Egypt's New Strongman, Sisi Knows Best

5/25/2014 Egypts New Strongman, Sisi Knows Best - NYTimes.
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MIDDLE EAST | NYT NOW
Egypts New Strongman, Sisi Knows Best
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK MAY 24, 2014
CAIRO Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former army officer soon to be Egypts
president, promises to remedy Egypts crippling fuel shortage by installing
energy-efficient bulbs in every home socket, even if he has to send a
government employee to screw in each one.
Im not leaving a chance for people to act on their own, Mr. Sisi said
in his first and most extensive television interview. My program will be
mandatory.
Mr. Sisi, 59, disciplined and domineering, is universally expected to
become Egypts head of state after a pro forma election scheduled to begin
Monday. He has already been the nations paramount decision maker
since he ousted Egypts democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi,
last summer.
Now, more than three years after the Arab Spring uprising raised
hopes of a democratic Egypt, his move into the presidential palace will
formally return Egypt to the rule of a paternalistic military strongman in
the tradition of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.
In his long rise to power and a compressed, three-week campaign, Mr.
Sisi has shown that he, too, sees himself as a morally superior father figure
responsible for directing and correcting the nation, with a firm hand if
needed.
You want to be a first-class nation? he asked of Egyptians, in a
leaked recording of an off-the-record conversation with a journalist-
confidant. Will you bear it if I make you walk on your own feet? When I
5/25/2014 Egypts New Strongman, Sisi Knows Best - NYTimes.com
wake you up at 5 in the morning every day? Will you bear cutting back on
food, cutting back on air-conditioners?
People think Im a soft man, he added. Sisi is torture and
suffering.
Like his predecessors, Mr. Sisi has proved adept at guiding Egyptian
history from behind the scenes. He teamed up with President Morsi to take
the job of the former defense minister two summers ago, only to oust the
president himself last summer. As chief of military intelligence, Mr. Sisi
was also the secret architect of the strategy the generals employed during
the 2011 uprisings, siding with the people against President Mubarak
while ensuring the army stayed in control.
All but unknown until 10 months ago, Mr. Sisi was immediately
elevated to the status of national hero by a broad section of the public
and all of the state and private media because he promised order and
stability after three years of upheaval. Now he will preside over the most
populous and, in many ways, most influential Arab state.
He has quickly displayed a certain nostalgia for the Nasserite state
dominance of the economy that set the stage for six decades of stagnation.
He has proposed government projects to force down prices and profits as
well as to irrigate and give away vast areas of desert. And he has expressed
frankly condescending views of the public.
The military, Mr. Sisi told fellow officers in a leaked recording of a
meeting last December, is like the very big brother, the very big father
who has a son who is a bit of a failure and does not understand the facts.
Urging patience with public criticism of the army, Mr. Sisi asked: Does
the father kill the son? Or does he always shelter him and say, Ill be
patient until my son understands?
A Nation Divided
But if he likens Egyptians to his family, he will lead a nation as deeply
divided as it was the day last July when he ousted and imprisoned Mr.
Morsi. Security forces have since killed more than a thousand of Mr.
Morsis Islamist supporters at street protests and jailed tens of thousands
of others. Millions more are alienated from the new government. Extremist
violence has surged.
The economy teeters close to the brink. An inefficient system of energy
subsidies is bankrupting the Treasury, but the low prices have become so
ingrained that any reform could be explosive. In 10 months, the Egyptian
government has burned through $20 billion of financial aid from
supportive Persian Gulf monarchies, and it is counting on billions more for
at least the next several years.
But Mr. Sisi often suggests that the problem is not the fault of the
state but the failings of its people, whether a lack of industry and
enterprise, a moral laxity that has tolerated rampant sexual harassment,
or even the exponential growth in the population.
He recently complained to a group of young doctors that Egypt could
not possibly afford to offer so many people the same level of health care
the defense ministry now provides to families of officers, much less
guarantee education and employment. Why? Because there is nothing!
he shouted, urging the doctors to work harder for less.
For challenges from protests to poverty, his solutions are almost
always expanding the governments power. In an interview, he talked of
unlocking the magic wand of Egyptians self-ability, but by
maximizing the role of the state.
As a speaker, he is a charismatic populist. Mr. Sisi often hails the
Egyptian people as the ultimate authority who drafted him to public
office. He can speak in a style so sentimental that it seems almost
romantic, cooing that the Egyptian people are the light of my eyes,
evoking comparisons to Abdel Halim Hafez, a midcentury crooner of the
Frank Sinatra-style.
Sisi is soft and sweet, as if he is flirting with a beautiful woman, said
Hassan Nafaa, a political scientist at Cairo University.
But in television interviews, he raises his voice to reprimand or silence
his questioners and promises Egyptians a kind of tough love. I will not
sleep and neither will you, Mr. Sisi said in a television interview. We
must work, night and day, without rest.
In addition to vast government projects that would force private
companies to lower both prices and profits, Mr. Sisi has proposed to
distribute trucks for the unemployed to find work hauling vegetables to
new markets. His pledges to irrigate vast acreage of desert for distribution
to small farmers resemble schemes the government discussed or tried
under both President Sadat and President Mubarak.
The state has to be in control here, Mr. Sisi said in the television
interview, insisting the government would plan, choose and execute.
No Room for Dissent
Mr. Sisi says the job of president also includes improving public
morals and presenting God correctly. He has said bluntly that as
president he would take legal action against personal insults. And
although a wave of protests against Mr. Morsi helped Mr. Sisi to power, he
has defended the current governments virtual prohibition of
demonstrations.
The existing dangers to the Egyptian state are much bigger than a
discussion of the protest law, he said. Anybody who thinks otherwise
wants to destroy Egypt.
He has made no public appearances in his campaign for president.
Instead, he has campaigned remotely, via television interviews and video
conferences. (His campaign declined to provide an interview or answer
written questions.) His television commercials say he grew up like a
regular Egyptian, in the narrow streets of one of Cairos oldest
neighborhoods, working in his fathers handicrafts shop.
Mr. Sisis childhood friends and neighbors say the district was then a
prosperous neighborhood of middle-class traders and tradesmen. Mr.
Sisis father, Said el-Sisi, owned a shop in the storied Khan el-Khalili
bazaar and several small workshops, and he was one of the neighborhoods
biggest employers and richest men, they say.
He always dressed in a suit and tie, and all the others wore
djellabas, said Hussein Abdel Naby, a lawyer who grew up downstairs
from Mr. Sisi in a building that his father owned, referring to a traditional
peasant gown worn by Egyptian men. He was the only one who drove a
Mercedes.
Mr. Sisis father was a stern and intimidating figure, several residents
of the neighborhood said, and Abdel Fattahs zeal for exercise stood out
from the other boys. He would hop up and down stairs to develop his
calves, Mr. Abdel Naby said, or alternate reading a schoolbook with
dropping to do sets of push-ups.
He used to punish himself, Mr. Abdel Naby said. After his father
looked askance at Mr. Sisi for the vanity of his necklace and open-collared
shirt, Mr. Sisi shaved his own head. Because I know I did something
wrong, he told his friends, as Mr. Abdel Naby recalled.
Mr. Sisis father married a second wife and had a second family, as
permitted in Islamic teachings, his neighbors and friends said. At the age
of 21 Mr. Sisi became engaged to a cousin who lived across the street. His
wife, mother, sisters and daughter have never worked outside the home,
several friends and neighbors said. (The campaign declined to comment.)
Two of Mr. Sisis sons followed him into branches of Egyptian
intelligence, and his daughter married the son of the new military chief of
staff.
By his 20s, Mr. Sisi was already in the military and dreaming of
greatness. In another leaked recording, he is heard telling his journalist-
confidant, Yassir Risk, that a voice in a dream said to him, We will give
you what we have given to no other.
In another dream, Mr. Sisi discussed premonitions with former
President Anwar Sadat. I said to him: And I know I will be the president
of the republic, Mr. Sisi recalled.
His first chance to shape history came near the end of the Mubarak
era. A few months after Mr. Mubarak promoted him to head of military
intelligence in 2010, General Sisi delivered a prescient report to top
generals. He argued that their own interests, and Egypts, would soon
diverge from the presidents, according to three people briefed on the
discussions by General Sisi and other top military leaders.
General Sisi told the top officers that military intelligence had
concluded that Mr. Mubarak was preparing to anoint his younger son,
Gamal, as Egypts next president, perhaps as soon as the elder Mubaraks
83rd birthday, in May 2011, these people said.
Egyptians would rise up in revolt, Mr. Sisi predicted, and the internal
security forces would not be able to contain it. So Mr. Mubarak would call
for help from the army, General Sisi said, according to all three
independent accounts.
Mr. Sisi told them, Are we ready? How do we respond to this
question?' recalled Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, 90, a former journalist-
historian who was close to President Nasser and is now close to Mr. Sisi.
He was the one who proposed to the army that they should not back
Mubarak.
The anticipated revolt erupted five months earlier than Mr. Sisi
thought, in January 2011, set off by events in Tunisia. But the generals
followed precisely the plan Mr. Sisi laid out, said Mr. Nafaa, the Cairo
University political scientist, who learned about Mr. Sisis report along
with Mr. Risk at a dinner with Mr. Sisi and three other generals after the
officers had finally removed Mr. Mubarak.
The army deployed very smoothly on January 28, 2011, because they
had a plan to go to the streets, and they simply moved it forward, to take
advantage of the revolution, Mr. Nafaa added.
Initially, Mr. Sisi was keen that the Muslim Brotherhood, the
Islamist option, be given a chance, Mr. Heikal recalled.
Counseling Morsi
Photographs with Mr. Morsi show Mr. Sisi in deferential postures,
looking down with his head bowed, or sitting in a slight hunch with his
hands between his thighs. But Mr. Sisi now says that in private he had
vehemently disagreed with Mr. Morsi. Among other points, Mr. Sisi says,
he objected to Mr. Morsis pardon of jailed Islamist militants, whom the
current government blames for the violent backlash against the takeover.
In his television interview, Mr. Sisi said that he had complained
angrily to Mr. Morsi, You are letting people out who will kill us! But the
president kept silent, Mr. Sisi said.
Mr. Sisis account, however, is at odds with the record. It was the top
generals who released almost all of the militants even before Mr. Morsi
held power. According to a tally published by the website Mada Masr, the
generals released more than 850 militants, while Mr. Morsi released only
18.
Mr. Sisi and his supporters also blame Mr. Morsi for allowing Islamist
militants free rein in Sinai. The army always stood ready to help the police
with security, Mr. Sisi said in an interview, as it now has aggressively.
Were responsible for it, Mr. Sisi said, speaking on behalf of the military.
But in a leaked recording of an officers meeting in October 2012, Mr.
Sisi said he had refused that job. I always stress to the senior people, my
mission is not to combat terrorism, Mr. Sisi said, citing very grave
dangers of civilian casualties. You would be creating an enemy against
you and against your country, because there will have been bad blood
between you and him. (In letters smuggled from prison, two top Morsi
aides also said Mr. Sisi had refused the presidents request for military
action in Sinai.)
In private meetings after the takeover, Mr. Sisi often repeated that he
had tried to advise Mr. Morsi about ways to stay in office, or, later, to
persuade him to accept a referendum on his continued rule, other cabinet
members said. But since then Mr. Sisi has increasingly argued that the
essential nature of the Brotherhood whose party won successive free
elections poses a threat to Egypt.
Their ideological structure makes confrontation with us inevitable,
he said in a television interview. The ideological structure of these groups
is that we are not real Muslims and they are real Muslims, he continued.
An ideology like that cannot come back.
Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on May 25, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with
the headline: New Egyptian Strongman, Sisi Knows Best.
2014 The New York Times Company

Egypt's New Strongman, Sisi Knows Best

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