WASHINGTON — A classified cable sent to Washington from the United States Embassy in Cairo in 2008 reported that a disgruntled midlevel Egyptian officer corps referred to the country’s powerful defense minister, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, as “Mubarak’s poodle” — incompetent and archaic but intensely loyal to his now-besieged president.
Another of the secret embassy cables obtained by WikiLeaks leveled even harsher criticism at Field Marshal Tantawi, telling Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the head of United States Central Command, that under the field marshal’s leadership, “The tactical and operational readiness of the Egyptian Armed Forces has decayed.” Nonetheless, the December 2008 cable concluded, he “retains Mubarak’s support, and could easily remain in place for years to come.”
As a 12-day-old revolution rocks the foundations of Egypt, the Obama administration is now embracing a transition process backed by Field Marshal Tantawi and other top military leaders that would ease their longtime benefactor, President Hosni Mubarak, from power. But whoever becomes the new president after elections in September, American officials say that the rich and secretive Egyptian military holds the key to the governing of Egypt, the country’s future and by extension to the stability of the Arab world.
Administration officials nonetheless concede there is much they do not know about an institution that is hardly a monolith and that operates as a parallel economy, a kind of “Military Inc.,” involved in the production of electronics, household appliances, clothing and food.
Although the Pentagon has long promoted its close ties to the Egyptian military, which receives $1.3 billion annually in United States aid, top officials concede that neither Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates nor Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have especially deep relationships with their Egyptian counterparts.
In an effort to ensure that the military kept enough peace on the streets so that talks with opposition leaders could begin, Mr. Gates made four calls to Field Marshal Tantawi in the past week; Admiral Mullen made two to the chief of staff of the Egyptian Army, Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan. “But this is not a situation where you have, ‘Hey, Hamid, it’s Bob,’ ” said one official familiar with the situation. American officials are also unsure about the thinking of the midlevel military leadership, which is considered sympathetic to the protesters, and whether it could split with the generals tied to Mr. Mubarak. Specialists think that for now, the chances of a split are slim.
But a September 2008 cable from the United States Embassy in Cairo to officials at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon recounts a midlevel officer corps disaffected by what it considered an encrusted military leadership. The cable reports on conversations with Egyptian academics and civilian analysts who describe midlevel officers as “harshly critical of a defense minister they perceive as incompetent and valuing loyalty above skill in his subordinates.”
Although the Egyptian military has been widely described in news media reports this past week as commanding the respect of the population, the cable says that among the elite its influence has ebbed.
“Recently, academics and civilian analysts painted a portrait of an Egyptian military in intellectual and social decline, whose officers have largely fallen out of society’s elite ranks,” the cable reports.
The cable quotes a retired general who says that military salaries have fallen far below those 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.”
The cable says that the military nonetheless remains powerful through its wide commercial network, and that military-owned companies, often run by retired generals, are active in the water, olive oil, cement, construction, hotel and gasoline industries. The military also produces televisions — and milk and bread. In a move that made the military ever more popular, during food shortages in 2008, Mr. Mubarak called on the army to use its bakeries to bake bread for the civilian population.
Robert Springborg, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and an expert on the Egyptian military, said that the army had continued to cultivate its image as protector of the nation since the protests began in Egypt, as it held back from cracking down on hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo who called for Mr. Mubarak’s ouster. But Mr. Springborg said that he believed that the military’s leadership was orchestrating events, and had been involved in allowing attacks against the protesters by pro-Mubarak forces on horseback and camels — but not by the army, so as not to taint it in the public eye.
“Behind the scenes, the military is making possible the various forms of assault on the protesters,” Mr. Springborg said. “It’s trying to secure a transition for itself. There’s lots of evidence that the military is complicit, but for the most part Egyptians don’t even want to admit that to themselves.”
Western reporters on the ground in Tahrir Square say that it is hard to be so certain about the military leadership’s actions and motives, but that over all, the army rank-and-file has shown sympathy with the protesters and the leadership has been either unwilling or unable to order its troops to fire on the demonstrators.
As of this weekend, it appeared clear that Field Marshal Tantawi and the small circle of military men had weighed their personal loyalty to Mr. Mubarak against the threat to the military from the crisis — and chosen their own survival. The Egyptian government announced that the most important member of the circle, Omar Suleiman, the new vice president and a former military officer, would lead the military-backed transition to the elections in September. Political analysts on Friday said that he already appeared to be governing in Mr. Mubarak’s place.
Ragui Assaad, an Egyptian and a professor at the University of Minnesota, had predicted Friday that the military would make a cold-blooded decision about Mr. Mubarak. “They are a rational, calculating institution,” he said. “The moment they see it is not in their interest to retain him, they will usher him out.”
But Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired head of Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said that the senior military leadership would treat Mr. Mubarak, who once led the air force, with more respect.
“I think they want him to go with dignity,” he said. “There’s a realization this isn’t going to work. As that becomes more evident, they’re going to insist that it be done in a dignified way.”
