Jun 26, 2014

In a surprise visit, US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Egypt on June 22 and held several meetings with the newly elected president, new minister of foreign affairs and head of the Arab League. It was the first visit by a high-ranking US official since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s inauguration. The visit was a part of a regional tour possibly designed to reach common ground on how to deal with the deteriorating situation in Iraq with the rapid advance of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Intensive lobbying has managed to persuade Congress to maintain its aid package to Egypt at its current levels and release $575 million, the first tranche of the $1.3 billion annual assistance to Egypt. Kerry also announced that 10 Apache helicopters on hold will be delivered “very soon” to Egypt. The visit, release of the funds and announcement regarding the helicopters are signs that the United States is eager to resume strategic cooperation with Egypt in light of the growing terror threat from radical Islamic groups such as ISIS, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis and al-Qaeda.

Analysis of the sophisticated bureaucracy of ISIS and its strategic intent to remove the borders of regional states reveals a qualitative paradigm shift in the nature of this group as well as its true aims and potential threat. Rather than being a mere terrorist franchise relying on insurgency to weaken existing governments, ISIS seems to be seriously pursuing its own state with an alternative style of government, with a revisionist view of how the region and world should look.

Despite the flaws of Egypt’s “very difficult” transition and criticism of the military’s increasing involvement in the country’s political and economic affairs, the United States may have reached the same conclusion as most Egyptians. Middle Eastern states are facing an unconventional war of unprecedented proportions. With weakened state institutions, accumulated demographic pressures and dysfunctional or oil-reliant economies, ISIS and its allies could cut through countries in a blitzkrieg, devouring the colonial borders of the Middle East and installing God-knows-what instead.

The threat of radical Islamist militants may have been underestimated, and the best way to confront it is to help an ally like Egypt build its institutional capacity, rather than weaken it or stand by watching it get weakened. Armageddon is taking the express train home. Egypt and its military, which has remained intact and united, is one of the few forces in the region able to stand up to this threat. Despite a chain of bloody yet limited skirmishes with overzealous anarchists, the military has miraculously managed to avert a situation where it would have been drawn into a full-scale confrontation with an agitated population, steering a difficult course in turbulently swinging public moods.