Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen: Egypt's Road to Revolt by Hazem Kandil

Revolutions are difficult to understand and almost impossible to predict. Egypt’s 2011 revolt was no exception. The military’s abandonment of Mubarak—a turning point for the revolt—confounded many observers, who assumed that the leader and the generals stood or fell together. The officers, it was thought, ruled from behind the scenes and simply swapped the figures in the spotlight to preserve the status quo.

In a challenge to this conventional view, Hazem Kandil presents the revolution as the latest episode in an ongoing power struggle between the three components of Egypt’s authoritarian regime: the military, the security services and the political apparatus. A detailed study of the interactions within this invidious triangle over six decades of war, conspiracy and sociopolitical transformation, Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen (Verso 2012) is the first systematic analysis of how Egypt metamorphosed from a military into a police state—and what that means for the future of its revolution.