After a decade of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in charge, the army still struggles with its core task of securing the country—even as it pursues an ever-expanding campaign to seize control of the economy
The tone and ambience were martial. But the enemy, in this case, was not rebels or invaders: it was the dollar, against which the Egyptian pound has lately lost almost half its value. Mr Sisi was not urging the troops to fight harder but rather exhorting them, and the rest of his 105m subjects, to endure aHis visit on April 1st to the Sinai peninsula, a vast moonscape that is home to less than 1% of Egypt’s population, was also a declaration of victory.
The turning-point came only when local tribes entered the fray. After years of being kidnapped, extorted and killed, they started working alongside the army to secure Sinai. The region is calmer today, though in December militants claimed responsibility for a raid on a checkpoint in the city of Ismailia, their first attack on the Egyptian mainland in three years.
Mr Sisi is fond of invoking the memory of Egypt’s post-revolutionary chaos to justify his autocratic rule. As the economy sinks, though, many of his subjects have soured on him. After investors pulled out capital last year, Egypt has had to devalue its currency by almost 50% since March 2022. The central bank has almost doubled interest rates over the period, including its most recent increase of two percentage points on March 30th.
With real rates deeply negative, investors have little appetite for Egyptian debt. On April 3rd the government sold only 1.1m pounds in bonds at an auction, just 0.04% of the 3bn-pounds-worth on offer: would-be buyers wanted much higher rates than the state was willing to provide.in December. Its commitments to the fund include a pledge to shrink the army’s economic empire, which crowds out private business.
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