(B. 1918)
Anwar Sadat is the self-proclaimed Caliph of Sadati Arabia, known for his leading role in the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy, the conquest of The United Arab Kingdom during Operation Taqwa, and the Black Sand War against the United Nations (UN). Once a promising officer in the Egyptian Free Officers Movement, his trajectory was violently altered in the failed 1952 coup attempt, where he sustained severe shrapnel wounds to the head. He emerged from his coma with unnerving clarity and an almost inhuman ability for strategic calculation, a trauma savant with great skills, yet naturally drawn towards extremism. Fleeing to Saudi Arabia in the aftermath, he found refuge under King Saud but quickly proved more dangerous as an ally than an enemy. His alliance with Salafist philosopher Sayyid Qutb would shape the coming decades, blending ruthless military efficiency with a radical theocratic vision. In 1955, his followers executed a stunningly coordinated coup against the House of Saud, now ruling Arabia as a dictatorship with absolute authority, enforcing an ideology that was part neosocialist, part Islamist, part fascist and entirely his own.
Despite the tightening iron grip of Sadat's institutions, his administration stewarded the most rapid economic growth in Arabia's history, mostly fuelled by enormous investments in a nationalised petrochemical industry which extracted vast quantities of oil from the ground and sold the world not just crude, but also its products, at lower prices. Despite rapid modernisation and economic growth, the spectre of totalitarianism encroached ever closer: first it was pro-western democrats, then pro-eastern communists, then the Shiites and finally any minority that remained. Sadat had a total control of the media, and the international press never got a wind of the massacre going on within Arabia's borders. Demographically Arabia did not suffer, as millions of devoted Muslims from across the world migrated to Arabia with the promises of stable jobs and a faithful community.
With an abundance of migrant manpower and petroleum income, Anwar Sadat created the Army of the Nation and Sadat (ANS), which quickly became the most fanatical and effective fighting force in the Arab world, bolstered furthermore by a vast influx of foreign jihadists and exiled militants who saw his rule as divine providence. The United Arab Kingdoms, weakened by internal divisions and the growing isolationism of its Hashemite rulers, stood little chance when a surprise invasion, Operation Taqwa, came in 1962. Such an attack had been in planning for years, but October of 1962 was chosen as the right time, as the world's eyes were fixed on the Cuban Missile Crisis. The war was a study in brutality—ANS troops displayed horrifying efficiency, deploying mass chemical warfare, industrial-scale executions, and asymmetric terror campaigns deep within enemy territory. The Second Razing of Baghdad, in which Sarin gas wiped out the entire city in a matter of days, marked the turning point in the war, leaving the Hashemites either dead or scattered in exile. Sadat declared a total victory.
The international community responded with fire. The Black Sand War (1962–1963) saw an unprecedented coalition organised by the United Nations (UN)—American, Soviet, German, British, French, Italian, Spanish, Scandinavian, Israeli, Turkish, Persian, Konratopian, Terranihilan and even Oceanykan troops—enter West Asia in a bid to extinguish Sadat’s nightmare state. The war was catastrophic; guerrilla resistance, scorched earth tactics, and suicide bombings turned every city into a bloodbath. Sadat’s forces, facing inevitable defeat, set the oil fields of West Asia alight, choking the sky to deny the UN air superiority. The armistice of 1963 was uneasy—Sadat, though battered, remained in power, having fired a warning shot in the form of an ICBM loaded with Sarin towards Avignon, slaughtering thousands in the city and forcing the UN into the negotiating table. In the years that followed, his name became synonymous with terror, his state a festering wound on the geopolitical map. Despite numerous assassination attempts and coup plots, the Butcher of Baghdad rules from his fortified palace in Riyadh, his black-bannered legions waging holy war upon the world.