(Center for Global Policy) This week’s Navigator is being issued on January 25 in recognition of the anniversary of the Egyptian revolution that toppled former dictator Hosni Mubarak. Seven years on, CGP Senior Fellow Sahar Aziz – American-Egyptian lawyer and scholar of national security, civil rights and Middle East law – examines the deteriorating political and economic conditions in the world’s largest Arab state and recommends that the United States reconsider its continuing policy of supporting military regimes in the country.
For the first time in Egypt’s history, two former military generals announced plans to run against another former general for the presidency. Meanwhile, the few civilian candidates have all withdrawn their presidential bids. Military factions, not civilian politicians, now dominate Egyptian politics.
Egypt, thus, may be poised for another military coup in the not-too-distant future.
Few observers of Egypt’s historic January 25th revolution could have predicted this would be the nation’s fate seven years later. The year 2011 marked the first time in a generation when People Power came to life in Egypt. Thousands of police could not stop the millions of Egyptians occupying the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and tens of cities across the country demanding social and economic justice.