Frida Ghitis
Egyptians witnessed something rare last Friday night: protests against President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Amid heightened repression, Egyptians have mostly stayed home ever since Sisi took power in a 2013 coup, two and a half years after mass protests had led to the ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak. Sisi quickly and ruthlessly crushed any opposition, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood. He jailed Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, and other Islamist leaders, along with any perceived critics of his regime. It’s no wonder most Egyptians have opted to keep their heads down.
Friday’s protests, which unfolded in Cairo and other cities, were small but significant. Just as telling was the government’s reaction. Taken together, and in the context of some of Sisi’s foreign policy decisions, they add up to a picture of an authoritarian leader who is strong and confident, but not without vulnerabilities.
The protests were called from abroad by an exiled former government contractor, who in a series of videos has accused Sisi of corruption and mismanagement. While demonstrators were calling for his ouster, Sisi was at the United Nations in New York. The authorities in Egypt responded to the protests forcefully, but without bloodshed—a sharp contrast to the massacre in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya square in August 2013, when security forces killed hundreds of unarmed protesters staging a sit-in against Sisi’s coup. There may not have been bloodshed this time, but according to human rights groups, more than a thousand people have been arrested.
While human rights groups and many Western political leaders have decried the depths of repression under Sisi—far exceeding what was found under Mubarak—Sisi still moves easily on the global stage. It is one reason he has to feel confident, and it is showing in his foreign policy behavior.
He has basked in the open support of U.S. President Donald Trump, who recently called him “my favorite dictator.” Trump’s praise for Sisi, who he described as a “real leader” during their meeting this week in New York during the U.N. General Assembly, is steadily eroding attempts in Washington to cut back generous U.S. aid to Egypt as a way to force Sisi to improve his dismal human rights record.
Just days before Trump met Sisi in New York, one of the top Republicans seeking some change in Egypt threw in the towel. Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had held up the $1.3 billion annual aid package, which he tried to trim as a form of pressure on Sisi. But Graham ultimately gave up and released the appropriations bill.
The most striking evidence of Sisi’s confidence is that he apparently doesn’t feel obligated to acquiesce to the wishes of his foreign patrons. When the former army chief took power six years ago, Egypt was in the midst of a steep downward slide, with the economy on the verge of collapse. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, eager to support Sisi’s onslaught against the Muslim Brotherhood and bring an end to the so-called Arab Spring, immediately disbursed billions of dollars in aid, allowing Sisi to consolidate his rule and stabilize the economy.
While human rights groups and many Western political leaders have decried the depths of repression under Sisi, he still moves easily on the global stage.With support from Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Washington critical for his survival, one might expect the Egyptian president to unquestioningly side with his backers on regional issues. But that is not what he has done. Instead, Sisi has largely refrained from taking sides in the paramount dispute in the Middle East, pitting Shiite Iran against a Sunni-dominated bloc led by Saudi Arabia.
In an interview with Al-Monitor this week at Egypt’s U.N. Mission, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry spoke at length about Egyptian foreign policy, showing a subtle but remarkable gap between Cairo and the countries’ that have helped keep Sisi’s regime afloat. Asked about Iran, Shoukry dutifully declared that, “We deem it necessary that non-Arab regional states do not intervene in internal affairs of the Arab states,” a clear dig at Tehran. But, he added, “We, on the other hand, always see room for cooperation.”
In April, Egypt dealt a potentially fatal blow to the Trump administration’s already fledgling plan to create an “Arab NATO,” backed by the Gulf Arab states, as a cornerstone of U.S. policy toward Iran. Cairo told Washington that it was pulling out of the proposed anti-Iran Middle East Strategic Alliance and did not attend a pivotal MESA meeting in Riyadh.
Shoukry also diverged from the Trump administration by forcefully restating Egypt’s support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In keeping with the regime’s stance, Shoukry maintained a low-key attitude toward Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that controls Gaza, even though it is a Palestinian spinoff of Sisi’s nemesis, the Muslim Brotherhood. Shoukry said Egypt remains prepared to help broker reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, its Palestinian rival.
While Sisi may be comfortable enough to defy his patrons when it comes to foreign policy, he has cause for concerns at home, even if he has an iron grip on the security forces and faces an enfeebled opposition. There’s a reason a call for protests launched by an Egyptian living in Spain persuaded hundreds of people to demonstrate, despite the risks.
Egypt’s economy is a house of cards. While the macroeconomic picture is mostly positive, the internal figures reveal that growth is built on discontent. The Egyptian economy posted strong growth last year, at 5.6 percent—the strongest in the Middle East. Those figures seem impressive, but they conceal the reality of daily life for Egyptians, whose lot is becoming more untenable by the day.
While Sisi implements harsh austerity measures and undertakes massive, unnecessary and corruption-plagued infrastructure projects with the encouragement of the International Monetary Fund, poverty in Egypt is surging. Egypt’s statistics agency reported that one of every three Egyptians is living in poverty, up from 28 percent in 2015. Outside observers question the official poverty threshold of $45 per month as too low. The World Bank says 60 percent of Egyptians are “poor or vulnerable.” It looks like a potential powder keg, with similarities to the economic conditions that marked the late Mubarak years.
Egyptians know corruption is rampant. They see multibillion dollar, white elephant projects—a new capital in the desert outside Cairo, an unnecessary expansion of the Suez Canal—as they struggle even more to survive. It’s a state of affairs that makes even the mightiest, most confident ruler vulnerable to an explosion of popular discontent.