Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s autocracy is no way forward for Egypt

Today’s visit to Britain of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the president of Egypt, was mired in controversy before it began, and rightly so. After the fulsome reception of President Xi Jinping of China on his recent state visit, it might seem that, in its dealings with authoritarian states, David Cameron’s government prioritises commercial ties to the exclusion of almost everything else. In the case of the Egyptian leader, that would be particularly short-sighted.

The UK, like all nations, has interests, and it is right to pursue them, whether with the Middle Kingdom or in the Middle East. With Egypt, however, there is a judgment to be made about whether encouraging authoritarian rule risks taking the country so far backwards that it risks joining the pyre of failing states in the region.

In 2013, Mr Sisi, then Egypt’s army chief, overthrew the elected Islamist government of President Mohamed Morsi in a popularly backed coup. Since then he has steered his country into an old confrontation. The army is entrenched on one side, increasingly radicalised Islamists are on the other, and there is little space left in between. If Egypt cannot chart a way forward between extremism and autocracy its prospects are bleak. They will not be made brighter by a west retreating into its comfort zone of backing Arab autocrats.

President Sisi’s coup came after mass protests against President Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood won a string of elections following the fall of the Mubarak regime in 2011. During its year in power, the Brotherhood abused its thin mandate to appropriate a revolution it was hesitant to join, and instead of governing it attempted to colonise Egypt’s weak institutions.

Mr Sisi’s autocratic alternative, however, is merely an extension of the military rule that has disfigured Egypt since 1952. By monopolising power and patriotism, the Sisi system is driving mainstream Islamism towards jihadi extremism — the poison to which he claims to be the antidote.

After the coup, security forces massacred about 1,000 Islamist activists at two protest camps in Cairo, banned the Brotherhood as a terrorist group and jailed an estimated 40,000 people. President Sisi has given greater licence to military tribunals than at any time since 1952; civil courts hand out multiple death sentences without due process, and torture of detainees is widespread. He has restored the security state, uniformed and unreformed, constitutionally embedded the power of the army, ringfenced its privileges and greatly expanded its business empire — helped by billions of dollars in aid from the Gulf.

The army is the only institution left in Egypt, and it seems to have little sense of the national institution-building needed to re-energise the country and the economy. This is re-creating the conditions that led to the upheavals of 2011. President Sisi is a reversion to the status quo ante, when Arab autocrats ostensibly served as a bulwark against Islamist extremism and provided a business environment congenial to foreign investors. In fact, they created assembly lines for the manufacture of jihadis, even as they invited select foreigners to widen their circle of crony capitalist insiders.

Britain is a major foreign investor in Egypt, above all in energy. Trade and investment are good for the UK and vital for Egypt, and should be mutually beneficial. But the economy will not flourish in Egypt, or anywhere else in the Middle East, without open politics and a reinvigorated society. Mr Cameron should underline that message when he greets the Egyptian leader in Downing Street.