Congress holds US$95 million in military aid from Egypt on basis of rights concerns

Last year, the United States Congress blocked the payout of a US$95 million portion of the US annual military aid budget to Egypt, because the latter did not meet the rights standards on which the financing is conditioned, according to two American sources close to Congress and the State Department who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.

The blocked sum is likely that which the US has reportedly diverted from Egypt to payout as military aid to Lebanon, said the source close to Congress.

Throughout US President Joe Biden’s term, there was always an amount withheld from the annual military assistance granted to Egypt on account of unmet human rights commitments. 

However, in September, Biden approved the release of the $1.3 billion to Egypt in military aid, overriding benchmarks required to meet human rights and which have been used in the past to uphold a minor portion of the annual aid.

A US State Department spokesperson told Reuters at the time that the human rights requirements from Egypt were waived this year in favor of advancing cease-fire talks in Gaza. 

The idea was “to not increase tensions or upset the Egyptians,” Seth Binder, director of advocacy at the Washington-based Middle East Democracy Center, told Mada Masr. “Egypt was playing the role that the US wanted it to play.”

Immediately after Blinken certified progress on the release of political detainees from Egyptian prisons, American senators Patty Murray and Chris Coons released a statement condemning Egypt’s record with regards to releasing political prisoners. 

“The law is clear: Egypt is required to make ‘clear and consistent progress’ in releasing political prisoners in order to receive $95 million — a small portion — of its $1.3 billion military aid package this year. The Egyptian government has failed that test. Over the last year, for every single political prisoner Egypt has released, it has jailed two more,” the senators said.

Murray and Coons, in their capacities at the time as chairs of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee and of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations respectively, later put a hold on the funds tied to human rights conditions, deeming Blinken’s certification to be illegitimate, according to the American source close to Congress.

The source said that the Senate’s explanatory statement referenced specifically a limited number of prominent political prisoners who haven’t been released. The decision to hold the funds did not proceed without tensions with the State Department, the source added. 

After Israel, Egypt has been the second largest recipient of American military Foreign Military Financing, since 1979, amounting to $1.3 billion a year. Since 2008, Congress has conditioned $300 million of the annual military grant on respect for human rights. 

In 2023, Senator Ben Cardin announced a hold on $235 million from the military assistance of fiscal year 2022 “until specific human rights progress is made.”

But in 2024, there was no statement from the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the hold.

Holds on the American funding to Egypt are not considered a major financial pressure. “It is not a substantial amount of money,” said Tim Kaldas, deputy director of the Washington-based advocacy non-profit, TIMEP. “The value of US assistance to Egypt as a percentage of the GDP has gone from 10 percent following the Camp David Accords to a fraction of a percent today,” Kaldas noted.

However, Kaldas holds that there is a symbolic value to withholding the funding portion, “evidenced by the fact that there was an attempt to bribe the head of the senate’s Foreign Relations Committee to influence the process and guarantee that the full amount is billed,” he adds, referring to the Bob Menendez case.

Former Senator Bob Menendez is awaiting sentencing in the US following his conviction on charges of using his post as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee between 2018-2022 to give favors to Egypt. 

Since Congress held $95 million from Egypt’s military aid budget at the end of last year, the State Department has notified Congress that it would reallocate $95 million from its annual military aid budget for Egypt to Lebanon, Reuters reported earlier this month, citing a document from the State Department.

The US diverted military assistance will be allocated to the Lebanese armed forces, which the document called a “key partner” in upholding the November ceasefire with Israel and preventing Hezbollah from attacking Israel. 

Binder, however, pointed to the fact that the diverted amount went to a government that just extradited an Egyptian citizen to the United Arab Emirates on account of his vocal criticism of the latter, namely Abdel Rahman Youssef. “A horrible irony,” Binder said.