The Wall Street Journal quotes Rafik Hariri Center Senior Fellow Richard LeBaron on how the Gulf countries are expected to exert greater influence in Egypt under President Sisi:
Another risk is that much of the Gulf aid has gone to the Egyptian military, which controls wide swaths of the economy and owns everything from industrial installations to chicken farms, but hasn’t historically been an engine for economic development.
The U.A.E. “should quickly pivot away from that support for the military and integrate their aid into the real economy,” said Richard LeBaron, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. “Otherwise you’ve got this distortion of the military and opportunities for corruption, which doesn’t make sense when you have a private sector as vibrant as Egypt’s.”