Background
Ahmed ISMAIL ALI was born on October 14, 1917, at Cairo
أحمد إسماعيل علي
Ahmed ISMAIL ALI was born on October 14, 1917, at Cairo
Educated locally, then at the Military College, where he graduated as an officer in 1938.
Former head of the Army’s General Intelligence Service, brought into the cabinet when President Sadat dismissed the anti-Russian General Mohamed Sadek. His promotion restored the balance since he had previously been replaced by Sadek as Chief of Staff after being held responsible when a radar installation was seized in a raid by Israeli paratroops.
After serving as an intelligence officer in the 1939-19445 war and as a company commander in Gaza during the Palestine War in 1948, he returned to the Staff College where he took his MA degree in Military Science in 1950. from 1950 to 1953 he remained at the Staff College as an instructor and then was assigned to the military commission which supervised the evacuation of British troops from the Canal Zone in 1953. He was appointed a brigade commander in 1956.
Most of 1957 he was at Fronz Military Academy in the Soviet Union on an advanced training course. On his return in December 1957 he was appointed commander of the Port Said forces and in April 1959 he became chief instructor at the Military College in Cairo with a spell in 1961 as military adviser to Premier Lumumba in the Congo (Zaire). In the Six-Day War of June 1967 he was Chief of Staff on the eastern front and afterwards worked hard to rebuild morale on the Suez front.
After attending the Higher Military Academy in 1969 he became Deputy Chief of Staff and took over two months later when General Abdel Moneim Riad was killed on the Suez front in April 1969. Replaced by Sadek subsequently, he stayed in the background until May 13, 1971, when he was made head of the General Intelligence Service.
His appointment as Minister of War led to moves towards better relations with Russia following the chill as a result of the expulsion of the Soviet Military advisers in July 1972. After a visit to Moscow in October 1972 with Aziz Sidki, then Prime Minister, he went on his own in February 1973 for talks with the Soviet leaders.
He was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federation of Egypt, Libya and Syria on January 21, 1973, and became Commander-in-Chief of the Arab Fronts on January 28, 1973. Since then he has made regular visits to the fronts to give pep talks to the troops.
Following the war, he was made a Field Marshal in November 1973.
Trained in the Soviet Union, he was labelled by the late General Abdel Moneim Riad as “a man with an ability to get on with the Russians”.
A veteran from the desert campaign with the British forces in the 1939-45 war and an expert on battle tactics, he was seconded as military adviser to the late Premier Lumumba of the Congo (Zaire). He has also acquired a high reputation for coordinating war preparations on all three Arab fronts against Israel.
Ali died in December 1974 from advanced cancer, at the age of just 57.