Background of the Cairo-Washington Crisis

The first crisis between Egypt and the United States since the revolution has unexpectedly hit. The crux of the matter is evidently Washington’s generous funding of Egyptian and American organizations that work in the field of human rights and support democratic practices. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces sees American behavior as interference in internal affairs, and an attempt to appropriate the revolution and exploit it to serve American and Israeli interests. Meanwhile, Washington sees what it has done as business as usual which is accepted by the Egyptian government, and considers it a natural extension of its activities in Egypt prior to the revolution.

The crisis hit quickly after security forces, maybe for the first time in the history of Egyptian-American relations, raided the offices of 17 domestic and foreign nonprofit groups, and confiscated computers and documents. Among the organizations were the American National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, Freedom House, and the German “Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.” The commission decided to take 44 people to court, among them 19 Americans, and to bar them from traveling. These measures were accompanied by a wide-ranging government media campaign about foreign conspiracies to divide Egypt and destroy the country. The campaign extended to Egyptian human rights activists, since it reiterated political vocabulary widespread during the Mubarak era, conveying accusations of treason, espionage and conspiracy.

The American reaction was strong and angry, coming from the mouths of officials and representatives in Congress who threatened to cut off American aid to Egypt, which last year reached $1.55 billion. This caused an explosive wave of public anger; the American threats touched Egyptian nationalism and the sense of honor of Egyptians who emerged from the revolution more insistent on freeing themselves from subordinate relationships to foreign countries — and more confident in their ability to rely on themselves economically and politically. On this basis, we can understand the calls to reject American military and economic assistance, and the public initiatives to donate in order to stop begging outside Egypt and to increase self-reliance. It is important to note that most Egyptians feel bitter about the failure of Arab and other foreign countries to fulfill the promises of aid they made when the revolution broke out.

The political participation of the Egyptian people and their creative revolutionary spirit — these are the new factors that caused the current transformation in the path of historical crises which used to break out occasionally between Cairo and Washington before the revolution. One of them was the funding of the Egyptian human rights organizations. The participation of the Egyptian people will change many Egyptian foreign policy positions in the future; the difference is that the military council, the American administration and Egyptian human rights organizations have not grasped the depth and force of the effects of popular participation, or in other words, the return of politics to the people. This is why all three parties dealt with the current crisis with outmoded behavior and conventional language. Most likely, they will come out of the crisis with new understanding and mutually agreed-upon solutions which demonstrate the importance of Egyptian-American relations and mutual interests; but they will not succeed in appreciating the effects of the crisis and the accompanying rhetoric on the public consciousness.

The first party is the military council and its government, which took the reins in the present crisis and used Egyptian national feeling and the belief of many Egyptians in the idea of conspiracy to escalate matters with Washington, perhaps to face covert American pressure regarding arrangements to hand over power from the army to a civilian government, and also the army’s position and influence over the future of the Egyptian political structure. Thus it repeatedly mentions that Washington is pushing, directly or through the Brotherhood and civilian parties, to limit the army’s powers and impose parliamentary supervision on its budget and economic activities. Estimates of the budget range from 9-25 percent of the Egyptian economy. However, it is believed that there are other reasons which explain the behavior of the military council, basically summed up by an attempt to run away from internal problems (tense relations with the youth of the revolution and the loss of control over security) by detonating an external problem which accords with nationalist feeling. Maybe they hope to gain sympathy and turn the street to face an external danger by manufacturing and spreading a message to the effect that foreign organizations, American or European, are financing internal activities, and that all of them are trying to cause chaos, and even embody the fifth column which the military council is blaming for the bloody clashes among demonstrators, the army and the police.

The foreign threats, sowing chaos and plotting to divide Egypt undoubtedly affected large sectors of Egyptians, but the problem is that there are those who are calling for the amendment of the decision a judicial commission arrived at several months ago on one of the Salafi organizations, which received 296 million pounds from two Qatari and Kuwaiti charitable organizations. In other words, there are calls for the military council to generalize judicial measures for all foreign parties, Arab and American, whether the groups are civilian human rights groups or religious groups. Some are even demanding (quite reasonably) that the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafi groups and the political parties should disclose their budgets and sources of funding; especially since the Brotherhood is not subject to government oversight of any kind because it is registered as a nonprofit group rather than a political party, although it is the majority party at the moment — the leader both politically and financially! So, the circle of implementation must be widened to include all parties without distinction, so that the military council will not be accused of using a double standard. In this framework, it is imperative that newspapers and private and party television channels be obligated to disclose their sources of funding, a matter which was never discussed in the Mubarak era, in spite of the existence of many insolvent papers and channels, which even now continue to operate!

As for Washington, the second party in the crisis, its attitude revealed a willful lack of understanding of the depth of change which has taken place in Egypt. It makes no sense to use the same rhetoric and practices which Washington used in the past to pressure the Mubarak regime. It also makes no sense for Washington to claim that the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and Freedom House are independent American nonprofits; they are receiving more than 75 percent of their funding from the American Congress. I suppose that the American administration deliberately remained ignorant of the realities of the change in Egypt in order to hold onto its former position and status in interactions with Cairo. It wants to force the military council and its government to accept the program of superiority based on commands and conditions which the Mubarak regime responded to. American hints in the aid sector generally paid Cairo for accepting Washington’s and Israel’s wishes without discussion or negotiation; this is not acceptable in the post-revolutionary Egypt. This means that the present crisis is a kind of test of strength between Washington and the military council, and probably both sides’ appraisals of the Egyptian army’s role in the political structure and its position on the peace treaty with Israel will come into play. (The army receives 84 percent of American aid.) Washington retreated on the army’s role in protecting democracy, but it certainly wants it to guarantee a continuation of the peace treaty with Israel.

In any case, Washington must realize that the situation in Egypt has really changed, and that accepting the government formed by the Muslim Brotherhood means losing the kind of influence on Egyptian politics that it had in the past; the change has truly begun, and there will be more as time goes on. Moreover, Washington cannot interact only with the president or the government; political power and public opinion are active and influential in the formation of Egyptian decisions, and these must come into play in calculating interactions with Cairo, which have become more complicated and sensitive. There must also be a search for a new form of cooperation between the two countries in every sphere, with full respect for Egyptian national sovereignty and the autonomy of Egyptian decision-making.

The third and weakest party still remains: the Egyptian human rights organizations. I say weakest because they are dependent on foreign aid and support, and the Mubarak regime refused, in practice, to let them become established and prevented them from receiving domestic funding. Meanwhile, their public image in Egypt hurt them badly in the last few months. The slander and insults reached the point of accusing those who work with them of treachery. Even so, most of the human rights groups played, and still play, prominent roles in defending human rights, and in giving moral support to the youth of the revolution. But these groups dealt with the present crisis in an outmoded way, defending themselves and their role with human rights rhetoric and pointing out how angry the military council was about their support for the youth of the revolution. They claimed equality with the government in foreign funding, which may be partially true; however, this will not end well unless it is accompanied by clear measures for openness, transparency and judicial and parliamentary oversight, which must apply to all kinds of foreign aid, whether to the government or organizations within civil society. Thus, equality would be realized between the two parties in terms of rights and duties.

There is undoubtedly a need for Egyptian and international human rights groups to remain and expand their roles, but on the condition that their positions are in line with Egyptian law. So, it is necessary to change the laws for nonprofit and human rights groups; to break the chains that security has put on their activities; and to pass a law which allows parliament to accept annual monetary support for human rights organizations. Perhaps the most important step is for the human rights groups to create a new form of domestic funding: contributions, grants and endowments; and public participation based on expanding the volunteer component of their different activities, reducing paid work and doing away with costly activities, in such a way that overall, the activities of human rights groups are funded domestically and only partially by foreign funding which is not subject to the rules of openness and transparency.