Egypt marks 2nd anniversary of Islamist ouster with mourning

At the focal point of Egypt's upheavals, where authorities had hoped to stage celebrations, there was instead a prayer for the week's dead, including soldiers cut down by militants in Sinai and the country's chief prosecutor, assassinated by car bomb in the capital.

The first part of that equation has been carried out: the once-ruling Muslim Brotherhood has been largely crushed, thousands of its members and scores of leaders in jail and hundreds — including Morsi — handed the death penalty; public protests are restricted, as is political activity; the media has been cowed amid an atmosphere that seems to equate criticism with disloyalty; and even many liberal activists are in jail.

Militants affiliated with the regional Islamic State group have turned the northern part of the Sinai peninsula into a war zone, this week staging a brazen multi-pronged attack on army positions; last month a key tourist site at Luxor was attacked; on Tuesday chief prosecutor Hisham Barakat was assassinated while leaving his Cairo home for work.

Michael Hanna, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Century Foundation, sees an "escalatory cycle ... deteriorating security is eroding confidence in capacity of the regime but at the same time also reinforcing hard-line trends in Egyptian society with respect of how to deal with these security threats."

In a thinly veiled reference to jailed members of the Brotherhood, el-Sissi blamed the violence on those "issuing orders from behind bars," and warned: "If there is a death sentence, it will be carried out."

[...] el-Sissi also has wide support among Egyptians who have come to feel that liberal democracy is a bad fit in a society where almost half the people are illiterate and significant political forces would, if allowed, create a theocracy which would hardly be democratic.

Unprecedented, coordinated attacks by militants including massive suicide bombings on the army in the Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday underlined the failure to stem an insurgency that blossomed in the area after Morsi's overthrow, despite a heavy-handed crackdown.

The army said 17 soldiers and over 100 militants were killed, although before the release of its official statement, several senior security officials from multiple branches of Egypt's forces in Sinai had said that scores more troops also died in the fighting.