In the last Republican debate, Ted Cruz excoriated President Obama for acting as a supposed “apologist” for radical Islam, claiming, “We need a president that shows the courage that Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi did—a Muslim—when he called out the radical Islamic terrorists who are threatening the world.” Granted, Sen. Cruz did not specifically express admiration for Sisi’s crackdown on Islamists (among others), but the Egyptian strongman’s actions have generally won favor with leaders of all stripes in both Israel and the United States; indeed support for Sisi might be one of the few things that Obama and Netanyahu can agree on.
Amid all these hosannas for the increasingly repressive Sisi regime, only a few lonely, principled voices such as the editorialists of the Washington Post have been pointing out the obvious: namely that excessive crackdowns often bring an equally violent reaction. At least that’s the case when the state responsible for repression is as ramshackle and corrupt as the one in Egypt (or, for that matter, in Syria or Iraq). It’s a different matter when the repression is being carried out by Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Maoist China, or Stalinist North Korea. But Egypt manages to borrow some of the noxious features of those states without matching them in sheer police-state efficiency.
The result is not peace and quiet but, rather, a growing insurgency that is being spearheaded by an Egyptian branch of the Islamic State that is attracting as supporters firebrands who consider the Muslim Brotherhood, which continues to eschew violence, to be too tame. As the New York Times reports [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/21/world/middleeast/cairo-car-bomb-isis.html?ref=world&_r=0], Cairo increasingly feels like a city under siege: “A long series of bombings have scared away investors, dashed hopes for a recovery of the tourist industry and reinforced a government crackdown on almost any dissent in the name of battling terrorism.”
This should surprise no one: With legal avenues to redress grievances increasingly closed off, Islamists will continue to turn to violence to make their voices heard. And no application of violence, short of genocide, is likely to end this growing insurgency. What is necessary is for Sisi to reach a political accommodation with more moderate Islamists and, just as importantly, with the more liberal leaders of the Egyptian opposition who are being targeted by the army just as much as the Islamists are. If the Sisi regime continues on the present path we know where that will lead: Al Qaeda, after all, was born out of a previous round of repression aimed at Islamists in Egypt.
Ironically, considering Ted Cruz’s criticism of Obama, the president has actually endorsed Sisi’s crackdown. As the Washington Post notes [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-kerry-should-tell-it-like-it-is-in-egypt/2015/07/30/888be578-354e-11e5-adf6-7227f3b7b338_story.html], “After weakly attempting to punish the Sissi regime with steps such as withholding the delivery of military helicopters, the Obama administration fell in behind it this year, using its authority to waive congressional restrictions on more than $1 billion in annual U.S. aid.”
Instead of simply giving Sisi a blank check, Obama would be well advised to emulate the example of the Reagan administration that pressured autocratic allies in countries such as Taiwan, the Philippines, and South Korea to end their oppression and gradually make way for democracy. Even if Egypt isn’t yet ready for rule at the ballot box, it needs, at the very least, a gentler and more inclusive brand of autocracy rather than the ham-handed oppression it is seeing today.
