Egypt: One Decade After the Revolution

Feb 04, 2021 10:11 am

Naeem Ashraf Mushtaha

After three decades of the late President Husni Mubarak’s rule, the Egyptian people revolted against the regime. The people revolted in response to being deprived from their freedoms, to being prevented from covering the events taking place in Egypt, and to the high rates of unemployment (which reached 29% according to the International Labor Organization through the UN Development Program).  

The Egyptian youth were filled with disappointment and struggled to rid themselves of such oppression. The revolution successfully dethroned the Egyptian President as his Vice President Omar Suleiman declared President Mubarak’s resignation in February, 2011. The transitional council became in charge until Dr. Mohammed Morsi, representative of the Freedom and Justice Party, won the elections and became president.

In order to prove that the Islamists could not rule, in 2012 some internal and external powers followed several methods to push the unemployment rate. It reached 35%. However, in 2018 the rate rose to 38%.

One of the methods those powers had used was inventing a fuel crisis among the Egyptian people. The protestors later started demonstrating against rising prices and power outages. 5821 demonstrations (485 averagely per-month) and 7709 protests (557 averagely per-month) were carried out which led to clashes between the protesters and security forces.  The people were called out to demonstrate in millions 24 times (i.e. twice a month). The protesters did not march in millions, however. Sometimes the number reached a few thousands according to the statistics by Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations.

The Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi suppressed all the demonstrations in order to establish an official law within the State institutions that dictates arresting unpermitted protesters who demonstrated against the government’s policy. The number of the detained opposing the Egyptian military-coup reached 40,000 in addition to others who were eliminated. According to the index of "Freedom House" with ratings for indicators such as electoral process, political pluralism, and freedom of expression and belief; the rate of the freedom of expression and belief, and political pluralism was 35% in 2011, 41% in 2021, and 21% in 2019. 

In 2011, 2 journalists were in detention according to the Committee to Protect Journalists in the Middle East and North Africa. The elected Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, nevertheless, made a paradigm shift in ending detention of journalists to the extent that no journalists were in prison in 2012. However, 29 journalists were in jail in 2019 which was quite an alarming number.

During the coup in Egypt, the US dollar to the Egyptian pound reached 7.7 pounds in the black market. The official rate, however, was 7.05 pounds. In 2016, the Egyptian pound reached 8.8 to US dollar, but in the black market it reached 10.7 pounds.

During Morsi's rule, the rates of wheat plantation were 3.5 million acres, but they declined to 2.5 million acres during El-Sisi's in 2016. In 2017, the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi announced the launch of the comprehensive process in the Egyptian city of Rafah, near the Gaza Strip from the south, as a  preliminary action to cutting off military supplies to the Palestinian armed organizations in the Gaza Strip; resulting in weakening the Egyptian economy and destroying agricultural wealth.

Egypt's Policy towards Palestine

In 2021, the Egyptian policy towards the Palestinian issue will not change much. The Egyptian intelligence services will continue to offer mediation between the Palestinian people and the occupation in order to prevent a massive military confrontation. However, the Egyptian army will continue establishing a belt along the Egyptian Rafah city to prevent the military supplies and reliefs from entering the Gaza Strip.

In addition, the Egyptian intelligence will act to unify the Fatah movement through fixing the relations between Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammad Dahlan in order to create real competition in the Palestinian elections. The Egyptian government has refused to open the Rafah Crossing should the epidemiological situation in Gaza Strip continue.

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