America’s Warning to Egypt

The current or next Egyptian government must understand that the international game led by Washington is almost finished and there are new forces developing to reshape it. This may be seen in situation of the raid of 17 human rights organizations.

The raid was not a security decision; it was done to execute the judge’s order in the investigation into foreign funding threatening Egyptian national security and destroying the prestige of the state. Washington did not act as law dictates, even though it presumes to be the guardian of freedom in the world. Its tone indicated that it considers Egypt to be a banana republic. Their warnings and explicit demands could be described as shameless in international relations: The U.S. disallowed the raids of the organizations’ headquarters and the seizure of important documents pertaining to their funding — organizations that entered Egypt in the past 10 months without the knowledge of Egyptian authorities and that fostered a climate of instability. Washington was obviously threatening, which it repeated twice in less than a month, to play the U.S. aid card. This is a threat that Egypt also holds, which we will explain later.

U.S. aid goes mostly to arms, and so its warning also took a military form. The U.S. announced last Friday that U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Field Marshal Tantawi about Washington’s concerns over the raids targeting headquarters of nongovernmental organizations in Cairo and asked him to put a stop to it. It is clear that the contact between the U.S. secretary of defense and his Egyptian counterpart was not political at all. It was not based on Tantawi’s position as head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or as acting president of the republic. Otherwise, the contact would have come from the White House itself. We can thus understand the significance of the message that they want to deliver.

The American administration is threatening to respond to pressure from some senators in Congress to cut off military aid after the campaign against the Egyptian army in the last few months. This was at the behest of organizations that receive foreign funding, which have activists who participated in the events on Maspero and Mohamed Mahmoud Street, and in Qasr al-Aini. Moreover, the U.S. secretary of defense is not only demanding to stop the raid of the headquarters of those organizations but to facilitate the U.S.’ own plans. This reveals that U.S. intervention does not concern the law and sovereignty of Egypt, but rather serves the American mood — a mood that cannot be a reflection of a superpower seeking freedom and human rights. This was evident during the Mubarak era, when Washington used the fierce Egyptian security apparatus as an arm of torture. People accused of targeting American interests were brought from Afghanistan, Albania, Italy and other countries to obtain their confessions under the Cairene guillotine of hell.

Cairo is not well currently: The economic condition is bad. International intervention in its affairs is not out of compassion. It is like a sick man being held in recovery from the difficult excision surgery of Jan. 25 last year. But this isn't exactly what the United States wants; what it wants is an old man on crutches, who is unable to walk without them.

The U.S. State Department said that Egypt pledged to halt the raids [and return] what reportedly had been taken from the premises. It will force judges to suspend the law — to stop the investigations into a decisive issue concerning national security and into the documents that they received that may prove it.

Any state that respects Egypt’s sovereignty would not do this; but this is about the rule of the strong over the weak. In this respect, Egypt can be a strong player despite its extremely poor economic circumstances. Aid is a part of the Camp David Accords, and the manipulation of those terms may lead to freezing them altogether. The U.S. uses aid primarily to protect American interests in the region. If they are cut off, Egypt would free itself of this burden. But Egypt must do so quickly in order to accelerate this breakdown; and it must go to other capitals on the map, such as Moscow and Beijing, to change the international balance of power or restore Egypt’s historical significance.