In Egypt it can not end well for anyone

During the Arab film festival Cinma Arabe this year I unfortunately was only
able to see the documentary about Gamal Abdel Nasser, the first part of the
trilogy Egypt's Modern Pharaohs (2015) from Jihan el-Tahri, but it was very
worth it. Not only because of the images of the triumphant rise and merciless
fall of Nasser, including the move of The Great Man of Unboundness as a
beggar to Moscow. There, just before his death in 1970, he had to subject to
Soviet-dictates in return for support against Israel. The film was especially
worth it because it makes so clear how the army under Nasser could get such
a grip on the interior economy that, only for defending its won and stolen
interests, it will ALWAYS have to stay in power.
It was because of this the Egyptian uprising in 2011 didn't become a
revolution but a military coup (which nevertheless, I remember it well, was
hailed wide and broad as a much promising revolution). The army could not
allow that retired Air Marshal Mubarak was succeeded by a civil regime. And
therefore, when elections could not be stopped anymore, the elected Muslim
Brotherhood-president Morsi was hindered as much as possible and within a
year set aside by the army. Since then retired Field Marshal Sisi guards the
lot.
Sisi is no Nasser. Nasser was the most important Arab leader of his era.
Despite all his errors he was a man with an idea. Sisi was hailed massively in
2013 as the new Nasser he presented himself - do you remember that
probably fake photo of little Sisi with Nasser? - but in comparison with the
real deal he's a nobody.

It's bizarre that the West still sees the regime as a stabilizing factor.

These last months Sisi rolled from one crisis into the next, and that's not bad
luck but incompetence. The Russian Metrojet-plane exploded on 31st of
October with all its 224 people on board because the safety measures on
airfields were substandard. The Italian student Giulio Regeni was tortured and
murdered because Sisi doesn't have the security agencies under control.
The uprise in the Sinai won't go away and the economy doesn't want to
recover. The handover of two isles to Saudi Arabia has even been explained
by Sisi's own furious supporters as what it is: hocking Egyptian land for Saudi
money. Whoever protests ends up in jail, next to the tens of thousands of
Muslim Brotherhood-members, secular activists, journalists etc. etc. that have

already been put away.

Sisi regards his crises as the fruit of foreign conspiracies and plots by
devils inside the country. Not his fault.
it's bizarre that the West, including the Netherlands, still sees Sisi's regime
as a stabilizing factor within the Middle East. The only explanation that I can
think of is that the region is even more unstable.
But I predict this: this will not end well. Not for the West, not for Egypt, not for
the army.