Quickly after Islamist rebels overthrew the authoritarian president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, a hashtag gathered steam on Egyptian social media: “It’s your flip, dictator.”
The message for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt was unmistakable. However he hardly wanted the warning.
For the reason that ouster of Syria’s longtime dictator on Dec. 8, Egyptian leaders have watched occasions within the Syrian capital, Damascus, with grim-faced vigilance, figuring out properly that revolutionary hearth tends to unfold.
Each nations have had a turbulent historical past because the Arab Spring uprisings that began in late 2010 and unfold throughout the Center East.
The Syrian revolt culminated virtually 14 years later with Mr. al-Assad’s fall. The Egyptian revolution deposed the nation’s longtime authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, and noticed an Islamist political get together come to energy within the nation’s first free elections. Mr. el-Sisi seized energy two years later in a army takeover, and he and like-minded leaders within the Persian Gulf and past stay cautious of Islamist teams gaining any energy within the area, as they simply did in Syria.
Days after Mr. al-Assad fled Syria for Russia, Egyptian safety forces arrested a minimum of 30 Syrian refugees residing in Cairo who had been spontaneously celebrating his fall, based on the Egyptian Initiative for Private Rights, a rights group.
The Egyptian authorities additionally made it tougher for Syrians to journey to Egypt within the aftermath of Mr. al-Assad’s overthrow, requiring most to acquire safety clearances first.
Mr. el-Sisi has given unusually frequent addresses in current weeks to defend his report.
“My fingers have by no means been stained with anybody’s blood, and I’ve by no means taken something that wasn’t mine,” he mentioned in December, every week after Mr. al-Assad fell.
In doing so, he appeared to attract a distinction with the deposed Syrian chief whereas brushing apart his personal human rights report, together with a bloodbath by the Egyptian army forces that he led of what rights teams say had been a minimum of 817 individuals protesting Mr. el-Sisi’s takeover of energy in 2013.
For the reason that rebels in Syria seized energy, Egypt has arrested or started prosecuting a number of individuals thought-about political opponents, together with the director of a outstanding rights group, the spouse of a detained political cartoonist and a TikTok person who had been posting movies essential of Mr. el-Sisi. Egypt already was holding an estimated tens of 1000’s of political prisoners, lots of them Islamists.
“Two thousand and eleven is simply 14 years away,” mentioned Mirette F. Mabrouk, an Egypt professional on the Center East Institute in Washington, referring to the 12 months of the Egyptian revolution. The Egyptian authorities, she mentioned, “know that issues snowball.”
After years of deepening financial distress throughout Egypt, Mr. el-Sisi was already in an acutely weak place. Any trace that Egyptians might catch Syrians’ revolutionary fervor spells bother — not as a result of Egyptians need armed revolt, Ms. Mabrouk mentioned, however as a result of it might take little or no for his or her disgruntlement to blow up into protest.
Essentially the most seen try to capitalize on the second has come from Ahmed al-Mansour, an Egyptian who left the nation to battle with Syrian rebels years in the past. After Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, he repeatedly ranted in opposition to Mr. el-Sisi on-line from Damascus.
“You’re price one bullet,” Mr. al-Mansour mentioned of Mr. el-Sisi in a video posted on X. It was seen 1.5 million instances.
The menace despatched Egypt’s TV anchors, who typically amplify pro-government speaking factors on their nightly broadcasts, into an uproar. One host, Ahmed Moussa, referred to as on Syria’s new leaders to behave.
“They have to inform us if they’re with what is going on within the focusing on of our nation or not,” he warned.
Shortly after his tirade in mid-January, the brand new Syrian authorities arrested Mr. al-Mansour together with a number of associates. He was detained on his strategy to a gathering with the nation’s interim protection minister, based on an announcement from the anti-Sisi motion Mr. al-Mansour based.
It’s unclear whether or not Egyptian authorities had pushed for his arrest.
Mr. al-Mansour’s group urged the Syrian authorities to launch him, saying that the Egyptian individuals had been exercising their rights in opposition to Mr. el-Sisi simply as Syrians had achieved in opposition to Mr. al-Assad. His present standing is unknown.
However even with Mr. al-Mansour silenced for now, different Egyptians are unlikely to cease complaining.
Many have soured on Mr. el-Sisi after years of financial crises, the newest of which was triggered by the successive shocks of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. However the issues are additionally rooted in authorities mismanagement and overspending, together with on grandiose megaprojects.
With Egypt deep in debt and shedding income, the forex has crashed, some items have develop into tough to search out and inflation has soared.
Such hardships have suffocated a inhabitants of about 111 million the place practically one in three already lived in poverty, based on official statistics.
Mr. el-Sisi has tried to defend himself from criticism, saying in a current speech that the nation was already in dangerous monetary form when he took over in 2013 and that Egypt’s speedy inhabitants development had made it tough to supply for his residents. However he had spent years boasting of the prosperity he would carry to Egypt — prosperity that by no means got here, at the same time as he inaugurated a expensive new capital metropolis full with a gleaming presidential palace.
“Persons are critically discontented, and due to this fact he’s attempting on the market to only tamp issues down,” Ms. Mabrouk mentioned.
At first, many hailed the president as a hero and savior for utilizing army drive to oust the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist political get together that gained the presidency following the 2011 Egyptian revolution however went on to alienate a lot of the inhabitants.
Mr. el-Sisi spent the following years stamping out the Brotherhood in Egypt, viewing it as a menace to his energy. Egyptian authorities prosecuted 1000’s of Brotherhood members and suspected sympathizers, labeling them terrorists, whereas others have fled the nation.
Even weakened, political Islamists stay a well-liked goal for Mr. el-Sisi and his supporters, who ceaselessly invoke the hazards of political Islam.
So it was unsurprising when the Egyptian authorities sounded a notice of warning concerning the lightning rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist insurgent group that has taken cost in Syria. The group was as soon as affiliated with Al Qaeda however has disavowed its extremist origins.
Egypt might have had little love for Mr. al-Assad, analysts mentioned, but it surely had come to favor the brittle stability he represented to the chaos and battle that encompass Egypt in Libya, Sudan and Gaza.
It has due to this fact approached relations with the brand new Syria gingerly.
In contrast to different Arab nations, Egypt has not but held high-level conferences with Syrian officers.
Diplomats in Cairo say Egyptian officers have privately urged different governments to stay cautious of Syria’s new management and to not elevate penalties on the nation too rapidly. They spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to talk publicly.
Egypt’s international minister, Badr Abdelatty, has referred to as on regional and worldwide companions to make sure that “Syria doesn’t develop into a supply of regional instability or a haven for terrorist teams.”
Mahmoud Badr, an Egyptian pro-government activist who helped foster the anti-Muslim Brotherhood protest motion that paved the way in which for Mr. el-Sisi’s ascension, mentioned on X quickly after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham swept into Damascus that the group and the Brotherhood had been indistinguishable.
“It’s all a part of one community and nobody can persuade us in any other case,” he mentioned, citing broadly circulated pictures that confirmed the chief of the Syrian group assembly with a outstanding Egyptian member of the Brotherhood.
And although anti-Islamist sentiment stays robust amongst Egyptians, so does anti-Sisi sentiment.
“It comes at a really dangerous time for Sisi,” mentioned Broderick McDonald, an affiliate fellow at Kings Faculty London’s Worldwide Middle for the Examine of Radicalization.
