Sadat and Identity

ANWAR EL-SADAT died surrounded by the weapons that made his country the most powerful of Arab nations. Yet his assassins were attacking Sadat the peace-maker, not Sadat the war-monger. In this and many other ironies of his life, Sadat was a paradox, a man to befriend you one day only to abandon you the next. Indeed, the late Egyptian ruler once flirted with Hitler's Germany, then denounced it; supported Nasser, then disowned him; courted the Soviet Union, then rejected it; and waged war on Israel only to then embrace it in conciliation. Unstable as this course may seem, it does have an inherent logic, for Sadat was a man who, in his own words, constantly sought a mission in life.

For the most part, it was a quest with challenging goals. Sadat would look for an angle, find one, take action, then move on to the next confrontation. Finally, with the peace initiative, it seemed he had found his Holy Grail. He fought alone, rarely giving ground and sometimes taking too much. Then, they took his life in the hope no one would be so foolhardy as to emulate him.

Sadat was an ambitious man, one of the first members of the lower class to go to military school, from which he graduated an officer. The army, a tight-knit and for the most part loyal group, became the center of his life, and his means for advancement. But advancement towards what? This is the dilemma that was to plague Sadat.

In the 1930's, the most obvious goal for a patriotic Egyptian was to end British occupation. Sadat thus became an underground revolutionary and befriended German agents, whom he viewed primarily as the enemies of England and thus his allies. Later, he would condemn Nazi policies wholeheartedly...and convince most that the meant it. Yet Sadat was adept at insincerity--as evidenced by his adventures in and out of prison during and just after the war. How to judge wherein lies the truth?

With Nasser, a confusing, often ambiguous relationship was the norm. In his autobiography, In Search of Identity, Sadat said: "Some people have wondered how I managed to spend such a long time by Nasser's side...I must have been, they concluded, either too insignificant or too cunning...All there was to it was that Nasser and I had been friends (for a long time)." Sadat had an almost fanatical belief in loyalty and thought the glue of friendship sufficient to keep even those who disagree together. In fact, he affirmed that he continually, if not always publicly, contested Nasser's policies. Upon the latter's death, it was only natural, said Sadat, to follow his own course, contradictions with the past now irrelevant.

Under Nasser, Egyptian policy focused on improving defense and the economy. The Soviet Union, by agreeing to furnish arms and finance important industrial projects, provided the answer to this problem. Yet Sadat, while supporting this alliance, was wary. He realized that by depending solely on the Russians, Egypt put a leash on itself. In 1972, two years after he succeeded Nasser, Sadat ordered the withdrawal of most Soviet personnel in Egypt. He did this, as he later claimed, to "show the whole world that we are always our own masters."

ONCE IN POWER, Sadat tried to consolidate his shaky position by making popular political moves. His decision to oust the soviets was widely praised, as was his order to cut back on the powers of the secret police. But Egypt suffered from an inferiority complex brought on by its resounding defeat in the June 1967 war with Israel. Antagonism was at a high and the prospect for breaking the Arab-Israeli deadlock seemed non-existant.

In retrospect, the decision to wage war on Israel with a surprise attack on Yom Kippur day, 1973, was a political masterstroke. All at once, Sadat restored Egyptian pride, broke the deadlock, and spurred Washington to alleviate tensions in the Middle East. If this was indeed the result Sadat had in mind, he could not have found a better way to achieve it.

And so ironically, but not illogically, Egypt made a stride toward peace by waging war. A period of shuttle diplomacy followed, with then-Secretary of State Kissinger working out a disengagement agreement between Egypt and Israel. It is probably then that Sadat saw his ultimate role as that of the peace-maker.

The true motivation for Sadat's historic trip to Jerusalem in November 1977 may never emerge clearly. Certainly it gave him a political boost at home. Perhaps it even served to fulfill a fantasy in which Anwar el-Sadat, as the "father of Egypt," singlehandedly made peace with the hated enemy. Such debate is in the end irrelevant, for Sadat's journey, his ultimate quest, stands as one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century. This fact cannot be overstated, for in one deft move, Sadat put a thaw to a seemingly rock-solid antagonism.

In a speech to the Israeli parliament, the Egyptian President tried to explain his daring move: "There are moments in the lives of nations and peoples when it is incumbent upon those known for their wisdom and clarity of vision to survey the problem, with all its complexities and vain memories, in a bold drive toward new horizons." Characteristically, Sadat found the flexibility to forget past Arab-Israeli hatreds, just as he had once forgotten his alliances with the Nazis, Nasser and the Soviets. Sadat was never unstable. Rather he was an ideologue who set different targets at different times for himself and for his country and then tried to attain them.

That Sadat was an astute political manipulator is equally beyond doubt. He had an uncanny sense for judging what his people wanted and then delivering it. Still, he set standards and tried to live up to them, no matter how unpopular his actions proved'to be. While the peace initiative was well received in Egypt, it earned Sadat the wrath of the rest of the Arab world. More recently, Sadat struck harshly at internal discord, detaining 1600 opponents to his regime, mostly Moslem militants. That repressive measure is believed to have directly instigated his assassination.

With Sadat's removal, the Middle East, after a period of relative stability, heads once again for the unknown. In Egypt, a new search for identity has already begun, and its outcome will profoundly affect the entire world. As President, Sadat successfully managed to impose peace as the goal for his country. As a legacy, Sadat would surely have wished for that goal to become eternal.