Why is anwar el sadat important

During a second prison stay, Sadat taught himself French and English. After leaving jail, Sadat renewed contact with Nasser. In the s he was a member of the Free Officers organization that overthrew the Egyptian monarchy in He became editor of the revolutionary paper al-Gumhuriya in and also authored several books on the revolution during the late s.

Sadat held various high offices, including speaker of the Egyptian Parliament, that led to his serving in the vice presidency , While the idea was progressive, the move created high inflation and a large gap between the rich and poor, fostering unease and contributing to the food riots of January Where Sadat really made an impact was on foreign policy, as he began peace talks with Egypt's longtime foe Israel almost immediately.

Initially, Israel refused Sadat's terms which proposed that peace could come if Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula , and Sadat and Syria built a military coalition to retake the territory in A few years after the Yom Kippur War, Sadat restarted his efforts to build peace in the Middle East, traveling to Jerusalem in November and presenting his peace plan to the Israeli parliament. Thus began a series of diplomatic efforts, with Sadat making overtures to Israel in the face of strong Arab resistance across the region.

For their historic efforts, Sadat and Begin were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in , and follow-through on the negotiations resulted in a finalized peace treaty between Egypt and Israel—the first between Israel and an Arab country—being signed on March 26, Unfortunately, Sadat's popularity abroad was matched by a new animosity felt toward him in Egypt and around the Arab world.

Opposition to the treaty, a declining Egyptian economy and Sadat's quashing of the resulting dissent led to general upheaval. We strive for accuracy and fairness.

If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Before he entered politics, he served in the military and was involved in many political movements that sought to expel British occupation from Egypt. Through his close relationship with Gamal Abdel Nasser, he assumed various ministerial positions before pursuing the highest government position in the Republic.

As President, he introduced greater political freedom and a new economic policy that led to economic instability. He studied at the Royal Military Academy in Cairo in and graduated in After graduation, Sadat was posted to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan as a second lieutenant. There, he became acquainted to Gamal Abdel Nasser. During the Second World War in , he was imprisoned for his efforts to acquire assistance from the Axis Powers in expelling the British occupation from Egypt.

He was able to escape two years later. In , he became active in the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood and participated in the attacks planned by the organisation. After being implicated in the assassination of pro-British minister Amin 'Uthman, he was arrested and spent three years in prison.

In , Sadat was expelled from the army and therefore was not able to participate in the first Arab-Israeli war. In , he took part in the creation of the clandestine association Free Officers Movement with Nasser and other junior officers. This organisation was committed to expelling the British presence from Egypt and eradicating royal corruption. In fact, he was tasked to announce the news of the revolution to the Egyptian people over the radio networks.

In , Sadat was appointed minister of State during Nasser's premiership. He held several high offices in the Egyptian government afterward. From to , he became president of the National Assembly. On 28 September , after the death of Nasser, he became acting President of the Republic. He was elected to the position for good in a nationwide vote on 15 October, becoming the third President of Egypt.

Whilst his presidency was widely expected to be short-lived, he surprised everyone with a series of intelligent political moves by which he was able to retain the presidency and emerge as a leader in his own right.

He dismantled many of the socialist features of the Egyptian state, and in so doing he impressed Western leaders with his sincerity, weakened his opponents, and enriched his friends.

Just as the revolution's land reform program had attacked the power bases of the "feudal" class, Sadat's "economic opening," or infitah, in attacked the power base of the government oligarchy. Sadat also began a controlled opening of the political process, although never so much as to threaten his hand on power.

Whereas each of these moves might be seen as expressions of a pro-Western stance, they all had important repercussions on the Egyptian domestic stage. It was Sadat's mastery of the Egyptian stage that allowed him to be so successful on the international stage when the opportunity presented itself.

From his experience in Egyptian politics, Sadat understood the importance of forming long-term and durable alliances to pursue long-term goals. His two primary goals upon coming to power were to regain the Sinai for Egypt and to improve the lackluster Egyptian economy. Although he was a nationalist, he understood that his goals could be achieved most readily with the support of an outside power.

Surveying the world in the early s, Sadat decided an alliance with the United States offered the best prospects. The Soviet Union had been tested and found wanting, and Sadat saw in America's close relationship with Israel an opportunity to form his own close relationship with the United States. To this end, Sadat developed an unusual rapport with the American ambassador in Cairo, Hermann Eilts, and he assiduously cultivated friendships with each of the four U.

In the words of Henry Kissinger:. He treated Nixon as a great statesman, Ford as the living manifestation of good-will, Carter as a missionary almost too decent for this world, and Reagan as the benevolent leader of a popular revolution, subtly appealing to each man's conception of himself and gaining the confidence of each. Sadat approached each of these men with the disarming and, at least at the beginning, counterintuitive premise that the United States and Egypt shared deep common interests.

He offered rosy visions of a common future, and he laid out a road map to get there. At several times during American-mediated peace negotiations with Israel, Sadat slipped a secret copy of his "fall-back" positions to the U. Sadat also applied his mastery of symbolism to international relations. His decision to go to Jerusalem was breathtaking in its effect, and his landing on Israeli soil irrevocably changed the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In one gesture granting the Israelis the recognition they had been demanding for decades, Sadat at the same time won an American commitment to aid Egypt in recovering the lands Egypt had lost in war. Sadat's decision to go to Jerusalem was surely the most dramatic of his life. It was dramatic not only because it utterly transformed the Middle East, but also because it was a supreme act of faith.

Sadat decided to play his primary card -- recognition of Israel -- out of a conviction that the United States, and particularly President Carter, would not allow his effort to be in vain. The gesture becomes even more impressive when one considers that Sadat had been disappointed with Carter's election only a year before his trip to Jerusalem, and that the great trust the men had in each other had developed after only a single set of meetings between them.

Sadat's calculus depended on his assessment that he had a limited window of opportunity, and that window was closing. Without clear U. The entropy unleashed by Sadat's dramatic breeching of the Bar Lev line would dissipate, and the sole consequence of the war would be Egyptian sovereignty over the Suez Canal.

The bulk of Sinai would remain under Israeli control, and any further efforts to regain Sinai for Egypt would require a massive military confrontation with the Israelis. In that event, a larger victory would prove much harder to achieve than the tactical victory of October 6, Further, the United States was anxious for a deal in , and Sadat understood the prospect of harnessing American enthusiasm for significant economic development assistance.

Sadat chose the riskiest of the options before him in November , at a time when the magnitude of the rewards for his actions could not have been foreseen. Sadat gambled because he must have understood that the costs of inaction were almost as great as the costs of losing, while the possible rewards for action were much greater. Sadat, and Egypt, won much from his gamble. Sadat's leadership style has been dismissed by some as an expression of fahlawa, an Egyptian peasant's shrewd combination of dissimulation and flattery in the face of power.

First, they give insufficient credit to Sadat's ability to identify and achieve his goals. Sadat was opportunistic to be sure, but he also had a keen sense of the "big picture" and constantly took incremental steps to bring him closer to his objectives.

Second, such assessments do not account for Sadat's ability to take dramatic and forceful steps when conditions were propitious. Once he was in power, Sadat did not play cautiously on the margins but moved daringly in pursuit of his goals.