“Ungoverned space” — areas nominally within the sovereign reach of the ruling power but effectively outside its control, are well on their way to becoming one of the defining features of the post-US occupation, post-Arab Spring Middle East. From Anbar in Iraq, to the entire area of what we once knew as Libya, the power of the state has atrophied or even disappeared. In its place, a motley assortment of well-armed pretenders or, increasingly, no one at all, contests for power and spoils, creating a vacuum filled by jihadists, arms dealers, drug smugglers and human traffickers.

The western desert — where Egypt meets Libya — is the latest region to join this expanding club. “The western desert risks becoming an ungoverned area,” explained a well-informed Egyptian official in a conversation in Cairo last week. “If we do not change direction, it will become a no-man's-land in a decade.”

This alert highlights the volatile western desert bordering Libya, along with the Sinai Peninsula and, increasingly, parts of Egypt’s urban heartland itself, as regions where the power of the Egyptian state is being challenged by force of arms.

Cairo remains the beating heart of the country and the regime. Almost daily challenges and confrontations that result in casualties to the security forces, those opposing it and others unfortunate enough to find themselves in harm’s way, have become an all but unremarkable part of its urban landscape.