We usually don't link to articles easily found on the web (unless written by FPA contributor Nate Field) but this Haaretz piece about Egyptian Intel Chief Omar Suleiman is tooooo much. Here's my favorite line:
“We met some years ago with CIA representatives in the lobby of a hotel,” recalled an Israeli intelligence man, “and suddenly Omar made a ‘v’ figure with his fingers. One of his aides surfaced out of the blue and placed a cigar between his fingers.”
Suleiman has received a lot of attention as of late in the international press because of his brokering deals between Hamas and Fatah, and between Israel and Hamas. These brokerings keep Egypt in the game. I happen to agree that Omar Suleiman, Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Services (EGIS), is President Mubarak's most important advisor on affairs foreign and perhaps domestic. EGIS is a truly general intelligence service organization with broad-reaching powers. The organization is different from the Ministry of Interior, which runs the local police forces and is the appropriate target for accusations of human rights and legal abuses, especially of prisoners. Suleiman is literally above all that (although he is responsible for a fierce crackdown on islamist activists and former militants some years ago). Suleiman's name has been bandied about as a possible successor to President Hosni Mubarak, and some Egyptian journalists I’ve met are convinced he's the next president. Although he does not meet the strict rules laid out for presidential nominees, he can likely easily assemble the requisite signatures to run as an independent.
Suleiman would be seen as a stable caretaker and transition figure should he become president instead of Gamal Mubarak. I suspect that many Egyptians would actually welcome this, especially since there is a general discontent that the Presidency may be handed down from father to son. The first big question for a Suleiman Administration is how it would treat the Muslim Brotherhood. By all reports Suleiman is very negative on the MB, but he is also pragmatic, and the MB is now a political force, not a militant one. The second is how a succession would work post-Suleiman. Given his advanced age that issue would come up immediately.
