Sisi warns Kerry of jihadist threat in Syria
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is already taking a more assertive role in Syria and Arab affairs.
On Egypt’s domestic scene, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is being lauded as an early-rising drill sergeant demanding 24/7 performance from a newly efficient and energized government. And in the foreign policy arena, a re-empowered Egyptian presidency is also moving beyond both the somnambulant legacy of the later years of the regime of deposed President Hosni Mubarak and the abbreviated and contentious era of deposed President Mohammed Morsi.
Nowhere is this new look in Egypt’s foreign activism more evident than on Syria. Days before Sisi’s election, a delegation of Syrian opposition figures assembled in Cairo at the invitation of Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy. Syrian opposition figures are scattered throughout the region, but in Cairo the only permanent resident for many months has been Haytham Maleh, a peripheral player in the Syrian scene.
Those invited to Cairo, however, included former National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces leader Moaz al-Khatib, writer and activist Haytham Manna, economist Aref Dalila, former Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi and film producer Jamal Suliman. These figures are not represented among the exiles of the Syrian National Coalition and their interests set them apart from the organization and its sponsors. None are close to the Muslim Brotherhood and all advocate a far more nuanced approach to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad based on political engagement, an idea shunned by the “official” opposition but which has grown in importance over the last year.
The presence of such personalities in Cairo at Sisi’s invitation offers clear evidence that a reinvigorated Egyptian presidency is seeking to make its mark in Syria and beyond.
