Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt's Road To Revolt

Beyond its detailed analysis of the historical forces that culminated in the Tahrir Square demonstrations and regime change, it also has relevance for understanding revolutionary change everywhere.

In his introduction the author states that to study revolution is to "study how the masses awaken from their slumber and thrust themselves on the centre stage of their own history only to watch their aspirations either usurped or repressed."

This rather fatalistic conclusion is, as we well know, too often the historical truth.

The main thrust of Kandil's argument is that the Egyptian revolution was able to gather strength not as a direct result of spontaneous uprisings of the people but as a result of infighting between the three pillars of Egyptian state power- the military, the security services and the political elite.

He takes us back to the origins of modern Egypt in order to demonstrate his case convincingly from British colonial rule, through Nasser, the Suez debacle and the catastrophic six-day war with Israel, via Sadat, Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood government of today.

And he reveals how, after the second world war, the CIA "loaned" former top nazi SS and Gestapo officers to the Egyptian regime to help it in its struggle against communism and democratic change and to ensure Egypt remained in the Western orbit.

The Mubarak regime was unable to successfully suppress the people's demands for democracy, he argues, because the military was unhappy with the leading role given to Mubarak's notorious security services.

It was unwilling to allow itself to be used as a tool of suppression or be seen as a continuing supporter of the unpopular corrupt business and political class and it viewed the uprising as an opportunity to re-establish its prominence and status in the country.

Such insights make Soldiers, Spies And Statesmen an invaluable contribution to our understanding of Middle Eastern politics and our comprehension of its mechanisms of revolutionary change in general.