Posted on 10/10/2015 6:15:45 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Over four decades after the 1973 war that saw Egyptian forces seize of the Sinai Peninsula from occupying Israeli forces in a shock offensive, the legacy of the brief conflict lives on.
One of the tales of the war known by some Egyptians is the existence of a “secret code” used by the Egyptian army that Israeli intelligence was unable to crack.
The cypher was simple yet unorthodox: using an unwritten language from one of Egypt’s ethnic minorities, the Nubians. With the system, words and commands that would have been undecipherable to even a veteran Israeli intelligence officer could be easily passed to the Egyptian battlefront.
A similar technique – using Navajo, an obscure Native American language – had been used to devastating effect three decades before by U.S. forces against the Japanese in World War II.
This week, Al Arabiya News Channel’s Arabic language website interviewed Ahmad Idriss, the Egyptian man who claimed to be behind the unusual idea over 42 years ago.
Idriss said that he came up with the idea to employ the Nubian dialect – which existed only in verbal form – after noticing how army higher-ups were planning new secret codes after Israel continually managed to crack the Egyptian cyphers.
Idriss’ idea soon trickled up the chain of command all the way to Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat, who summoned the serviceman.
A nervous Idriss then went to a security headquarters to meet Sadat.
“I was shaking when I saw him considering it’s the first time I meet an Egyptian president,” the veteran recalled. “Realizing how afraid I was, Sadat headed towards me and put his hand on my shoulder. He then sat and smiled at me and said my idea was excellent, asking how it could be implemented.”
In response, Idriss told the president - who himself had Nubian roots - that there must be Nubian language-speaking servicemen stationed in the region in southern Egypt bordering Sudan where the ethnic group hails from.
“I told him [Sadat] that the [Nubian speaking] soldiers are present among border guards patrolling the southern region,” he said. Sadat, recalling his days as a low-ranking lieutenant in Sudan, which had then been part of Egypt, agreed. Idriss was warned by Sadat - under the fear of execution - not to reveal this military secret to anyone.
According to the veteran, the use of the Nubian language for code remained in use until 1994 and was sometimes used by Egyptian leaders in confidential documents.
“The [Nubian] word ‘Ushrya’ was the most famous on the list of secret codes during the October War and it means attack,” Idriss said.
Questionable cypher However, Maj. Gen. Mahmoud Khalaf, a long-serving former officer who took part in the 1973 war, called into question the use of the code.
“The Nubian language is not hard to understand,” said Khalaf, who now serves as an advisor at the Nasser Military Academy in Cairo. “This is a rumor.”
According to Khalaf, one of the key factors in Egypt’s surprise attack that pushed back the seemingly all-powerful Israeli troops was a long campaign of deception – both from Egypt’s military and political sphers.
“To foil the enemy, we pretended that we were not going to war… Mossad and Israeli army intelligence understood that Egypt’s army would absolutely not go to war…we prepared, step by step, to achieve surprise,” he told Al Arabiya News.
The plan to take back Egyptian territory extended far back beyond Sadat’s own presidency, said Khalaf, who remembers in-person briefings from Sadat’s predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Soon after the disastrous Arab-Israeli war in 1967, which resulted in Egypt losing the entire Sinai Peninsula to Israel, Nasser began to envision winning back Egyptian territory.
“Three months after 1967… Abdul Nasser said to us, ‘everything Israeli has taken from us, we will bring back by force.” Six years later, and three years after Nasser’s death in 1967, Sadat set the plan in motion.
In 1978, U.S. President Jimmy Carter brought together Sadat and Israeli premier Menachem Begin at Camp David, which paved the way for a peace treaty between the two countries.
The resulting pact - which resulted in Israeli forces making a near-full withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula five years later - continues to this day.
I always thought Israel won that war.
Beat Isreal, humm I think not!
When I was stationed inSinai, it was because Israel GAVE the Sinai back to Egypt - they did not lose it. Notice the Arab source though....
As I remember it, this is the war the Israelis
came closest to losing because they did not do
a preemptive strike even though they knew it
was coming.
The 1973 Yom Kippur War and the aftermath of it were effectively the final military and diplomatic proceedings of the 1956 Suez Canal dispute. Very interestingly, the 1956 dispute saw the U.S. on the same side as the Soviets and Egypt -- with Israel, France and Great Britain opposing them.
The Sinai was given back to Egypt as part of the peace treaty. Egypt never seized it back.
Interesting re-write of history.
Israel won the Yom Kippur War. Egypt didn’t get trounced quite as badly as Syria, but the only reason they have Sinai is because Israel gave it back per the Camp David Accords.
Last paragraph very intriguing. Will have to read up on that tonight. I was 6 at the time but that’s no excuse, as I know alot about WWII and wasn’t even around then.
I thought Kissinger was Jewish. why would he want to force Israel’s hand. I know of course he was American first like we all are, but Israel was an ally.
Two word response: Ariel Sharon.
Yup!....I was going to post the same thing but you did it ..
Well, it’s essentially true....It did happen at camp david, and we have been supporting both Egypt and Israel since that time.
They won, but it was clear that they couldn’t protect the Sinai indefinitely. Egypt and Syria had, years before Israel thought they could, done better than they had done six years earlier with the help of Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. If Israel couldn’t have peace on at least one front, there was no reason to assume they wouldn’t lose the next war. They bought peace by returning Sinai, and that peace has held for the decades since.
I guess that’s how we lost to Japan
I didn’t know that. Makes sense. Man, I made a post the other day stating that there are still 100 million+ Americans worth their salt (after subtracting most minorities, all dems, gays etc).
Israel has six million people altogether!! I wish they had at least 30 or 40 million.
They are certainly tough but if Arabs fought worth a dam things could have been different.
And now they have to make deals with the devil (Russia) because the US president has become an enemy.
I thought Kissinger was Jewish.
So is George Soros.
I guess that’s how we lost to Japan
After the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel ended up with possession of the Sinai Peninsula. Because the Sinai is on the eastern side of the Suez Canal, this resulted in a completely untenable situation where the Canal basically became a militarized border between two hostile nations (Israel and Egypt). There was no way the U.S. was ever going to let that situation remain in place, so the Nixon administration cut a deal with the Egyptians to support them behind the scenes in an invasion of the Sinai, while at the same time letting them know that the U.S. would never let Egypt defeat Israel. The whole purpose of this was to put Israel on notice that they would have to deal with a military campaign along the Suez Canal every few years in perpetuity, which would eventually bankrupt the small country.
This is why there were a number of issues negotiated and concessions made at the 1976 Camp David accords, but there the U.S. was adamant that the Sinai Peninsula was going to be handed back to Egypt.
ouch
I never knew any of this. Granted I was a child, but like I said, the History channel covered WWII and sometimes I so extensively, yet so many wars and the politics behind them were never explored.
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