Muhammad Hosni Terrorist Mubarak (
Arabic:
محمد حسني سيد مبارك,
Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [mæˈħæmːæd ˈħosni ˈsæjːed moˈbɑːɾˤɑk],
Muḥammad Ḥusnī Sayyid Mubārak; born 4 May 1928)
[1] served as the
fourth President of Egypt, from 1981 to 2011.
Mubarak was appointed
Vice President of Egypt in 1975, and assumed the presidency on 14 October 1981, following the assassination of President
Anwar El Sadat. The length of his presidency made him
Egypt's longest-serving ruler since
Muhammad Ali Pasha.
[2] Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in the
Egyptian Air Force, serving as its commander from 1972 to 1975 and rising to the rank of
air chief marshal.
Mubarak was ousted after 18 days of demonstrations during the
2011 Egyptian revolution.
[3] On 11 February, Vice President
Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned as president and transferred authority to the
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
[4][5] On that day Mubarak and his family left the presidential palace in
Cairo and moved to
Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
[6][5]
[edit] Early life and the Egyptian Air Force
Mubarak was born on 4 May 1928,
[1] in
Kafr-El-Meselha,
Monufia Governorate,
Egypt. Upon completion of high school, he joined the
Egyptian Military Academy, where he received a
Bachelor's degree in Military Sciences in 1949.
[citation needed] On 2 February 1949, Mubarak left the Military Academy and joined the Air Force Academy, gaining his commission as a
pilot officer on 13 March 1950
[7] and eventually receiving a Bachelor's Degree in Aviation Sciences. Hosni Mubarak is married to
Suzanne Mubarak, and has two sons:
Alaa and
Gamal.
As an
Egyptian Air Force officer, Mubarak served in various formations and units, including two years when he served in a
Spitfire fighter squadron.
[7] Some time in the 1950s, he returned to the Air Force Academy, this time as an instructor, remaining there until early 1959.
[7] From February 1959 to June 1961, Mubarak undertook further training in the
Soviet Union, attending a Soviet pilot training school in
Moscow and another at
Kant Air Base, near
Bishkek in
Kyrgyzstan (then
a Soviet republic), an airfield that is today home to the Russian
5th Air Army's 999th Air Base.
Mubarak undertook training on the
Ilyushin Il-28 and
Tupolev Tu-16 jet bomber, and then joined the
Frunze Military Academy in 1964. On his return to Egypt, Mubarak served in wing and then base commander appointments, taking up command of the Cairo West Air Base in October 1966 before briefly commanding the
Beni Suef Air Base.
[7] In November 1967 Mubarak became the Air Force Academy's commander
[8] and two years later he became Chief of Staff for the Egyptian Air Force.
Mubarak became Commander of the Air Force and Egyptian Deputy Minister of Defence in 1972. In the following year his military career reached its pinnacle when he was promoted to
Air Chief Marshal in recognition of service during the
October War of 1973.
[7][9] Mubarak has been credited in some publications for Egypt's initial strong performance in the 1973 war against Israel.
[10]. As Mubarak was only in post for about a year when the war erupted his role with the Egyptian airforces was disputed by many. Among those who disputed the role of Mubarak was the know Egyptian analyst Mohamed Hasanain Haikal, whose evaluation of the role of the airforce in 1973 was different from that of Mubarak and his supporters. Haikal, in a television interview dated February 19, 2011 argued that the airforce had mostly a psychological function to the Egyptian forces in 1973, providing blanket coverage for the ground troops that carried the crossing of Suez Canal. Haikal argued that this blanket coverage was for psychological reassurance to the ground troops, not due to any military necessity
[11]. The role of Mubarak was further disputed by Shahdan Elshazli the daughter of the former Egyptian military Chief of Staff Saad Eldin Elshazli. She alleged that Mubarak altered the representation of a number of events pertaining to the 1973 war to show a magnified role for himself. In an interview with the Egyptian independent newspaper Almasry Alyoum (Feb 26th 2011), Elshazli claimed that Mubarak altered documents to take credit for the initial success of the Egyptian forces in 1973 from her father. She alleged that even photographs pertaining to the discussions in the military command room were altered, so that the pictures of Saas Eldin Elshazli was erased and replaced by Mubarak. She stated that she intends to take a legal action with this regard
[12].
[edit] Vice President of Egypt
In April 1975, Mubarak was appointed by Sadat as Vice President of the Egyptian republic. In this position, he loyally served Sadat's policies. He took part in government consultations that dealt with the future disengagement of forces agreement with
Israel.
[13]
As part of his support for Sadat's policies, he went in early September 1975 on a mission to
Riyadh and
Damascus, in order to convince the Saudi and Syrian governments to accept the disengagement agreement signed with the Israeli government ("Sinai II"), but was refused a meeting by the Syrian president.
[14][15]
In addition, Mubarak was sent by Sadat to numerous meetings with foreign leaders.
[16] Mubarak's political significance as Vice-President can be seen from the fact that at a conversation held on 23 June 1975 between Foreign Minister Fahmy and US Ambassador Hermann Eilts, Fahmy said to Eilts that "Mobarek [sic] is, for the time being at least, likely to be a regular participant in all sensitive meetings" and he advised the Ambassador not to antagonize Mubarak, as he was Sadat's personal choice.
[17]
[edit] President of Egypt
Following the assassination of
President Sadat in October, 1981 by a Jihad cell in the military led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli, Hosni Mubarak became the President of the
Arabic Republic of Egypt, and the Chairman of the
National Democratic Party (NDP). He was the longest serving President of Egypt, his term lasting 29 years.
[edit] Egypt's return to the Arab League
Mubarak in Berlin in 1989
Egypt is the only state in the history of the
Arab League to have had its membership of the League suspended, due to President Sadat's peace treaty with Israel. However, in 1989, eight years after
Sadat's assassination, Egypt was re-admitted as a full member, and the League's headquarters were relocated to their original location in
Cairo.
[18]
[edit] Wars and the monetary gain from the Gulf War of 1991
Egypt was a member of the allied coalition in the 1991
Gulf War, and Egyptian infantry were some of the first to land in
Saudi Arabia to evict Iraqi forces from
Kuwait.
Reports that sums as large as $500,000 per soldier were paid or debt forgiven were published in the news media. According to
The Economist:
- The programme worked like a charm: a textbook case, says the IMF. In fact, luck was on Hosni Mubarak's side; when the US was hunting for a military alliance to force Iraq out of Kuwait, Egypt's president joined without hesitation. After the war, his reward was that America, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, and Europe forgave Egypt around $14 billion of debt.[19]
[edit] Assassination attempts
According to the BBC, Mubarak has survived six assassination attempts.
[18] In June 1995 there was an alleged assassination attempt involving noxious gases and
Egyptian Islamic Jihad while he was in
Ethiopia for a conference of the
Organization of African Unity.
[20] Upon return Mubarak is said to have authorized bombings on
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya which by 1999 saw 20,000 persons placed in detention related to the revolutionary Islamic organizations.
[citation needed] He was also reportedly injured by a knife-wielding assailant in
Port Said in September 1999.
[21]
[edit] Stance on the invasion of Iraq in 2003
George W. Bush and Mubarak, 2002
President Mubarak spoke out against the 2003
Iraq War, arguing that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict should have been resolved first. He also claimed that the war would cause "100
Bin Ladens."
[22] However, as President he did not support an immediate US pull out from Iraq as he believes it will lead to probable chaos.
[23]
[edit] Changing economic scene
In July 2004 Mubarak accepted the resignation of Prime Minister
Atef Ebeid[24] and most of the cabinet. He then appointed
Ahmed Nazif as the new Prime Minister. The new cabinet was generally viewed with optimism. Economic conditions were starting to improve considerably after a period of stagnation. The new cabinet headed by Ahmed Nazif had some success in overcoming the grim economic situation. The Egyptian stock market had the greatest percentage increase of all emerging markets for the fiscal year 2004/2005. However, unemployment persisted and Mubarak came under criticism for favoring big business and privatization as opposed to workers' rights. All this was a consequence of the wide use of privatization policy, by selling shares in most public sector companies, but it was widely believed that this reserve of previously nationalized capitals would end soon, leaving Nazif's government broke.
[edit] 2005 elections
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President Mubarak has been re-elected by majority votes in a
referendum for successive terms on four occasions: in 1987, 1993, 1999. The referendum in itself and its results are of questionable validity
[who?]. No one could run against the President due to a restriction in the Egyptian
constitution in which the People's Assembly played the main role in electing the President of the Republic.
After increased domestic and international pressure for democratic reform in Egypt, Mubarak asked the largely
rubber stamp[citation needed] parliament on 26 February 2005 to amend the constitution to allow multi-candidate presidential elections by September 2005
[citation needed]. Previously
[when?], Mubarak secured his position by having himself nominated by parliament, then confirmed without opposition in a referendum.
The September 2005 ballot was therefore a multiple candidate election rather than a referendum, but the electoral institutions, and security apparatus remain under the control of the President. The official state media, including the three government newspapers and state television also express views identical to the official line taken by Mubarak. In recent years however, there has been a steady growth in independent news outlets, especially independent newspapers which occasionally criticize the President and his family severely
[citation needed]. Satellite channels beaming from Egypt such as the
Orbit Satellite Television and Radio Network for example, also exhibit relative openness as exhibited in their flagship program
Al Qahira Al Yawm. In the last few years however, the cabinet headed by Prime Minister
Ahmed Nazif has been somewhat successful in turning things around. According to the
List of countries by Human Development Index Egypt ranks 111th out of 177 countries, and rates 0.702 on the index.
On 28 July 2005, Mubarak announced his candidacy, as he had been widely expected to do. The election which was scheduled for 7 September 2005 involved mass rigging activities, according to civil organizations that observed the elections.
[25] Reports
[citation needed] have shown that Mubarak's party used government vehicles to take public employees to vote for him. Votes were bought for Mubarak in poor suburbs and rural areas. It was also reported that thousands of illegal votes were allowed for Mubarak from citizens who were not registered to vote. On 8 September 2005,
Ayman Nour, a dissident and candidate for the
El-Ghad Party ("Tomorrow party"), contested the election results, and demanded a repeat of the election.
In a move widely seen as political persecution, Nour was convicted of forgery and sentenced to five years at hard labor on 24 December 2005.
[26] On the day of Nour's guilty verdict and sentencing, the
White House Press Secretary released the following statement denouncing the government's action:
"The United States is deeply troubled by the conviction today of Egyptian politician Ayman Nour by an Egyptian court. The conviction of Dr. Nour, the runner-up in Egypt's 2005 presidential elections, calls into question Egypt's commitment to
democracy, freedom and the rule of law. We are also disturbed by reports that Mr. Nour's health has seriously declined due to the
hunger strike on which he has embarked in protest of the conditions of his trial and detention. The United States calls upon the Egyptian government to act under the laws of Egypt in the spirit of its professed desire for increased political openness and dialogue within Egyptian society, and out of humanitarian concern, to release Mr. Nour from detention."
[27]
According to
Reporters Without Borders; Egyptian media ranks 133 out of 168 in freedom of the press,
[28] showing an improvement of 10 places from 2005.
[edit] State corruption during Mubarak's presidency
While in office, political corruption in the Mubarak administration's Ministry of Interior rose dramatically, due to the increased power over the institutional system that is necessary to secure the prolonged presidency.
[clarification needed] Such corruption has led to the imprisonment of political figures and young activists without trials,
[29] illegal undocumented hidden detention facilities,
[30][31] and rejecting universities, mosques, newspapers staff members based on political inclination.
[32] On a personnel level, each individual officer is allowed to violate citizens' privacy in his area using unconditioned arrests due to the
emergency law.
In 2005
Freedom House, a non-governmental organization that conduct research into democracy, reported that the Egyptian governments, under Mubarak expanded bureaucratic regulations, registration requirements, and other controls that feed corruption. Whenever Egyptians face such controls, money is what ultimately triggers the requisite signature or relevant approval. Compounding the normal bureaucratic culture is the state ownership of many or most of the primary economic levers - banking and financial institutions, tourism, oil, the Suez Canal, manufacturing, the media, and so on. Furthermore, government employees receive insufficient pay, while a decreasing minority of Egyptians achieve increasingly vast wealth, thus creating a growing income gap between the classes and causing the supposed middle class to be squeezed to the smallest minority between the rich and the poor.
Freedom House claimed that corruption has remained a significant problem under Mubarak, who promised to do much, but in fact neither has done anything significant to tackle it effectively
[33].
In 2010,
Transparency International's
Corruption Perceptions Index report assessed Egypt with a CPI score of 3.1, based on perceptions of the degree of corruption from business people and country analysts, with 10 being very clean and 0 being highly corrupt. Egypt ranked 98th out of the 178 countries included in the report.
[34]
[edit] Emergency law rule
Egypt is a
semi-presidential republic under
Emergency Law (Law No. 162 of 1958)
[35] and has been since 1967, except for an 18-month break in 1980s (which ended with the assassination of
Anwar Sadat). Under the law, police powers are extended,
constitutional rights suspended and
censorship is legalized.
[36] The law sharply circumscribes any non-governmental political activity:
street demonstrations, non-approved political organizations, and unregistered financial donations are formally banned. Some 17,000 people are detained under the law, and estimates of
political prisoners run as high as 30,000.
[37] Under that "state of emergency", the government has the right to imprison individuals for any period of time, and for virtually no reason, thus keeping them in prisons without trials for any period. The government continues the claim that opposition groups like the
Muslim Brotherhood could come into power in Egypt if the current government did not forgo parliamentary elections, confiscate the group's main financiers' possessions, and detain group figureheads, actions which are virtually impossible without emergency law and judicial-system independence prevention.
[38] Pro-democracy advocates in Egypt argue that this goes against the principles of democracy, which include a
citizen's
right to a fair trial and their
right to vote for whichever candidate and/or party they deem fit to run their country.
[citation needed]
[edit] Presidential succession
Gamal Mubarak, son of Hosni Mubarak
In 2009, US Ambassador Margaret Scobey reported uncertainty regarding presidential succession, stating "Despite incessant whispered discussions, no one in Egypt has any certainty about who will eventually succeed Mubarak nor under what circumstances."
[39] She listed likely candidates, saying, "The most likely contender is presidential son
Gamal Mubarak (whose profile was ever-increasing at the ruling party, until that party collapsed during
The Egyptian Revolution of 2011); some suggest that intelligence chief
Omar Suleiman might seek the office, or dark horse Arab League Secretary-General
Amre Moussa might run. Mubarak's ideal of a strong but fair leader would seem to discount Gamal Mubarak to some degree, given Gamal's lack of military experience, and may explain Mubarak's hands off approach to the succession question."
[39] President Mubarak and his son denied this, "saying [that] a multi-candidate electoral system
introduced in 2005 has made the political process more transparent."
[40] Nigerian Tribune journalist Abiodun Awolaja described a would-be succession by Gamal Mubarak as a "hereditary pseudo-
monarchy".
[41] Ambassador Scobey summarised Mubarak's vision of the presidential succession, stating, "Indeed, he seems to be trusting to God and the ubiquitous military and civilian security services to ensure an orderly transition."
[39] The National Democratic Party of Egypt continued to state that Hosni Mubarak was to be the party's only candidate to the 2011 Presedential Elections. Mubarak declared on February 1st 2011 that he had no intention to run in the presidential race at the end of 2011. When this declaration failed to ease the protests, Mubarak's vice president stated that Gamal Mubarak, the son, will not run for president. With the escalation of the demonstration and the fall of Mubarak, a former influential figure in the National Democratic Party Hamdy El-Sayed, claimed that Gamal Mubarak intended to forcibly take over his father's position, assisted in that by the then Interior Minister, Habib El-Adly.
[42]
[edit] Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Hosni Mubarak is generally supportive of
Israel. As he has been involved intensely in the
Arab League, he has supported Arab efforts to achieve a lasting peace in the region. The current position of the League is that which was endorsed at the
Beirut Summit, on 28 March 2002. At the summit the league adopted the
Arab Peace Initiative,
[43] a Saudi-inspired peace plan for the
Arab–Israeli conflict. The initiative offered full normalization of the relations with Israel. In exchange, Israel was demanded to withdraw from all
occupied territories, including the
Golan Heights, to recognize an independent
Palestinian state in the
West Bank and the
Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital, as well as a "just solution" for the
Palestinian refugees. The Peace Initiative was again endorsed at 2007 in the
Riyadh Summit. In July 2007, the Arab League sent a mission, consisting of the
Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers, to Israel to promote the initiative.
1 September 2010. During Middle East negotiations, Mubarak and Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel look at their watches to see if it is officially sunset; during Ramadan, Muslims fast until sunset.
On 19 June 2008, the Egypt-brokered "lull" or
pause in hostilities between Israel and Hamas went into effect.
[44] The term "lull" is a translation of the
Arabic term
Tahdia.
[45] According to
The New York Times, neither side fully respected the terms of the cease-fire.
[46]
The agreement required Hamas to end rocket attacks on Israel and to enforce the lull throughout Gaza. In exchange, Hamas expected the
blockade to end, commerce in Gaza to resume, and truck shipments to be restored to 2005 levels, which was between 500 and 600 trucks per day.
[46][47] Israel tied easing of the blockade to a reduction in rocket fire and gradually re-opened supply lines and permitted around 90 daily truck shipments to enter Gaza, up from around 70 per day.
[48] Hamas criticized Israel for its continued blockade
[49] while Israel accused Hamas of continued weapons smuggling via tunnels to Egypt and pointed to continued rocket attacks.
[46]
However, when conflict again ensued during the
Gaza War, Egypt's foreign minister stated that Hamas had brought it upon itself.
In 2009, Mubarak's government banned the
Cairo Anti-war Conference, which has criticised his lack of action against Israel.
[50]
[edit] Revolution and resignation
Massive protests centered on Cairo's
Tahrir Square led to Mubarak's resignation in February 2011.
Mass protests against Mubarak and his regime erupted in Cairo and other Egyptian cities on 25 January 2011. On 1 February, Mubarak announced he would not contest the
presidential election due in September. He also promised constitutional reform.
[51] This did not satisfy the majority of protesters as they expected Mubarak to depart immediately.
[52] The demonstrations continued and on 2 February, violent clashes occurred between pro-Mubarak and anti-Mubarak protestors.
[53] Most of the pro-Mubarak protesters were found to be thieves and police in plain clothes inorder for them to do the dirty work as if the nation was split. This was recognized by Britain's minister.
[54] On 10 February, contrary to rumours,
[55] Mubarak asserted that he would not resign until the September election, though he would be delegating responsibilities to Vice President
Omar Suleiman. The next day, Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned.
[4] The announcement sparked cheers, flag-waving, and celebrations from protesters around Egypt.
A few hours prior to the resignation announcement, reports surfaced suggesting the ousted president and his immediate family had left Cairo for
Sharm el-Sheikh.
[edit] Reports and speculations about condition following resignation
Since his resignation, Mubarak did not make any media appearance, which led to some speculations about his real condition. Some reports claimed that he went into a coma.
[56] Other suggest that because he is still present in Egypt he is still playing a role in the government in secret. Whether that is the case or not, the former President's presence in Sharm el-Sheikh is stopping much of the tourism that is going on there because of security reasons.
