Succession Gives Army a Stiff Test in Egypt

CAIRO — When a boiler at Military Factory 99 exploded in early August, killing one civilian worker and injuring six, a group of employees called a strike to demand safer working conditions, as they are entitled to do under Egyptian law.

Yet, before the month was out, eight of them were on trial — in a military court — for “disclosing military secrets” and “illegally stopping production.”

The message was unmistakable: the rules that apply to the rest of Egypt do not apply to the military, still the single most powerful institution in an autocratic state facing its toughest test in decades, an imminent presidential succession.

President Hosni Mubarak has ruled Egypt with dictatorial powers for 29 years but is ill and not expected to continue in office after his current term expires in 2011. Retired officers, political activists and other analysts here say that the military’s show of force with the striking civilian workers was part of a concerted effort to put the military’s stamp on the choice of the next president.

Technically, Egyptian voters will determine their next leader in the 2011 elections, but in practice the governing party’s candidate is almost certain to win. The real succession struggle will take place behind closed doors, and that is where the military would try to assure its continued status or even try to block Mr. Mubarak’s son Gamal.

Military officials have expressed reservations in interviews and in the Egyptian news media about Gamal Mubarak, one of the most frequently mentioned potential successors of the president. Retired officers and other analysts said the military would not support his candidacy without ironclad guarantees that it would retain its pre-eminent position in the nation’s affairs. Retired officers circulated an open letter criticizing Gamal Mubarak’s candidacy last month, and several retired Egyptian officers said in interviews that they were skeptical of hereditary succession.

The military has much to lose in the transition, these officers and analysts say. Over the years, one-man rule eviscerated Egypt’s civilian institutions, creating a vacuum at the highest levels of government that the military willingly filled. “There aren’t any civilian institutions to fall back on,” said Michael Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation who has written about the Egyptian military. “It’s an open question how much power the military has, and they might not even know themselves.”

The beneficiary of nearly $40 billion in American aid over the last 30 years, the Egyptian military has turned into a behemoth that controls not only security and a burgeoning defense industry, but has also branched into civilian businesses like road and housing construction, consumer goods and resort management.

The military has built a highway from Cairo to the Red Sea; manufactures stoves and refrigerators for export; it even produces olive oil and bottled spring water. When riots broke out during bread shortages in March 2008, the army stepped in and distributed bread from its own bakeries, burnishing its reputation as Egypt’s least corrupt and most efficient state institution.

“In times of crisis, they are there,” Salah Eissa, editor of a government-run weekly, Al Qahira, said in an interview. “That’s why you see some people today go as far as to call for military rule.”

To enhance their power and prestige, the armed forces cloak themselves in a veil of secrecy, answering directly to the president, not the prime minister or cabinet. They have ignored calls in Parliament for budget transparency. The names of the general officers are not published, nor is the military’s size, which is considered a state secret (observers estimate the ranks at 300,000 to 400,000).

The military interprets its writ broadly. A retired army general, Hosam Sowilam, recently said the army would step in “with force if necessary” to stop the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, from ascending to power. He added that the military still considered Israel a primary threat, even though the two nations had been at peace for more three decades.

“We shall obey the president because he will be accepted by the people,” General Sowilam said in an interview. “But we will not accept any interference by the political parties into our military affairs.”

While the military is not expected to dictate the governing party’s candidate, Egyptian political observers said it held an informal veto power over who rose to the top of the country’s power pyramid. “The military is seen as the only institution that is able to block succession in Egypt,” said Issandr el-Amrani, a close observer of Egyptian affairs who writes the Arabist blog.

At the same time, the military does not want to be seen as dictating political events. “They are the only and primary force in Egypt right now,” said George Ishak, a member of the secular opposition group National Association for Change. “We do not wish for the military institution to play a political role in supporting anyone over anyone.”