Anwar Sadat

Who is Anwar Sadat?

Muhammad Anwar Sadat was an Egyptian army officer and statesman who served as the third President of Egypt from 1970 until his assassination in 1981. Born in the Nile Delta village of Mit Abu al-Kum, he joined the military and became a member of the Free Officers Movement that ended the monarchy in 1952. Succeeding Gamal Abdel Nasser as president, he launched the Infitah economic liberalization policy and shifted Egypt's alignment away from the Soviet Union toward the United States. In October 1973 he led Egypt in the war against Israel that restored national confidence after the 1967 defeat. He then pursued a dramatic path to peace, making a historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977 and signing the Camp David Accords in 1978 and the Egypt–Israel peace treaty in 1979. For these efforts he shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with Menachem Begin. The peace with Israel angered many, and he was assassinated by Islamist militants during a military parade in Cairo in 1981.

Sources: The Nobel Peace Prize 1978 official biography, nobelprize.org · Anwar Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (1978) · Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry 'Anwar Sadat'