Egypt

Writer: EU policies solidify autocratic rule in Arab world, backs terrorism

Maged Mandour, a Cambridge graduate with a Masters in International Relation and policy analyst with the website openDemocracy, criticized the EU policies for supporting despots in the Arab world and granting them the legitimacy to crackdown on political opponents as part of the war against terrorism.
 
In an article for openDemocracy, Mandour said the EU policies allow Arab tyrants to tighten their grip on power, exclude political opponents and grant legitimacy to autocrats as in Iraqi and Syria as well as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt who outlawed the MB as part of the counter-terrorism strategy.
 
Arab tyrants will use this internationally-backed policy to solidify their rule and apply further repressive policies, Mandour wrote.
 
The autocratic regimes, which represent the moderate trend for EU in the Arab world, have committed heinous crimes and follows policies that leads to the emergence of terrorist groups, he said.
 
The writer accused Arab regimes, including Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula, of either being unable to control extremism or unwilling to in order to use it as a pretext to apply despotic policies and uproot political opponents, tightening their grip on power.
 
"In Egypt, the military committed the worst massacre in modern Egyptian history to polarize the political system," the writer said referring to Rabaa al-Adaweya massacre in mid-August 2013.
 
Terrorist incidents following the massacre reached an unprecedented level, according to Mandour.
 
Mandour mentioned that terrorism affects European communities as well due to racism and marginalization and stated the Charlie Hebdo incident as an example.
 
Mandour opined that European countries should rather "de-securitize its discourse," and tackle the reasons behind the emergence of terrorism and consider it a societal, not a security problem. 
 

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