Obama Removes Weapons Freeze Against Egypt
WASHINGTON — Seeking to repair relations
with a longtime ally at a time of spreading war in the Middle
East, President
Obama on Tuesday lifted an arms freeze against Egypt
that he had first imposed after the military overthrow of the
country’s democratically elected government nearly two years ago.
Mr. Obama cleared
the way for the delivery of F-16 aircraft, Harpoon missiles and
M1A1 Abrams tanks, weapons prized by Egyptian leaders, who have
smoldered at the suspension. In a telephone call, Mr. Obama
assured President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt that he would
support the full $1.3 billion in annual military assistance the
Cairo government traditionally receives, even as others seek to
cut it, the White House said.
The decision signaled a trade-off for a
president who has spoken in support of democracy and human rights
but finds himself in need of friends at a volatile time in a
bloody part of the world. The White House made no effort to assert
that Egypt had made the “credible progress” toward democracy that
Mr. Obama demanded when he halted
the arms deliveries in October 2013. Instead, the decision
was justified as being “in the interest of U.S. national
security,” as the White House put it in a statement.
Administration officials, speaking on the
condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, said
the timing of the move was not directly related to the swirling
crosscurrents now roiling the Middle East, including the widening
conflict in Yemen, the rise of extremism in Libya, the battle with
the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq or the possible nuclear deal
with Iran.
But they said the
broader perils of the region, particularly militant attacks in the
Sinai Peninsula, had played an indirect role. “Given that higher
level of threat, we felt it particularly important to make sure
Egypt had all of the equipment it could possibly need to defend
itself from these threats,” one of the officials said.
Beyond Sinai, Egypt
faces multiple security issues. In February, it
conducted an airstrike against Islamic militants in Libya in
retaliation for the beheadings of a group of Egyptian Christians.
Egypt has also said it will send
ground troops into Yemen if necessary to support the
Saudi-led operation against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. And
Egyptian leaders agreed in concept to create a combined military
force with other Arab states.
Mr. Obama’s move will release 12 F-16
fighter jets, 20 Harpoon missiles, and the shells and parts
necessary to assemble up to 125 M1A1 Abrams tanks that Egypt had
previously paid for but that have been held up since 2013. The
F-16s are especially important to Egyptian leaders, who have
bitterly raised the issue with their American counterparts at
nearly every opportunity.
Intended or not, experts said Mr. Obama’s
decision would be interpreted as an effort by Washington to
bolster a fragile position in the region. “The U.S. is facing
quite a few challenges, and it needs to shore up relations with
allies,” said Steven Simon, a former Middle East adviser to Mr.
Obama now affiliated with Dartmouth. “The assistance to Egypt was
always predicated on its foreign policy, not its domestic policy.
That was certainly the Egyptian understanding of it.”
But other experts and human rights advocates said Mr. Obama had
effectively capitulated to Mr. Sisi, a former general who helped
lead the military overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim
Brotherhood government in 2013 and then won the presidency in an
election tainted by wide-scale arrests of opposition figures. They
compared Mr. Obama’s decision to lift the arms freeze to past
instances when he did not live up to his own words, citing the “red
line” he drew against Syrian use of chemical weapons in its civil
war.
“Unsurprisingly, in
this case you see that national security priorities, broadly
defined, trump virtually everything else,” said Sarah Margon, the
Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “And that’s a very
myopic, short-term approach to fighting terrorism. Human rights
abuses are actually a very bad counterterrorism strategy.”
According to Human
Rights Watch and an Egyptian group called the Arabic Network for
Human Rights Information, the Egyptian authorities arrested more
than 40,000 people after Mr. Sisi’s removal of Mr. Morsi and have
never provided a full accounting of the detentions.
Mr. Sisi’s
government has cracked down on nongovernmental organizations that
take foreign money and has authorized military courts to hold mass
trials in terrorism cases that the rights groups call a way of
suppressing protesters.
Amy Hawthorne, a senior fellow at the Rafik
Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council in
Washington, said Mr. Obama’s decision would be seen as a victory
by Egyptians who wore down American officials’ resistance.
“This isn’t their
intention, but it will be read by Sisi as acceptance of his
legitimacy and a desire to satisfy his demands in their
relationship,” she said. “I’m still trying to understand, how do
our concerns factor in?”
Mr. Obama’s decision does include elements
that may irritate Mr. Sisi, however. Until now, Egypt and Israel
were the only countries permitted to buy American arms by drawing
credit from future foreign aid. Mr. Obama said he would halt that
for Egypt, barring it from drawing in advance money expected in
the 2018 fiscal year and beyond. He will also channel future
military aid to four categories — counterterrorism, border
security, maritime security and Sinai security — rather than give
Egypt broad latitude to decide how to use it.
The change in
policy is intended to wean Egypt away from large, expensive
weapons systems that signal national prestige but are not suited
to fighting the sort of insurgent and terrorist threats it now
confronts, American officials said.
Without its aid
already spoken for years in advance, Egypt will have more
flexibility to make arms purchases to deal with immediate
challenges. The United States will also have more flexibility to
cut it off if future actions warrant, officials said.
Indeed, some
scholars said the end of cash-flow financing, as it is called, was
the most significant element of Mr. Obama’s announcement because
the resumption of aid had been expected eventually.
“Now the military aid could be much more
easily discontinued in the future,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, a
researcher at the Century Foundation in New York. “This is a very
far-reaching step.”
Bernadette Meehan,
a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said the release
of the weapons did not mean that the United States would stop
pressing Egypt to ease its domestic repression of dissent.
“We will continue
to engage with Egypt frankly and directly on its political
trajectory and to raise human rights and political reform issues
at the highest levels,” she said.
David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Cairo.
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