Egypt is spiraling toward instability and radicalization. Since last summer’s coup, the military-backed regime has used brute force to try to restore peace and manage its form of “democratic transition.” But its repressive strategy to physically eliminate political opponents, restore stability and end society’s acute polarization is backfiring.

Egypt will hold a presidential poll this year before parliamentary elections, interim president Adly Mansour said Sunday, in a move seen to benefit army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The election process would have to start before mid-April, according to a timetable included in a constitution adopted in a referendum this month.

An internationally respected Egyptian political scientist said Wednesday that prosecutors had filed espionage charges against him, making him the second such scholar targeted this month in a widening crackdown on dissent against last summer’s military takeover.

Egypt’s deposed government filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC), requesting investigations into what it described as crimes committed by the military against its members. The complaint accused the military of staging a coup d’etat against the country’s first elected president Mohamed Morsi and his government, which was followed by the detention of its members and the usage of “extreme force to remove civilians who gathered to protest against the coup."

Egyptian security forces clashed with student demonstrators in central Cairo on Sunday after thousands rallied in anger at the death of a young engineering student. Mohamed Reda was shot Thursday by riot police after joining anti-regime protests at Cairo University. The young man’s fate has fueled defiance across the nation’s campuses, which since July have been experiencing their most violent period following the 2011 revolution.

The ministry expects tourism revenue to reach $8.8 billion by the end of the year, compared to $10.5 billion registered at the end of last year, Zaazou said on the sidelines of an economic conference in Cairo. Egyptian Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou on Monday said that Egypt had lost 95 percent of its incoming tourism within the past four months, mainly due to advisories issued by several governments against traveling to Egypt.

Less than a month after Egypt publicly condemned an American decision to suspend portions of its annual military aid package, relations between the allies are back on track. Egypt’s foreign ministry announced Wednesday that Cairo now expects an “intense period” of diplomatic visits from Washington. Despite the public frostiness that hung over the alliance just a few weeks ago, analysts say the relationship below the rhetoric remains strong.

The young people who led Egypt’s revolution two and a half years ago have been suspicious of the US for the simple reason that it supported former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime for 30 years. From the US perspective, President Barack Obama pivoted quickly from Mubarak to the people; but it did not look that way on Cairo’s streets. When the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi was elected President in 2012, many Egyptians assumed that America must have supported him, because they could not imagine that the US would accept a result that it did not want.