 The COP 27 summit in Sharm el-Shaykh has thrown up many questions about the future of humanity. But if there is one country that is using the summit, for very short-term gains, it is Egypt, the host. The government of Abdul Fateh el-Sisi has sought to portray itself as a responsible global player. However, the truth is very different. Egypt is among the most oppressive regimes in the region and, as a proxy of the US, has also re-tavak from Libya to Palestine. What role does Egypt play in West Asia and North Africa? How do its positions affect the lives of millions outside its borders? What enables the LCC government to maintain such a tight control over its people? Rania Khalek of Breakthrough News explains. So Egypt under Sisi is certainly a worse dictatorship than under Mubarak. And we know there's an insane amount of repression, political prisoners, and we can get into that. But then the question becomes, why is this okay when you constantly hear this sort of moralizing from the United States and other Western powers about police states and repression in countries like Syria or Iran or basically these sort of officially designated enemies? Why does Egypt get away from it? And why does it have the support of countries like America, France, and of course the GCC states, which aren't exactly free countries either, and Israel? And of course, the broader context of that is Israel is indeed, I'm sorry, Egypt, excuse me, is indeed a client state that receives billions of dollars a year. For its military and security apparatus from the United States, it's quite unconditional. And that is to control a massive country with a huge population that is strategically located by the Suez Canal, which of course provides access to East Asia and the African coastline and the Suez Canal historically has been an important tradeway for European colonialism. And today, of course, it continues to be important to neocolonialism, to moving stuff from one part of the world to another, to basically imperialism and capitalism. And there's also the fact that it's proximity to Israel and other countries with oil. I mean, the more countries that you have under your control in the Middle East, the less likely you'll have resistance to your imperial ambitions. There was a time, of course, when Egypt was under the leadership of an independent, an independent leader, Nasser, who was an Arab nationalist and instituted some socialist policies and promoted this idea of Arab independence from imperialism across the region. And of course, this is a very scary challenge to anybody who wants to control access to resources. And also there was a fear, of course, of being able to push back against a country like Israel, which at borders. And so as a result, you actually had the US, the CIA, the British funding and helping organized Islamic extremism against this secular Arab nationalism. And it was ultimately successful. And Egypt ultimately did normalize relations with Israel, which is still one of the major countries in the Middle East to have normalized with the Israelis, and also has ever since then just been an increasingly a client state of the United States. And of course, that makes controlling the region much easier. And Egypt does play a role. It's also important to keep in mind that Egypt participates willingly in the blockade on Gaza. Gaza is surrounded, of course, by an Israeli air land and sea blockade, but Gaza also borders Egypt. And so Egypt, you know, there's a land border and that blockade is carried out by the Egyptians in coordination and collaboration with the Israelis, with the Americans, and has been ongoing for years and years and years. So it's also important to remember that that is what allows Egypt to behave however it likes. It just it participates in this sort of Israeli settler, a colonialist state. And it was one of the first, if not the first, state that normalized relations with Israel in the region. And it maintains a security relationship with Israel, Israelis vacation in Egypt. And, and Egypt, I mean, every once in a while, that was one of the fears when Egypt had its very brief experiment with democracy after 2011, was that with the Muslim Brotherhood leader, of course, Hamas is like a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, that you might see a situation where the Egyptians relent a little bit on their participation in the blockade of Gaza. That was certainly a fear of all the Israel lobbying organizations in the United States. So there was that was another reason why you didn't see so much of an outcry when the democratically elected leader of Egypt was overthrown in basically a military coup. And of course, Egypt immediately returned to its you know, the role it always played in enforcing this blockade on 2 million Palestinians who live in open air prison in Gaza. Around the region, of course, for its own interests, Egypt is increasingly involved in African countries to, I mean, Egypt is technically a North African country, but involved in a neighboring African countries to push for, you know, access to resources and on its own. And also, of course, Egypt has played a role in funding militias and Libya for its own interests. Egypt is vehemently under under CC is vehemently opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood. So anywhere in the region where they feel there's a threat of the Muslim Brotherhood, they do try to get involved and push against that in any way they can. But yeah, this is the broader context of why Egypt can be this horribly repressive police state with obvious human rights violations. I mean, human rights organizations can't even access Egypt. They haven't been able to access Egypt for years. You can imagine if that was the case for like Syria or Iran, the kinds of hand wringing you would see. But with Egypt, it's totally fine because of course, it's not really about freedom and democracy. It's about who's on the side of Western imperialism and who's against it. And internally, of course, when we talk about Egypt, like I mentioned, it's a deeply repressive police state and way more repressive now than it was even under Mubarak, of course, that had a brief experiment with democracy when it elected a Muslim Brotherhood guy to office after the Arab Spring and after the protests in Zahrir Square back in 2011. And of course, with a very short timeframe that experiment with democracy was almost immediately overturned by Egypt's security apparatus and military apparatus, which really remained in charge of that country. And then you had Sisi come to power and also in that lead up or in taking down the first democratically elected leader of Egypt, you had this horrible massacre where hundreds of people were killed. And of course, nobody's been held accountable for that. So the state is completely captured by security agencies that control everything. It has a huge number of political prisoners, something like 60,000 political prisoners, which account for, I believe, half the jail population in Egypt and many are held in horrible, tortuous conditions. And of course, like denied access to life-saving medications. Their families and lawyers don't always get to access them, neither do rights groups. Some never leave, some have been imprisoned for years. And of course, the purpose of the political prisoners in Egypt is to really extinguish any and all political opposition to the government. And that's why you see this Egyptian, he's still in prison in Egypt, kind of like always going on hunger strikes to get attention because of his horrible treatment and the fact that it seems like he's never going to get out of jail. And he's, of course, also a British citizen. So Egypt isn't, I mean, he's Egyptian British. So you even have countries like the UK and the US, I mean, the US, there are American Egyptian prisoners as well, some of which have been released over the years, but some of which have not. So you even have the, like the actual American and British imperialists unable to protect their own citizens from the Egyptian security apparatus that they actually fund. So it's, you know, as Egypt's in the news during this COP 27, it's important to keep all this in mind. Because, you know, like you mentioned, there's been this sort of PR campaign to try to whitewash all of this. And as a, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen. And it just really highlights the hypocrisy that we constantly see when it comes to countries in the global South. It really is, you can be as horrible, you can imprison as many people as you want, you can be as anti-democratic and authoritarian and repressive as you like, as long as you're on board with American imperialism. And if not, then there's a problem. And then, you know, then we're going to moralize and write reports about you and sanction you.