Liberals and secularists claimed that President Mohamed Morsi's assumption of power in Egypt was an honour bestowed by the January 25 Revolution that ousted the Mubarak regime after 30 years in power. Morsi retorted that the Egyptian people were responsible for him winning the presidential election. The Muslim Brotherhood, to which the President belongs, and the Salafists are convinced that it was the Hand of God that carried Morsi to the presidential palace in the biggest Muslim country of the Arab world. (‘The Hand of God' is a religious term first coined by Diego Maradona to silence global protests against his first goal in his country's 2-1 over England in the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico City. Maradona's use of his hand was declared ‘the Goal of the Century' by FIFA in 2002). Morsi's predecessor's security apparatus detained him on May 18, 2006 (the then presidential elections). He was again held on January 28, 2011 for taking part in anti-Mubarak protests three days earlier. Morsi was freed when prisons across the country were stormed by unknown elements just hours after the collapse of the police forces on January 28. His official adversary Mubarak was toppled on February 11, 2011 and given a life sentence for refusing to save the lives of demonstrators, who took to the street last year. Whether any of the arguments mentioned above are plausible or not, Morsi has great opportunities to write history and that could place him in a higher position than many nationalist heroes, such as the late presidents Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Although Morsi has to fight different foes on several battlefronts (ailing economy, disputable constitution, growing poverty, immature democracy and much-needed social reforms) to bail out Egypt, he will receive the big prize if he succeeds in preserving the history of Egypt's military in Sinai. Morsi's predecessors, including Mubarak, made a name for themselves by leading the Egyptian army to preserve Sinai's security and territorial integrity. None of the former three leaders ever allowed militant groups to run amok on the peninsula and test the military's patience. Sadat achieved victory in the Sinai war with Israel on October 6, 1973; he also managed to end Israeli occupation of the peninsula after signing the Camp David peace accords in 1979. Sadat's predecessor Gamal Abdel-Nasser led two wars in Sinai, irrespective of their different results for acceptable reasons. Although Nasser, together with a group of young army officers, launched one of Egypt's greatest uprisings in modern history on July 23, 1952, his defeat in Sinai in the 1967 war and the Israeli occupation of the entire peninsula was a blemish in his curriculum vitae. It must be said that Mubarak should be given his due for his role in the army in Sinai under Sadat in 1973 and afterwards. Mubarak's betraying policies and miserable and corrupt economic strategies in the last 15 years of his 30-year rule are a completely different story. Since then, the security in Sinai on the one hand and the reputation of the Egyptian army on the other were never shaken to the same extent as they are now. Moreover, the Egyptian military's historical task during the January 25 Revolution did not force it to relax its firm grip on the Sinai. Adding more patriotic chapters to its history and dedication to the nation, the Egyptian army achieved a crossing—greater than the crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973—by supervising a peaceful and bloodless power transfer from military to civilian rule. The army was deployed across the country on January 28, 2011 to protect millions of anti-Mubarak demonstrators after the police forces disappeared and unprecedented violence broke out, including kidnapping, murder, looting, and arson attacks on public and private properties. The army was committed to fulfilling the demonstrators' demands (freedom, social justice and dignity). However, insecurity broke out in the Sinai only days after the revolution. The threat of militants increased paradoxically, although President Morsi encouraged Muslim radicals to abandon violence and integrate themselves into the new democracy. Morsi's first months in power were greeted with the brutal killing of 16 soldiers on the Rafah border in August. The attack happened just weeks after Morsi ordered the release of prisoners belonging to militant groups that had launched a terror campaign in the 1990s and during the revolution. A series of attacks on soldiers and police forces in the Sinai took place after President Morsi pledged to hunt for active militant groups on the peninsula. In his capacity as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Morsi should be fully aware that the military will never allow any bid to compromise its history and reputation.
