Analysts both inside and outside Egypt continue to debate whether or not the former Mubarak regime embarked on an appeasement strategy with the military to limit opposition to the grooming of the president's son, Gamal, as Mubarak's successor. One of the pillars of such a strategy was the regime's appointment of a large number of ex-officers to senior positions in the administration and state-run enterprises. This paved the way for the military to penetrate the civilian sector. The issue of the army's so-called economic empire is now receiving attention from the same analysts as they attempt to provide a behind-the-scenes rationale for the military's supportive role in both the January and June revolutions. Put differently, these two issues — the military's economic enterprises and ex-officers' intrusion in the civilian sphere — have been used to present the army as an opportunistic power-seeker, lacking any driver but maintaining the institution's interests. Such an image has been asserted by analysts, including well-known scholars with links to top think tanks and career diplomats and officials. Charles W. Dunne, director of Middle East and North Africa Programmes at Freedom House in the US, recently spoke to the House foreign affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. In his testimony, he reiterated these generalisations about the Egyptian army. “With the breakup of the Mubarak regime, the Egyptian military, which controls approximately 40 per cent of the Egyptian economy and holds the balance of power in all national-level political deliberations, saw its opportunity when the revolution arrived,” he said. There have been varying estimates of the size of the military's economic enterprises, ranging between five and 60 per cent of Egypt's GDP. Such an exceptionally wide range underscores the methodological flaws of some researchers and illustrates their difficulty in data definition, collection and interpretation. The penetration of the military into the national economy is a common characteristic of many Middle Eastern countries, including Israel and Turkey. As described by the Turkish writer Akca Ismet, the military-economic structure of Turkey has developed quickly, leading to the militarisation of Turkish industry. Similarly, the Israeli military has played an enormous role in the national economy, particularly in the rising defence industry in which Israel has become a leading global manufacturer and exporter. In fact, the Israeli defence industry has been a major sector that hires ex-military officers in both its private and public enterprises. According to the commentator Andrew Feinstein, “nearly 30 per cent of Israel's economy went towards sustaining its defence force,” making it one of the most militarised economies in the world. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Egyptian military enterprises have been geared to local consumption, which has conflicted with the interests of many potential private foreign and local suppliers. The Egyptian army, with all its commercial potential, is among the last institutions that have not been privatised, a situation that is considered by many analysts to be ideologically unacceptable. As such, the so-called economic miracles of both the Israeli and Turkish militaries have been denied the Egyptian army, which has an old history of military industry that dates back to long before the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and the state of Israel in 1948. For many analysts, the disputed issue of the military invasion of the civilian administration has become a solid fact that cannot be subjected to rational discussion. No less seriously, many of these analysts consider their poorly reasoned idea of an “officers' republic” in Egypt to be one of the army's vested interests that it has to defend, if not to stage a coup in order to protect it, as one of the many privileges claimed to be enjoyed by the military corps and understood as the army's so-called economic empire. But none of these analysts has been able to offer a complete picture of the secondary careers of Egyptian retired military officers in either the public or the private spheres. For a variety of reasons, including tight security precautions, it has been difficult to assess the extent of the post-retirement careers of military officers. Failing to reach a measurable estimate of the presumed ex-military infiltration of the Egyptian bureaucracy, some of these analysts have shifted their emphasis towards the imaginary qualitative impact of the ex-military officers on the government machine. Steven A. Cook, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, for example, writes: “Most importantly, the informal power of the military is both reflected and reinforced in that the staff of the presidency have consisted almost exclusively of serving or retired military officers, who could impress upon the various branches of Egypt's state bureaucracy the priorities of the military leadership.” Once again, such alleged qualitative influence has lacked substantial evidence first for its existence and second for its ability to achieve its supposed objectives. Zakaria Azmy, an ex-officer as well as the strong man of the presidency, worked in the institution years before Mubarak's appointment as president. Though the presidency has had many ex-officers in its service, none save Azmy has been in a political position. The commentator Yezid Sayeigh claims that such ex-officers have constituted a solid base for the ruling regime and thus form what he describes as the “officers' republic.” Yet many civilians, including Ossama Al-Baz and others, were close to the president and influenced his decisions until the surfacing of Gamal Mubarak as a potential successor. All the old guard of the Mubarak regime, except for Safwat Al-Sherif, were civilians. People like Fouad Mohey Al-Din, Refaat Al-Mahgoub, Atef Sidki, Fathy Sorour, Kamal Al-Shazli and even Kamal Al-Ganzoury were all powerful while they were civilians. But according to Sayeigh, the officers' republic was quite obvious during the Mubarak era. As he says, “The senior officer corps was co-opted by the promise of appointment upon retirement to leading posts in government ministries, agencies, and state-owned companies, offering them supplementary salaries and lucrative opportunities for making money and asset accumulation in return for loyalty to the president. This officers' republic served as a primary instrument of presidential power.” It is true that the Mubarak regime, as a form of career extension, co-opted many ex-officers by appointing them to civilian positions. But Mubarak's patronage was not limited to the retired military. The regime hired tens of thousands of civilian consultants who were offered more lucrative opportunities than their military counterparts. In fact, retired members of the military were a minority within the large numbers of co-opted consultants. Mubarak also opted for a career-extension policy with the judiciary, allowing the service of judges to the age of seventy and appointing many judges as governors. Adjudication committees were also made up of retired judges. It is fair to say that the Mubarak era witnessed the zenith of the judiciary as an independent and prestigious profession. By law, the members of the judiciary and the army are bared from having any extra income while in service and, accordingly, the regime worked to provide such sources of income. The so-called privileges of the military represented a kind of welfare benefit that provided additional funds as well as job opportunities. Such options cannot be sustained except by military economic enterprises and secondary careers for retired officers. Mubarak himself was a typical military officer with a strong commitment and loyalty to the army, something that was not strongly shared by Sadat or even by Nasser, with his reliance on army officers in his modernisation project. Mubarak's commitment to the military was evident in many of his decisions, including his final act as president: transferring power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and stepping down from power. It cannot be claimed that he pursued the building of an officer caste to defend his regime as the opposite happened: SCAF endorsed the popular demand for the removal of Mubarak. Mubarak's efforts were not intended to establish a parallel structure that would form the core of the regime. Rather, he sought to compensate members of the institution who would have limited financial resources, particularly after early retirement. Uri Avnery, the Israeli peace activist and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement, has recently pointed out that “when a general goes home, the army considers it its comradely duty to provide him with a suitable civilian job. The country [Israel] is swimming with ex-generals and ex-colonels who hold central positions in politics, public administration, government-owned corporations and services, etc. Tycoons employ them for huge salaries because of their influential connections. Many of them have founded ‘security'-related companies and are engaged in the world-wide import and export of arms and military equipment.” Avnery's description of the civilian careers of Israeli ex-officers uses the same words that have been used by many western, as well as Egyptian, analysts when describing the so-called officers' republic in Egypt. Nevertheless, there are substantial differences between the two cases. In Israel, there has been serious academic study of the ex-military officers' paths across different sectors of the civilian state and economy. For example, the Israeli analysts Barak and Tsur carried out a pioneer study of former high-ranking Israeli officers and their post-retirement posts. The study drew on an “original database that includes details on all 213 officers who were promoted to the two highest ranks in the IDF, major-general and lieutenant-general, and who served in its general staff since 1948.” The reliability of the primary references used in this study cannot be compared to the interviews conducted by Sayeigh with Egyptian army retirees that led him to his conclusions. According to Barak and Tsur, former high-ranking IDF officers “have occupied 120 positions in the business sector, 106 positions in the political system, 40 positions in the public sector, and 10 positions in the security services.” Sheffer and Barak have reached the same conclusions, reporting that over 90 per cent of the military elite have pursued secondary or even tertiary careers in Israel. Beyond the quantitative aspect, many members of the Israeli military elite are close to policy-formulation and decision-making circles in the government security services and in the public and private business sectors. In other words, the military has been both quantitatively and qualitatively influential in the public affairs of the Israeli state and society. Despite the fact that military elites play an important role in Israeli politics there is no mention of an officers' republic. On the contrary, Israel is always described as an oasis of democracy, as the prototype of a civil state. When it comes to the evolution of the military institution, the Israeli historical and political contexts have been utterly different from those of Egypt. But when analysts address the issue they show a clear bias. In Egypt, based on no real evidence, ex-military officers are said to form an illusory entity called the officers' republic, while in Israel, which has a long and well-known record of deep ex-military penetration in civilian institutions and enterprises, many analysts praise what they refer to as a true democracy. More than double standards are at work in this biased representation. The writer is a political analyst.
