Egypt’s army seems to want to make pasta as well as war

THE WAR was not going well. The enemy had made three major advances in barely a year. The population was demoralised. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi needed to show leadership. His motorcade zipped across a desolate landscape until it reached an army checkpoint, where Egypt’s president sought to rally the troops. “Don’t think this crisis will remain,” he told a clutch of camouflage-clad conscripts. “A day will come, and this crisis will become history.”The tone and ambience were martial. But the enemy, in this case, was not rebels or invaders: it was the dollar, against which the Egyptian pound has lately lost almost half its value. Mr Sisi was not urging the troops to fight harder but rather exhorting them, and the rest of his 105m subjects, to endure a . It was a curious scene that says much about the past decade of his rule.