The Arab world’s transitional states desperately need economic assistance and investment, the World Economic Forum heard today. The “cost of the transition is much, much more than anticipated,” said one government minister.
But plans to increase US assistance risk being jeopardized by the Egyptian government’s attack on pro-democracy NGOs, said a US government official.
The groups’ officials “are being held hostage” and face up to five years in prison, the International Republican Institute’s Sam LaHood said today.
The US is committed to supporting the region’s democratic transitions through a range of initiatives, from infrastructure investment and debt forgiveness to preferential trade access and loan guarantees. Washington is also engaged with European and Gulf states in supporting the G8’s Deauville Partnership and encouraging the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to invest in the fragile transitional economies.
But the Egyptian government’s ban on travel for officials of US-based NGOs, following recent raids on the groups’ offices, is putting such aid at risk.
“It’s a big, big issue,” an administration official said, in an off-the-record discussion. “It will impact massively,” if the authorities in Cairo proceed to prosecute the democracy assistance officials.
Claims that pro-democracy NGOs are orchestrating anti-government protests are ”patently false,” IRI’s Sam LaHood told National Public Radio.
His lawyer’s analogy is that “we are being held hostage and there’s a negotiation going on in his opinion between our governments … and nobody wants the hostage to die, but sometimes mistakes are made.”
“The reality is, this is bigger than me or IRI,” LaHood said. “There are 300 NGOs being investigated by the Egyptian government, and only a handful of them are American.”
The Obama administration appeared to give the nod to efforts by legislators on Capitol Hill who are threatening to cut or veto the annual $1.4 billion aid package to Egypt’s military.
“It is the prerogative of Congress to say that our future military aid is going to be conditioned on a democratic transition,” said Michael H. Posner, assistant secretary of state responsible for democracy, human rights and labor.
The Egyptian government’s crackdown is “unprecedented” and “a direct challenge” to the United States, a leading analyst said yesterday.
The Obama administration is “struggling” to cope with the crisis, but it would be “a huge mistake” to back down, said Michelle Dunne, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council of the United States.
The political rational for the regime’s targeting of the NGOs was clear, she said: they comprise Egypt’s most vibrant democratic forces.
While liberal parties remain weak, “liberalism resides in civil society,” Dunne, a former state Department official, told the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Western states and companies must overcome fears of political Islam and invest in the Arab world’s transitional economies, the new Islamist prime ministers of Tunisia and Morocco told the Davos forum.
“I do not believe the new regimes should be called political Islamist regimes,” Tunisia’s Prime Minister Hammadi Jebali told a Davos panel. “We must be careful with our terminology… For the first time in the Arab world, we have free and honest elections that led to democratic regimes.”
Arab officials and civil society activists urged Western executives and commentators not to demonize the Islamic movements that have gone from prison to parliament and the corridors of power in a year of stunning transformation.
“I would like to ask the businessmen in the room. Have you suffered from the victory of the Islamists? You supported the dictatorships in the past,” Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane said. “Today we can guarantee your interests more than they did in the past.”
Moez Masoud, an Islamic scholar and preacher at Egypt’s Al-Tareeq Al-Sah Institute, said opinion polling showed people voted for Islamic groups in Egypt primarily because they were the most organized and effective.
“It wasn’t about bikinis or no bikinis, or whether to implement Sharia law. It got down to jobs, money and security, and the people wanted the best-organized groups,” Masoud said.
“First you have to let the Arab world be for a while… Stop trying to impose secularism from afar,” he advised his Western audience.
But financial stringency arising from the Western economic crisis is a serious constraint on economic assistance, observers suggest.
“The economic environment undoubtedly has a huge impact on our reaction” to the Arab Spring, says Steve McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy.
“Many in Egypt and other countries in the region feel that the US and international community are not stepping up and providing them with support that is commensurate with the moment,” he says. “Compare this to the reaction to ’89-’90, when the U.S. provided billions in support to European transitions to democracy.”
McInerney gives the Obama administration marks for effort, but fears it may not be enough. “They did create a 160 million dollar fund for region, but that’s really small potatoes.” They’ve also tried to mobilize funds from the Gulf states, but the deliverables have been much less than hoped for. “The administration has tried to do what it can with very limited resources, but it’s not sufficient to meet the challenges of the moment,” he said.
Egypt’s military is banking on the assumption that US strategic interests will trump lower order issues of democracy and human rights, notes one commentator:
The country is in many ways too big to fail in the eyes of the US, with its peace deal with Israel and the emerging political power of the Muslim Brotherhood. After years of the State Department giving Egypt’s most popular opposition movement the cold shoulder, US Ambassador Anne Patterson has been reaching out to them in recent weeks. Perhaps that’s what the military is banking on.
Egypt’s finances practically dictate that the country will be going cap in hand abroad for cash in the near future. The US would usually be a first port of call, as would the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, where Washington has considerable sway. All of this would argue that cooler heads will prevail. But the message from SCAF to Washington today feels like, “You need us more than we care about you.”
