Any hope for an exit from the current Middle East chaos lies with the efforts of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi to stabilize its politics and rebuild the Egyptian economy, World Tribune said on its website.
With its 90 million people and traditional role as the intellectual leader of the Sunni Arab world, Sisi’s efforts to move out of the collapse of four years ago is critical not only for his own country but for the region as a whole.
There is general acknowledgement in the area of Egypt’s overwhelming importance and leadership – except in the pro-Iranian elements dominant in Damascus, Lebanon-Hizbullah, Gaza-Hamas, and Yemen-Houthi, and increasingly in Baghdad.
Egypt’s importance brought thirty country leaders, dozens of financial companies — more than 1,000 potential investors — including non-Arab states for his conference at Sharm el-Sheikh in mid-March.
The Gulf states alone pledged $30 billion in loans and investments. That’s in addition to larger earlier Gulf emergency loans to Cairo after Sisi’s takeover.
Sisi has laid out an ambitious economic agenda: he has launched a second, wider Suez Canal, proposes to build a new capital linking Cairo to Suez, and invites a massive inflow of foreign investment.
He has declared war on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic radicals, imprisoning thousands of activists of the previous regime.
He proposes to lead a strengthened Arab alliance against Daesh, now controlling large sections of Iraq and Syria. When the terrorists murdered Egyptians in Libya, he immediately struck with air raids and is pushing his Arab allies and the Western powers to come down militarily on the Libyan terrorists.
Perhaps his most important contribution to the current scene, however, has been his courageous attempt to address the traditional Muslim origins of the current outbreak of terrorism. He went to al-Azhar University, the fountainhead of Sunni theology, to personally call on the Muslim clergy there for a reformation of Islamic thought. He said that without such a revision of traditional Muslim thought, the basis of the present terrorism will not be eradicated.
He has broken with Hamas in neighboring Gaza because of its terrorist activities and its flirtation with Tehran.
Although the US was officially represented by Sec. of State John Kerry along with American firms at the investment conference, the Obama Administration still flirts with remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood. The cutoff of $1.3 annual American military aid — especially delivery of F16s needed in the Sinai campaign — has sent Sisi searching for other suppliers, including a recent initialization of a French fighters deal and negotiations with the Russians.
Sisi’s relations with the Israelis remain formally cool. The Israelis, despite their request, were denied entry to the investment conference. But there are reports of frequent personal contacts between leaders of both countries. (MENA)