by Sannat Odhrani
According to Al Jazeera, over 37 million Egyptians today “have no memory of the Arab Spring,” suggesting that what was once considered a socio-political turning point in Middle East-North African history is now fading into relative obscurity. While, over a decade later, Egypt’s trajectory turns once again to authoritarian governance, the ramifications of the ongoing Persian Gulf conflict risk setting similar conditions to those that inspired so many of its people to take to the streets to demand change all those years ago.
On December 17, 2010, the self immolation of Tunisian vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi in protest against police harassment sparked a mass insurrection that would eventually spread across North Africa and the Middle East. In what became known as the Arab Spring, largely peaceful, youth-led anti-government movements would see the ousting of several Arab dictators and the the collapse of states such as Libya, Syria, and Yemen into outright civil war.
On January 25th, 2011, following in the footsteps of Tunisia, Egyptian protesters took to the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities. This launched an 18-day long movement, demanding a series of changes to the country’s socio-economic and political landscape, including economic and political reform which culminated in the then-President Hosni Mubarak resigning on February 11th.
In 2012, the state held its first ‘true’ elections, which saw Mohammed Morsi – a member of the highly controversial Muslim Brotherhood – assume the presidency. Soon enough, Egypt’s attempt at establishing democracy would prove to be short-lived, with political polarisation, and faltering governance sewing the seeds of a 2013 a military coup, which saw Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seize power and the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood from the Egyptian political sphere. Following widely criticised ‘sham elections’ in 2018, MPs passed a motion permitting El-Sisi to retain power as late as 2030. In 2026, El-Sisi remains in office, with the trend of democratic backsliding suggesting he may do so far longer, signalling the end of Egypt’s dabble with democracy.
Since the El-Sisi regime came to power, the detention or imprisonment of activists, intellectuals, and journalists – as well as other systematic human rights abuses – remain commonplace, drawing widespread condemnation from international human rights organisations. With the state’s short-lived experiment with press and intellectual freedom largely dashed by government crackdowns, the hopes of many Egyptians that democratic civil society would flourish following the revolution have been mostly dashed.
Today, the country is facing a host of pressures including economic stagnation, and political repression, which have been attributed to both El-Sisi’s leadership and the role of the military in government. A failure to effectively develop Egypt’s economy and drag it out of stagnation has also been driven by poor socio-political infrastructure, with no cohesive social security system to address rapid population growth and large-scale unemployment. Analysts from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center suggest that without democratisation, the nation stands to suffer greatly in its development efforts.
On the international stage, Egypt finds itself in a difficult position in light of the expanding Israeli-US war on Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. With El-Sisi having developed close ties with Donald Trump and his country’s economic and military reliance on the USA, the President is careful not to outwardly condemn US regional policy. Cairo has simultaneously distanced itself from Tel Aviv, following a deterioration in Egyptian-Israeli relations over recent years. All the while, relations with Tehran remain fraught as ever with the widening of regional conflict, representing the latest in decades of setbacks to Egyptian-Iranian normalisation and a reinforcement of support for its Gulf allies, with which Cairo enjoys close diplomatic relations and economic ties.
Further, as ongoing US-Israeli and Iranian aggression across the Middle East strains the wider global economy, it poses a particularly acute threat to Egypt’s economic and security situation. With the state already losing critical revenue from Houthi attacks on trade, carriers and shipping in the Red Sea. Heavily reliant on oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, Egypt recently introduced a series of ‘exceptional measures’ in attempt to curb energy supply shocks, including a 9PM curfew for retail and hospitality premises, the shutting off of street lights, and scores of non-essential workers being instructed to partially work from home. According to Egypt’s Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, the cost of the country’s natural gas imports has more than tripled since the outbreak of the war, while foreign investors scramble to divest from its debt market, driving down the value of the Egyptian pound.
With no end to the ongoing Gulf crisis in sight, discontent with the El-Sisi government appears set to grow. While the prospect of tensions boiling over to 2011-like levels is currently unlikely, it is clear that Cairo must find viable means of stabilising its economy to avoid further delegitimising an already unpopular regime, before such conditions are fostered.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own, and may not reflect the opinions of The St Andrews Economist
Image Credit: Muhammad Ghafari