Anwar Sadat

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Anwar Sadat was assassinated on the 6th of October 1981, by soldiers under his own command, at a parade held to celebrate a war he himself had launched. He was watching the annual victory parade in Cairo when Lieutenant Khalid Al-Islambuli stepped forward and emptied his assault rifle into Sadat's body at the grandstand. Eleven others died alongside the president, including the Cuban ambassador, an Omani general, a Coptic Orthodox bishop, and the head of Egypt's Central Auditing Agency. Twenty-eight more were wounded.

  The date was not accidental. Sadat had chosen the 6th of October 1973 as the moment to launch a surprise attack against Israeli forces in the Sinai. Eight years later, to the day, that anniversary became the setting for his death. Who was this man who had fought a war, made a peace that scandalized the Arab world, and died at the hands of those who believed he had gone too far? And how did a boy from a poor village in the Nile Delta grow into one of the most consequential figures of the twentieth century?

• 2. Village Boy to Revolutionary

  ›

  Mit Abu El Kom, a small settlement in Monufia Governorate, was where Sadat was born on the 25th of December 1918. His family was poor, and he was one of fifteen children. His mother, Sit Al-Berain, was the child of an Egyptian mother and a Sudanese father. His father, Anwar Mohammed El Sadat, had met her while posted in Sudan as a medical officer.

  Sadat graduated from the Royal Military Academy in Cairo in 1938 and was commissioned into the Signal Corps as a second lieutenant. His first posting was to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, where he met Gamal Abdel Nasser. The two, along with other junior officers, formed the Free Officers, a clandestine group dedicated to ending British rule and eliminating state corruption.

  During the Second World War, Sadat joined the fascist and ultranationalist Young Egypt Party and collaborated with Nazi Germany as part of Operation Salam. He later said he had wanted to make Egypt "a second Iraq." After the Abdeen Palace incident, he deepened his plotting, meeting with two German agents in Cairo, but was arrested and imprisoned for much of the war. In prison at Qarmidan, held in solitary confinement, he was treated with unexpected humanity by a young police officer named Salah Zulfikar, who brought him food, newspapers, and cigarettes, and helped his family obtain visitor permits.

  By the time he was free, Sadat's political involvements had ranged across the Muslim Brotherhood, the Young Egypt Party, the Iron Guard of Egypt, and the Free Officers. When the Free Officers launched the Egyptian Revolution on the 23rd of July 1952, overthrowing King Farouk I, it was Sadat's voice that delivered the first statement of the revolution over the radio.

• 3. The Shadow Politician

  ›

  Gamal Abdel Nasser's presidency gave Sadat a series of roles without ever putting him fully in the spotlight. He was appointed minister of state in 1954, then editor of the newly founded daily newspaper Al Gomhuria. By 1959 he held the position of secretary to the National Union. From 1960 to 1968 he served as president of the National Assembly, and in 1964 he became vice president and a member of the presidential council. He was reappointed vice president again in December 1969.

  Nasser's supporters considered Sadat little more than a useful figurehead, a man they could control after the dominant president's death. When Nasser died in October 1970 and Sadat succeeded him, the assumption inside the government was that his presidency would be brief. Within months, Sadat made clear that assumption was wrong. On the 15th of May 1971, he announced what he called his "Corrective Revolution," purging the government and security apparatus of dedicated Nasserists. He then dismissed and imprisoned Vice President Ali Sabri, who had close ties with Soviet officials, and Interior Minister Sharawi Gomaa, who controlled the secret police. Those two moves alone reshaped the political landscape.

  Sadat also made a deliberate choice to cultivate Islamist movements that Nasser had suppressed, offering them what he described as "considerable cultural and ideological autonomy" in exchange for political backing. That decision would carry consequences he did not foresee.

• 4. The Crossing

  ›

  On the 6th of October 1973, Sadat coordinated with Syrian president Hafez al-Assad to launch a simultaneous surprise assault. Egyptian forces struck the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula while Syria struck the Golan Heights. The two territories had been held by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967.

  The most striking Egyptian achievement was Operation Badr, also called "The Crossing." Egyptian forces pushed approximately 15 kilometres into the Sinai after breaking through the Bar Lev Line, a fortified defensive chain that had been widely regarded as impenetrable. The performance of Egyptian and Syrian forces in the opening stages astonished observers throughout the Arab world and alarmed Israel.

  As the war progressed, Israeli divisions led by General Ariel Sharon crossed the Suez Canal in a bid to encircle the Egyptian Second Army. On the 22nd of October 1973, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 338 calling for an immediate ceasefire, but it was broken almost immediately. Soviet leader Alexei Kosygin cancelled a meeting with Danish Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen to travel to Egypt and personally urged Sadat to sign a peace agreement. Israeli forces completed their encirclement of the Egyptian army on the 24th of October. A second ceasefire, imposed jointly by the two superpowers, ended the fighting on the 25th of October. When the guns fell silent, Israeli forces stood 40 kilometres from Damascus and 101 kilometres from Cairo.

  Sadat emerged from the war known across Egypt and much of the Arab world as the "Hero of the Crossing." For years afterwards that title stuck.

• 5. A Separate Peace

  ›

  Two disengagement agreements with Israel followed the war, the first signed on the 18th of January 1974 and the second on the 4th of September 1975. Each was a step along a path that most Arab governments considered unacceptable.

  Sadat worked to build an international coalition for his peace push. During his visit to the United States in late 1975, he invited Evangelical pastor Billy Graham for an official follow-up visit. On the 8th of April 1976, he visited the Vatican and received a message of support from Pope Paul VI for achieving peace with Israel, provided a just solution to the Palestinian issue was included. In early 1977, Sadat told the Lebanese magazine Al Hawadeth that he had a secret commitment from the US government to press Israel for major withdrawals. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger publicly denied any such promise.

  In January 1977, the economic strains of Sadat's Infitah liberalization policy triggered two days of "Bread Riots" across Egypt. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Cairo protesting the lifting of price controls on basic goods. In Cairo alone, 120 buses and hundreds of buildings were destroyed. The army was deployed and subsidies were reinstated.

  Later that year, on a date that stunned the region, Sadat flew to Jerusalem, becoming the first Arab leader ever to officially visit Israeli-controlled territory. He met Prime Minister Menachem Begin and addressed the Knesset directly, laying out his conditions for a comprehensive peace. On the 26th of March 1979, Sadat and Begin signed the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in Washington, D.C., following the Camp David Accords facilitated by President Jimmy Carter. Egypt became the first Arab nation to officially recognize Israel. In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Sadat spoke of the long-awaited peace desired by Arabs and Israelis alike.

  The Arab League suspended Egypt in 1979 and moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. With the exception of Sudan, the entire Arab world and the Palestine Liberation Organization rejected the treaty. Egypt's suspension from the League would last until 1989.

• 6. An Unexpected Friendship: Iran

  ›

  While Egypt was becoming estranged from its Arab neighbors, Sadat was quietly rebuilding a very different relationship. During Nasser's presidency, Egypt and Iran had been open adversaries. Within a year of Sadat taking office, that had reversed.

  In 1971, Sadat addressed the Iranian parliament in Tehran in fluent Persian, invoking the 2,500-year-old historic connection between the two countries. The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, came to call Sadat his "dear brother." After the 1973 war, Iran contributed heavily to clearing and reactivating the blocked Suez Canal, and promised to supply Israel with free Iranian oil to compensate for any oil wells they relinquished in western Sinai, easing the path to withdrawal.

  When the Shah was overthrown and went into exile, Sadat gave him refuge in Egypt. When the Shah died, Sadat ordered a full state funeral and arranged for him to be buried at the Al-Rifa'i Mosque in Cairo, the resting place of Egyptian Khedive Isma'il Pasha and numerous members of the Egyptian and Sudanese royal family.

• 7. The Conspiracy and the Killing

  ›

  Egyptian Islamic Jihad had been building toward violence for years. According to journalist Lawrence Wright, the group was recruiting military officers and stockpiling weapons, waiting for the moment to launch what its members called a complete overthrow of the existing order. The plan, devised by Abbud al-Zumar, a colonel in military intelligence, called for killing the country's top leaders, seizing army headquarters, the State Security building, the telephone exchange, and the radio and television building, then broadcasting a call for Islamic revolution.

  In February 1981, Egyptian authorities arrested an operative carrying details of the plot. In September, Sadat ordered the roundup of more than 1,500 people, including Jihad members, the Coptic Pope, Coptic clergy, intellectuals, and activists across the political spectrum. All non-government press was banned. The sweep missed a Jihad cell inside the military led by Lieutenant Khalid Al-Islambuli. The broader assassination plot was organized by Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj, a civilian engineer and Egyptian Islamic Jihad member. A fatwa authorizing the killing had been obtained from Omar Abdel-Rahman.

  On the 6th of October 1981, at the parade in Cairo, Al-Islambuli moved to the front of the grandstand and opened fire. Al-Islambuli and four others directly involved in the attack, including al-Salam Faraj, were found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed on the 15th of April 1982. Of 19 people tried in connection with the assassination, 17 were jailed and two were acquitted. Among the more than 300 Islamic radicals indicted in the broader case was a young Ayman al-Zawahiri, whose command of English made him the de facto spokesman for the defendants at trial. Zawahiri was released from prison in 1984.

• 8. How the World Remembered Him

  ›

  Sadat's funeral drew an extraordinary gathering. Three former American presidents, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon, attended simultaneously, a rare occurrence. Sudan's President Gaafar Nimeiry was the only Arab head of state present. Only three of the 24 Arab League member states, Oman, Somalia, and Sudan, sent any representatives at all. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who considered Sadat a personal friend, walked the entire funeral procession rather than ride, so as not to violate the Sabbath. Sadat was buried at the unknown soldier memorial in Cairo, directly across the street from the grandstand where he was killed.

  In 1983, the American television miniseries Sadat aired with Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr. in the title role. The Egyptian government banned it immediately and extended the ban to all Columbia Pictures films, citing historical inaccuracies. A civil lawsuit brought by Egyptian artists' and film unions against Columbia Pictures was dismissed by a Cairo court on the grounds that the alleged offenses had occurred outside Egypt's jurisdiction. Gossett received an Emmy nomination for the performance. The first Egyptian portrayal of Sadat's life came in 2001 with the film Ayyam El Sadat, which was praised as the greatest performance of actor Ahmed Zaki's career.

  In 2018, the United States Congress awarded Sadat the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously, decades after he had already received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.