The study was requested by Rep. Tom Lantos, senior member of the opposition Democrats on the House of Representatives International Relations Committee.
Lantos said in statement the study proves his long-held belief that the “Egypt program is meant more as a political entitlement program, with no real performance standards.”
“For all of the $34 billion that U.S. taxpayers have spent on this program over two decades, it is clearly not a serious effort to enhance the military capabilities of an ally to better participate with U.S. forces in joint actions,” he said.
“This is a massive military entitlement program on autopilot.”
The study, which can be downloaded in PDF here, concludes:
For the past 27 years, the United States has provided Egypt with more than $34 billion in FMF assistance to support U.S. strategic goals in the Middle East. Most of the FMF assistance has been in the form of cash grants that Egypt has used to purchase U.S. military goods and services. Like Israel, and unlike all other recipients of U.S. FMF assistance, Egypt can use the prospects of future congressional appropriations to contract for defense goods and services that it wants to procure in a given year through the FMF program. Until 1998, DSCA limited the number of new commitments to less than the annual appropriation thereby allowing more than $2 billion in undisbursed funds to accumulate. If the plan to eliminate the undisbursed funds for the Egypt FMF program is realized, these funds will be depleted by the end of fiscal year 2007. As Congress debates the appropriate mix between military and economic assistance to Egypt, the inherent risks of such flexible financing warrant careful attention and assessment by State and DOD.
Similarly, both State and DOD could do a better job assessing and documenting the achievement of goals as a result of the $34 billion in past U.S. FMF assistance and the $1.3 billion in annual appropriations planned to be requested. Periodic program assessments that are documented and based on established benchmarks and targets for goals would help Congress and key decision makers make informed decisions. We agree that expedited transit in the Suez Canal; support for humanitarian efforts in Darfur, Sudan, and elsewhere; and continuing offers to train Iraqi security forces are important benefits that the United States derives from its strategic relationship with Egypt. However, without a common definition of interoperability for systems, units, or forces, it is difficult to measure the extent of current and desired levels of interoperability, nor is it clear how the Egyptian military has been or could be transformed into the modern, interoperable force articulated in the U.S. goals for the Egypt FMF program.
The report also cites some forms of Egyptian payback for the aid:
Egyptian and U.S. officials cited several examples of Egypt’s support for U.S. goals. For example, Egypt:
• deployed about 800 military personnel to the Darfur region of the Sudan in 2004;
• trained 250 Iraqi police and 25 Iraqi diplomats in 2004;
• deployed a military hospital and medical staff to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, where nearly 100,000 patients received treatment;
• provided over-flight permission to 36,553 U.S. military aircraft through Egyptian airspace from 2001 to 2005; and
• granted expedited transit of 861 U.S. naval ships through the Suez Canal during the same period and provided all security support for those ship transits.
36,553 flight sorties between 2001 and 2005? That sure seems like a lot for a country that officially is not providing logistical aid to US forces in Iraq.
“Do the Yanks see themselves rolling westwards out of Siwa one of these days, shoulder to shoulder with tubby little men in dirty collars and 80s sunglasses?”
LMAO!!!!!!
[…] The clampdown in Egypt has tightened this spring as President Hosni Mubarak’s chief challenger in last year’s election, Ayman Nour, has been sentenced to five years in prison. Hundreds of protesters have been beaten and arrested by security forces; Mr. Nour’s supporters blame the government for a fire last week that destroyed his headquarters; and Egypt ordered an American pro-democracy group, the International Republican Institute, to suspend work in the country. Mr. Obey, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee and a prominent voice on foreign policy, had first proposed cutting $200 million from the $1.3 billion in military aid for Egypt in 2007. Raytheon Co. and other military contractors with sales to Egypt helped block that proposal, so he turned to Chairman Hyde and focused on the $455 million pledged to Cairo in the form of economic-support funds. To win votes, the amendment called for dividing the $100 million equally among two popular causes: fighting AIDS and famine in Africa. But among the strongest opponents were prominent African-American Democrats, such as Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D., Mich.), whose Detroit-area district has a substantial Arab-American population. The underlying foreign-aid bill represents a $597 million increase over this year, but this belies a major budget-cutting exercise, since the administration requested almost $2.4 billion more than the bill would provide for the new budget year that begins Oct. 1. The administration is promised $3.4 billion to fight AIDS and tuberculosis, and the White House would get most, but not all, of the money requested for an initiative to fight malaria. The House floor action came as Republican leaders in Congress reached final agreement on a long-delayed wartime-spending bill to pay for military operations in Iraq as well as Gulf Coast hurricane-recovery efforts. The House Appropriations panel released more detail about a proposed $427.6 billion Pentagon budget for 2007. Within the $427.6 billion total, $50 billion represents a further emergency expenditure, largely for Iraq, and an ever-larger share of the funding is consumed by the escalating operations costs in the war. The remaining $377.6 billion represents the core Pentagon budget for the year, and as with foreign aid, cuts are made from the administration’s request. The $81.78 billion provided for procurement is $1.14 billion less than requested and includes a $140 million cut from the Air Force procurement of the Joint Strike Fighter and $88 million from planned purchases of the Global Hawk unmanned-aerial vehicle. […]