Ahmed al-Mansour: The Egyptian fighter in Syria causing Sisi alarm

He was a relative unknown until a few weeks ago, but Ahmed al-Mansour has managed to develop a cult following in his native Egypt after Syrian rebels toppled the Assad dynasty.

An Egyptian national who first began fighting with Syrian rebels against Bashar al-Assad in 2013, Mansour has been churning out videos since the rebels captured Damascus, calling on Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to step down after 12 years in power.

Using the hashtag “It’s your turn, Dictator”, a phrase based on the 2011 Syrian rallying cry “It’s your turn, Doctor”, Mansour has been posting near-daily content lamenting the dire political and economic conditions in the North African country.

“The state of terror that Sisi has us living in requires our initiative to reignite the revolution,” Mansour said in a video recently posted X.

In recent months, Sisi, an ex-army chief who came to power in 2013 after staging a coup against Egypt’s first democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi, has been facing mounting public anger over the carnage unfolding in neighbouring Gaza as well as the country’s flagging economy.

Home to over 109 million people, Egypt has been grappling with record inflation and foreign currency shortages since Sisi seized power, with foreign debt quadrupling to $164bn by December 2023.

Amid the unrest, Sisi has repeatedly tried to absolve himself of any responsibility for the country’s woes, and has also sought to distance himself from any comparisons with Assad.

In multiple speeches he’s said his hands are neither stained with Egyptians’ blood nor has he plundered the nation’s wealth.

“If your president is not good, if there is blood on his hands, or if he has stolen money, you should be concerned for your country. Thank God, neither of these issues exists,” Sisi said in a recent speech.

Other social media users, however, using Mansour’s hashtag, have said that in the months following the coup, Sisi oversaw possible crimes against humanity, as thousands of pro-Morsi protesters were either gunned down or detained in the country’s worst episode of police brutality in modern history.

Sisi also embarked on a wide-scale crackdown, arresting an estimated 65,000 political opponents – including politicians, protesters, journalists and civil society activists.

Sisi ‘afraid’?

Following Assad’s ouster, which the Egyptian government initially decried, Cairo reportedly began compiling lists of Egyptians who had decided to go and fight in Syria after the start of the uprising.

Saudi state media, citing Egyptian sources, reported that some of the individuals on the lists were reportedly involved in terrorist activities in Egypt before leaving for Syria.

Mansour, who has since left the rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham – which captured Damascus – has ridiculed the Egyptian government’s actions, claiming Sisi was “afraid.”

“Sisi has been compiling a list of Egyptians fighting in Syria. I have something to say to him. You’re stupid. You’re afraid,” a defiant Mansour said in a video on Monday.

‘Sisi has been compiling a list of Egyptians fighting in Syria. I have something to say to him. You’re stupid. You’re afraid’

– Ahmed al-Mansour

Following the video’s release, Arabi48 reported that Egyptian authorities had arrested several members of Mansour’s immediate family, including his father and uncle.

Days later, in another video on X, Mansour made four key demands: President Sisi’s resignation, the removal of the Egyptian army from politics, the release of all political prisoners and a return to the principles of the January 25 2011 revolution.

Since Mansour launched his social media campaign, Egyptian officials have reportedly been so concerned that the interior minister recently held a meeting with senior security officials and raised the country’s security alert to its highest level.

Amid the growing unrest, Ahmed Moussa, a prominent Sisi supporter, attacked Mansour on his X account, threatening him with the fate of Hisham Ashmawy, a former army officer executed on charges of treason and terrorism.

Meanwhile, Nashat al-Daihi, another Sisi supporter, criticised Mansour on his television show, labelling him a traitorous terrorist who fled Egypt in 2012 and called for an armed revolution like Syria’s.

A source close to Mansour told Middle East Eye that despite the Egyptian government’s attempts to smear the former foreign fighter as a terrorist, Mansour’s decision to actually head to the trenches was determined by Sisi’s coup and subsequent brutal crackdown.

He said Mansour, who was born in Alexandria Governorate, was university-educated having studied at Al-Azhar and attended the Naval Academy, where he specialised in logistics. 

The source said Mansour would go on to study at the Institute for the Preparation of Preachers and give Islamic lectures on Egyptian TV.

He noted Mansour underwent changes following the 2010 police torture and killing of Khaled Said. The source said that Mansour had no relations with the Muslim Brotherhood or any political party after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, and that the Rabaa al-Adawiya massacre proved a pivotal turning point.

“Mansour took part in the Rabaa sit-in and witnessed numerous massacres by the military regime,” the source said.

Within two months, he left Egypt for Syria to join the fight against the Assad government, the source added.

The anxiety surrounding developments in Syria has resulted in increased security measures taken by Egyptian authorities towards Syrians, mostly refugees, residing in Egypt. 

In Cairo, when members of the Syrian community took to the streets to celebrate the fall of Assad, they were detained under the pretext of protesting without a permit.

Meanwhile, Egyptian authorities are reported to have told travel and airline companies operating in the country not to allow Syrian nationals to enter Egypt from anywhere in the world, except those holding temporary residency permits.