Controversy over who won the 1973 October War persists, not because there can be doubt on the facts, but because the struggle of which the war was an episode continues, writes Abdel-Moneim Said I was stunned when Lord David Owen, speaking at the American University in Cairo (AUC) on 14 October in the context of the "Journalists without borders" lecture series organised by the Heikal Foundation for Arab Journalists, remarked that the 1973 October War was a defeat for Egypt. My shock was understandable. Many men of my generation fought in that war and we had always believed that we won. Now an eminent British politician was telling us that Egypt lost both on the field of battle and in the political arena as well. I suddenly recalled Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, the founder of that journalistic foundation, saying that he was often inspired by the British school of strategic thought, and that Churchill and Montgomery were, to him, icons in this domain. On the heels of this recollection followed the observation that the "British school" had just returned to Egypt several decades after the end of the British occupation. In a previous article on "Victory and defeat in October 1973" I dwelt on Owen and Heikal's remarks from the abstract strategic perspective. Here, I will anchor my assessment of their views in the military and political realities of the war itself. To be just, Lord Owen's argument was cogent and well corroborated. Among the facts that he took as evidence of Egypt's military defeat were that after the battle of 6 October Israeli tanks had reached the outskirts of Cairo and that the Egyptian army could not secure itself against Israeli strikes because it depended on stationary instead of mobile missile defences. "If Egypt had done the opposite and, additionally, brought Jordan into the war effort, it would have achieved an overwhelming victory," he said. He found further proof of Egypt's defeat in the fact that the Egyptian-Israeli talks on 28 October took place on the western side of the Suez Canal. Owen's remarks triggered harsh criticism from his audience, which was perhaps only natural given that his speech coincided with the 36th commemorative celebrations of the October War. In response, he said, "You must not look at me as someone from a country that had invaded Egypt. But I still hold to my view, which is that Egypt was defeated in 1973 and that it succeeded in regaining its territory by diplomatic means." The audience response in AUC's Oriental Hall that day took three general directions. There were those who felt that Owen was not qualified to judge the outcome of the war. Among these were those who charged him with colonialist arrogance and the presumption of scoffing at Egyptians for their belief in their victory and ridiculing their 36th anniversary celebrations. Secondly, there were those who attempted to refute Owen's arguments on technical grounds. The actual results of the war prove beyond a doubt that Egypt emerged victorious, they said, for it ultimately did regain its occupied territory and it did inflict a defeat on the erstwhile invincible Israeli army. In the opinion of the members of this body of opinion, there is room to debate how Egypt capitalised on its victory. It was possible to argue, for example, that Egypt should have expanded its military operations against Israeli forces in order to liberate its territory militarily, while others would counter that the strategic balances of power and material resources did not favour this alternative and that Egypt could best achieve its goal through non-military means, such as negotiations. The third camp of opinion regarded Owen's remarks as a flagrant denial of the facts established by the war; a deliberate disregard for the sacrifices Egypt and its armed forces made towards recovering their occupied territories, and a slight against the detailed planning and technical expertise that Egypt had brought to bear in all phases of the war, and that Israel, itself, admitted was one of the chief causes of its defeat. What we can say for certain is that Owen's opinion reflects a different, Western take on the October war, one that runs pretty much along the lines of the British politician's argument in Cairo. But Western opinion on this matter is not uniform. Some hold that the October war ended in a "tie", with no clear victor or loser. Perhaps the fairest view is that which regards the outcome of that war as an "incomplete" or "ambiguous" victory for Egypt. The diversity of opinion in the West stems from two factors: first, the confusion that arose from the "breach" operation conducted by Israeli forces enabling them to drive a narrow corridor through the Sinai to the western side of the Suez Canal. This was precisely what Israel wanted to achieve from that operation; it had to improve its image in the Western media after a series of powerful blows and setbacks inflicted upon it by Egyptian forces since the outset of hostilities. The second is the fact that Egyptian-Israeli talks on 28 October were held at kilometre 101, which helped the Israelis exaggerate the significance of their having reached this point on the Western bank of the Suez Canal. However, the fact remains that Egypt achieved its goals from the October war, to which testify the Israelis as well. Indeed, because of the astounding results that Egyptian forces achieved during that war Israel created a fact- finding commission charged with investigating how the defeat happened. Chaired by the head of the Israeli Supreme Court, the commission found that there had been severe flaws both in Israeli military intelligence operations and in leadership on the front. During the hearings a senior Israeli intelligence officer acknowledged how expertly the Egyptians had prepared for and fought this war. As for the goals, these were set out in the commission handed by president Anwar El-Sadat to the general commander of the Egyptian forces Ahmed Ismail on 5 October, and included ending the state of "no war, no peace" that was being perpetuated by the US and the Soviet Union, the continuation of which worked to Israel's advantage, and inflicting as much material and moral damage as possible on enemy forces so as to drive home the message that Israel will not achieve security through the exercise of military might and geographical expansion. Naturally, a major goal of the war was to liberate occupied Sinai in phases as the abilities of Egyptian forces and strategic developments permitted. From the very nature of these goals sprang the concept of a "limited war". The aim was for Egyptian forces to cross the canal and reach a depth of 18 kilometres on the eastern side, this being the range of Egypt's Sam-6 stationary defence missiles. Beyond that, Egyptian forces would be entirely exposed. Once this ground target was achieved, Egypt would set into motion the diplomatic machinery needed to complete the objective of liberating Egyptian land. Clearly, then, from the outset of the war the Egyptian command had its sights set beyond how the battle would be waged on the ground to how it would handle the situation once the guns fell silent. One could see this as an attempt to exploit the openings of war, as opposed to their closings. But the battle itself also affirmed the precision and skill with which Egyptian forces carried out their mission. With the combined efforts of Egyptian engineers and fighters they crossed one of the most difficult water barriers in the world that the Israelis had secured for many years by means of a formidable defence barrier on the eastern side of the canal. Some political and military experts are of the opinion that the successes of Egyptian forces had a profound psychological impact on the Israelis. Some go as far as to say that the Israelis, in spite of their progress in many areas, are still in the grips of the "October war complex" and are determined never to allow a repetition of that debacle. With regards to the "breach" that many in the West seized upon as evidence of how the war ultimately turned in Israel's favour, we can counter that that corridor came to exact a heavy toll from Israeli forces while it offered Israel no practical advantages in terms of the strategic balances of power once the fighting stopped. Indeed, had hostilities resumed it would probably have proven a strategic disaster for Israel. In order to secure its hold over the western side of the canal, the Israeli command had to send over six or seven divisions, which were in a potentially precarious position on that narrow strip of land surrounded on all sides by Egyptian forces. Because Israel also had to allocate additional forces in order to secure the entrances to the corridor, it had to sustain an extremely high degree of mobilisation. As a result, the presence of Israeli forces turned from an Israeli into an Egyptian leverage card, which Israel had obviously realised by the time of the Egyptian-Israeli talks in which Israel, itself, asked to withdraw its forces to the east of the canal and dismantle the so-called corridor. Nor, contrary to Owen's claim, did the fact that these talks were held at kilometre 101 crown some ostensible Israeli victory. The most telling proof of this is the ferocious resistance Israeli forces encountered when they attempted to enter Suez on 24 October 1973, in spite of the heavy bombardment to which they subjected Egyptian forces inside the city. Moreover, in the course of the battle of Suez, in which popular forces joined with the 19th Infantry Division in that city, the Egyptians inflicted heavy losses on the Israelis, destroying 13 tanks and armoured vehicles. Yet as conclusive as such evidence seems to me, it is unlikely that the "war over the October war" will end here, because that war is less part of the past as it is part of the unfolding present and future.
