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Sisi 2014!

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By experts and staff

Published
  • Steven A. CookCFR Expert
    Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies

This article was originally published here on ForeignPolicy.com on Wednesday, March 26, 2014.

For many observers, Sisi’s rise to power represents a dangerous return to the status quo ante of Egyptian politics. Time and again over the last eight months, for example, the Washington Post’s editorial page has hammered away at the army chief for the government’s human rights abuses and denial of democratic freedoms. The generals, according to the folks on 15th St., are leading Egypt in reverse -- essentially re-establishing the old political order at the expense of the high ideals of the 2011 uprising.

It was just three years ago that Hosni Mubarak fell, but reams have already been written about Egypt’s lost revolution. These analyses are accurate -- Egypt is not going to be a democracy any time soon. However, Cairo is also not the barren political environment that critics imagine, in which autocrats enforce their rule solely with tear gas and the truncheons.

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