"Sisi rose through an army that was rapidly reorienting itself away from the Soviet Union and toward the United States. Today more than half of Egypt’s combat aircraft, and nearly two-thirds of its tanks, are American-made; it relies heavily on the United States for maintenance and spare parts—to the tune of $1.3 billion in annual military aid from Washington, which covers some 80 percent of Cairo’s arms purchases. Big-ticket items are bought on credit: Egypt can make large orders now, and pay for them over a period of several years, an arrangement known as “cash-flow financing.” Israel is the only other country that enjoys this privilege.
Beyond that, the two militaries conduct numerous joint training programs, including the biannual Bright Star exercise, and dozens of Egyptian officers train at American institutions.
One of those students was Sisi himself, who in 2006 was sent to the U.S. Army War College for a yearlong master’s-degree program that has become a way station for up-and-coming Egyptian officers. Other graduates include Gen. Sedki Sobhi, the current chief of staff and a likely successor to Sisi should he resign to pursue the presidency.
Sisi’s year in Pennsylvania coincided with the worst points of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, when sectarian attacks were killing thousands of civilians each month. The Bush administration, meanwhile, was continuing a rhetorical push for democracy around the region: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a speech in Cairo in mid-2005 calling on the Egyptian government to “fulfill the promise it has made to its people, and to the entire world, by giving its citizens the freedom to choose.”
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/el-sisi-egypt-dictator-103628.html?hp=pm_1#.UwS_Jvl5PAw
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