LONDON: Remember Barack Obama’s much praised 2009 Cairo speech? All that talk about “a new beginning” in US relations with the Muslim world jars now we know his idea of improved relations is to authorise drone strikes and ensure that Guantanamo prisoners on hunger strike are force-fed only at sundown during Ramazan.
And it jars when you consider that America’s attitude to Cairo today is best described as self-interested spread betting.
Following the army’s removal of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s elected president, the Obama administration is loth to call it a coup. (If there were any doubt, the transitional president, Adly Mansour, has now freely admitted to having been installed by coup.) Instead, the US is spinning its relationship with Egypt as “complicated”. The statements coming out of the White House are carefully worded, Cairo-speech style, to suggest the hesitation is about needing time to scan for signs of eroded democracy.
America’s primary concern, as always, is how best to preserve its interests in the region. Calling a coup a coup would legally bind the US to withdraw $1.5bn in aid to the army — and it’s the army that keeps the US and its regional ally Israel happy. In return for this aid, the deal is that Egypt doesn’t mess with its “cold peace” treaty with Israel, quells the restive Sinai, controls its side of the besieged Gaza Strip and secures US priority passage through the Suez Canal.
This time the army is on the side of the protesters on the street who wanted Morsi to go. But if the US position were premised on the popular will, it would not have supported Hosni Mubarak prior to the revolution in 2011 — and it would have threatened to pull the aid during Egypt’s post-revolution period of military rule, when the army was putting more than 10,000 citizens through military courts, removing their clothes in the streets, and forcing women to undergo “virginity tests”.
Likewise, if the US had wanted to throw its weight behind Egypt’s post-revolutionary push for “bread, freedom, dignity”, the Obama administration might have condemned Morsi’s abuses of power, rather than branding protesters immature.
When Morsi rushed through an unpopular, divisive and illiberal constitution; when he gave himself unprecedented powers; when he sent the army out to attack those protesting about this constitution and arrest critics and when he stood by as Christians and Shias were killed: the US was not voicing concern for human rights in Egypt. But there’s a “hedge your bets” approach here, too: even as the US was dismissing anti-Morsi protesters, it was sending signals to Morsi that it supported his imminent removal, according to an Egyptian official interviewed by the New York Times. Now Muslim Brotherhood supporters are being killed, arrested or muzzled; the former president is detained; and the army has issued an arrest warrant for the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader. The US has cautioned the army about respecting the rights of Morsi supporters — but it won’t side more strongly with them because it isn’t clear, yet, if they are needed to maintain US concerns: the army and opposition may be able to forge ahead without the Brotherhood; they may not. For the US, it’s best to stay vague. This is why, preposterously, America is able to confirm plans to send four shiny F-16 fighter jets to Egypt, while still talking democracy and inclusion for Egypt’s transitional process.
None of this will be of any great surprise to Egyptians who, as in other parts of the Arab world, are used to this duplicity. In Cairo and across the Middle East, when the US reiterates its hopes for strong democracy in the region, it is beyond implausible — it is insulting.
By arrangement with the Guardian