The Egyptian Army is the largest service branch within the Egyptian Armed Forces, and is the largest army in the Arab World, and Africa. It is estimated to number around 490,000, in addition to 485,000 reservists for a total of 975,000 strong. The modern army was established during the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha (1805-1849), who is considered to be the "founder of modern Egypt". Its most significant engagements in the 20th Century were in Egypt's five wars with the State of Israel (in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1967-1970, and 1973), one of which, the Tripartite Aggression of 1956, also saw it do combat with the armies of Britain, and France. The Egyptian army was also engaged heavily in the protracted North Yemeni Civil War, and the brief Libyan-Egyptian War in July, 1977. Its last major engagements was Operation Desert Storm, the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991, in which Egyptian army constituted the second largest contingent of allied forces.
Following the resignation of former President Hosni Mubarak on 11th February 2011, during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has been governing Egypt.
Read more about Egyptian Army: Structure, Order of Battle, Weapons Inventory
Famous quotes containing the words egyptian and/or army:
“He will to his Egyptian dish again.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)