and Sharaf uncovered a military plot to reinstate Amer and dismiss the president if he attempted to resist.25 It was clear that the field marshal’s men were not ready to surrender their boss. Amer’s ejection from the military had to wait.
This time Nasser had to improvise. In September 1962, he told Amer he intended to rule Egypt collectively through a twelve-member Presidential Council, which would include both of them, in addition to some old RCC colleagues and a few civilian ministers. To join the council, however, Amer had to resign and accept the appointment of Muhammad Fawzy, director of the Military Academy, as the new commander-in-chief. Nasser’s real intention, as he later confessed to Fawzy, was to isolate his unruly field marshal with a sleight of hand from the corps.26 Amer reluctantly agreed, not knowing exactly what he was getting into. During the council’s first meeting, on September 18, Nasser announced the appointed of Aly Sabri (his close security associate) as prime minister, and reminded Amer to submit his resignation as agreed. Instead, Shams Badran, the OCC director, came to see Nasser the next day to inform him that after consulting with his men, the field marshal had decided to stay on. A furious Nasser insisted that Amer carry out his part of the deal, and all Badran managed to secure from him was an extension. After a couple of months, Badran turned up with a letter of resignation. As the president skimmed through the lines, he quickly realized it was a ploy—and a quite dangerous one. In the letter, which Badran claimed had “somehow leaked” to the officer corps and the press, Amer said he was stepping down because Nasser adamantly pursued the path of dictatorship: “What you should be working for now is democracy … I cannot imagine that after all this time, after eradicating feudalism and manipulative capitalism, after the masses have placed their trust in you unreservedly, you still fear democracy.” On that same day, before Nasser could recover from the shock, paratroopers demonstrated outside his house with their machine guns pointed toward the presidential residence. The PBI also informed him that Nasr at the GIS was plotting something big with the general staff. A few days later, Badran carried to the president a new message from the field marshal: Amer would not resign unless Nasser pledged in writing to establish democracy. The president had no choice but to negotiate with Amer. A meeting was set for December 11. The field marshal began by stressing that the political security of the armed forces depended on him personally, and that any attempt to remove him from office would lead to disaster. Amer followed his not-so-subtle threat with a list of demands that included promoting him from commander-in-chief to first vice president and deputy supreme commander of the armed forces (Nasser holding nominally the title of supreme commander), in addition to undivided control over the military’s financial and administrative affairs. Realizing at this point that challenging Amer would certainly provoke a coup, the president retreated.27
So basically the Presidential Council gambit backfired. The field marshal not only emerged unscathed, but also his position improved considerably, in effect being promoted from the number two man to sharing the number one position. The confrontation confirmed Nasser’s worst fear; he complained to Zakaria, after what he considered Amer’s “silent coup,” that there were now two states in Egypt, an official one, which he presided over, and a shadowy one led by Amer.28 In a less guarded moment, he bluntly confessed to Sadat that the country was currently “run by a gang … I am responsible as president, but it is Amer that rules.”29 The type of regime emerging in Egypt in the 1960s was therefore one of dual power, an unstable and alarming situation.
The previously lurking power struggle now came into the open. Nasser’s goal was to infiltrate the military, while Amer’s goal was to extend his influence over the political sphere. The president pushed Amer in March 1964 to hire Muhammad Fawzy as chief of staff, after he had refused to surrender general command to him two years earlier. The field marshal acquiesced in order to appease Nasser, but then restricted Fawzy’s duties to trivial administrative tasks, and created a new position in the chain of command—the so-called Ground Forces Command (GFC)—to carry out the duties of the chief of staff.30 Amer and his entourage, on the other hand, tightened their grip over the military and security, and began to extend their influence over civilian sectors as well, from overseeing land reform to supervising public sector companies and running sporting clubs. In truth, though, the real players in this struggle were neither Nasser nor Amer, but rather their security associates. For example, hiring Fawzy as chief of staff was proposed by his relative Samy Sharaf, the PBI director; at the same time, the OCC head, Shams Badran, had an infinitely stronger control over the military and military-based security organs than Amer himself.31
At this point, Nasser began to regret his disregard for political organization. If he had formed a strong ruling party, he would have kept the military in line via political commissars, as was the case in Russia and China. Instead, he resolved to control the military through secret cells loyal to his regime. Now that their loyalty had shifted to Amer, he had no way of purging them—he simply did not know who the members of these cells were.* But perhaps it was not too late. If the military had become his rival’s power base, and if the security apparatuses he controlled (the PBI; the Interior Ministry’s investigative organ, the GID; and the police force) were no match for Amer’s ensemble (the OCC; the military and civilian intelligence agencies; and the military police), then maybe he could turn his attention to the political apparatus—maybe he could shore up his social support and transform the rudimentary organs that existed so far into an all-powerful ruling party. If he succeeded in expanding and organizing his social base, then maybe he could reduce the relative weight of the military in the ruling coalition. The idea of the Arab Socialist Union (ASU) was thus born—conceived from the beginning as a political counter to the military.
COUNTERWEIGHING THE MILITARY
Nasser deeply mistrusted political parties because they could be easily infiltrated and subverted. He preferred to mobilize support through direct appeal to the masses via speeches and state-controlled media. But by 1962, he realized how he had inadvertently cornered himself; because of his reluctance to build a powerful ruling party, the political arena became entirely dominated by the military and the security apparatus. Nasser was now determined to remedy this deficiency. He began to build on what he had. The chaotic array of political currents that constituted the Liberation Rally gave way by 1958 to a more pyramid-shaped, district-based structure called the National Union (NU). But despite its more solid structure, the NU was a nonideological control instrument open to all citizens and concerned mostly with providing crowds to welcome state dignitaries, shepherding them to root for the president during national celebrations and to vote for whatever the government ordained in referendums. Neither the Liberation Rally nor the NU had any capacity for popular mobilization. They were more like fluid social networks of all those who supported—or more accurately, sought to benefit from—the regime. They included students, workers, peasants, professionals, merchants, as well as rural notables and capitalists, coming together occasionally to express approval of whatever the regime did.
The passing of the socialist laws of 1961, which Nasser used to broaden his mass base and tighten his grip over the bureaucracy, provided the occasion to reorganize and empower the NU. Through the National Charter of 1962, Nasser announced the creation of the ASU, which was supposed to represent the will of what he called “the alliance of the people’s productive forces” in achieving freedom (from imperialism), socialism (which meant a state-planned economy), and (Arab) unity. It was methodically structured along two axes: one based on profession, with committees for workers, peasants, intellectuals, soldiers, and “patriotic” capitalists, as well as the Socialist Youth Organization for students; and another on residence, with district branches in the cities and basic units in the villages (7,500 chapters in all). In theory, the ASU was supposed to provide candidates for parliament and cabinet, as well as other leadership positions, such as mayors and university deans, and “inspire” legislation and policies on all state levels. In short, it was supposed to represent the seat of political power.
The GIS deputy director and leading ASU cadre Abd al-Fattah Abu al-Fadl published an exposition of the origins and goals of this new organization in the regime’s mouthpiece Al-Tali’ah (The Vanguard). Abu al-Fadl first explained that the ASU was a mass organization
