Under the presidency of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s military presents old and new dynamics. Civil-military relations remain imbalanced: but paradoxically, the overwhelming role of the military, also as economic player, combines with the subtle narrowing of the military as cohesive entity. In fact, the rising competition among security, intelligence services and the military turns the security sector into the main Egyptian locus of politics. The promotion of family and crony relations, at detriment of corporate ones, generates a securitized economy increasingly subordinated to the coercive sector. As business networks flourish and compete, the opening of new military bases reveals a strengthened interdependence among economic interests, partnerships in the Gulf and projection in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

This ISPI Dossier, in collaboration with the Program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States (CMRAS) at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, traces the evolution of Egypt’s military and security sector highlighting their emerging factionalism, as the 10th anniversary of the start of the uprising which ousted Hosni Mubarak approaches.