Jalal Talabani, 1933-2017

Jalal Talabani, former President of Iraq and founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), has died in Germany at the age of 83. One of the two historic leaders of Iraq's Kurds, along with the late Mullah Mustafa Barzani (father of Kurdish Regional Government President Mas‘oud Barzani), he was also President of Iraq (a position now constitutionally reserved for a Kurd) from 2005-2014. The impact of his passing barely a week after the referendum on Kurdish independence remains to be seen.

In 1961 Talabani joined in the Kurdish uprising, originally as a supporter of the elder Barzani and his Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). He and his supporters, mostly based in eastern and southern Kurdistan around Suleimaniyya (now frequently known by the Kurdish form Sulaimani), and with support from leftists and intellectuals, were increasingly at odds with Barzani's KDP, which largely depended on tribal support from northern and western Kurdistan.

After the Kurdish revolt failed following a deal between Iran and Iraq in 1975, Talabani and his supporters founded the PUK. Though a rival of the KDP, the two major parties have shared power within the Kurdish Regional Government.

The PUK was, generally speaking, less enthusiastic than the KDP about the recent unilateral referendum on independence.

Talabani left the Presidency after a stroke in 2014 and went to Germany for treatment. His PUK co-founder Fuad Masum succeeded him as President. Talabani's son Qubad is Deputy Prime Minister in the Kurdish Regional Government.

Şerif Mardin (1927-2017)

I will start with the good news: I intend this post to mark the resumption of regular, possibly daily, blogging. I'm back.

The bad news is I must start with bad news: Şerif Mardin has died at the age of 90. The Turkish sociologist and public intellectual made a name for himself studying the social institutions of the late Ottoman Empire, and his work on he sociology of religion in Turkey has resonated in the debates of recent years. Mardin spent his career at a variety of institutions in Turkey, the US, Britain, and France.

Remembering Peter Sluglett, 1943-2017

Peter Sluglett, historian of modern Iraq, has died. Most recently a professor at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore and until recently its Director. Prior to that he served as Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah, and from 1974-1984 he taught at the University of Durham in his native Britain.

He is perhaps best known for his Iraq Since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship. with his late wife, Marion Farouk-Sluglett. and Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country.

Remembering Jack Shaheen

Jack Shaheen died July 10 at the age of 81. Jack had a full career as Professor of Mass Communications at the University of Southern Illinois at Edwardsville, but his great accomplishment was his critique of Arab stereotypes in American media, especially film and television. Jack was the son of Lebanese Greek Catholic immigrants, but became a savvy interpreter of US media culture. His several books, including Reel Bad Arabs, about film stereotypes, and The TV Arab, were entertaining bit serious critiques, and Jack famously persuaded Disney to drop an offensive line from a song in the film Aladdin.

Jack was a superb raconteur with a great sense of humor.

I posted about Jack's career several years ago, and the post includes a film clip. We saw each other rarely, but I considered him a friend, and he will be missed.

Remembering Reporter Clare Hollingworth, 1911-2017

Veteran British foreign correspondent Clare Hollingworth died today in Hong Kong at the age of 105. (Yes, 105.) Almost all the obituaries will lead with her famous scoop of being the first reporter to report the German invasion of Poland in 1939, though at the time she had been working for the Daily Telegraph only three days. Admittedly, when your first big story is breaking news of the outbreak of World War II, that can be hard to top. But she spent her incredibly long career reporting from hot spots around the world, including the Middle East. She covered the North Africa campaign, the Palestine conflict (including the bombing of the King David Hotel), covered the Algerian War of independence, reported the defection of Kim Philby, and interviewed the Shah. So she deserves being remembered on this blog for her Middle Eastern reporting, mostly from the 1940s through the 1960s.

I had the honor of knowing and occasionally working with Clare back in the 1980s, though in Europe and East Asia, not in the Middle East. At the time she made her home mostly in Hong Kong, where she spent the rest of her life, but also kept a place in Paris. I remember visiting her during the Paris Air Show one year, but I particularly remember her role as my guide on my first visit to Hong Kong in 1987.

Hong Kong was still British in those days, and was also still a key listening post for Western intelligence services keeping an eye on the mainland; as well as a Chinese intelligence listening post to the outside, the station thinly disguised as the Xinhua News Agency. Clare knew them all.

Clare must have had a home somewhere, but she seemed to live to all intents and purposes at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents' Club, where she held court, a celebrity among her colleagues. The Club is a legend in its own right, and at the time I had recently read John Le Carre's The Honourable Schoolboy, in which the Club played a key role. Asked to introduce me to Hong Kong, Clare set up a withering schedule of meetings and interviews, often at the club. She would have been 76 at the time, and I was not yet 40, but she easily left me in her dust.

I understand five years ago, when Clare turned a mere 100, the Foreign Correspondents' Club held her a suitable party, and she still survived another five years. They don't make them like Clare anymore. RIP.

‘Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani,1934-2017

‘Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the Iranian President from 1989-1997, and who held almost every other senior executive position other than Supreme Leader at one time or another, has died at age 82. Though his political fortunes have waxed and waned in recent years, he remained one of the most familiar faces throughout the entire period since the 1979 Revolution.

Born in a village near the pistachio-producing city of Rafsanjan, to a large and wealthy family which made its fortune in pistachios, The family name was Hashemi-Behramani; Rafsanajni was added as a clerical appellation. During and after his Speakership and Presidency, several of his children and siblings achieved prominence as well.

He came to be known as a moderate in the spectrum of Iranian revolutionaries; he had traveled in the United States before the Revolution.

At the seminary in Qom, he became a disciple of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. When Khomeini was forced into exile, he represented him as a leader in the domestic opposition to the Shah. After the Revolution he was a prominent figure in the Revolutionary Council, served as Minister of the Interior, as Tehran Friday Prayer Imam, and was Speaker of Parliament from 1980 to Khomeini's death in 1989. He served as a member of the Council of Experts from 1983 until his death, and as its Chairman 2007-2011.

As Khomeini's Personal Representative to the Supreme Defense Council he also served as Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, he essentially was in command during the last year of the Iran-Iraq War, and accepted its end.

From early 1989 until his death he also chaired the powerful Expediency Discernment Council.

When Khomeini died in 1989, President ‘Ali Khamene'i was chosen as the new Supreme Leader, and Rafsanjani ran for and won election as Iran's fourth President. He improved relations with the outside world, including Saudi Arabia.

After the Presidential years he remained influential, remaining on the Council of Experts until replaced in 2011, and as Chairman of the Expediency Council until his death. In 2013 he registered to run for the Presidential elections, but was disqualified by the Council of Guardians. He then backed the election of Hassan Rouhani.

Rafsanjani reportedly died of a heart attack.

1970s Activist Melkite Archbishop Hilarion Capucci Dies at 94

Melkite Catholic Patriarchal Vicar Emeritus Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, who made headlines in 1974 when Israel arrested him for supplying arms to the Palestine Liberation Organization, died January 1 in Rome. Born in Aleppo in 1922, he was arrested in August 1974 by Israel, charged with using his Mercedes sedan to smuggle arms into the Occupied West Bank. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but was freed after Vatican intervention and expelled by Israel in 1978.

Lionized by many Arab countries, he remained an activist for Palestinian and other causes. He was active during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979-80, negotiating the repatriation of US soldiers killed at Deser One, but was unsuccessful in negotiating the release of the Embassy hostages. In 2010 he was a passenger on the Mavi Marmara protest ship headed for Gaza when it was seized by Israel; he was held brieffly by Israel and then expelled.

A Belated Appreciation of Irfan Shahid, 1926-2016

Irfan Shahid

I  have learned, rather belatedly, of the passing of Prof. Irfan Shahid, Professor at Georgetown, former Associate Fellow of Dumbarton Oaks, and Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, who passed away on November 9 at the age of 90.

Professor Shahid was one of the readers of my doctoral dissertation.Though he was the definitive historian of Byzantine-Arab relations down to the Islamic conquests, he didn't actually teach history at Georgetown, where he was the Oman Professor of Arabic and Islamic Literature, teaching the Qur'an, Classical Arabic Literature, and the like in the Arabic department. I really only got to know him from his eager involvement in my doctoral committee.

Born as Irfan Kawar in Nazareth in 1926 to a Palestinian Greek Orthodox family, he read Classics at Oxford and then took his Ph.D. at Princeton in Arabic and Islamic studies. I never did know why he changed his name from Kawar to Shahid.

Although he was a prominent enough figure at Georgetown, I suspect he was really far more at home at Dumbarton Oaks, the Harvard-owned Byzantine studies library in Washington, where he did most of his life's work on Byzantium and the Arabs. He discussed his time there in an interview at Dumbarton Oaks in 2008. His publications included Rome and the Arabs: A Prolegomenon to the Study of Byzantium and the Arabs; Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century; and Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, and numerous articles. I am uncertain if his final volume, on the seventh century and the Arab Conquests, might have been far enough along to someday appear. Unfortunately, all his volumes are priced beyond my or most people's reach.

Fidel Castro and the Middle East

With Nasser

Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, a critical juncture in the decolonization of the Third World, and had considerable success in portraying himself as a champion of decolonization efforts worldwide.

Castro was no romantic hero, but indeed a brutal dictator despite some beneficial reforms on the domestic front, and a man who committed Cuban troops to various adventures in Latin America and a bloody war in Angola. But he cultivated many admirers, and some emulators, in the Middle East.

Since 1959 is now nearly 60 years ago, it may be worthwhile to take a moment to recall the context. In 1955-56, Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal, accepted the Soviet offer to build the Aswan High Dam, and resisted the British-French-Israeli intervention in the Suez War.

Four years before the Cuban Revolution, in 1955, the Afro-Asiatic Conference at Bandung had laid the groundwork for what would come to be called the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). When the NAM was formed at Belgrade in 1961 Cuba, though increasingly aligned with the Soviet Bloc, was a charter member, as was Egypt.

In 1958, following US and British interventions in Lebanon and Jordan (to block unrestblamed by the West on Nasserist propaganda), Egypt and Syria united in the United Arab Republic, creating the alignments Malcolm Kerr branded "The Arab Cold War."

Also in 1958, four years into the Algerian War of Independence against France, French nationalist generals rebelled against the Fourth Republic; out of the crisis came the creation of the Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle.

It was in this context that Castro entered Havana on January 1, 1959. After he defeated the US-backed exile landings at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, he came to be seen as a Third World hero who had defied the United States, as Nasser had defied Britain and France.

With the rapid decolonization and independence of British, French, and Belgian colonies in Africa, in 1960-62, Castro and Che Guevara, like Nasser, saw Africa as a fertile ground for asserting influence, beginning with the Congo.

With Algeria's Bouteflika

With Algerian independence in 1962, Cuba offered training to the new Algerian Army, after supporting it in the independence struggle. Cuba also supported, via Egypt, the fight for independence for South Yemen, which would lead to the only Marxist-Leninist state in the Arab world. With the formation of the PLO, Cuba became an early supporter, providing training to Palestinian guerrillas.

With Qadhafi

With the Libyan Revolution in 1969, Cuba found a fellow apostle of Third World Revolution in Mu‘ammar Qadhafi, and he, like the Cubans, had a preoccupation with Sub-Saharan African movements.

Castro, with his long ties to Algeria, joined the Algerians in supporting the POLISARIO Front against Morocco in the Western Sahara.

With Saddam

With the death of Nasser, Egypt's tilt to the West, and the decline of leftist liberation movements and the rise of Islamist ones, not to mention Cuban military over-commitments in Central America and Angola, Cuban influence in the Middle East  was much reduced. Castro even criticized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba's foreign adventures were much reduced, and limited to supporting Latin American leftists like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Castro opposed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

In the Middle East of today, with ISIS and similar movements long having replaced revolutionaries of the left, the 1960s seem a long time ago. But Algeria, one of Cuba's early allies and one still led by Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had known Castro since the early sixties, has declared eight days of mourning for the Cuban leader.

Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad, former Ruler of Qatar, Dies at 84

Former Qatari Emir Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani, who ruled from 1972 until overthrown by his son in 1995, has died at he age of 84. His grandson Sheikh Tamim is the current Emir.

Born in 1932, he was already Heir Apparent and Deputy Ruler when he deposed his cousin and took the throne. He presided over the huge increase of wealth following the oil price rise of the 1970s. He gave more and more of his day-to-day responsibilities to his son and spent long periods in Europe. In 1995 he was deposed in turn by his son Hamad, while Khalifa was vacationing in Geneva. He lived in exile in France and the UAE. In 2004 he was allowed to return to Qatar.

In 2013 Sheikh Hamad abdicated in favor of his son Sheikh Tamim, the current ruler, who is the late Sheikh Khalifa's grandson. For the past three years Qatar has had three living former or sitting Rulers, until Sheikh Khalifa's passing.

Ruhi Ramazani: We Have Lost One of the Giants

Ruhi Ramazani

R.K. Ramazani, the undisputed Dean of Iranian Foreign Policy Studies in the US, passed away earlier today. The Edward R. Stettinius Professor Emeritus of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia trained generations of Iran specialists and other Middle East experts over his more than 60 years at UVA.

Ruhi, as he was universally known ("Ruhollah was Khomeini's name; I don't use it anymore") was a Persian gentleman of the old school, who came to the US in 1952 and has been a fixture at UVA  ever since. And Mr. Jefferson's University left its stamp on him: he also wrote frequently about Jeffersonian principles, and he was on the Board at Monticello.

Ruhi had a long and loyal association with both the Middle East Institute and The Middle East Journal, serving at various times on MEI's Board of Governors and on the Journal's Board of Advisory Editors. He published his first article in MEJ in Spring of 1958, and his most recent in Autumn 2004. Many of those articles were collected in his book Independence without Freedom: Iran's Foreign Policy, published in 2013 by (of course) UVA Press. He also came to our Annual Conference until age and failing health made the drive from Charlottesville impossible. He continued to donate to the Journal annually.

My condolences to Nesta and the children and grandchildren.

Ruhi himself deserves the last word: UVA did this interview in 2007:


R.K. Ramazani, Interview, UVA Today from R.K. Ramazani on Vimeo.

The Last of the Founders: Shimon Peres (1923-2016)

One of the last survivors of Israel's founding generation, Shimon Peres has died at age 93, two weeks after suffering a massive stroke. Peres held almost every senior position imaginable in a life that paralleled the life of Israel: Defense Minister, Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, Prime Minister (twice, or three times if you count a brief stint as Acting PM in 1977) and finally the most politically outspoken holder of the usual ceremonial post of President, a job he held until 2014. Born in 1923 in what was then Poland and is now Belarus, he was likely one of the last senior Israeli figures born in pre-WWII Eastern Europe.

There's little point in retracing all the details of a long and very politically active life. Everyone will be doing that today. Let me touch on the salient points. A key protégé of David Ben-Gurion, he followed the "old man" out of the Mapai (later Labor) Party to found Rafi, and returned when BG did.

He would be the rare Israeli Defense Ministers never to have served on the IDF or one of the pre-state military organizations. Like a later exception to the rule, Moshe Arens, he made his name in the civilian side of the defense establishment. In Peres' case, he created it. As Director-General of the Defense Ministry in the 1950s, the post in charge of defense production, he was the architect of Israel's defense relations with France, and the father of Israel's domestic defense industrial sector, today one of the most robust in the world. In the same period, he also served as the father of Israel's nuclear program.

1994 Nobel Peace Prize

Peres' terms as Prime Minister (1984-1986 in rotation with Yitzhak Shamir and 1995-1996 after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin) were in neither case elections in his own right. In the 1990s, as Foreign Minister under Rabin, he was involved in negotiating the Oslo Accords and shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Yasir ‘Arafat.

In his last decades Peres was a strong supporter of a two-state solution and what he referred to as a "New Middle East": he would not live to see it. But he made the usually ceremonially role of President an advocate for peace, despite inevitable friction with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I think he will be missed.

Uzbekistan After Karimov: Now What?

I need to catch up on my blogging over the Labor Day holiday; as I'm still recovering from the latest surgery and there's a hurricane coming up the coast I'll be chair-ridden anyway.

The death of Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov in recent days raises a great many questions about the succession, but what struck me as particularly bizarre was that after days of rumors about his health, the first official confirmation came when the Turkish Prime Minister sent his condolences. That's right: news of the death of Uzbekistan's only President since independence was announced by another country.

Of all the autocratic "Khans" running the countries of Central Asia, Karimov was among the worst. Juan Cole presents the bill of particulars here. The succession is muddled. His own daughter was once considered a possibility, until he put  her under house arrest.

Prof. John D. (Jack) Ruedy: Historian of Algeria, Great Teacher, Mentor, Friend

No matter how many degrees one may accrue, most of us are lucky to have two or three teachers who truly formed us and our way of thinking, writing, and teaching. I was saddened to learn last week of the passing of one of the best teachers I have ever encountered, my graduate school advisor and the chairman of my doctoral dissertation committee, Emeritus Professor of History at Georgetown John D. (Jack) Ruedy. He died August 1 at the age of 89.

Professor Ruedy was a recognized scholar of the History of Algeria, and author most notably of Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation. A revised second edition brings the history into the present century.

His published work is well known among Maghrebists, and also deals with broader regional issues, but his true forte was teaching, inspiring generations of students. I first encountered him in my sophomore year as an undergraduate in a survey course on Modern Europe, and that persuaded me to take his undergraduate course on Islamic Civilization. The rest is history I guess. In graduate school his courses on the Maghreb and Islamic Spain were equally great despite a lot of reading required in French, neither then or now my strongest language. He believed in making his lectures entertaining, but he also believed in lots of assigned reading and the essential role of languages as a tool for historians.

While I think he was a little disappointed that most of his Ph.D. candidates (at least those of my era) chose dissertation subjects outside the Maghreb, he was always a positive but rigorous guide.

A native Californian, he took his doctorate at UCLA under Gustave von Grunebaum, and then took the position at Georgetown, where he spent his entire career. I am grateful for his teaching and guidance, and his friendship, and the role model he provided as both scholar and teacher. My condolences to Nancy and the children and grandchildren, and my profound gratitude.

Israeli Sociologist Prof. Michael Feige Died in Sarona Market Attack

Michael Feige

One of the four Israelis killed in yesterday's attack on the Sarona  Market in Tel Aviv was a noted scholar of Israeli society, the sociologist and anthropologist Professor Michael Feige of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. I only knew him by reputation, but it is a reminder that attacks on civilians (by either side) leave everyone vulnerable.

BGU has posted a tribute to Prof. Feige here.

Muhammad Ali and the Middle East

With Nasser, 1964

The late Muhammad Ali, who died this weekend, was often described in his heyday as the most famous man on earth. It may well have been true, especially in the Third World, where his embrace of Islam, his willingness to give up his title rather than support the Vietnam War, his staging championship bouts in Kinshasa and Manila, all added to his global fame.

When he announced his conversion to Islam, it was to the extremely unorthodox Nation of Islam, which many Muslims did not accept as Islamic. Later, in 1975, he converted to mainstream Sunni Islam. In 2005, he announced himself an adherent of the Universal Sufism movement led by Inayat Khan.

Praying at Hussein mosque, Cairo

Throughout his career, he made many visits to the Middle East, beginning with a visit to Egypt in 1964, where he met with Nasser and visited the High Dam under construction at Aswan. It should be remembered at the time meeting with Nasser was itself cause for controversial, as was his meeting with Mu‘ammar Qadhafi in Libya. It added to his reputation as a rebel.

At the Kaaba

In 1972, Ali famously made the hajj. He would thereafter speak of how moving he found the experience.

He would make many other visits to the Middle East. He was decorated by heads of state from Morocco to the Gulf, He generally drew crowds wherever he went. In 1982, having retired from the ring, he held two exhibition fights in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.


In 1986 he visited Egypt for the second time, posing at the pyramids.

This is only a partial catalog of Ali's love affair with the Middle East, which was very much mutual.

Receiving a decoration from King Hasan II of Morocco

Clovis Maksoud, 1926-2016

Source: American University

Clovis Maksoud, diplomat, writer, intellectual, professor, and a familiar figure in Washington since the 1970s, has passed away at the age of 90.

He served for many years as a Representative of the Arab League, and was sent as a Special Representative of the League to the US during the oil crisis of 1974. From 1979-1990 he was the Arab League's Ambassador to the US and the UN. Maksoud, a proponent of Arab unity, resigned that post over the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He was also a frequent spokesman for Palestinian issues.

At earlier periods in his career he had served as a writer and editor, and continued to write newspaper columns and articles for many years, as well as books. In recent years he served as Director of the Center for the Global South at The American University in Washington.

Ambassador Maksoud and his late wife Hala were prominent figures around the Washington diplomatic, Arab, and Lebanese communities for decades. He was always friendly, accessible, and outspoken, a highly visible voice for Lebanon, for Palestine, and for the Arab World as a whole.

Hasan al-Turabi (1932-2016)

I rarely post on weekends, but the passing of Hasan al-Turabi demands comment. From the 1970s until today, in power or sometimes in prison, he was a major figure in Sudanese politics and society, and a major figure in the spread of Islamist ideology, especially in Africa. Educated in law in Khartoum, London, and Paris with a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne). He was active in the Sudanese wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, In the 1960s he transformed that into the Islamic Charter Front, becoming its Secretary-General. With the 1969 coup by Ja‘far al-Numeiri, Turabi was jailed and later exiled. He returned under a national reconciliation agreement in 1977, and in 1979 became Numeiri's Justice Minister/Attorney General. After Numeiri was overthrown in 1985, the democratic parties united to keep Turabi out of power.

But not for long. After four years, in 1989,  another military coup brought President ‘Umar al-Bashir and a military regime to power. It was soon clear that the ideology behind the coup was that of Turabi's movement, now known as the National Islamic Front (NIF).

The NIF was essentially the real power throughout the 1990s. In various roles, including Speaker of Parliament,  Turabi was the chief ideologue of the Bashir regime.

In the 1990s, Turabi founded the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress as a sort of Islamist International, and Sudan was soon hosting a number of radical organizations, most famously including Usama bin Laden, but also Abu Nidal. This in turn led to international sanctions and an ostracism of Sudan, including a US air attack in 1998. In 1999, Turabi had a falling out with Bashir, and spent the following decade in and out of prison, and as an open critic of Bashir.

Out of power he advocated democracy, but when in power in the 1990s he was part of a ruthless and oppressive regime and supported radical jihadis like Bin Laden.

Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, 1923- 2016

In his 93 years, some 70+ of them as a journalist and pundit, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal went through several incarnations, made powerful friends (Nasser), powerful enemies (Sadat), and outlived them all. And then played a major role in recording the history of his times. He was often as controversial as he was prolific. But he remained to the end a major voice in Egypt and the Arab World as a whole as a journalist and author, and in the past decade in a lecture series for Al-Jazeera.

I've known enough of the players in those years to know that many of them felt Heikal's books distorted facts and claimed greater knowledge than he possessed, and they may be right, but he wrote so many books that he may well control the narrative. Most people write only one memoir (Sadat is an exception), but Heikal wrote many. Al-Ahram, which he long edited, remembers him here.

He cut his journalistic teeth covering the Battle of Al-Alamein in 1942; he started out with the English-language Egyptian Gazette. He later moved to the weekly Akher Saa and then to Akhbar al-Yom. He first met Gamal Abdel Nasser during the first Arab-Israeli War in 1948, and was with the Free Officers on the night of the 1952 coup.

With Nasser at Al-Ahram

His golden age was the Nasser era. His 17 years as Editor of Al-Ahram (1957-1974), and his reported role as a ghostwriter for Nasser's Philosophy of the Revolution cemented his role as the public interpreter of Nasserism. To some, he was an apologist, though he liked to portray himself as a trusted adviser. He straddled the line between journalism and government.

After Nasser died, Heikal never enjoyed as close a relationship with Sadat. He remained at the helm of Al-Ahram through the 1973 war, but in 1974 Sadat replaced him as Editor. He fell out further over the peace with Israel, and in 1981 Sadat jailed him in a widespread crackdown on his critics. After Sadat's assassination and Heikal's release, he wrote a book, Autumn of Fury (Kharif al-Ghadab), ostensibly about the Sadat assassination but really a scathing treatment of Sadat's whole career, retailing every scurrilous rumor, with or without evidence.  Though the book was banned in Egypt for years, the jailed journalist had his revenge.

Heikal was a frequent critic of Mubarak. He never took a full-time newspaper post again but wrote columns and articles for a variety of papers and magazines across the Arab world. In 2003, at age 80, he announced he was stopping writing. But he continued his commentaries in interviews, two "lecture series" on Al-Jazeera, and after Al-Jazeera became anathema in Egypt, with the Egyptian satellite channel CBC.

Whatever else one may think of Heikal as a reporter, analyst, and commentator, no other Arab journalist enjoyed so long and prominent a career.

On the Pre-UN Career of Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922-2016)

Most of the obituaries and appreciations of the late Boutros Boutros-Ghali focus on his 1992-1996 term as Secretary-General. But he should also be remembered for his role as an Egyptian diplomat during the Egyptian-Israeli peace talks in the 1970s.

When Anwar Sadat announced his trip to Jerusalem in 1977, his Foreign Minister, Ismail Fahmy, opposed the initiative and resigned. The number two man at the Foreign Ministry was the Minister of became Acting Foreign Minister, but was not offered the job on a permanent basis, probably because he was a Copt (though his grandfather, Boutros Ghali, had served as Prime Minister in 1908-1910, and who I discussed in a post on the Dinshawai incident a while back). Boutros-Ghali was de facto Foreign Minister through the early months of negotiations.

With Moshe Dayan, 1979

In December 1977 Muhtammad Ibrahim Kamel became Foreign Minister and Boutos-Ghali reverted to the Minister of State role. Kamel and Boutos-Ghali worked together through the negotiations at Camp David in 1978, but Kamel felt the Accords went too far and promptly resigned. Boutros-Ghali again served as Acting Foreign Minister but without the permanent title, until Mustafa Khalil became Foreign Minister in 1979.

Boutros-Ghali would never be Foreign Minister, but he remained a loyal diplomat through the Sadat era and into the Mubarak years. In 1991 he was given the improved title of Deputy Foreign Minister, still short of the ministerial post (again, probably due to an unwillingness to name a Copt), a few months before he was elected to the UN job as Egypt's candidate, arguably an award for his loyalty.