The current president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, rescued his country by staging a coup on July 3, 2013. That coup he engineered to overturn the rule of then-President Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), who was solidifying his hold, and that of the fanatical MB to which he belonged, on the country. For his pains, Al-Sisi was portrayed by many in the West as a dictator to be shunned for his “record on human rights.” His violent crackdown on those who came out to protest the coup resulted in the deaths of between 624 – the Egyptian government’s figure – and 2,400, the figure provided by the Brotherhood. Those in the West — who had never had to face a conspiratorial, violent, and shape-shifting group such as the MB — had little understanding or sympathy for al-Sisi. The other Arab states, on the other hand, whose leaders do understand the threat from MB fanatics, approved of his coup. Some in the West have called him a “despot” — but if he is a “despot,” he has turned out to be quite a mild, enlightened despot. Al-Sisi is no Saddam Hussein, or Ali Khamenei, or Hafez al-Assad, or Muammar Qaddafi. He wants to make Egypt safe for secular Muslims, and for Copts, as well, the two groups most threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood. Unlike Nasser, the pan-Arabist, or Morsi the pan-Islamist, Al-Sisi is an Egyptian nationalist. Al-Sisi has been in power for eight years, having righted the listing ship of state, and is now running Egypt smoothly, and on all cylinders. A report on his achievements is here: “Egypt moves center stage – opinion,” by Neville Teller, Jerusalem Post, November 22, 2021:
An unexpected piece of news broke just as the 14-day international COP26 conference on climate change drew to a close earlier this month. The host for COP27 in 2022 is to be Egypt. Moreover, in the interim, Egypt partnered with the Maldives to organize workshops to boost international adherence to the commitments made at COP26.
COP27 is to be held in the Red Sea resort of Sharm e-Sheikh on the southeastern edge of the Sinai peninsula. Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in making his bid to host it, said Egypt would work to make it “a radical turning point in international climate efforts in coordination with all parties, for the benefit of Africa and the entire world.”
The fact that Egypt is about to assume a major role in a key area of international policy is a testament to Sisi’s determination. The path toward international recognition of Egypt as a leading player on the world stage has not been without its difficulties. To succeed, Sisi needed to mend fences with the Biden administration.
The previous two major conferences on climate change were held in France and the U.K. Now Al-Sisi has managed to have Egypt chosen as the venue for the third such conference. Not India, or China, or Germany, or the U.S., but Egypt, a Third World country, will host the next international climate conference. It’s an amazing feat and a feather in Al-Sisi’s cap, one that will put his country front and center on the world stage. It shows how far Al-Sisi has come in winning acceptance from those quondam critics abroad who were previously determined to condemn him for his coup.
Then-US president Barack Obama had disapproved of Sisi’s coup against Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi, and condemned Sisi’s crackdown on opponents of his new regime. Joe Biden, Obama’s vice president throughout his two terms, made it clear from the start of his own presidency that he was going to hassle Sisi on his human rights record.
“We will bring our values with us into every relationship that we have across the globe,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price in March. “That includes with Egypt.”
Really? Is the proposed sale of $650 million worth of weaponry to Saudi Arabia an example of bringing “our values” into “our relationship” with the Kingdom?
Neither Obama nor Biden understood just how insidious the Muslim Brotherhood was, seeing it only as a political movement and not as a violent, quasi-secret society of fanatical Muslims. Out of their profound ignorance of the kind of danger Egypt faced from the Brotherhood, Obama and Biden were determined to distance themselves from Al-Sisi, who so violently cracked down on the Brotherhood. But since then, he has managed to lessen Biden’s hostility, and with that slow warming of ties with Washington, he has made himself acceptable enough to host the next conference on climate change that will be held in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Sisi knew that a vital step in his bid for enhanced global recognition was to persuade Washington to resume the regular program of US-Egypt strategic discussions. This series of dialogues was established under the Clinton administration in 1998 and held periodically since then, apart from a gap from 2009-2015 starting with the Obama administration.
Sisi pulled it off. On November 8, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken participated in the opening session of the revived US-Egypt dialogue. Afterward, Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, declared that the talks had boosted relations between the two countries and been a great success….
The Bidenites were finally persuaded this year to renew the bilateral talks with Egypt that had been cancelled from 2009 to 2015, and held only intermittently since then. It was finally understood that Al-Sisi was in power to stay. And there seems now to be the recognition among the Bidenites that the Muslim Brotherhood was indeed a real threat to Egypt’s stability, and that Al-Sisi deserves credit for managing to keep the MB under control. In fact, President Al-Sisi has done a great deal for Egypt. His troops are engaged in fighting in the Sinai against regrouped jihadists, members of both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. He is seen by the Copts as their protector against the fanatical Muslims of the Brotherhood. He is supported by secular Muslims in Egypt who rightly regard him as their ally. He has established close security ties with Israel, including the sharing of intelligence and the deploying of troops against common enemies — Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Brotherhood — in the northern Sinai. As a sign of Israel’s trust in Al-Sisi, Jerusalem has given permission for Egyptian troops to move right up to the Sinai-Gaza frontier in their fight against Jihadists, overriding the clause in the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty that had demilitarized the northern Sinai. And Egypt, similarly, has given the Israelis permission to use the Sinai airspace, in another agreed-upon overriding of the “demilitarization” clause.
Al-Sisi’s release of his “National Strategy for Human Rights” was the first such document issued by the government of Egypt. He has already carried out its most important recommendation, which was to lift the state of emergency that had been imposed in 2017 after major bombings of Coptic churches in Tanta and Alexandria by members of the Islamic State. By now he feels he has the Islamic State on the run in the Sinai, and can afford to lift the state of emergency. And in so doing, Al-Sisi wins favor in Washington.
The groundwork for Sisi’s re-engagement with Washington had been laid months before. In September he traveled to Sharm e-Sheikh to meet with Israel’s newly elected prime minister, Naftali Bennett. Afterward Bennett said the two leaders had “laid the foundation for deep ties moving forward.” He told reporters that the talks covered diplomacy, security and the economy, including aspirations to expand trade and tourism….
Al-Sisi’s overture to Israel in meeting with Prime Minister Bennett was valuable for Egypt in two ways. First, it testified to a budding cooperation that would extend far beyond the realm of collaboration on security in the Sinai, to the economic benefits Egypt can reap from closer ties with the Jewish state. In essence, without formally joining the Abraham Accords, Egypt showed it wanted to normalize ties with the Jewish state, that will begin with an increase in trade and tourism. Second, it showed the Americans that Egypt could be a real “partner for peace” with Israel, for the meeting between Al-Sisi and Bennett took place in September, scarcely four months after the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza, a war which ended thanks to Egypt brokering a ceasefire. And Egypt has been acting as a go-between Hamas and Jerusalem ever since, trying to arrange a prisoner swap between the two. The Egyptians have been tough on Hamas during these negotiations, which is not surprising, since Hamas is the Gazan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the Al-Sisi regime’s mortal enemy.
The 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel stipulated that agreed security arrangements were to be established, and that, upon the request of either of the parties, the security arrangements could be modified.
In the 1979 Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt, both sides committed themselves to.”demilitarization” of the northern Sinai, which could be waived upon the agreement of both parties. In the recent past, Egypt has agreed to allow the Israeli military planes to overfly the Sinai to keep track of jihadists. Now, in early November, it was Israel’s turn to allow the Egyptian military to move their forces right up to Rafah, on the Gaza-Sinai frontier. These waivers of the “demilitarization”agreement, by both sides, testify to the closeness of their collaboration against the Jihadists in the Sinai.
More broadly, US disengagement from the Middle East under Biden has spurred Sisi into seeking meaningful relationships with China and Russia. Sisi has given both world powers lucrative contracts. China, by way of the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), is building Egypt’s new administrative capital city, 45 km. east of Cairo, on a vast plot of desert equal to the size of Singapore.
In August, Egyptian delegations visited nuclear power plants in Russia to finalize a deal connected with the construction by Russian nuclear power producer Rosatom of Egypt’s first nuclear reactor at El-Dabaa.
Al-Sisi knows that the Bidenites are disengaging from the Middle East, having pulled out entirely from Afghanistan, and leaving only a handful of troops still in Iraq, as they seek to focus their attention and military resources on the growing Chinese threat. As a consequence, Al-Sisi has decided to be on the safe side and win favor with the other two superpowers by giving them both contracts. He’s entrusted China with the task of building Egypt’s new administrative capital city – “New Cairo” — which is meant to relieve the congestion in “old” Cairo. It is planned that the transfer of parliament, presidential palaces, government ministries, and foreign embassies will be completed between 2020 and 2022, at a cost of USD 45 billion dollars. That’s a lot of good will that Al-Sisi has bought for Egypt in China.
Egypt has also just made a deal with a Russian firm, Rosatom, to build Egypt’s first nuclear power plant. It’s not quite in the same league as the Chinese-built city, but is still a major project; the Russians will be understandably grateful, having been chosen for such a project, given that Al-Sisi could have chosen others — the U.S., the U.K., Germany and, especially, France — to build the reactor.
One more recognition– this a personal one – may come to Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi himself, if the Hamas-Israel ceasefire he was instrumental in crafting this past May continues to hold. It’s not beyond the range of plausibility that next year he may be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. That would madden the Muslim Brotherhood, please the Copts, delight the Israelis, and make Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh very angry. Sounds good to me.
mortimer says
An Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is needed in Afghastlistan. The Afghan people are suffering. Muslim countries should put the Taliban out of business. The Taliban are an embarrassment to modern Muslims, just as the Muslim Brotherhood was in Egypt.
We cannot have a stable world when TERRORIST organizations run whole countries. NATO will go back to Afghanistan in the next 2 or 3 years to evict the Taliban again. Next time, they should finish the Taliban off so they will never come back and Pakistan had better get on board as well.
ElderlyZionist says
Here is another optimistic essay. I admire President al-Sissi, and I hope every one of Mr. Fitzgerald’s predictions comes true. But I question whether the Obama-Biden administration is truly reconciled to the defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood and the ascendance of the Egyptian nationalist regime, and I very much doubt whether Biden’s handlers really intend to confront the PRC.
I look for more treachery, and more of the engineered decline of the West.
Infidel says
I’m actually less impressed by el-Sisi, who has let the persecution of Copts go unchecked, and who has most recently signed an agreement w/ Erdogan after Biden became president. I tend to think that MbS right across the Red Sea is more likely to bring long term reforms, depending on how long he lasts. I think that right now, the reforms are minimal, since the actual de-jure king – King Salman – does not share a lot of his views, but once MbS ascends the throne, a lot more changes are likely to come
As for Obama, let’s hope that the turmoil in his government pre-occupies everyone so that minimal damage can be done on this front. It’s already bad enough w/ the lifting of the travel ban and the import of thousands of unvetted Afghans into this country
Rafael says
We need a leader like al-Sisi in Turkey instead of that bigoted, brainless er-DOGgie who is a terrorist sponsor and made the name of Turkey evil in the international area.
Dhimmi says
The real islam will still come so it is better that west sees as soon as possible, Sisi or the Muslim Brotherhood is still the same from the western perspective