Source: Council On Foreign Relations
Author(s): Steven A. Cook
Original Link: https://www.cfr.org/blog/tragic-tale-egypts-decline-it-also-story-americas-future
This article was originally published here on Salon.com on Sunday, August 27, 2017.
Alexandria, Egypt’s second city, was once a cosmopolitan place. Nestled in the eastern Mediterranean at the corner of Africa and the Levant, it attracted large numbers of Greeks, Italians, European Jews, Lebanese and others. It was a hub of many languages and cultures in the polyglot society that was Egypt in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th. Squint hard enough and the remnants of that era comes into view, but they remain a blur. Alexandria is a ramshackle sprawl now, the unfortunate result of poor or nonexistent urban planning, Egypt’s population growth and massive corruption. In an ironic twist, the city has also become an Islamist stronghold over the last four decades….
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