Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi dies at 85

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who held commanding positions in the Armed Forces in Egypt’s 1967 and 1973 wars and headed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces during the year that it steered Egypt following the 2011 ouster of Hosni Mubarak, died at the age of 85 on Tuesday morning.

After a military funeral for the deceased field marshal on Tuesday, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was also a member of SCAF in 2011, eulogized the former commander, announcing three national days of mourning and naming the Hikestep military base in Cairo after Tantawi.

“Today I lost a father and a teacher,” Sisi said. “I learned a lot from him about leadership and dedication in serving the country.”

After praising Tantawi’s rise through the Armed Forces, Sisi spoke in defense of his leadership during a period marked by popular demonstrations that saw clashes resulting in the killing and wounding of dozens. “This man is innocent of any blood. The Mohamed Mahmoud events, the Maspero events, the Port Said Stadium events, the [Scientific] Institute: any of the conspiracies to topple the state that happened in that [2011-2012] period, I swear he is innocent of them and all the officials who were present then are innocent,” Sisi said during the inauguration of a number of projects in South Sinai on the same day.

Tantawi began to play a role in government with his appointment to the Defense and Military Production Ministry under ousted President Hosni Mubarak, a portfolio he held from 1991 to 2011 across five cabinet formations.

At the outbreak of the January uprising in 2011, Tantawi was at the head of a SCAF that, almost a month later, would endorse the popular revolution and its call for Mubarak to step down.

The military council, with Tantawi at its head and both Sisi and then-Armed Forces Chief of Staff Sami Anan in its ranks, then assumed control over the country from March 2011 until the election of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi in June 2012.

Less than a month after SCAF took power, its executive authority was confirmed that month by the Supreme Administrative Court. Shortly afterward, military personnel were insulated from the investigations into graft that were leveled against Mubarak-era officials as competency to try them was handed over to military courts. At the same time, more and more civilians, including minors, were convicted by military courts in trials recorded by activists at the time. 

The council also held decisive power over the stage management of what were hailed as Egypt’s first democratic elections and during the drafting of a new national constitution. The council amended the laws on parliamentary elections, dissolved local councils that are yet to be revived, drafted the criteria for choosing members of the constitutional drafting committee, replaced the Cabinet a second time and later dissolved the elected House of Representatives after the results of the presidential elections were announced in 2012.

The SCAF era also saw frequent demonstrations accusing SCAF of delaying the handover to an elected civilian government. Tantawi suggested that “foreign parties” were manipulating protesters to go in the “wrong direction.” On November 19, 2011, in one of the most notable of the clashes under SCAF’s government, security forces attacked a small sit-in in Tahrir Square held by people injured in the revolution who were demanding the state fulfill some of its promises to them. Hundreds of fellow protestors flocked to Tahrir to defend them and the clashes escalated into a five-day street battle centered around the nearby Mohamed Mahmoud Street. Security forces used live ammunition, pellets and tear gas on protesters, killing at least 50 people. 

Tantawi was appointed once again to the defense and military production portfolio when Morsi assumed presidential office. Morsi later dismissed both Tantawi and Anan from their positions in government and in the Armed Forces and handed the ministry over to Sisi.