Egypt and the West: a smarter authoritarian approach in Cairo
After a decade of domestic and regional unrest, Egypt is looking for a new way to gain internal stability through carefully balanced international recognition, especially from the US and the European Union, which have been among Egypt’s most critical partners in recent years. In fact, a decade after the Arab Spring, a military-dominated autocracy led by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has triggered a counter-revolution with limited transformations, symbolic acts of economic liberalization and a deep securitization of society in order to present Egypt as a new state with a traditional and historical political role: a country constantly in search of stability but eager to adapt the typical national narrative based on securitization and a rejection of paternalistic practices by Western partners and allies.
From this perspective, the instrumental use of propaganda and the permeation of the security establishment in the civil dimension, as well as the narrative of being an indispensable actor in macro-regional dynamics, are the main drivers to understand Egypt’s current domestic and foreign policy moves. In other words, Egypt is trying to build a new image inside and abroad, proposing itself as a natural Western partner.
This process of rebuilding a country’s public image involves various dimensions, starting with those of domestic policy. In fact, during the last decade, domestic politics in Egypt have been characterized by an anti-Islamist political agenda aimed at the removal or ban of all the groups, parties and civil forces ideologically close to the Muslim Brotherhood from political, social and economic life in the country. To legitimize its ideological and political battles in the country, the regime relied on a repressive and violent campaign, and, more in general, tried to promote a political agenda aimed at boosting the legitimacy of the central authority, excluding all political and social forces able to question the state of play in the Egyptian government and among the élites. It is not a coincidence that in the country today the government crushes every possible sign of unrest or turmoil, strangling any form of dissent and repositioning the military autocracy at the core of state institutions and civic and political life.
Over time, as stated by several international NGOs (like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International), Egypt has become one of the world’s top jailers of journalists and human rights defenders (such as Patrick George Zaki and Alaa Abdel Fattah), many with the instrumental charge of terrorism (estimated at 65,000 by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information in 2020).
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Moreover, the military has penetrated the civil dimension of the state and emerged from this process as the dominant force. In light of this, military authorities and the President rebuilt an Orwellian state control of the media, in which they rewrote the Constitution to extend presidential powers, reducing any space of independence for civil society and guaranteeing the overwhelming role of the military, also as an economic player, in the state. This process, thus, has had a dual structural dimension in Egypt, aimed at accumulating the state’s power and consolidating this influence within politics more broadly.
Contextually to the domestic dimension, also in its regional and international agenda, Egypt tried to adapt its national determinants with a peculiar approach in foreign policy. In fact, Cairo adopted a security approach to explain its foreign policy in order to protect its national interests abroad and to expand its regional leverage and soft power in the MENA region as a whole. From an Egyptian perspective, a very good example is the launch of the “Arab Intelligence Forum” in November 2021, an informal mechanism ideologically thought and supported by President Al-Sisi not only to enhance the joint Arab cooperation in the areas of security and information, but also to justify and reinforce its national security policies on terrorism and preventing radical violent extremism.
In this sense, Egypt’s foreign policy, even under Al-Sisi, has been perfectly in line with that of its predecessors, adopting a careful strategy to maintain the existing balance domestically and to contain any threat to regional order. This approach led the country to face several complex relations with its traditional Western partners and allies. The latter point is crucial to understanding the similar vision of Al-Sisi and the Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates), who, ideologically, share a political project to combat political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which are perceived as an existential threat, and to counteract Turkey and Qatar, proponents of political Islamist activism.
However, especially, during the last decade, Egypt’s relationship with Western partners (and above all with European countries) was marked by a mutual misunderstanding: for its part, Cairo was frustrated about paternalistic Western demands for change – especially in the defense of human and civil rights, while Westerners were discouraged by the Egyptian government’s disinterest in following European requests. A divergence that increased over time, also due to US unwillingness of the US – Egypt’s main Western ally – under former US President Donald Trump, to exert leverage on Egypt (as well as on other MENA autocracies) on human rights, and consequently by the Egyptian perception of having nothing to lose on these issues.
The establishment of a new administration in the United States, with President Joe Biden (apparently) more sensitive to human rights issues, and an Egyptian interest not to be isolated in regional affairs, especially in the energy disputes with Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean, convinced Cairo to opportunistically evaluate a new approach on some matters. But at the basis of this “evolution” there is in particular the Egyptian opportunity to improve its international reputation, strictly linked to the repression of internal dissent.
Two factors also contributed to this “game change”: the possible blocking of investments and international aid and a new geopolitical role of the country in the southern European neighborhood. If regional stabilization and strong economic cooperation remain of primary importance to Egypt and Europe, it is equally undeniable that the Cairo regime cannot indelibly suffer a bad reputation in the international community, nor be treated as a pariah state – a new condition partially due to the American and European decisions to attach strict conditions to millions in military and economic funding for Egypt. In other words, this aid can be conditional if there is no progress on human rights issues. A situation recently emerged when the Biden administration continued to insist that Egypt improve certain aspects of its human rights record before releasing part of $1.3 billion of US annual assistance to Egypt – more or less $170 million of the $300 million in military funding.
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Also in this perspective, Cairo has become somewhat more open to discussing matters such as human rights, proposing a peculiar “National Strategy for Human Rights”. The policy will run until 2026 and address four areas: civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; rights of women, children, persons with disabilities, youth and the elderly; and education and capacity-building in the field of human rights. As affirmed by Alaa Roushdy, Egyptian Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for Human Rights, the document was developed over several years and was not released in response to concerns of the United States and other foreign powers. But analyzing this document in depth it turns out that the 78-page strategy does not explicitly address in what way some of these problems can be realistically solved.
Beyond its symbolic value and the real degree of bringing concrete benefits to human and civil rights issues, this document meets the need to soften the repressive image of Egypt in the West. Conversely, this strategy could recognize the Cairo government’s modus operandi without changing its political and functional approach. Even though this narrative has been successful in justifying the use of mass repression, it has proven difficult to control in the long term.
Nowadays, indeed, the internal social condition in Egypt is less conflictual and polarized than in the past – but not less dangerous – and the regime has promoted a new step in which the reduction in levels of repression could be possible with a gradual and partial restructuring of the political system. This does not mean a structural change in the Egyptian securitarian approach, rather an attempt to promote a new ideological soft narrative mainly aimed to legitimize the security establishment. At the same, the use of a national strategy on human rights could be useful to deflecting external accusations of a dictatorial approach in the domestic dimension.
Western governments (and Europeans especially) might approve of an Egyptian change of course due to the renewed indispensable role of the country in the several crises in the Mediterranean and the Levant.
In fact, in exchange for Cairo’s less harsh approach on human rights, European countries could accept, with ambiguity but without too much criticism, Egypt’s fundamental help with regional issues, especially in managing relations between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip or in the maritime disputes between Greece and Turkey, or to persuade the competing powers in Libya and Syria to promote a widespread de-escalation; no less significant could be the Egyptian role in managing crises with illegal migration in the Central Mediterranean and in preventing jihadist attack in their lands.
In addition, other concomitant factors could play a key role in Egyptian re-engagement in Western strategies, like the convergence of interests among Gulf monarchies and Israel in the MENA region, as well as cooperation with important industrial sectors (in particular arms and the energy industry) in Western Europe and the United States.
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Finally, without concrete and plausible alternatives on the horizon, nobody in Brussels or Washington could expect real steps in the Egyptian human rights strategy, not least because nobody is interested in seeing Egypt once again plunge into the whirlwind of violence of the recent past (like in 2011-2014). Paradoxically Egypt could benefit most from this cleaned-up image because it can maintain unchanged the main structure of its hard security policies, both within and outside the country.
In conclusion, Egypt’s domestic human rights strategy is a smokescreen that allows the country to engage without too many limits, indirectly obtaining from its Western partners more assurances than limitations.
