On August 14, it will be 10 years since the start of the dismantling of two protests by the Muslim Brotherhood in “Cairo, far from Cairo”! Don’t you remember a camp in the middle of a street/road, opposite a mosque? There were two camps, one in Nahda Square, not far from the pyramids, and the other in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, in the center of the city. These were the two main Muslim Brotherhood (IM) protest centers, which took place during Ramadan in 2013, as a possible and more internationally visible response to the previous July 3 coup that ousted Mohamed Morsi from the presidency and the then head of the State Army, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. after this military takeover, as the Obama administration decided to call it, since Americans cannot have relations with coup regimes. After the coup, General Sisi was acting Prime Minister (July 2013-May 2014) of the new regime that would officially become his from 8 June 2014.

To situate ourselves in time and manner, it is necessary to remember that former President (PR) Hosni Moubarak’s plan for his post-mortem Egypt was for his son candidate “G’amal Moubarak” to win the 2010 presidential election and economic liberalization would begin. of the country in Arabic.

The military did not allow the liberalization of the regime because of the part they occupy in the country’s economy and they do not want to give up. The best example to explain reality is to make “an assumption”! Egypt has, round number, 110 million inhabitants. Let’s assume every Egyptian eats two carcasses a day, then 220 million peppers must be cooked every day! Who has the capacity for this venture? Electric ovens in canteens of military barracks. From that moment on, “the junk” became exclusive to the bread trade, a non-negligible participation in the trade of large quantities of grains, yeast, as well as the Companhia das Águas e do Gás. This model is being copied in the most diverse sectors, and it is also the major problem that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union have with this regime. The international community is calling for less military power and control in Egypt’s economy. This is also Sisi’s dilemma, if he accedes to these requests, he will lose his foothold. And it should be noted, the Egyptian economy has never been so hostage to the military structure as it is now. It was like a startup deal that lasted 10 years. “Sisi is the weakest of all generals, he is in the hands of others. That’s why they pushed him forward”. Mohamed Soudan, a member of the Egyptian IM, told me in an interview one day that he had managed to flee to London with his family.

Sisi, “Keynesian Marshal”

“G’amal Abdel Nasser (PR between 1956-1970) was the “architect” of the Assuan dam, which also earned him the title of “pioneer of the inhospitable”, such were the difficult working conditions. Anwar al-Sadat (PR ) between 1970-1981), built cities outside major centers, in an attempt to liberalize the economy. Hosni Moubarak (PR between 1981-2011), embellished Cairo with bridges over the Nile. Current PR Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, carries the coat of a “national foreman”, given the magnitude of the public works he initiated, in particular two, the construction of a new administrative capital about 50 km from Cairo and the widening of the Suez Canal, with phases already completed , but whose ” spark” is a conclusion that fuels the beginning of a later phase of widening. As long as there are promoters of the work, this widening will continue. In 2022, the Suez Canal Authority had its highest ever profit. The circuit feeds itself and the PR Sisi, whether he is the weakest of all generals or not, consolidates his presidency.

Public works are the mainstay of the regime, quickly mitigating the problem of unemployment and malnutrition, but for sociologist Said Sadek, this tendency of Sisi to challenge the elements in the middle of the desert (he builds all ministries in a single neighborhood/city ) demonstrates the megalomania of this PR and gives the following example: “When IM campaigned to denigrate Sisi’s image and presented him as an enemy of Islam because he was a devout Muslim, his reaction was: I’m going to building the largest mosque in the world.” Africa” ​​(in the new administrative capital).

This is Sisi’s “inevitable Egypt”, based on cement and concrete. They enabled him to present/arrive the presidency as a statesman capable of managing large files in times of crisis. which the country had lost to Moubarak in the last years. It is these colossal works that symbolize for all people, especially in difficult times, a sense of rebirth, that everything makes sense, that it was all worth it and that you can take a deep breath! That taste is yet to come, but in the meantime Egyptians have a reason to get up early every day. Egypt has a project, this is it!

The dark side of the regime

Egypt is a cornerstone in the fight against Islamist terrorism, in ensuring a secure Suez Canal open to world navigation, in controlling migration routes from sub-Saharan Africa. Then, during the cold war, it was always a regional power contested between the Soviets and the Americans, as it is today. But nowadays not only Americans and Russians are fighting over an “Egyptian cafuné”! Turks, Saudis, Qataris and Emirates are also in multipolarity. In the aforementioned 2013 Ramadan, in the first paragraph, in the tension/dispute between an elected Islamist PR (Mohamed Morsi) and a soldier (Sisi) who, in line with Moubarak, well incorporated the ‘either me or the beards’ “of the already ex-PR it was predicted that the spark could happen during the fast, due to the lack of normal life, but unthinkable during the holiday month. Saudi Arabia (in support of Sisi) and Qatar (in support of IM) sent ships with fuel and grain so that nothing was wanting during the holy month, postponing the military attack to a more normal period.

Egypt’s geostrategic and security interests, along with regional disputes, enabled the installation of a regime that today can be considered even more secure than that of PR Moubarak. Whoever made the revolution in 2011 is in prison or has serious mental health problems. For the past decade, the non-governmental organization (NGO) Reporters Without Borders has “presented a bill” that is hard to digest for those living in the freest country in the world, Portugal. 170 journalists arrested, dozens more interrogated and randomly interrogated, more than 500 information sites blocked, plus a ban on publishing cartoons and “dubious comedy”!

But the Great Powers see this as a lesser evil, as Egypt’s geography is not deceiving. Sisi became president and Americans resorted to tropes, an understatement (“military takeover“) in order to preserve the famous tech-military cooperation that earns Egypt a secret annual check, which will vary between one billion and two billion dollars, no one knows or dares ever say the exact amount! With a border with Cyrenaica, eastern Libya , supports Marshal Haftar, who in turn is supported by the Russians, against a staunch enemy of PR Sisi, PR Erdogan of Turkey On the other hand, Egypt has made agreements with Israel on the exploitation of natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean. reached with Lebanon on the same issue, so Egypt, Israel and Lebanon now form a triple that will play a role in the leakage of Russian gas. Another alternative source for Europe, which will reinforce the importance of Sisi at the top of the pyramid!

Something important to point out in these 10 years, and which we think will go unnoticed or perhaps not well appreciated, is the fact that the August 14 attack 10 years ago on the IM protest camps worked as a vaccine for the other IM branches across Africa and who saw Egypt as an example. These effects were particularly felt in Tunisia, when the leader of the (Islamic) Ennahda party, Rachid Ghannouchi, realized that following the Egyptian example, no other military structure would allow “a president, a majority and an Islamist government”, which is practically impossible. used to be. the post-election scenario in Egypt. Ghannouchi decided not to run for the 2019 presidential election because he had the conditions to be elected PR of Tunisia precisely because he knew that sooner or later he would be deposed by a domestic conspiracy with international contours.

Note that the “al-Qaidas and the Baghdadis” are like the pandemic, it seems like 10 years ago. They never opened newscasts again, which I think is a plus to note. Terrorism does not stop, but we have not seen terrorists for a long time!

Egypt 2023

The scenario described so far is pharaonic in scope and scale, but the 110 million Egyptians are just like our 10 million Portuguese, they don’t care about the statistical successes! That is precisely why the scale of possible social discord is also large and very explosive. The President General knows this and recently decided to see what is left of the Egyptian opposition and decided to open dialogue. It is necessary to start talking about the next election, but it was not necessary to detain a dozen relatives of the only Egyptian who announced that he wanted to be a candidate against the current PR. It is necessary to reorient the country’s politics and economy, to combat inflation and the devaluation of the Egyptian pound, but security issues remain untouched. It is this “one on the nail and the other on the horseshoe”, which will continue to guide the “Keynesian regime of Marshal Sisi”, fundamental to keeping it in the precarious balance of military regimes, which, if not with this one, it will be with another and Egypt will continue!

Political scientist/Arabist