Egypt's Continuing Turmoil

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According to Dr. Spyer, the last straw for the July 2013 coup was President Morsi's threatened jihad against the Assad regime. Egypt was being transformed by the Muslim Brotherhood government into an anti-Western Islamist power and General Sisi, though neither a secularist nor a liberal democrat, was anxious to prevent the country from heading in a chaotic and dangerous direction. The general was also alarmed by the growing lawlessness in Sinai, which under Morsi had become a haven for foreign jihadists and smuggled weaponry from post-Qaddafi Libya, as well as a springboard for terror attacks on Israeli and Egyptian targets. Fearing the spillover of more terrorism to Egypt proper, and another Israeli-Hamas military confrontation, Sisi linked the clampdown on the Muslim Brotherhood to the fight against the Sinai insurgency - a strategy that in his view forced the Islamists into an unwinnable fight.

www.meforum.org/3661/egypt-turmoil