— Cairo (AFP)
Fifty years after what Egypt celebrated as its "October victory", the memory of the 1973 war against Israel that has shaped the Arab nation's politics and diplomacy is fading.
Successive Egyptian presidents over the course of decades drew legitimacy from their military past fighting Israel.
Egypt's current leader, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is a rare exception. Having only enlisted in a military academy the year the war took place, he did not take up arms against neighbouring Israel.
Yet, he has still capitalised on this chapter in national history.
