Report: Cut US aid to 'most repressive Egyptian state in modern history'

The US government should cut military aid to Egypt to the tune of $300 million, so says a new report by two Washington-based think tanks.

The report, released by the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and the Center for International Policy (CIP) said the cut was necessary in order “to show the Egyptians this assistance is not an entitlement.”

It is no longer sustainable for the US to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses under President Abdel Fattah el Sisi’s autocratic rule, said the authors of the report, Seth Binder of POMED and William D Hartung of CIP.

The use of national security waivers by the US government to circumvent human rights abuses was an impediment towards good governance in Egypt and only rewards the misuse of funds in furthering “patronage and prestige”.

“An end to torture in Egypt’s prison system; easing of restrictions on journalists, human rights defenders, and other NGOs; and an end to the killing, torture, and displacement of civilians in the anti-terror campaign in the Sinai,” should all now be preconditions if the Egyptian regime wants access to US aid, according to the report.

As part of the US-brokered Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1978, Cairo has received a yearly $1.3 billion worth of military aid. And since 1948 the US has given more than $83 billion in foreign aid to Egypt alone.

Widely regarded for decades as one of the Middle East’s most strategic countries due to its control over the Suez Canal, access to the Nile River and proximity to Israel, the most populous Arab country has since seen its influence “greatly diminished”.

‘Red lines’

In power since 2013, Sisi overthrew and later jailed the country’s first democratically elected leader, President Mohamed Morsi, in a bloody military coup which saw hundreds killed.

The US initially suspended aid to Egypt only to release it again in 2015 citing national security reasons.

The report accuses successive US administrations of being insufficiently serious about holding Egypt’s poor human rights record accountable. It cites the need for a discussion on “whether there are any red lines that should lead to a complete cutoff of US security assistance” if the Sisi regime continues to flagrantly violate human rights.

Since taking power, Sisi has systematically sought to eliminate any form of opposition leading the authors to conclude that the Egyptian president “has built the most repressive Egyptian state in modern history”.

The US President Donald Trump has made “matters worse” and “to an extent beyond previous administrations—has fully embraced Egypt’s authoritarian regime, ignoring Sisi’s abysmal human rights record”.

An almost continuous flow of aid from Washington to Cairo has created a culture of “entitlement” amongst the higher echelons of the Egyptian political and military establishment.

The aid given by the US government no longer purchases continued support from Sisi and the authors noted a lack of regard towards American interests in the region.

The forthright report may ring alarm bells in Cairo, which is still grappling with unrest emanating from the 2011 Arab Spring and the brutal crackdown on protests that followed.

Once a linchpin of power in the Middle East the country’s economic woes and an active insurgency in the Sinai region has resulted in international marginalisation.

Gulf monarchies, in particular, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have attempted to become power brokers in the region, spending billions of dollars propping up anti-democratic forces in the region.