Donald Trump has made some strange decisions since he took the office of the presidency, but one of the strangest only recently occurred. On April 3rd, Trump hosted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the White House. On the surface that might not seem like such a strange decision, but when Sisi’s record in and before he took office is examined, the decision starts to draw some questions. Sisi became the Egyptian president in 2013 via a coup in which he overthrew the democratically elected former president. He has since killed more than 800 protesters in just one day, and those who dissent against him have been imprisoned in numbers reaching tens of thousands.
When Sisi took control of Egypt in 2013, former President Obama refused to meet with the new dictator due to the nature of his human rights violations and the nature in which he took power. Obama understood that Egypt was long-considered a vital ally in the Middle East, but that didn’t prevent him from holding the bloodthirsty dictator responsible for his actions and decisions. Sisi has one of the most infamous security forces in the world, and they have committed countless atrocities in the Egyptian president’s name. Such atrocities include mass incarceration, torture, and the disappearances of journalists, students, aid workers, and even Islamists.
It would seem that President Trump, who has already shown his love and admiration for another dictator in Vladimir Putin, doesn’t mind what sort of violations against humanity the new Egyptian dictator has committed or ordered. Trump only sees Sisi as a strong leader who has done what Trump believes is a great job cleaning up the Middle East. When reporters asked Trump about his meeting with Sisi, the president praised the dictator for the job he has done under what Trump called a ‘very difficult situation’.
Unfortunately, Trump is completely wrong in this instance, as he tends to be. Since the rise of Sisi in Egypt, the country has become a police-state that is worse in many ways than the previous vitriolic figure in Egypt, President Mubarak, who was defeated in 2011 in one of Egypt’s first legitimate elections in more than 30 years.
There is little argument in favor of the idea that Sisi has made things better in Egypt. The democratically elected President prior to Sisi, Mohamed Morsi, was only in power for two years before Sisi led the armed forces of Egypt in a coup. There is no doubt that Morsi wasn’t the best leader, but to say that the current dictator is any better is a fallacy. After Morsi was forcibly removed from power, Sisi and his forces suspended the Egyptian constitution and created an interim government with very different rules.
To ensure his rise to power would persist, Sisi immediately used his newfound power to fight the dissent that still permeated the Egyptian population. A peaceful sit in ended in the deaths of 813 protestors in one day thanks to a decision by Sisi to have them all gunned down in the street. Another 40,000 dissenters have been arrested and jailed during his tenure as president.
These tactics are clearly designed to scare the population into submission, which is basically another term for ‘terrorism’. It’s almost as if the Egyptian government is proud of their ability to dispatch protestors in whatever way they deem appropriate. Even Egyptian homeland security officials seemed to brag about their level of control over the population.
How President Trump could ignore the seemingly obvious problems with Sisi and his government is beyond rational thought, but so are most things that Trump does.