At a cafe in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Mohamed was lamenting to a foreign journalist how Egypt’s 2011 uprising had hurt his business because law and order had broken down.
The reporter never got to ask the tour guide whether he thought things would get better now the army is back in charge; before Mohamed had finished speaking, two plainclothes policemen detained the Reuters correspondent, ending their conversation.
Foreign journalists may chafe at such unwelcome attention, but millions of Egyptians have shrugged or cheered the renewed zeal of security services since the army ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi last month, a dramatic milestone in two and a half years of political upheaval.
It may seem an irony that Egyptians should welcome the re-emergence of a police state whose reputation for brutality and venality drove them to revolution. But in Sharm el-Sheikh, the logic is obvious to those whose living depends on promising a sunny, and safe,holiday in an area with a historyof violence.
Egypt’s generals have used popular demands for security to justify a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, in which over 1,000 people have died since they toppled President Mohamed Mursi on July 3.
In Sharm el-Sheikh, in the south of the Sinai peninsula, the army’s argument resonates with the guides, shopkeepers and waiters of an industry that, nationwide, used to account for one in eight jobs in Egypt. For all the timeless appeal of pyramids and beach resorts, that employment depends too on the country being perceived as a safe, open place to visit.
“The Brotherhood weren’t interested in security. They were interested in getting their organisation into political positions. That’s it. They didn’t care about tourism,” said Ibrahim Kandil, a 27-year-old watch-seller. “The situation was better before; there used to be security,” he added.
The heavy presence of security forces in the resort town – built on land Israel returned to Egypt after they signed a US-brokered peace treaty in 1979 – is partly a response to the upsurge of violence in northern Sinai since Mursi’s overthrow.
Tanned and tattooed Europeans wade into crystal blue waters in tight shorts or bikinis, and drink beer on the streets
Tourism workers play down the threat of violence spreading south, but Islamist militants set off bombs in the town as recently as 2005. A similar attack could further devastate tourism, one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency.
Sharm el-Sheikh makes for a surreal contrast to the urban grit, poverty and social conservatism of the cities of the Nile valley, where most of Egypt’s 85 millionpeople live.
It is a sanctuary of casinos, nightclubs, scuba diving schools, luxury hotels and English-style pubs set amid immaculate avenues,manicured lawns, date palms and Sinai’s distant mountains.
Tanned and tattooed Europeans wade into crystal blue waters in tight shorts or bikinis, and drink beer on the streets. At night, dance music thuds from beachside bars. It is a lifestyle far from that embraced by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood – though the movement’s ministers insisted they would not curb it.
The tourist industry will be one barometer of whether authorities are able to convince foreigners Egypt is safe and stable enough to visit after they overthrew the country’s first freely elected president and began hunting down his supporters.
Like many tourism workers, Mohamed Galal, a 22-year-old from the Delta town of Munifiya, said he expected the authorities would be able to handle security threats, and that business would soon improve.
“Everything will be all right, now because the police have caught all the big bosses of the Muslim Brotherhood,” the cafe manager said.