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Zeinab Abul-Magd is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History at Oberlin College. Dr. Abul-Magd is the author of Imagined Empires: A History of Revolt in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013) and Militarizing the Nation: Army, Business, and Revolution in Egypt, 1952-2015 (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming 2016). She published a series of short studies on the Egyptian military and its economic enterprises, including “The Egyptian Republic of Retired Generals” at Foreign Policy, “The Generals’ Secret: Egypt’s Ambivalent Market” on Sada of Carnegie Endowment, and “The Army and the Economy in Egypt” on Jadaliyya. She writes occasional columns for Egyptian newspapers, including al-Masry al-Youm/Egypt Independent, al-Tahrir, and al-Badil.
The Egyptian state today faces one acute crisis after the other. To be fair, the Egyptian military cannot be held responsible for creating these crises. However, it is unlikely that Egypt will be able to resolve them unless and until the armed forces divests itself of the power and the privileges associated with the immense economic power and privileges it has accumulated.
