It was a surprise for both insiders and the public when President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi's spokesman Alaa Youssef announced the president's choice of former ministers Fayza Abul-Naga and Ahmed Gamaleddin as advisors on national security and the war on terror. For a while now sources in the ruling quarters had been briefing that a leading member of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) would shortly be assigned as national security advisor. The name of Mohamed Al-Assar was mentioned most often. It was impossible for any foreign diplomat or informed government official in Cairo to have missed Al-Assar's political role in the post Hosni Mubarak years, whether during the transition under SCAF, the rule of Morsi or of Adli Mansour. Speculation was fed by the role Al-Assar played as head of Crisis Management Committee (CMC) following the initiation of the rule of President Al-Sisi. CMC brings together several leading ministers and heads of state-security bodies. CMC is influential in decision-making on issues ranging from the recent offer by Cairo to host a regional bureau of the UN Human Rights Council to communication with so-called “reformist” elements close to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. “Al-Assar kept telling people who called to enquire about the matter that he was not up to any new responsibilities. He sounded like he meant it and that was long before the announcement of the nomination of Fayza and Ahmed Gamaleddin,” said one informed source. “After the recent terrorist attack in Sinai, I called [Al-Assar] and asked him if the recent attack was going to prompt the announcement of his new assignment and he ruled it out even more categorically than on previous occasions.” It was only on the eve of the public announcement of the assignment of both Abul-Naga and Gamaleddin that the word was being leaked that the former minister of interior sacked by ousted President Mohamed Morsi would be getting the job, say sources close to ruling circles. Then, adds one presidential source, Abul-Naga was summoned for a meeting with the president, starting speculation about a new role for the woman who served under Mubarak and during the first post-Mubarak transition as minister of state of foreign affairs and minister for international cooperation. “Fayza was never fully out of the picture. Her views were solicited often and she also volunteered ideas and information, not always in a direct fashion but her presence was never fully eliminated,” says the presidential source. Abul-Naga is a career diplomat in her early 60s. Her colleagues may not like her but they agree that she is a woman of exceptional professional skills. “Some [diplomats] limit her skills to her composed nature, and she really never loses her poise, her polished style and firm command of Arabic, English and French but this is not what Fayza is about. Fayza is a tough negotiator, a very energetic worker and a stubborn woman who does not take no for answer. She is also a wildly ambitious lady,” says a former aide who is now an ambassador. In the foreign service Abul-Naga's name is associated with two prominent diplomats: Boutros-Boutros Ghali, who selected her from his cabinet as minister of state for foreign affairs in the late 1980s and early 1990s to join him in New York as UN Secretary General, and Amr Moussa, who always said “Fayza is the definition of what a top notch diplomat should be”. A key reason behind the selection of Abul-Naga as national security advisor is, say government sources, her expertise gleaned as assistant foreign minister for African affairs in the late 1990s. at the time her performance was complemented by African diplomats even as Mubarak's incremental neglect of the continent bit deeper. Another key factor, say insiders, is her “much appreciated firm scrutiny over the operation and finance of civil society in Egypt”. “In this respect, she sees eye to eye with the president and the head of intelligence who have questions, to say the least, about the motives behind the finance provided for some NGOs and the working agendas of others.” During her ministerial tenure in the first post-Mubarak transition Abul-Naga was in conflict with Washington over the Cairo operations of two US NGOs. Criminal charges were directed against their employees before a political deal with the US saw them leave Egypt aboard an American plane following direct US threats of a full diplomatic showdown. The selection of Abul-Naga as national security advisor has fuelled concern among an already apprehensive civil society that new regulations imposed by the state in the absence of an elected legislative will force many NGOs to close their doors. Another reason for her selection is said to be her combative cabinet style, under Mubarak, when she went head to head with ministers close to Gamal Mubarak's, especially minister of finance Youssef Ghali, the mentor of the ousted president's younger son. “Youssef used to call her ‘Amr Moussa in a skirt' and the only person who liked her was [former minister of defense Hussein] Tantawi who never really liked Gamal or Youssef or any of the members of the cabinet who supported more openness towards the world,” said a Mubarak-era minister who declined to be identified. Tantawi, according to some sources, is the one who nominated Abul-Naga for the job. Gamaleddin, says a source in the prime minister's office, has “specific expertise and skills in terms of handling political Islamic groups, he has ideas for firm confrontation but he also has ideas for building in-roads or even starting conditional dialogue”. Like Abul-Naga, Gamaleddin has also been privately advising the new head of state on a range of issues. The former minister of interior, removed by Mohamed Morsi and replaced by Mohamed Ibrahim, has been portrayed in the columns of some informed commentators as the most effective minister of interior to serve in the post, with one going so far as to suggest that “Gamaleddin will be deciding the strategies while Ibrahim will be in charge of execution”. This is not the picture portrayed by a high-ranking police source. He argued that “it would be more like job-sharing”. “The ministry of interior has too much on its plate already. You might say that terrorism will be Gamaleddin's remit while Ibrahim will worry after the other tasks, especially preparations for the parliamentary elections,” he argued. Question marks over overlap, duplication and possible confrontation in the role of both Abul-Naga and Gamaleddin have been raised by many. At the Foreign Ministry, intelligence, the ministry of international planning, the ministry of investment and trade, and in the top echelons of the interior ministry there are many questions about how the Abul-Naga/Gamaleddin portfolios will work. Conflicts among the men Al-Sisi has surrounded himself with are already catching the attention of foreign diplomats in Cairo. Many of them still talk about the abrupt departure of Nabil Fahmi as foreign minister in the cabinet reshuffle announced last summer. “It happened at the very last minute, after Fahmi was told that a planned visit to an Arab capital was going ahead. At the very last minute we had to inform guests that it would be Sameh Shoukri not Nabil Fahmi who would be arriving the following day,” says a Foreign Ministry source. Egyptian and foreign sources both say the dismissal of Fahmi was the end of a power struggle involving another influential official who objected to what he saw as the foreign minister's tolerance of political debate among foreign service members on an internal social media service, and his reluctance to summon ambassadors suspected of having Islamist leanings. “Now if this kind of ping-pong becomes more widespread with these new appointments we really will have a problem deciding who to talk with and whose word to take,” says a Cairo-based Western ambassador. The challenge is much tougher for the staff in the presidency who may have to negotiate between parallel decision-making bodies. Some official sources say they fear the day they might have to go between Al-Assar, the influential Armed Forces general, and Gamaleddin or Abul-Naga. “Luckily these three are on good terms and I would say on the same page on many issues. Hopefully, if they agreed among themselves, then the streamlining will be doable,” says one source. The appointment of Abul-Naga and Gamaleddin was complemented with the appointment of a secretary-general for the national security team. Khaled Al-Bakly has worked with Abul-Naga closely for several years and is thought to be a good working partner for Alaa Youssef, the presidential spokesman who, according to several sources, managed to build a smooth relationship with the military-dominated presidential aides in his first weeks at the president's office. “Coordination and a good team work is essential now. We cannot be running against one another with so many internal and foreign challenges,” says the source at the office of the prime minister. He added that Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb himself “has demonstrated remarkable modesty by accommodating all sorts of views to keep the boat sailing”. According to the same source, the assignment of Abul-Naga and Gamaleddin “should be about it”. “I hope that there will no further expansion of the presidential advisory team, at least for now,” he said. The new national security team will be working from the presidential offices in Heliopolis and is expected to hold meetings with all concerned officials and ministers in the next few days before embarking on their dual task: to promote development and combat terror.
