2 yiaie E By TOM FOLEY Anwar el-Sadat died Tuesday in the same hospital as.the late Shah of Iran. Perhaps in a way this emphasized the crumbling position of U.S. corpo- rations and the Pentagon in the Middle East, both of which had placed the same high hopes on the Sadat regime in Egypt as it had earlier placed on Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in Iran. aE Iran, now Egypt, and next One can only note in passing that in the days just before he was killed, Sadat had been exerting might and News Analysis main to try to get Washington to rush to the aid of his fellow-dictator, Presi- | dent Ga’far el-Numeiri of the Sudan. Over 10,000 people have been ar- rested in the Sudanese capital of Khar- toum in the past few weeks as resis- tance has grown among the Sudanese people — the armed forces in particu- lar — against the pro-imperialist policies of Numeiri. To try to save the sinking Numeiri regime, Sadat dispatched his second- in-command, Vice-President Hosni Mobarak, to Washington, to argue for an airlift of Pentagon weapons in Khartoum. Mobarak returned to Cairo just-in time to narrowly escape death in the attack on Sadat by Egyptian Army troops in Nasr City on Tuesday. Mobarak however is no replace- ment for Sadat: he lacks all the per- sonal charisma that Sadat had, and it is a good question how long Mobarak will last Even the big business-owned news By WILLIAM POMEROY LONDON (By mail) — Outside the U.S. air force base at Greenham Common, Berkshire County, England, 40 British women set up a “‘peace camp.” They arrived there on Sep- tember 6 after a 10-day, 110-mile march from the city of Cardiff in Wales. Announcing that ‘‘We are here to embarrass the U.S. air force who use this base,”’ the women are accost- ing all who enter or leave the base to put the case for nuclear disarmament. Greenham Common is one of the locations in England declared by the Thatcher Tory government as a site for the U.S. Cruise missile, to be instal- led in Western Europe at U.S. insis- tence by 1983, withits use wholly under U.S. control. Said the 40 women in a letter to the U.S. base commander: “The British people have never been consulted about our government’s nuclear de- fense policy. We know that the arrival of these hideous weapons at this base will place our entire country in the po- sition of a front-line target.’’ The women have pledged to remainin their “peace camp’’ (they are chaining themselves in turn to the base perime- ter fence) until the BBC agrees to tele- vise a debate on the issue of siting the Cruise missiles or at least until Oc- tober 24, when the Campaign for Nu- clear Disarmament (CND) has sched- uled a massive demonstration against nuclear weapons. Unions for disarmament The Greenham Common episode is but one of innumerable facets of the anti-nuclear weapon movement in Bri- tain and in Western Europe in general. Its strongest recent manifestation came in the overwhelming endorse- PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCT. 16, 1981—Page 10 media has been forced to admit now that discontentis rife among the Egyp- tian armed forces over Sadat’s sell-out policies. And the Egyptian armed forces are the final determiner of polit- ical trends in Egypt today as they have been since 1952, when King Farouk was ousted. There is no need to try to’explain Sadat’s execution by referring to non-Egyptian forces. Washington is trying to do this of course for its own reasons: it wants to get Libya, and is using-any pretext to do so. But any Libyan involvement in the attack on Sadat can be safely dis- counted. Sadat had antagonized so many people in Egypt that he had more bitter enemies than friends in his own country. Moreover, Sadat had attempted to crush elements of the right as well as the leftin Egyptian politics. Inthe past month he ordered the brutal repres- sion of the Muslim Brotherhood (al- Ikhwan al-Muslimin), a rightist group founded in Egypt in 1929 by Sheikh Hassan al-Banna of Ismailia. Stock-in-trade Assassinations were the stock-in- trade of the Muslim Brotherhood in the old days.and the style of Sadat’s execu- tion is vaguely familiar from then. U.S. business interests in Sadat’s Egypt were substantial. U.S. firms, mainly the big oil monopolies, had in- vested more than $1 billion in Egypt. Washington was counting on Egypt as the keystone of its attempt to build a “strategic alliance” across the Middle East from Morocco to Pakistan. It was therefore no accident that in the Nasr City reviewing stand close to Sadat on Tuesday were Lt.Gen. Robert ment by the 1200-delegate annual British Trades Union Congress on Sep- tember 10 of a resolution supporting unilateral nuclear disarmament for Britain and the denial of sites for any Cruise missiles. At the annual British Labor Party ‘conference, which opened in Brighton on September 27, a similar resolution passed. This is no longer surprising in view of the sentiment in the labor movement. However, what did come asa shock to the pro-nuclear weapon . grouping was the issue’s outcome at the annual assembly of the Liberal Party, on September 17. Liberal delegates overwhelmingly © overrode their party leaders and voted for a resolution of the party’s youth wing that forthrightly opposed the bas- ing of the Cruise missile anywhere in Western Europe and that called for Britain to take the initiative in creat- ing a nuclear-free zone in Europe. This stand was not only an embar- . rassment to Liberal Party leaders, but posed a problem for the formation of the alliance between the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party that is being promoted in capitalist circles as a force to stop a left-leaning Labor Party from winning the next election: the Social Democratic Party (made up mostly of right-wing defectors from the Labor Party) favors the Cruise missile and NATO armaments. Price rising Anti-nuclear weapon sentiment has been augmented by reports that the submarine-based Trident missile that the Thatcher government decided to acquire from the U.S. will cost vastly more than originally estimated. This is due to the.new, enlarged designs - Kingston, commander of the Rapid Deployment Force based at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, and ‘Gen. William Smith of the U.S. Air Force, . deputy commander of U.S. forces in Europe. Three of their aides were wounded as soldiers from an Egyptian Army ar- tillery unit flung hand grenades into the stand and sprayed machine-gun fire at Sadat. One of the main political problems for Washington in building its “strategic alliance’ across the Middle East was Israel. The Shah of Iran and his regime until 1979 worked closely ~ with Israel in every respect. The Is- raelis helped build the Shah's secret police organization SAVAK. which tor- tured 165.000 Iranians to death. But with the ouster of the Shah, this gruesome alliance was broken. Israel moreover lost 60 percent of its oil sup- ply the Shah had been givingit. Sadat's Egypt stepped in here to close that gap: with the Camp David agreement, Egypt began supplying Israel with oil. Egypt also broke up the united Arab front by signing the Camp David deal. Nothing unusual Sadat did nothing unusual by agree- ing to peace with Israel. The late Pres- ident Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt was ready — in fact eager — for peace with Israel at any time since 1954. But Nasser’s idea of peace was a final, de- finitive, and lasting peace in which the rights of the Palestinians and othe Arabs would not be ignored. : British peace sentiment grows daily being approved by the military spending-mad Reagan Administra- tion. Initially priced at $10 billion, the Trident is now admitted by the Thatcher cabinet to have gone up to $12 . billion. pe. However, the director of the Aber- deen University’s prestigious Center for Defense Studies, David Greennwood, has forecast that expen- diture on the Trident will soar to at least $16 billion and that this could be worsened by inflation. Greenwood is known as a consistent accurate forecaster of defense budget trends.. He said: ‘‘The way forward to a strategic nuclear force for the next century is a journey to an unknown destination at who knows what cost. Like the price, the odds against the United Kingdon getting there are high and rising.” Opposition to the Trident and the - British workers protest Prime Minister Thatcher's policies. Sadat:corporations lose a friend Sadat’s idea was completely differ- ent. His idea was not so much peace with Israel as it was peace with U.S. imperialism, Israelis or not. To get that, he destroyed Arab unity and sold out the Palestinians as well as the Egyptian nation, and in Egypt re sentment has steadily grown against this this since 1977. In January, 1977, Egyptian workers took to the streets in mass demonstra- tions Sadat later blamed on the out- lawed, underground Egyptian Com- munist Party. Sadat had to cancel the food price increases that sparked the upsurge of mass protests, and there have been noprice hikes on basic foods since then. But in the past month, Sadat or- dered full-scale repression of all pos- sible opposition groups in Egypt. He deposed Pope Shenuda III, head of the © six-million-member Coptic Church, banned the Muslim Brotherhood, insti- tuted police contorl over all of Egypt’s 40,000 mosques, and began a far- reaching purge of the Egyptian army. ~ Secret organization It is nosecret— at least any more— that there is a secret pro-Nasser or- ganization in the Egyptian Army. Sadat was trying to get it uprooted but he did not succeed. Sadat was always an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. In his book, ‘‘Revolt on the Nile’ (N.Y., 1957), he said he prayed for a Nazi vic- tory during the 1942 invasion of Egypt. Sadat also collaborated with Nazi -agents in Egypt during World War II. It is thus ironic that in the U.S. and Israel today Sadat is portrayed as a “friend.” —DAILY WORLD. Cruise is affecting most sectors of British life. An example is the devel- opment of Christian CND, the wing of the CND that seeks to recruit British © churches to support nuclear disar- mament. Two years ago the annual . general meeting of Christian CND. could assemble barely enough mem- bers to fit around a table. Last year, it — drew 110 representatives. _ This year, on September 13, Christ- ian CND’s annual general meeting _was held in the shell-of Coventry Cathedral, blitzed by the Nazi bom- bers in World War II. Over 900 repre- sentatives from all of the main Christ- ian denominations attended. Msgr. Bruce Kent, the Catholic priest who is the present general secretary of the - CND, told the assemblage: ‘‘It must be seen that the Christian peace move- ment is as broad as the human ‘race ~ itself.” —DAILY WORLD