Egypt: farewell democracy, hello President Sisi

Egypt voted for Morsi and his Islamic rule: but the West has happily watched the military retake control

A portrait of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi behind two Egyptian girls
(Image credit: MAHMUD KHALED/AFP/Getty Images)

SO, the ‘Arab Spring’, a phrase as misleading as ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’, and just as uncritically adopted by Western policy-makers, is grinding to a grisly halt just about everywhere.

Libya is a mess. In Syria, those who fought against President Assad have just surrendered Aleppo to government forces. And, perhaps most disappointing of all to the fantasists in the Foreign Office, Egypt has come full circle: the Arab Spring there has turned out to be merely a political Groundhog Day, exchanging one brutal military dictatorship for another. In elections to be held at the end of May, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will be elected president by those who can be bothered to vote.

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is a former Welsh Guards lieutenant colonel and intelligence analyst for the British government's Joint Intelligence Committee. His book, 7-7: What Went Wrong, was one of the first to be published after the London bombings in July 2005.