Cracks in the new Pharaoh’s throne

By Koert Debeuf

The stability of Sisi’s Egypt is a mirage.

CAIRO — “I can be arrested at any moment. The secret police are following me day and night,” says Amal, 40, chain smoking cigarettes. She is nervous, very nervous — she changes the subject of our conversation every few minutes. Her colleague, Ayman, 35, sits beside her. He wonders if he will be allowed to leave the country the next day to travel for work.

We had agreed to meet in a dim corner of an underground bar in the Maadi district of Cairo. Every time we meet the venue becomes darker, further from
listening ears.

Amal and Ayman are members of the political bureau of the now-banned April 6 Youth Movement, a group of activists who helped organize the 2011 revolution against Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. After the revolution, they were seen as heroes. They had achieved the unthinkable. The European Parliament granted one of the movement’s members, Asmaa Mahfouz, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Four years later, the leader of April 6, Ahmed Maher, has been sentenced to three years in jail for defying the anti-protest law of November 2013. He is one of the dozens of young activists jailed since democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi was ousted in July 2013. To justify the imprisonments, the government and the media no longer portray the activists as heroes, but rather as corrupt foreign agents on a mission to destabilize the country. As a result, many Egyptians now believe that the 2011 revolution was nothing more than a Western conspiracy.

The Egyptian regime seems to be in a state of panic. Nobody knows exactly why.

The Muslim Brotherhood was the first target of the crackdown that followed Morsi’s removal. A court declared it a terrorist organization in December 2013. Being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood was suddenly equivalent to being a member of a terrorist organization, enough to be arrested and imprisoned. Human Rights Watch calculated that from July 2013 until May 2014, tens of thousands of people were detained by the government, and many hundreds killed. This was the first wave of the crackdown.

The second wave

Amal and Ayman are now facing a second wave of arrests. “We were organizing a day of civil disobedience on June 11,” Ayman explained, “when the police started to arrest and even kidnap students from their homes and from university.” People disappearing is not a new phenomenon in Egypt, but over the past few months it has occurred at an unprecedented rate. The Egyptian rights group Freedom for the Brave counted 163 people kidnapped by security forces since April 2015. Some have just disappeared. Others were released after being questioned and beaten by the police.

The reasons for these sudden disappearances and arrests are unclear. The Egyptian regime seems to be in a state of panic. Nobody knows exactly why. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi looks untouchable. He was elected as president with 96.1 percent of the votes in June 2014. Earlier, in January, the new constitution was approved in a referendum with 98.1 percent voting in favor. Sisi’s two big projects seem to be going well: The new Suez canal will be ready on August 6 with no delays, and during the investment summit in Sharm el-Sheikh last April economic contracts were signed for a total of $36 billion.

Internationally, President Sisi has gained the support of neighboring Gulf countries, the United States, Europe and Russia. Out of fear of extremist groups like the Islamic State and its affiliates in Libya and Egypt, world leaders support Egypt’s anti-terrorism agenda, relieved that while Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya are collapsing, at least Egypt appears stable. Most Egyptians would agree with this analysis.

That’s why many were surprised to read about a harsh attack on police behavior in three main Egyptian newspapers in April. Everyone in Egypt knows that no such article can appear without the approval of the newspaper’s owner and one of the three state security apparatuses. Only two weeks later, Al Watan, a newspaper close to the government, dedicated its front page to “the seven forces stronger than Sisi.” These forces included corruption, powerful people, businessmen, the interior ministry, the media, the informal economy and social media. That edition of the newspaper was taken off the market.

Growing frustration

The article in Al Watan is one example of growing frustration. “I pay now twice as many taxes as one year ago, but I get nothing in return,” complained Sultan, 41, a local contractor at an international NGO. Alfred, 38, an engineer, decided to leave Egypt because of the rising inflation. “My standard of living is decreasing every month. I can’t pay my bills anymore,” he sighed. (Both men declined to give me their last names.)

Food prices went up by 30 percent since last year. Alfred is not alone. A recent survey shows that over a quarter of male Egyptians between the ages of 15 and 29 want to leave the country because of low wages or a lack of job opportunities. Thirty percent of Egyptians are between 15 and 29 years old; many are looking to emigrate.

The frustration is spreading to all levels of Egyptian society. The financial newspaper Al Bursa published a piece with the title, “Why is the government moving with the speed of a turtle?” President Sisi publicly agrees with this criticism and has complained about the government’s incapability to reform. Rumor has it that he will replace about half of the government in yet another reshuffle.

Sisi’s four promises

Since taking power in July 2013, Sisi made four promises: economic reforms and investments, religious reformation, democratic elections, and a victory in the fight against terrorism. He is more or less delivering on his first promise. He has issued new tax and investment laws, and attracted billions of dollars in investment. International companies are carefully optimistic about the country’s macro-economic future and have decided to stay in Egypt. Nevertheless, there are a few setbacks. The announcement of a new capital at the Sharm el-Sheikh investment summit last April appeared to be nothing more than a wild idea. Other plans have also yet to be realized. The biggest problem is that tourism — Egypt’s most important source of revenue — has been hard hit.

Sisi’s second promise, reforming Islam, proved to be a political mistake. In a move to counter the Muslim Brotherhood, Sisi asked Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious institution of Sunni Islam, to rethink religion. A TV channel responded to the challenge and organized a live debate featuring two scholars from Al-Azhar and a renowned intellectual, Maher El-Beheiry. Suddenly, Egyptians came face to face with a challenging public debate about the Quran and the role of religion in society. Jumpstarting a public debate about religion and the state had not been part of the pre-approved plan. Al-Azhar accused El-Beheiry of blasphemy. Reason enough for the famous TV host, Ibrahim Eissa, to criticize Sisi harshly in his widely viewed show. On May 31, El-Beheiry was sentenced to five years in jail for “contempt of religion.” But the doors of the debate were thrown open and no one will be able to force them closed again anytime soon.

The fourth promise Sisi made is probably his most painful. He is nowhere near a victory in the fight against terrorism.

On the day Sisi ousted president Morsi, he read a declaration with a roadmap for reform. He spoke of presidential elections, and preparations for parliamentary elections. Two years on, there is still no law to organize elections for parliament. One reason the plan has failed is because of Sisi’s inability to get political parties united in one big coalition for the elections. Most Egyptians don’t appear worried about this electoral delay, but the important players are. In Egypt, political parties are classically ran by business tycoons who pay for their respective parties’ activities. These businessmen are getting frustrated. Other well-off people — most of them loyal to the old Mubarak regime — want their parliamentary seat, their source of prestige and connections, back.

This business elite is one of the pillars of Egyptian society. They are part of the so-called “deep state,” a network reaching from the interior ministry to the luxury hotels at the Red Sea. This group is not only frustrated about the postponement of the elections. Most businessmen are disappointed about the fact that their part of the pie looks considerably smaller than expected. Many new business contracts go to military enterprises, expanding the army’s already excessive role in the economy. These business tycoons backed Sisi and his presidential campaign. And they’re getting nothing in return. A large part of the surprising criticism cropping up in the media is the result of this battle between the army and the “deep state.” This old network knows how to wreck a regime. Sisi knows this, and it makes him ill at ease.

The fourth promise Sisi made is probably his most painful. He is nowhere near a victory in the fight against terrorism. The Egyptian National Council for Human Rights reported that 1,800 civilians and 700 security personnel were killed between June 2013 and December 2014. Occupancy rates in police station holding cells are 400 percent. Prisons are 160 percent. And the situation is only getting worse. There have been as many terrorist attacks in the first three months of 2015 as there were in all of 2014. A car bomb suicide attempt in the Karnak temple in Luxor was a devastating low point, while another car bomb killed Egypt’s general prosecutor. And despite massive military deployment, the army still hasn’t succeeded in controlling the Sinai peninsula. Groups linked to the Islamic State and militant Bedouin tribes  are turning Sinai into Egypt’s Afghanistan. At least five soldiers were killed when terrorists attacked military checkpoints earlier this week in the Sinai.

More violence

Adding further potential for unrest, the youth of the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming more and more tired of its leadership’s pledges of non-violence. Their friends have been jailed and even sentenced to death. While they fear for their lives in Egypt, the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood lives in London, Istanbul and Doha. Embittered, some youths have left for Syria to join the troops of the Islamic State. Others are waiting for a change of strategy and have set their hopes on the new king of Saudi Arabia.

Unlike his predecessor, King Salman is convinced that Egypt cannot win the battle against an estimated two million Muslim Brothers through violence and oppression. He sees Iran, not the Muslim Brotherhood, as the greatest existential threat, and wants to build a broad Sunni coalition. Financial assistance from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries has saved Egypt from collapsing since 2013.

But how patient will Saudi Arabia be with the ideological battles of the Sisi regime?

Sisi is right to be nervous. He knows that Egypt’s stability is very fragile. His answer is more repression. In the name of fighting terrorism the West is looking the other way. Again. Egypt is a room filling with gas. We don’t yet know when it will run out of air. When that happens, one spark will be enough to make everything explode. Again.