Meet the New Egypt, Same as Old Egypt, Four Years After Uprising

[Purveyor]

By Tarek El-Tablawy Jan 20, 2015 7:01 PM ET

The blast walls surrounding the state security headquarters in Cairo bear none of the graffiti that covers the rest of the city, yet on it Salama Mohamed sees the latest chapter in the story of Egypt.

The imposing, fortress-like compound under former President Hosni Mubarak was home to the most feared of security services, its plain-clothed officers working on extracting confessions. Mohamed knew them well. His father, a mechanic, was picked up for undisclosed reasons years earlier. He was released two weeks later, a shadow of his former self.

“He came out from there broken,” said the 28-year-old office clerk, after moving across the street from the headquarters. “Now look at them. They hide behind the walls and then come back out even meaner than they were before.”

As Egypt marks the fourth anniversary of the January 2011 uprising that pushed Mubarak from power, for people like Mohamed the revolution has gone back to where it started.

After at least 900 died in clashes with security forces in 2011, the country of 80 million people is torn between Islamists and secularists. A court last week overturned Mubarak’s three-year prison sentence on corruption charges and ordered a retrial, potentially paving the way for his release.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-20/meet-the-new-egypt-same-as-old-egypt-four-years-after-uprising.html

[isobar]

1. It is a little less "mubaraky".

[leveymg]

2. Perpetual civil and religious wars was the inevitable result of regime change across MENA

This outcome -- along with regionalization and globalization of Sunni-Shi'ia conflict -- was not only foreseeable in 2011, it was a cold calculation by some in Washington, Paris and London. It was what some saw as an acceptable cost of regime change - collateral damage. Democracy was never the point. When Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood came out the winners, the Egyptian Army was brought back into power.

This is Clinton's enduring legacy as SoS, as well as Petraeus' at CIA.

The Paris massacres were mere gusts of an inevitable blowback.