Tales of Omar Suleiman
from From the Potomac to the Euphrates and Middle East Program

Tales of Omar Suleiman

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This article was originally published here on ForeignPolicy.com on Thursday, July 19. 

"I am responsible for the stability of Egypt," Lt. Gen. Omar Suleiman said, his voice rising as his large fist slammed on the table to accentuate the point. That was my first experience with Suleiman, then President Hosni Mubarak’s spy chief and all-seeing eye of Horus. It was the spring of 2005, and I was seated around a conference table in downtown Washington with a group of people far more senior than I. The conversation over stale bagels and bad coffee that morning  dealt mostly with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The fist-on-table incident came at the end of the hour, when someone brought up the possibility of democratic change in Egypt -- almost as an afterthought. On July 19, Suleiman died of a heart attack while undergoing medical tests in a Cleveland hospital. He had been suffering from amyloidosis, a chronic disease related to abnormal protein deposits in tissue that affects the heart and liver, and his sudden passing came as a shock to his enemies and admirers alike. Suleiman’s dismissal of reform was just as startling. It wasn’t just the sound of his ample fist hitting the faux oak, but because his rejection of the idea was so straightforward. Even early in the days of President George W. Bush’s "Freedom Agenda," Egyptian officials had become adept at bobbing and weaving their way through conversations about political change. It was a game in which they refused to say yes or no. But Suleiman -- the man closest to the apex of power in Egypt save members of the Mubarak family itself -- was having none of it.

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