Osama Askar appointed head of the Armed Forces

Lieutenant General Osama Askar was appointed to the position of Armed Forces chief of staff, the third highest military position in the country, on October 27 by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

His predecessor, Lieutenant General Mohamed Farid Hegazy, held the role from 2017 and was appointed advisor to the president for the LE600 billion Hayah Karima initiative on Wednesday. 

During the 2011 uprising, after which the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took over government of the country, Askar, then a major general, was at the head of the Third Field Army, responsible for parts of the Suez area, central North Sinai and the South Sinai Governorate.

In the 2013 military coup that saw Sisi ascend to the presidency in the wake of the pro-military June 30 protests, Askar remained responsible for the Suez and Sinai areas and described himself as a major player in mediating labor disputes between workers and companies operating around the Suez Canal.  

In January 2015, 30 security personnel were killed in the Sinai peninsula by the Islamic State-affiliated Province of Sinai, leading Sisi to cut short a visit to Addis Ababa. On Sisi’s return, he created a new military unit entrusted with the defense of the region to the Suez Canal’s east, and appointed Askar from the rank of major general to lieutenant general, placing him at the head of the new unit.

According to MP and Major General Ahmed al-Awadi, Sisi has several times intervened to ensure Askar could stay in senior positions in the Armed Forces. Awadi told Mada Masr that at the time of his 2015 promotion to the new military unit, Askar was aged 58, the retirement age for major generals.

In 2017, when Askar was over 60 years old, the retirement age for lieutenant generals was raised from 62 to 64, said Awadi, while in May 2021, when Askar was one month away from celebrating his 64th birthday, the retirement age for the same rank was raised to 65. 

Askar was also appointed in 2016 as assistant for Sinai development affairs to the then Head of the Republican Guards Lieutenant General Mohamed Zaki, who is currently the defense minister. 

The Sinai development project is worth about LE700 billion or almost US$45 million, with large portions of the funding coming from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates according to government statements, and has included comprehensive changes to the peninsula’s housing, infrastructural, agricultural, educational and irrigational compositions.

In coverage of his appointment on Wednesday, Egypt’s domestic press noted that Askar was  not only responsible for Sinai development, but also for disarming the Bedouin tribes in Sinai of “34 unlicensed weapons.” However, a discrepancy in the Cairo24 news outlet reported that number at “hundreds” of “unlicensed weapons.”

Askar has headed the Armed Forces Operations Authority for the past two years.