For several years now, there has been a gathering storm in Congress over aid to Egypt. This used to be about the effectiveness of the aid and the supposed lack of gratefulness from Egypt, or its refusal to publicly back the US over certain goals like the Iraq war or Bush’s democratization agenda. Every year, this congressional initiative — led by both Republicans and Democrats close to the Israel lobby (but also including others) such as Tom Lantos, a veteran Egypt-basher — was defeated in Congress. The White House and State Dept. have always stood up to those Congressmen who wanted to change the aid program to Egypt, and the conventional wisdom has remained that while the Mubarak regime is no great shakes, it is overall useful and worth propping up.
Tag: us
Still no word on Gamal – Bush administration meetings
From yesterday’s State Dept. press briefing:
QUESTION: On Egypt. The Egyptian Government is warning that if there are demonstrations again this week it will crack down once again and throw people in jail. So I’m wondering if you feel like your strategy last week about talking about it from this podium and urging them to be more democratic has had any impact whatsoever. Have there been any high-level conversations about the U.S. displeasure if this happens again?
And finally, did the Secretary happen to run into Gamal Mubarak last week on his visit here?
MR. MCCORMACK: Funny, just happened to be at the White House and she ran into him there, yes.
QUESTION: Yeah, in the hall —
MR. MCCORMACK: No, I’ll let the White House talk about various meetings over at the White House. But yes, the Secretary was in a meeting that was hosted by Steve Hadley and Gamal Mubarak was in the United States on private business. She attended the meeting. I believe if you talk to my friends over at the White House, they’ll tell you the President stopped by the meeting. And as for any further details, I refer you over there.
QUESTION: Okay.
MR. MCCORMACK: Down the street.
QUESTION: The demonstrations?
MR. MCCORMACK: In terms of demonstrations, you know, I’m not aware that there were going to be — that there were going to be additional demonstrations. We will urge, as we would with the interaction between any government and its people, that the — any demonstrations take place in a peaceful manner, that all parties avoid any provocation to one another that might result in resort to violence.
Certainly, we have in the past and continue to call upon the Government of Egypt to allow peaceful freedom of expression. We believe that that is an important part of any healthy, functioning democracy that the people have the right to, in public, express their views whether the state likes those views or not, and be free from physical violence by the state. And of course, the state has a responsibility to provide a secure environment for all its people and we would hope and expect that the government could provide for security for its population while allowing for peaceful protest.
QUESTION: And one final thing. Last week, we talked about whether any aid would be at stake if they continued this kind of behavior. And I think over the weekend maybe a GAO report came out that said that the Administration does not even have in place a mechanism to gauge whether your aid is going to the right places and whether it has actually helped move democracy forward in Egypt specifically. Did you see those reports?
MR. MCCORMACK: I saw the press reports. I don’t — haven’t looked at the GAO report myself. There are — as with any aid program, we have monitoring mechanisms. I don’t know if the dispute with the GAO report has to do about whether or not those were — those mechanisms are robust enough. I’m happy to look into that for you.
QUESTION: Is that a State Department responsibility or —
MR. MCCORMACK: Well, it’s split because the bulk — the bulk of our assistance to Egypt flows through Foreign Military Sales and other kinds of military-to-military assistance programs. The State Department, of course, you know, plays some role in terms of hosting those offices at Embassy Cairo that oversee those aid programs. But in terms of the State Department element of this, I don’t have a dollar figure for you. Yes, we do have aid programs in Egypt, but I don’t have a dollar figure for you, Teri.
The friends over at the White House, thus far, have not been asked about this. Someone needs to ask what topics they were discussing, because thus far we have no idea. Not that the answer is likely to be useful, but still…
Islamist imagery
From a guide to interpreting Jihadi imagery:
The motif of jahanam, which means “hell” in Arabic, is often used in jihadi propaganda to discredit enemies and to emphasize the notions of good (Islam) and evil (enemies of Islam). The concept of Hell in Islam is similar to that in Christianity and Judaism. It is a place of eternal suffering and fire for the wicked, the tyrannical, and the unjust.
In one of the examples below, the concept of hell is used to boast about the deaths of what are represented as two American soldiers. The text of the image reads the same in both Arabic and English, literally: “They went to Hell.” The notion of hell and the gruesome pictures serves as propaganda against the Coalition Forces, and they are an attempt to boast of jihadi victories. It also serves to bolster the resolve and reinforce the religious righteousness of the anti-occupational jihadi insurgency. By labeling dead Coalition soldiers as people who are destined for Hell, the jihadi cause (i.e. those who brought about the death of these soldiers) is presented as the righteous side of the conflict.
From the Islamic Imagery Project — which includes sections on nature, geography, people, and “warfare and the afterlife.” There are some odd examples in there, and they shouldn’t say “Islamic” when they mean “Islamist,” but it’s an interesting project.
Gamal Mubakak meets Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hadley
Gamal Mubarak met with Dick Cheney and other senior US officials the day after last week’s protests:
Gamal Mubarak, 42, a powerful political player and widely considered a possible heir to his father, Hosni Mubarak, told the U.S. officials that Egypt is committed to further democracy but said it would be a long-term process that will include setbacks. “There was no tension at all,” Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Fahmi said in an interview. “They listened to his explanation of what was happening.”
. . .
[Egyptian ambassador to the US Nabil] Fahmi said Mubarak was on a “private visit” and decided to see top administration officials Friday. A source familiar with the talks said Mubarak came to the United States to renew his pilot’s license. Neither side announced the meetings, which were first reported by al-Jazeera television and later confirmed by U.S. spokesmen.
Aside from Cheney, Mubarak had a separate White House meeting with national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. President Bush stopped by for a few minutes to shake Mubarak’s hand and convey greetings to his father. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stayed for a portion of the discussion with Hadley. It is unusual for a private foreign citizen with no official portfolio to receive so much high-level attention.
Why does he have a pilot’s license in the US? Is he a US citizen? Would someone really make a trip all the way over there to renew a pilot’s license and, while at it, casually stroll by Dick Cheney’s office to see if he had time for a cup of coffee and a nice chat? And meet the president while hanging around the West Wing’s water cooler?
My bet is that this is related to the heat Egypt has been getting in Congress on the military aid issue. And that would suggest, contrary to common pundit wisdom in Egypt, that Gamal does indeed have a foreign affairs/security portfolio on top of his public domestic policy/economy agenda. But of course it could be about all kinds of other issues, not least succession scenarios and his father’s ailing health, which is rumored to be a growing concern in US circles.
GAO report on military aid to Egypt
The slow crusade in the US Congress to cut down on military aid to Egypt went a step further yesterday with the publication of a report, requested by leading anti-Egypt congressman Tom Lantos, on the effectiveness of the aid program. Haaretz reports:
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.
The Rabat Summit: The Admin Responds
Obviously peeved at poor press reviews, the admin is responding that some good did come out of the Moroccan-held “Fourm of the Future,” according to the post this morning.
The key passage:
“The Arab-Israeli issue is a very important issue in that region, just to state the obvious,” one official acknowledged at a briefing for about two dozen journalists. But he said reporters, who were not permitted inside the conference rooms during the Rabat session, missed the bigger picture.
“There is a sense of urgency that you felt in the room as you heard countries talking about the importance of reform,” he said. “What has changed is that we have created a mechanism now for countries to participate fully with their neighbors in the room to talk about issues of reform.”
Created a mechanism? What does that mean? A meeting is now a mechanism to facilitating reform?
A sense of urgency? Are we now meeting and interpretating the atmosphere as a sign of conferences’ success/failure?
This is “project 3000” – refoming the Arab world by year 3000.
Excuse me for being critical and cynical…. I did not understand the fuller picture. I need to start reading between the subtle feelings and lines of such events before lashing out.
I am glad the world is ordered again and progress/reform is coming. I’ll just sit and wait for it to come…..
More on AHDR
This is from the NYT today:
Basically, The UN’s version of events coyly supports Friedman’s editorial while the State department is denying the pressure.
From the text of the story:
“A senior State Department official, asking not to be identified, said some officials at the department had made “a couple of inquiries” about when the report would be issued by the development program and whether it would contain a repetition of criticism of administration policies that has been a feature of at least one previous report in the same series.
The official said the inquiries did not amount to criticism, however.”
And:
Another unnamed State department official stated, “”The idea of suppressing a report like this is the last thing on the minds of the administration.”
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Issandr is going to talk to Nader Fergani next week so hopefully we will get more on this to see who is lying.
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I can report this – In an interview I conducted with Fergani on 8 March 04 in Cairo, we discussed the then hot topic of the GMEI.
He said, ” While the US is leaning on the AHDR for help in developing the plan, they are trying to kill it. Each paragraph begins by citing something from the AHDR, but the US was cutting $12 million from its contribution to the UNDP’s core budget (he said this was approved by congress).” Hence the bureau which publishes the AHDR.
He attributed the financial pressure as US objections to criticism of Israel and American policy; He said Arab states did not have much to say about the AHDR, much less criticism of it.
Bush delaying new AHDR
I’d never thought I’d write this, but Thomas Friedman actually has something interesting to say in his latest column! Friedman is revealing, for the first time I think, that the Bush administration is behind the delay of the release of the third installment of the Arab Human Development Report, which is on governance:
Then I started to hear disturbing things – that the Bush team saw a draft of the Arab governance report and objected to the prologue, because it was brutally critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation. This prologue constitutes some 10 percent of the report. While heartfelt, it’s there to give political cover to the Arab authors for their clear-eyed critique of Arab governance, which is the other 90 percent of the report.
But the Bush team is apparently insisting that language critical of America and Israel be changed – as if language 10 times worse can’t be heard on Arab satellite TV every day. And until it’s changed, the Bush folks are apparently ready to see the report delayed or killed altogether. And they have an ally. The government of Egypt, which is criticized in the report, also doesn’t want it out – along with some other Arab regimes.
So there you have it: a group of serious Arab intellectuals – who are neither sellouts nor bomb throwers – has produced a powerful analysis, in Arabic, of the lagging state of governance in the Arab world. It is just the sort of independent report that could fuel the emerging debate on Arab reform. But Bush officials, along with Arab autocrats, are holding it up until it is modified to their liking – even if that means it won’t appear at all.
It makes you weep.
Incredible.
Syria helping foreign fighters in Iraq?
Yesterday, Bush threatened Syria and Iran that if they continue to interfere in Iraqi internal affairs in the lead-up to Allawi’s “election” on 30 January, there would be unspecified trouble against unspecified people.
Confusing? Yeah…..
Confusing? Yeah…..
The BBC filed this report this morning.
Two key parts:
1) Bush stated at the joint press conference with Berlusconi, “We will continue to make it clear, to both Syria and Iran that, as will other nations in our coalition… that meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq is not in their interests.” – This is a guised threat against Syria.
2) Directly from the report, “As for Syria, the highest levels of government did not appear to have sanctioned such activity but there was a ‘significant amount’ of both financial support and movement across the border of foreign fighters, he [Bush] said.” – Double-speak: Although we threaten Syria, its leaders may not be involved.
What does this mean?
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Apparently they are very tenuously insinuating that Syria and Iran had something to do with the bomb in Karabala that killed 7 and wounded 30.
Yet if we go back a few weeks to the Fallujah report, there is no evidence that there was a massive influx of foreign fighters. Juan Cole also has several comments on Informed Comment in November documenting the lack of foreign fighters.
Are we to believe there are no foreign fighters in Fallujah because they are in Karbala?
And if we buy this logic leap, do we assume it is Iran and Syria and not Saudi or some place else from which these imagined army of foreign fighters come from?
Another Failed US Policy
The Moroccan Summitt came and went with many arguing that nothing news-worthy happened. Perhaps on the surface they are right. But for the sake of austerity, lets have a look.
While some argue the economic reform before political reform discourse never left, the outcomes of last week’s Moroccan Summit firmly resituated and re-centered this notion.
While some argue the economic reform before political reform discourse never left, the outcomes of last week’s Moroccan Summit firmly resituated and re-centered this notion.
It is within this context that states concerned about the Arab world’s governance condition converged to discuss the US diplomatic plan to democratize the world (since Iraq has not proven a successful democratizing kick-starter). Yet, what really was on display is another expression of a US policy failure.
Last February Al-Hyatt newspaper leaked the US’s Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI). Immediately, Arab leaders balked. Most prominently Hosni Mubarak called the plan “delusional” and an invitation to open “the gates of hell” without controlled reform (translation no reform, only adding cosmetic national councils). Yes….when one wants to bring a sudden stop to a idea’s circulation – employ the chaos argument. Other defensive, and not necessarily wrong, arguments Mubarak proffered were the “Islamists will hijack the Democratization process,” reform cannot come from outside, and reforms were already in progress.
By mid-March 2004, the US had not realized that while it could unilaterally launch a war, it was unable to push diplomatic reform plans. Mind you, many warned that the US’s measures had no teeth. Brian Whitaker of the Guardian sniffed the GMEI out for what it was nearly as quickly as it was launched.
This did not stop the US State department undersecretary Marc Grossman from touring the Arab world with his “we don’t want to impose this on anyone but it will be done” message in March 2004. I remember his encounter with then Egyptian FM Ahmad Mahir being more or less hostile. According to the view then democracy, one way or the other, would stop the scourge of terrorism. Terrorism is treated so simplisticly that if you eliminate authoritarianism it will magically disappear (without changing the US’s biased regional policies).
Arab leaders responded launching diplomatic missions to Europe to try and unite Old and New Europe against the US’s imperialistic designs. In large part, they succeeded.
The “initiative” battle was more or less over when Bush convened the G-8 summit in Georgia last June. The GMEI (then changed to Broader ME plan because in German “Greater” implied, ironically, imperialism when it was translated) was blocked by which countries did not show up rather than those in attendance. As al-Jazera.net pointed out then “Egypt and Saudi Arabia, two countries covered by the initiative but alarmed by its potential implications, declined invitations to the summit. Tunisia, which holds the rotating presidency of the Arab League, followed suit. Leaders of Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Turkey and Yemen accepted Bush’s invitation.” So four out of 22-Arab league countries attended.
The idea of democratizing the Arab world fades as Iraq unravels. Yet, a summit scheduled to further discuss the outdated plan in Morocco took place on 11 December. The NYT ran a story on 5 December, entitled “US Slows bid to advance Democracy in Arab world,” which forecasted the get-together’s expected agenda and limited outcomes. The NYT also followed up with a piece that correctly argued that Arab leaders used the “excuse” of the Arab-Israeli conflict as the reason not to reform. The story did not, however, choose to focus on how the US plan had changed over the year and became a fairly large diplomatic failure. I am not sure the US could have ever pushed through, morally or practically, such an ambitious reform program. However, the Moroccan summit’s limited outcomes are further evidence that the US is losing influence with its regional allies.
Essentially, democratization efforts are being sidelined in favor of developing the social and economic aspects of the Arab world. Afterall, the Washington Consensus (WC) has been wrongly telling us for years that when the economic reform is done then political reform (read democracy which, in turn, is understood as peace) can commence. The Arab governments, knowing this convention to be wrong, simply have called for the WC to be followed. Indeed, this WC approach is a tremendously popular refrain in a certain party secretariat’s reform plans in Egypt. In the absence of any real desire or ability to oppose the Arab states, US policy shifted towards accommodate the possible.
Anyone who has thought more than a minute about this insanely wrong and simplistic “economic reform leads to democratization” concept (derived from Modernization theory) knows that what took place last week was not a sincere attempt to create a dialogue or space for development. Morocco’s summit was “politics as usual” as the US continues to sure up support for its contradictory regional role as a destabilizing hegemon.
I often argued last spring that when the GMEI successfully ran out of steam, we would see the proliferation of “We tried but Arab Culture resists modern democracy” arguments by US officials and more right-leaning analytical servants of political power. Nevertheless, I was outwitted again.
Instead of blaming the culture….it looks like they instead will simply blame the rulers, who are marketed as pining to stay in power at any cost. But then again, I should of realized….the culture argument is being saved for when the US military leaves Iraq in the midst of its ongoing civil war.
The truth of the matter is….the US never cared if there was democracy or reform. They only care about making sure that the dictators that exist in the region are friendly to the status quo minded establishment in Washington. By treating the Arab states as their vassals rather than actors (with interests and attributes) that can contribute to international political development, the US repeatedly, and likely uncaringly, continues to frame its policies erroneously. Its dialogues between equals (even when the equals aren’t equals) not orders from above that translate into every language and produce more promising, balanced policies.