"One Year After Morsi, How Goes Egypt?" – Pipes in NRO, #1340

Homepage    |     Articles    |     Blog

You can follow Daniel Pipes and the Middle East Forum on their Facebook and Twitter pages.

Join Daniel Pipes on a fact-finding expedition to Israel's Negev desert. For more information, please click here. Please take a moment to visit and log in at the subscriber area, and submit your city & country location. We will use this information in future to invite you to any events that we organize in your area. Dear Reader: I discussed "The PA-Hamas Merger" on ​Nothing Left, ​​Jewish Australian Radio, ​July 1​, http://www.danielpipes.org/14535/pa-hamas-merger. Yours sincerely, Daniel Pipes _____________________________________________ One Year After Morsi, How Goes Egypt? by Daniel Pipes Jul 3, 2014 Cross-posted from National Review Online, The Corner http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2014/07/one-year-after-morsi-how-goes-egypt Print Send Comment RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. Egyptians took to the streets in numbers never seen anywhere, ever on June 30, 2013 to protest against their Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi. Three days later, Defense Minister Abdul Fattah al-Sisi responded to this outpouring by overthrowing Morsi. How do things look now, exactly a year later? Pretty awful. Looking at the two most urgent arenas, Islam and the economy, almost nothing offers a sign of hope. In the debate over the proper role of Islam in the lives of Egyptians, the dividing lines have only increased, spawning violence, further extremism, and a sense that the country's split between Islamist and anti-Islamist factions will last for many years. Even the dividing lines among Islamists and among anti-Islamists are hardening. The inscrutable Sisi presides over this mess as the new Husni Mubarak, stolid and repressive, with his own views seemingly contradictory and elusive. A street scene from January 2014. Egypt has seen steady violence since the coup d'état a year ago. Egypt's economic decline continues apace. Income is down most everywhere one looks – direct foreign investment, remittances from workers abroad, tourism. Perhaps most symbolic is that until April 2012, the country sold natural gas to Israel; less than two years later, it buys natural gas from Israel (at more than four times the old selling price). Pervasive food and energy subsidies distort the economy, as do the ubiquitous military industries. Red tape remains stifling. The country unsustainably depends on subventions from rich Persian Gulf states to pay for imported foodstuffs. Few tourists go to the beach at Sharm el Sheik or other Egyptian resorts. At the one-year mark, Sisi has done little to inspire confidence. But we who wish Egypt well have little choice but to look to him to grow in his job and tend to the fissures and weaknesses that have so swollen under the military dictatorship that began in 1952. Should Sisi fail, one shudders to contemplate the possibly Syrian-like civil war and economic collapse that could follow. (July 3, 2014) Related Topics:  Egypt This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

To subscribe to this list, go to http://www.danielpipes.org/list_subscribe.php Sign up for related (but non-duplicating) e-mail services:    Middle East Forum (articles and event reports)    Campus Watch (articles, blog posts)    Islamist Watch (articles, blog posts)    Legal Project (articles, blog posts) at http://www.danielpipes.org/list_subscribe.php DanielPipes.org