspapers have been exercising their wit, trying to invent a name for the Egyptian one that didn’t happen yet. By now, “date revolution” is leading in that contest, but in fact Egyptian events are much deeper and more mysterious than this plain and nutritious fruit, that Prophet Mohammed himself enjoyed so much.
People’s riots in Egypt that are raging for more than week now, have attracted attention of the entire world. Reasons for that are plenty. Poorly-informed majority is bothered by the lost opportunity of their beloved winter vacation at Egyptian resorts. Well-informed minority is worried, too — but by the possible rise in the oil prices. Neighbors of Egypt are anxious about the aggravation of military-political situation in the region, which already has the notorious reputation for being not the safest place in the world. Fan-club of the relentless fighter for the world-wide transparency Julian Assange considers the Egyptian events to be an obvious victory of his. Incorrigible adherents of conspiracies are seeking for the “hand” of U.S. State Department, Shiite and Sunni Islam fundamentalists or the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Those who have the least amount of information of all (they happened to be our colleagues from the American Fox News TV-channel) were so upset with the spoilt winter holidays, that have shown the map with Egypt placed on Iraq’s place.
Certainly, during the Cold War era that would have necessarily become a subject for the mockery of Soviet political observers. I can actually imagine the titles like “Freudian slip of tongue”, “Leak from the secret CIA archives” and “Americans barely remember what country they’ve invaded”. In the current vegetarian times of reset, however, we’d just restrain ourselves with a remark regarding the poor geography knowledge of the major TV-channel editors.
In reality, though, mysteriousness and nearly impossible predictability of origins, possible development and the consequences of Egyptian events may be compared to the well-known touristic symbol of this country — Sphinx. Just like the Egyptian riots, everyone knows about Sphinx but no one can tell you about its origin, purpose or authorship.
There’s only one thing that we may state for sure. The reason for — without a shadow of exaggeration — millions of Egyptians to hit the streets in their furious support of the last week events is the economic inequity. The very same poverty that overthrown Tunisian President Ben Ali, has once again brought down its merciless anger upon 83-year-old Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Today the Egyptian poor promise that they won’t leave the streets until the aviation marshal — whom everyone is quite fed up with — wouldn’t leave the country, which he used to rule over for thirty years at a stretch.
President of Egypt
Mohammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak
During Mubarak’s rule Egypt was the most pro-Western country of the Arab world. In that sense it plays an essential role in the settlement of the Middle Eastern conflict. Own national interests of Egypt (it neighbors both Israel and Palestinian Autonomy after all) are intertwined with the U.S. interests here — the latter are vitally interested in the Middle-Eastern peace. As an ally of the United States, Egypt was annually receiving military aid from Washington. According to the Washington-based Daily Telegraph correspondent Alex Spillius, actual size of this aid makes up about $1.3 billion, which were used “to finance the oppressive Egyptian apparatus” then. At the same time, right before the Egyptian turmoil Wikileaks published the cables, stating that USAID (United States Agency for International Development) granted Egyptian non-governmental democratic institutions about $66.5 million in 2008 and $75 million in 2009. This information came up to surface in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. The same publication featured the diplomatic cables with the conversations between U.S. embassy in Cairo and the State Department. “President Mubarak is deeply skeptical regarding the U.S. role in promotion of democracy. Nevertheless, U.S. government should continue its policy of aiding Egypt to create democratic institutions, which are to make the foundation of changes in Egypt”, — American ambassador reported to his superiors. Mubarak’s skepticism towards the democratic regime in Egypt stretched so far, that Minister of International Cooperation Fayza Abul-Naga even addressed American embassy with a request to stop financing Egyptian NGOs due to the “violations during their registration”. Dispatches of American embassy in Cairo contain information regarding the numerous ambassador’s attempts to incline Mubarak to cancel the state of emergency. The latter lasted for so many years that it turned from emergency to casual, having abolished the freedom of assemblies and deprived citizens of the primary rights. Mubarak responded that he wouldn’t tolerate political parties with religious ideology in his country — regardless Islamist or Christian one — while American funds mostly settle in the pockets of communists and religious extremists.
Appearance of Mohammed El Baradei — former IAEA chief — as a pretender for the Egyptian “throne” perfectly fits the version about Westernized democratization of Egypt as the incentive of today’s riots. This 69-year-old winner of the Nobel peace prize has left cozy Europe where he currently resides and suddenly emerged amongst the crowds of his protesting fellow countrymen, having attempted to lead the mysterious revolution. Chances of his mission’s success are scarce, although numerous Western observers would be glad to see him as a new President of Egypt.
According to the experts of domestic Egyptian policy, two other pretenders have much greater chances to succeed. One of them is the newly-fledged Vice-President Omar Suleiman — whom Mubarak has hastily appointed, hoping that he’d be able to relieve the tensions in the country. The second and even more probable pretender doesn’t even have a last name. Instead he has tremendous influence, lots of supporters and extensive infrastructure that covers an entire country. This is the “Muslim Brothers” — underground Islamist movement that, having a notorious reputation, was banned in Egypt. It may have the plans to change attractive secular image of Egypt to yet another kind of Iranian Islamist republic. Let’s have a look at both “claimants to the throne” and try to estimate their chances.
President-spy?
General-lieutenant Omar Suleiman is not a boy, indeed. This year he’s going to be 75. Just like Mubarak he is a career military pilot. He used to study at Moscow’s Frunze Military Academy and took part in the Yom Kippur War against Israel — however he made his career in a different line of work. In 1991 he headed the Military Intelligence of Egypt and in 1993 became the chief of General Intelligence Service (al-Mukhabarat). In this capacity Suleiman closely approached American special services. Under his leadership Egyptian intelligence took an utmost active participation of the war on terrorism that was unleashed on the 11th of September, 2001.
As a professional spy, General follows all the rules of this romantic trade. There’s almost no information about him, his activity or his subordinate in the open access.
Mysterious head of the Egyptian intelligence service, acting Vice President (and possible President) of Egypt General Omar Suleiman
However, we managed to dig some information about this remarkable man. He played an essential role in George W. Bush’s decision about engagement of troops into Iraq. It seems to be utterly impossible for the modest Egyptian General to influence the decision of a geopolitical scale. In fact, though, everything is possible in the mysterious and secretive world of special services.
Here’s a sad story of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi who led the Al Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, the facility where Zacarias Moussaoui trained. His real name was Ali Mohamed al Fakheri but for the sake of convenience we will keep calling him simply al-Libi. He was captured by Pakistani officials in November 2001, as he attempted to flee Afghanistan following the collapse of the Taliban precipitating the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
At first he was turned over to the FBI and held at Bagram Air Base. When talking to FBI interrogators Russell Fincher and Marty Mahon, he seemed "genuinely friendly" and spoke chiefly in English. He seemed to bond closely with Fincher, a devout Christian, and the two prayed together and discussed religion at length.
Al-Libi also told the likeable American details about Richard Reid, and agreed to continue cooperating if the United States would allow his wife and her family to emigrate, as he was prosecuted within the American legal system himself.
In return for his sincerety FBI passed the trusty terrorist to the CIA, which director George Tenet personally approached George W. Bush for permission to take al-Libi into their own custody and rendition him to a foreign country for more "tough guy" questioning. With President’s permission they simply came and took al-Libi away from the FBI in the second week of January 2002, when he was flown to the USS Bataan, the ship which was being used to hold eight other notable prisoners, including John Walker Lindh. He was subsequently handed over to Egyptian interrogators.
That’s where the Egyptian Intelligence Service headed by Omar Suleiman came into play. Egyptian authorities grew dissatisfied with his level of cooperation, so they locked him in a tiny cage in a secret al-Muhabarat prison for eighty hours. Before each interrogation they took him out, knocked him over, and punched him for fifteen minutes — after these “procedures” his testimony became much more interesting. In particular he pointed to Abu Zubayadh who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. On September 15, 2002, Time published an article that detailed the CIA interrogations of Omar al-Faruq. In the article he gave a shocking confession: al-Faruq said two senior al-Qaeda officials, Abu Zubaydah and Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi were in charge of Al-Qaida’s South-Eastern network and were planning large-scale attacks against U.S. interests in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Cambodia. After that, pressure upon al-Libi increased manifold and he finally spilled. According to his testimony, Iraqi instructors were training members of Al-Qaida how to use the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). That was the part that Americans would have liked — due to George Bush’s order they were looking for casus belli to invade Iraq. In Cincinnati in October 2002, Bush informed the public: "Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases." This claim was repeated several times in the run-up to the war, including in then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the U.N Security Council on February 5, 2003, which concluded with a long recitation of the information provided by al-Libi. Powell's speech came less than a month after a then-classified CIA report concluding that the information provided by al-Libi was unreliable and about a year after a Defense Intelligence Agency report concluded the same thing.
Al-Libi recanted these claims in January 2004 — in the long run they cost America and Iraq hundreds of thousands of lives, hundreds of billion dollars and they changed an entire geopolitical situation in the world. Some people thought that al-Libi gave false information because he simply “cracked” after severe tortures and was lying to stop the torment. Others believed that he deliberately misled interrogators, trying to provoke the “global jihad” — we would never know the truth now. In September of 2006 U.S. Senate concluded his testimony to be deliberate lies. Destiny of Al-Libi himself became public only in May of 2009. As the English edition of the Lybian newspaper Ennahar reported, he committed suicide, having hanged himself up in the chamber of Lybian Prison. It was stated that he was 46-year-old and gave no clues about how he got into Lybian prison in the first place.
That’s how Al-Libi, of whom no one had ever heard before, became the reason for the events of a planetary scale and a humble Egyptian General — who has all the chances to become President now — assisted him in that.
(To be continued)
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