Anwar Sadat

Anwar Sadat is presented as both a leading architect of forces gathered for the war in Afghanistan and, in 1981, the victim of an assassination by elements linked to those same forces. The contrast makes him central to Noam Chomsky’s argument about political violence: networks built for one strategic purpose could persist, turn toward other targets, and expose the instability concealed by simplified accounts of terrorism.

Sadat and the Afghan Networks

Chomsky places Sadat within the history of radical Islamist forces organized, armed, and trained with support from the United States, Egypt, France, and Pakistan. He describes Sadat as one of the most enthusiastic creators of forces assembled for the holy war against the Russians. In a later account, he calls Sadat’s role decisive in establishing those forces. Sadat therefore appears not only as a head of state associated with Egypt, but as a participant in the formation of a wider military network.

Assassination and Reversal

In 1981, elements drawing on the same groups assassinated Sadat. Chomsky stresses the reversal: the president who had helped bring the forces together became a target of violence associated with them. He also links the assassination to a broader pattern, arguing that the response of radical Islamist forces began in 1981 and that violence continued thereafter. The account thus treats Sadat’s death as part of the history of an organized network, rather than as an isolated episode.

Political Violence and Its Naming

Sadat’s assassination serves Chomsky’s challenge to explanations that attribute violence chiefly to abstract cultural antagonisms while leaving political history aside. He questions whether the killing can plausibly be explained by globalization, just as he questions that explanation for other acts of violence. The point is not that the evidence here establishes every cause of the assassination, but that a serious account must attend to the political and organizational circumstances Chomsky identifies.

More broadly, Chomsky argues that official definitions of terrorism should be applied consistently, including to coercive state action, rather than reserved for violence committed by enemies. Sadat’s relationship to the forces and networks in this history sharpens the book’s emphasis on consequences that outlast the immediate purpose for which armed groups were assembled. His role in their creation and his assassination by elements connected to them form a stark reversal, one that resists a simple division between state policy and later violence.