Egyptian President el-Sisi meets the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim, on
the sidelines of COP26 in Glasgow, November 1 2021 [photo credit:
@ThisIsSoliman]
Mandour concluded his analysis on a gloomy but candid note:
Unfortunately, the more likely course is a continuation of the
current policy track, with an expected IMF loan in the works, as well as
increased investments from the Gulf, which might just keep the regime
afloat, but it will not spare the poor and the middle class the mass
social dislocation that is bound to occur.
The IMF loan is likely to come through but observers are wondering
whether Sisi’s plea for a break - “the situation in our country does
not tolerate the applicable standards at this stage” - means that the
usual caveats about governance and human rights will be even more openly
set aside then is usually the case.
True the president has overseen the release of about 100 political prisoners in the past few months but there are tens of thousands
including many thousands held without charge in pre-trial detention.
Prisoners are being detained in awful conditions, often subjected to
torture. It is impossible to know the true numbers but human rights
organisations have estimated that up to 60,000 political prisoners are
trapped in the labyrinthine prison system Sisi has built. Among those held is the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah who yesterday passed the six month mark of his hunger strike and has warned his family that he may die soon.
Although Sisi can expect to avoid the usual ineffectual chidings he
receives from Western leaders about human rights abuses, Tamim will do
well to look for details on how the president plans to use the US$5
billion. Additionally, the Qataris may be eying opportunities to snap up
state-owned enterprises after the Egyptian government in May announced a
major privatisation of “several sectors such as grain (except wheat), port construction, fertilizer manufacturing and water desalination plants.”
Though Egypt formed part of the so-called Quartet that turned on
Qatar in 2017, Cairo was never full-throated in its denunciations during
the three and a half year blockade. (Unlike the Emiratis who took the
lead in attacking Qatar as a terror state.) One has the sense that Sisi
joined the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain only because he couldn’t say no
given the amount of funding the Emiratis and the Saudis have poured
into his regime since he overthrew Mohammed Morsi , the country’s only
democratically elected president, in 2013. Still as Matthew Hedges
pointed out in yesterday’s newsletter, animosity between Abu Dhabi - the
principal instigator of the blockade – and Doha remains, albeit at this
stage as an exercise in information warfare.
What Sisi will need to do is to run a ploy that the Egyptians are
quite skilful at: playing one side off against the other. It was a
gambit that his presidential predecessors played very well in the Cold
War: Washington against Moscow. And later with the demise of the USSR,
Hosni Mubarak was able to use the Jihadist and Muslim Brotherhood threat
to ensure that America and the Gulf remained staunchly behind him.
The stakes for Sisi are high because if tensions between Doha and Abu
Dhabi ratchet up, the Emiratis may bring pressure to bear to force him
to loosen his newly-found and warm embrace of Tamim. That in turn could
cause the kind of dislocation that could plunge Egypt into the
political and social disaster the president is striving to avoid.
However, if he plays it adroitly and he may well do, Sisi could yet
tiptoe through the economic minefield he has managed to lay out for
himself.