The Equations to Be Recalculated

By William E Smith

"We shall find out if a man or an idea was killed"

The nightmare had come true: the sudden, terrifying death of the beleaguered, valiant, seemingly indispensable Anwar Sadat. In a week of anger and disbelief, the assassinated Egyptian leader was hailed in the U.S., in Western Europe, in Israel and elsewhere as a man of courage and peace. In a few Arab capitals, where he had never been forgiven for signing a peace treaty with Israel, his death was greeted with cheers and celebration, a burst of joy that much of the rest of the world considered obscene. And throughout a week that culminated in a somber state funeral Saturday, there were questions everywhere about what the Middle East, indeed the world, would be like without him; where the earthquake of his death had left Egypt; what would be the future now of the quest for a Middle East peace.

Expressions of shock and tribute arrived in Cairo from Israel, where Prime Minister Menachem Begin said he had lost "not only a partner in the peace process but also a friend"; from Bonn, where Chancellor Helmut Schmidt spoke of his "bewilderment and horror"; from Tokyo, where the government called Sadat "a great gladiator for peace"--and from two men who had been more fortunate than Anwar Sadat. In St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, Pope John Paul II, who was struck by a bullet just five months ago, spoke of his "emotion and pain." And in Washington, Ronald Reagan, who had decided not to attend the Sadat funeral because of security considerations, greeted the three living ex-Presidents, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, who had agreed to represent their country at the funeral. In a brief White House ceremony for them, Reagan addressed a moving eulogy pointedly toward those "who rejoice in the death" of the Egyptian leader. Said the President:

"In life you feared Anwar Sadat, but in death you must fear him more. For the memory of this good and brave man will vanquish you."

From the chaos of the assassination scene, the Egyptian leadership moved swiftly to secure an orderly transition. At 5 p.m. Tuesday, scarcely two hours after the fallen President had been pronounced dead at the Maadi Military Hospital, the Cabinet met in emergency session and unanimously appointed Vice President Hosni Mubarak as Prime Minister and supreme commander of the armed forces. It was Mubarak, a member of the "October Generation," as Sadat called the participants in the October 1973 war, whom the late President had been grooming as his successor for the past seven years. The next day the People's Assembly, Egypt's parliament, nominated Mubarak for the presidency.

A national referendum was scheduled for early this week, but the balloting was regarded as a mere formality: Mubarak already had taken charge. The government immediately announced an official mourning period of 40 days and, as a special precaution, declared a state of emergency for one year, thereby prohibiting public gatherings and marches during that period. At 8 p.m. Tuesday, Mubarak formally announced Sadat's death to the Egyptian people over television and radio. Said the President-designate: "Allah has ordained that Sadat should die on a day which itself is symbolic of him, among his soldiers, heroes and people proudly celebrating the anniversary of the day on which the Arab nation regained its dignity." Egypt, Mubarak declared, would follow Sadat's course, "without any deviation, the course of peace." For the moment, Sadat's proud belief that he had established "a state of institutions" in Egypt that would permit a peaceful transfer of power, appeared to hold.

That night, and during the days that followed, Cairo was calm. Eleven years earlier, its millions had erupted in frenzied grief after the sudden death of Gamal Abdel Nasser. This time, the city remained unexpectedly tranquil, perhaps because Sadat aroused a different kind of emotion in his countrymen, but also because the state of emergency left people uneasy about venturing into the streets. There were no roadblocks. No extraordinary military presence was visible except around a few key installations and buildings. Stores stayed open late as Cairenes shopped for 'Id al-Adha, the Muslim feast of sacrifice. Only on the morning of the funeral was there a street demonstration. Said a student: "Something is destroyed inside of me. He is gone, I'm here. That's all."

By Thursday, there were reports that the armed forces of Egypt and neighboring Libya, a bitter foe of Sadat's, had been placed on alert, and that rioting by Muslim fundamentalists had broken out in the southern Egyptian city of Asyut, long a center of religious militancy. The clashes in Asyut, in which both police and protesters used firearms, causing hundreds of casualties, did not subside until army reinforcements were brought in. But there were no mass arrests within the army as a result of the assassination, and the country as a whole remained quiet.

Mubarak, Egypt's air force commander in the 1973 war, seemed almost matter-of-fact as he set out to assure the world that the Egyptian government would honor existing treaties and uphold Sadat's policies. Acutely aware that under the terms of the Camp David accords Israel is scheduled to withdraw from the easternmost portion of the Sinai next April, Mubarak assured Jerusalem that he would carry on with the peace negotiations along the lines laid down by Sadat. Despite Egypt's official rift with Saudi Arabia over the peace treaty with Israel, Mubarak declared that he, like Sadat, supports the sale of U.S. AWACS planes to the Saudis. Unlike Sadat, Mubarak refrained from making inflammatory remarks about Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who had long called for Sadat's overthrow and death and whose radio stations last week beamed out fervent propaganda urging Egyptians to rise up against their government. In earlier years, Mubarak had been dismissed by some diplomats as a colorless acolyte. But last week, as he proceeded in a deliberate way to demonstrate the continuity of leadership, he looked more impressive than his reputation had suggested.

Nonetheless, Sadat's violent death raised a host of concerns about Egypt and its relationships with the rest of the world. Sadat was like the Shah of Iran in one respect: he was the show. Both the Americans and the Israelis were aware of the vulnerability of basing their policies on so thin a leadership, even as they concluded that they had no real alternative. Sadat's assassination presents at the very least a serious challenge to U.S. foreign policy and all that that policy must contend with in the Middle East: the Camp David peace process, the Palestinian autonomy talks, the return of the Sinai, the U.S.-encouraged "strategic consensus" of anti-Communist states in the region. How much of Egypt's peace with Israel will survive Sadat's death? Will the new Egyptian leadership move closer to other Arab states, perhaps Saudi Arabia and Jordan at first? Will Israel keep its pledge to evacuate the rest of the Sinai next April? Will Mubarak, like Sadat, go along with Reagan's plan for a strategic consensus, even to the point of giving it precedence over progress toward a Palestinian settlement? Most Western governments are betting strongly on at least one answer: Mubarak is likely to do nothing that could prevent Egypt's recovery of the Sinai. As a senior British diplomat put it last week, "The slogan of the Mubarak leadership will be: Let's get to the end of April with the peace treaty intact. After that we can come to grips with the other problems."

Any inquiry into Egyptian and Middle East prospects begins with the three most gnawing questions of the moment: Who assassinated Anwar Sadat? Why?

And what does the act mean for the stability of Egypt? As in a mystery novel in which hardly a character is free of suspicion, Sadat had so many enemies that almost no political or religious group can be completely ruled out. He was despised as a traitor by Arab nationalist radicals at home as well as those in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere. He was hated by Islamic fundamentalists both inside and outside Egypt, and their numbers, like their fervor, are on the increase. He was at odds with some of his country's Coptic Christians. He had quarreled with the Soviet Union for nine years and only last month expelled the Soviet ambassador. At that time he also ordered the arrest of 1,600 Egyptian dissidents of all kinds, including several old comrades. Lately, in the view of some observers, he had seemed more harried, more desperate than the visible circumstances warranted. Had he learned of a plot in the making?

The official Egyptian position last week was that the assassination had been the work of a small band of Muslim fanatics acting alone, with no links to any political organizations or foreign country. According to the government, the group had been composed of four men, all from the same area of Upper Egypt: First Lieut. Khaled Ahmed Shawki el-Istambuli, who commanded an artillery battery, and two former lieutenants and a reserve officer. As a legitimate participant in the parade, Khaled had ordered other troopers off their truck and substituted the assassins. According to Defense Minister Abdel Halim Abu Gha-zala, the four had purchased on the black market the grenades and guns they used in the attack. "It was very primitive, but successful," said Abu Ghazala. "At this point we do not believe they are part of a larger group."

Some skepticism greeted the official explanation. It is true that there were no sure signs of parallel attacks anywhere else, or any coordinated efforts to take over the country, as presumably would have been the case in a wider conspiracy. But some questions remained. Sadat's security men seemed slow to react, though the spectacular nature of the attack might well have stunned them. More important, the professional nature of the assault suggested the possibility of thorough training and a larger operation. Somehow the assassins evaded the security check prior to the parade. They were able to sneak live ammunition and grenades aboard their open truck. They positioned their vehicle in the column closest to the reviewing stand. Finally, they were able to reach the stand at the precise moment when the eyes of the President, his security detail and everyone else were focused on the jets overhead. Was the split-second timing an eerie coincidence, or had the attackers known the precise schedule of the parade?

A small, violent Muslim fundamentalist sect known as Takfir wa Hijra (Atonement and Holy Flight) may have been involved. This group, a band of urban guerrillas seeking to transform Egypt into a rigid Islamic state, exhorts its members to use "sacred terror" to achieve its objectives and is known to have built cell groups within the armed forces.

A more widely held view, especially among some Western observers, was that the attack was part of a larger plot aimed at deposing the Sadat regime and installing an uncompromisingly Arab nationalist, anti-Israeli government. It is argued that a chain of command existed that reached from the assailants through some radical field officers, perhaps even a brigadier, to one of Egypt's most famous political exiles, Lieut. General Saadeddin Shazli, 59. Shazli, who was the Egyptian army's chief of staff and one of the heroes of the 1973 war, was later relieved of his command by Sadat, who blamed him for allowing the Israelis to break through the Egyptian lines and cross to the west bank of the Suez Canal. Four years later, after Sadat's journey to Jerusalem, Shazli quit as ambassador to Portugal. He remained in exile and formed an anti-Sadat group, the Egyptian National Front, based in Damascus. After Sadat's murder, Shazli declared in Algeria, where he now lives: "Sadat was doomed from the day he went to Jerusalem. Anyone who follows in that traitorous path will similarly be doomed."

There was no direct evidence that either the Soviet Union or Libya was involved, though it is possible that some Libyan money found its way into the hands of the plotters. Israeli intelligence officials had indicated for some time that they were worried about penetration of the Egyptian army and intelligence community by anti-Sadat elements, reputedly backed by the Libyans and the Soviets.

In fact, Israel's intelligence chief flew to Cairo last month to discuss the matter with Egyptian officials. The Israelis also suspected that anti-Sadat elements were planning a major operation, but they did not know its precise nature.

Assuming he can hold dissident forces in check, Mubarak's first task will be to address himself to the problems of ruling Egypt. No doubt he will attempt immediately to confirm the loyalty of the army. He is likely to promote some officers, retire a few, perhaps announce a pay hike for all ranks. He will promise to uphold Egypt's 1971 constitution and its vision of democracy; Egypt is certainly not yet such a state, but under Sadat, autocratic as he was, it became more democratic than it had ever been before. To satisfy the fellahin--the peasants--and particularly the Islamic fundamentalists, he will try to find ways to ease the problems of the country's poor. He may also attempt to conceal some of the more blatant signs of Westernization that have offended orthodox Muslims, particularly the open displays of ostentatious spending by the very rich.

There is a sense throughout Egypt that the economic promise held out by the peace treaty with Israel has never been realized. Thus far, advantages and liabilities have canceled each other out.

The per capita income of Egypt's 43 million people has remained stable at around $420 a year. With the peace treaty, Egypt lost economic aid from 16 Arab countries, including $2 billion a year from Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, it earned $2.5 billion on oil sales last year, much of it from fields in the Sinai returned by Israel; Egyptian workers in other Arab countries bring home about $2.7 billion a year; and foreign investments since 1979 have totaled $550 million. On the balance sheet alone, the Egyptian Establishment is likely to support Mubarak in his continuation of Sadat's economic policies.

A key element in the equation is Israel --and the varied reaction of Israelis to Sadat's death underscored their confusion.

The country's leaders, men like Begin, President Yitzhak Navon, former Defense Minister Ezer Weizman and Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres, who knew Sadat and worked with him, were genuinely moved and saddened. Right-wing extremists were overjoyed, anticipating that Sadat's death might mean Israel would retain its hold on part of the Sinai.

Residents of Yamit, the big Israeli settlement on the northern Sinai coast, began to wonder if they would be able to cling to their homes after all. The answer was no. As President Navon put it, "We did not make peace with one man, great as he was, but with the people of Egypt. We are duty-bound to continue."

Yet, deep down, there was also fear, particularly among Israel's leaders, old and new. Observed Interior Minister Yosef Burg, who is also the chief negotiator with the Egyptians in the autonomy talks: "Now we shall find out if a man or an idea was killed." Moshe Dayan, the former Foreign Minister, suggested that Israel must continue to take part in the negotiations but must "check seven times over with seven eyes who is running the new Egypt and how strong is his commitment to peace." Ariel Sharon, Begin's Defense Minister, warned that Israel must keep itself strong, "for we are a lonely country, and small, in an area where shocks are a daily occurrence."

There was very little public awareness inside Israel that the country's refusal to budge significantly on the Palestinian issue had contributed to Sadat's recent problems: as long as a wider Palestinian settlement (going beyond the Camp David autonomy provisions) was not in sight, Arab moderates like Sadat would steadily lose ground to the rejectionists. But there also was impatience in Israel with the views of the right wing. As a Jerusalem lawyer put it, "When I hear those people talking about stopping the Sinai withdrawal because of Sadat's assassination, it hurts me to say that perhaps we as a nation did not deserve Sadat, were not mature enough for his vision."

On the Arab side, the reactions were even more disparate. A few states were stunned--Morocco, Oman, and the Sudan, which had been Sadat's closest ally and, like Egypt, had suffered from Libya's belligerency. But in Libya, happy flag-waving crowds shouted their approval. In Lebanon, Palestinian commandos danced in the streets as if celebrating a victory. "We shake the hand that pulled the trigger," said one fedayeen commander. Palestine Liberation Organization Leader Yasser Arafat, who was in Peking, declared: "What we are witnessing is the beginning of the failure of the Camp David agreement with the fall of one of its symbols." A number of other Arab governments were outwardly unsympathetic but inwardly troubled. The Saudis broke with Sadat over Camp David but still saw him as a counterweight to the regimes in Syria and Iraq, with whom they are united only by their opposition to Israel. Both Syria's President Hafez Assad and Jordan's King Hussein are vulnerable to the kind of Muslim fanaticism that brought down Iran and troubles Egypt. As one Western diplomat said of Assad and Hussein, "They won't be reviewing military parades for a while."

The real perceptions of the Arabs, and particularly the Palestinians, toward Sadat are exceedingly complex. Leaving aside Gaddafi (as well as that non-Arab Muslim fanatic to the east, Iran's Ayatullah Khomeini, who late last week called on Egyptians to overthrow "the dead Pharaoh's successors" and replace his government with a Khomeini-style Islamic republic), the Arabs felt betrayed by Sadat. What was statesmanship to the West was treason in their eyes. Of course, they envied him: they could not forgive him for getting back more Arab land by negotiating than they had achieved by other means. They were impatient; his patience seemed boundless. They felt he had given away his soul for the Sinai; he maintained to his death that he had never signed a separate peace. They were angered by his trip to Jerusalem; even more, they resented his unwillingness to change course when the autonomy talks seemed to be going nowhere. They blamed him for the Israeli raid on the Iraqi reactor last June, which took place just three days after Sadat and Begin had talked in the Sinai. Either Sadat had approved the raid on Arab territory, they said, or he had been duped by the Israelis.

"He gave away so much in return for nothing," said Musa Mazzawi, a Palestinian spokesman who lives in London. Explained another distinguished Palestinian, Edward Said of Columbia University: "After Camp David, the Israeli annexation of Jerusalem was assured, the settlements on the West Bank increased, and the destruction of Lebanon and its people continued with even greater ferocity by Israeli troops and warplanes. The rule of the Israelis on the West Bank became even more oppressive. The setback to the Palestinian people by the treaty was incalculable. All of this happened after Camp David, and so it is hard to reconcile the realities with the praise that is being showered on Sadat by the Western media."

Whatever overtures Mubarak makes toward the other Arab governments will presumably be tentative ones, at least until April. Most observers think he will avoid a military showdown with Libya, especially if he feels uncertain about his own army. But he is known to be worried about Libya's recent air strikes inside the Sudanese border. In fact, two days before Sadat's death, Mubarak was in Washington asking for faster delivery of American arms to the Sudan.

In his dealings with the other Arabs, Mubarak may have one advantage over his mentor: he is in a better position to bring about a reconciliation with some of Egypt's traditional friends, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Says Nadav Safran of Harvard University: "The Riyadh-Cairo axis is a natural one, but it was disrupted by Sadat's signing of the peace treaty and the dilemma in which the Saudis found themselves. If they supported Sadat, they exposed themselves to immediate danger from the P.L.O., Iraq, Syria and others; if not, they would lose Egypt. They chose the latter, expecting it to be a temporary alienation. But Sadat personalized his quarrel with Saudi Arabia, and it became a matter of personal pride." Sadat's death, reasons Safran, "will bring about a natural rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and that is important for the U.S. and for the region."

Almost unheard and unnoticed during the early part of the week was the Soviet Union, which issued a condolence message of studied correctness. Later in the week, Soviet papers declared that the assassination revealed the depth of opposition to Sadat's policies and accused the U.S. of using his death to "frighten the Arabs." But except for those outbursts in the press, the Soviets remained quiet. They will certainly try to work their way back into Egypt, where they have been so long deprived of a significant role. But for the moment they can sit back and reap the rewards of Arab frustration over the West Bank, the Israeli settlements, the AWACS debate and everything else that is not going right for the U.S.

The Reagan Administration does not enjoy the same luxury. It has lost its best friend in the Middle East, a man on whom four U.S. Presidents have relied, have admired for his sometimes reckless courage and have forgiven for his errors. Because he was so bold, Sadat's trip to Jerusalem and the peace process that followed became a broad channel for breaking out of the impasse of the preceding three decades. Sadat trusted his friends; he expected them to understand that he was not making a separate peace, and in the end he was not well served by U.S. Administrations that failed to press the Israelis toward a wider settlement. "I attribute a certain amount of blame to the U.S. for what happened to Sadat," says Hermann Eilts, former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt. For almost two years, says Eilts, Washington has followed a "policy of almost total inaction on the broader Middle East peace treaty. This made people like Sadat very vulnerable. He counted on the U.S. to move the peace process forward."

While Sadat remained outwardly confident, privately he must have realized that the Reagan Administration lacked not only a clear Middle East policy but a sense of urgency about the region and, worse, was giving the Israelis reason to think that Washington would apply less pressure toward a settlement than the Carter Administration had done. Sadat was discouraged about the autonomy talks, having made clear that he could not accept the very limited form of Palestinian self-government envisaged by Israel. But he readily agreed to the resumption of negotiations. He urged the U.S. to try to include the P.L.O. in the talks but received no support. He accepted Reagan's strategic-consensus plans and allowed the U.S. to expand the Egyptian airbase at Ras Banas on the Red Sea for possible use by the Rapid Deployment Force. As the pressures mounted at home, Sadat grew almost desperate for some real progress in this stage of Camp David, but he could find no way to achieve it.

Washington realizes that it will not see Sadat's like again, but it is encouraged by the way Mubarak has taken charge. Said Secretary of State Alexander Haig: "We are greatly assured that the policy will be one of continuation of the Sadat legacy." Assuming that all goes well domestically, U.S. officials agree that, in time, Mubarak will seek ways to renew ties with his Arab neighbors and look for alternative approaches to peace. Many Western diplomats believe that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Fahd's plan, announced two months ago, which offered peace to Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied in 1967, was a constructive effort to enlarge the scope of the negotiations.

The Fahd plan, TIME has learned, was worked out in close consultation with Arafat and thus might provide a basis for bringing the P.L.O. into the peace process. But that prospect is still anathema to the Israelis. As William Quandt, a Middle East expert, observes, "The hardest thing for Mubarak to do in the next six months is going to be to send reassuring and credible signals to the Israelis while at the same time beginning the slow process of rebuilding ties to the Saudis, the gulf states and Jordan."

As the week ended, leaders from all over the world gathered in Cairo to pay final tribute to Anwar Sadat. Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Schmidt were there, as were Prince Charles, Begin and Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiri.

Among the members of the American delegation, in addition to the three former Presidents and Rosalynn Carter, were Haig, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and Henry Kissinger. They paid courtesy calls on Mubarak and on the widowed Jehan Sadat. She also, of course, met with Begin, to whom she said: "It is very sad, but I am glad my husband died on his feet and not on his knees."

For security reasons, the ceremonies, which took place at midday Saturday, were held far from the normally tumultuous streets of the great city. As it was, police had to fire into the air to disperse a crowd of 2,000 people who had merely wanted to attend the service. Sadat's casket, draped in the Egyptian flag, was flown by helicopter from the mosque of the hospital to a sports stadium in Nasr City, then carried on a horse-drawn caisson for the final 800 yards to the very reviewing stand where Sadat had been mortally wounded four days earlier. Seated in the same row in which he had fallen, his wife and family received condolences from the mourners before the casket was moved to a hastily constructed tomb in front of the Unknown Soldier pyramid.

As the Sadat family stood beside the tomb, pallbearers carried the coffin to its grave. After final prayers from the Koran, Sadat's Republican Guard presented arms. There was a roll of drums, and a single bugle sounded taps. It was over.

Sadat had once said that he hoped to be buried on Mount Sinai, as a symbol of the peace he had brought to Egypt. On other occasions he spoke of being laid to rest at Mit Abu el Kom. But in the end, the government decided the burial should take place at a public site near the capital. Mubarak explained: "He was a statesman, one of the biggest in the world.

How could you put him in a very small place?" --By William E. Smith. Reported by Robert C Wurmstedt and Wilton Wynn/Cairo, with other bureaus

With reporting by Robert C Wurmstedt, Wilton Wynn/Cairo

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