US conflicted over aid to Egypt

A US official told Reuters that there is a directive to withhold most military aid to Egypt, the news agency reported on Wednesday.

The comments were made to the news agency two days after a bloody confrontation between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and security forces resulted in 57 casualties on October 6.

Egypt was set for pro-army celebrations commemorating the 1973 war with Israel, while the Muslim Brotherhood planned anti-military marches to protest the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi on July 3. 

The anonymous official said that the exception to a halt in the aid would be US support for Egypt’s counterterrorism efforts in Sinai, the restive region believed to be a haven for militancy.

The official also told Reuters that President Barack Obama has yet to make a final decision and that the administration is conflicted over commitment to human rights and democracy promotion in Egypt and the concern to preserve security ties through support to the military. 

The White House, however, said that reports of an end to military assistance are false. “The reports that we are halting all military assistance to Egypt are false,” Caitlin Hayden, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

“We will announce the future of our assistance relationship with Egypt in the coming days, but as the president made clear at [the UN General Assembly], that assistance relationship will continue,” Hayden said.

So far, the US is still reviewing the allocation of the remaining US$585 million of its 2013 assistance to Egypt. This aid has been under review since Morsi’s ouster as US law stipulates the halting of non-essential assistance to countries where coups unseat democratically elected governments. Several commentators have said that it is for this reason that the Obama administration has not labeled the events in Egypt a coup.

Egypt receives $1.3 billion in military assistance from the US on an annual basis, a byproduct of the 1979 peace accords with Israel.

Joshua Stacher, assistant professor of political science at Kent University and author of Adaptable Autocrats: Regime Power in Egypt and Syria, doesn't think the talk about the delay of aid is a reflection of a conflicted US administration about its stance vis a vis political developments in Egypt. After Morsi's ouster and the forced dispersal of the Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins on August 14, "a lot of people started putting pressure on the US administration," Stacher tells Mada Masr. "And this is Obama's way to react to domestic audiences. Like during the 18 days [in January 2011], Obama rhetorically shifted policy to make it look like there is more change than what was actually happening."

According to Stacher, the US-Egyptian military relations are too organic to be untied by the delay of part of the annual aid, especially that the inter-personal relations between Egyptian and American generals remain intact, which "allow Egyptian military men the leeway they have in politics." Stacher also argues that the main tools of oppression and human rights violations by the Egyptian state are not the Apaches and F16s that are traded to Egypt in aid, but rather the tear gas and bullets purchased from American suppliers. 

In his interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm, Sisi exhibited the confidence that Stacher refers to in Egyptian-American military dynamics. “Military aid is stipulated in the peace treaty, which is based on a balance of power between parties.” Bilateral relations, he said, are based on mutual interest and respect with no interference in internal affairs.