| Key bits, but as always, read the whole thing. |
[PJMedia] Two years after the collapse of Egypt's sixty years of military rule, the largest Arab country has come full circle. The population has had enough. Beans (not to mention animal protein) have been priced out of the budget of the poorer half of Egypt's citizens for weeks, and the country is nearly out of fuel -- which means, in the middle of the wheat harvest, nearly out of bread. There isn't much to hope for here, but there are best and worst case scenarios.
The worst case scenario is the status quo: chaos in politics, violence in the streets, complete cessation of tourism, and economic breakdown. This is not an economy with a lot of buffer. Nearly a fifth of Egyptians were suffering from malnutrition when the World Health Organization surveyed the country in 2011. WFP estimates that two of five Egyptian adults are mentally and physically "stunted" by inadequate diet. The slow starvation of Egyptians under successive military regimes is gradually turning into actual hunger.
Sadly, military government probably is the best case scenario.
There is only one reason the military might do a better job than the Moslem Brüderbund or the liberal opposition, and that is because Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
and other Gulf states (besides tiny Qatar) might decide to provide funding for a military regime that suppressed the Moslem Brüderbund, which the Saudi regime rightly fears as a competitor to its medieval form of monarchy. That is why Saudi aid to Egypt has been insignificant, while tiny Qatar has committed $5 billion--nearly a fifth of its total foreign exchange reserves--to keep Egypt afloat during the past year. |
