By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, United States, Jan 27 2015 (IPS)

At the same time as the United States, Canada and the European Union announced a set of new sanctions against Russia in mid-December last year, Ukraine received 350 million dollars in U.S. military aid, coming on top of a one billion dollar aid package approved by the U.S. Congress in March 2014. 

Western governments’ further involvement in the Ukraine conflict signals their confidence in the cabinet appointed by the new government earlier in December 2014. This new government is unique given that three of its most important ministries were granted to foreign-born individuals who received Ukrainian citizenship just hours before their appointment.

Frédéric Mousseau

The Ministry of Finance went to Natalie Jaresko, a U.S.-born and educated businesswoman who has been working in Ukraine since the mid-1990s, overseeing a private equity fund established by the U.S. government to invest in the country. Jaresko is also the CEO of Horizon Capital, an investment firm that administers various Western investments in the country.

As unusual as it may seem, this appointment is consistent with what looks more like a takeover of the Ukrainian economy by Western interests. In two reports – The Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture and Walking on the West Side: The World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict – the Oakland Institute has documented this takeover, particularly in the agricultural sector.

A major factor in the crisis that led to deadly protests and eventually to president Viktor Yanukovych’s removal from office in February 2014 was his rejection of a European Union (EU) Association agreement aimed at expanding trade and integrating Ukraine with the
EU – an agreement that was tied to a 17 billion dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

After the president’s departure and the installation of a pro-Western government, the IMF initiated a reform programme that was a condition of its loan with the goal of increasing private investment in the country.“The manoeuvring for control over the country’s [Ukraine’s] agricultural system is a pivotal factor in the struggle that has been taking place over the last year in the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War”

The package of measures includes reforming the public provision of water and energy, and, more important, attempts to address what the World Bank identified as the “structural roots” of the current economic crisis in Ukraine, notably the high cost of doing business in the country.

The Ukrainian agricultural sector has been a prime target for foreign private investment and is logically seen by the IMF and World Bank as a priority sector for reform. Both institutions praise the new government’s readiness to follow their advice.

For example, the foreign-driven agricultural reform roadmap provided to Ukraine includes facilitating the acquisition of agricultural land, cutting food and plant regulations and controls, and reducing corporate taxes and custom duties.

The stakes around Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector – the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat – could not be higher. Ukraine is known for its ample fields of rich black soil, and the country boasts more than 32 million hectares of fertile, arable land – the equivalent of one-third of the entire arable land in the European Union.

The manoeuvring for control over the country’s agricultural system is a pivotal factor in the struggle that has been taking place over the last year in the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War.

The presence of foreign corporations in Ukrainian agriculture is growing quickly, with more than 1.6 million hectares signed over to foreign companies for agricultural purposes in recent years. While Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont have been in Ukraine for quite some time, their investments in the country have grown significantly over the past few years.

Cargill is involved in the sale of pesticides, seeds and fertilisers and has recently expanded its agricultural investments to include grain storage, animal nutrition and a stake in UkrLandFarming, the largest agribusiness in the country.

Similarly, Monsanto has been in Ukraine for years but has doubled the size of its team over the last three years. In March 2014, just weeks after Yanukovych was deposed, the company invested 140 million dollars in building a new seed plant in Ukraine.

DuPont has also expanded its investments and announced in June 2013 that it too would be investing in a new seed plant in the country.

Western corporations have not just taken control of certain profitable agribusinesses and agricultural activities, they have now initiated a vertical integration of the agricultural sector and extended their grip on infrastructure and shipping.

For instance, Cargill now owns at least four grain elevators and two sunflower seed processing plants used for the production of sunflower oil. In December 2013, the company bought a “25% +1 share” in a grain terminal at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk with a capacity of 3.5 million tons of grain per year. 

All aspects of Ukraine’s agricultural supply chain – from the production of seeds and other agricultural inputs to the actual shipment of commodities out of the country – are thus increasingly controlled by Western firms.

European institutions and the U.S. government have actively promoted this expansion. It started with the push for a change of government at a time when president Yanukovych was seen as pro-Russian interests. This was further pushed, starting in February 2014, through the promotion of a “pro-business” reform agenda, as described by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker when she met with Prime Minister Arsenly Yatsenyuk in October 2014.

The European Union and the United States are working hand in hand in the takeover of Ukrainian agriculture. Although Ukraine does not allow the production of genetically modified (GM) crops, the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, which ignited the conflict that ousted Yanukovych, includes a clause (Article 404) that commits both parties to cooperate to “extend the use of biotechnologies” within the country.

This clause is surprising given that most European consumers reject GM crops. However, it creates an opening to bring GM products into Europe, an opportunity sought after by large agro-seed companies such as Monsanto.

Opening up Ukraine to the cultivation of GM crops would go against the will of European citizens, and it is unclear how the change would benefit Ukrainians.

It is similarly unclear how Ukrainians will benefit from this wave of foreign investment in their agriculture, and what impact these investments will have on the seven million local farmers.

Once they eventually look away from the conflict in the Eastern “pro-Russian” part of the country, Ukrainians may wonder what remains of their country’s ability to control its food supply and manage the economy to their own benefit.

As for U.S. and European citizens, will they eventually awaken from the headlines and grand rhetoric about Russian aggression and human rights abuses and question their governments’ involvement in the Ukraine conflict? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Samantha Power (left), United States Permanent Representative to the U.N., speaks with Ron Prosor, Permanent Representative of Israel, in the Security Council Chamber after the Council held a midnight emergency session on the conflict in Gaza, Jul. 28. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 7 2014 (IPS)

There is an age-old axiom in politics, says a cynical Asian diplomat, that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

But that longstanding adage never applied to Israel, which although sustained militarily by the United States, has had no compunction at lashing out at Washington if the U.S. is ever critical of illegal settlements or human rights violations in the occupied territories."The U.S. government has continued to serve as an enabler for Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza." -- Norman Solomon

Although its military survival depends largely on all the U.S. weapon systems at its command, Israel lambasted the United States last week, unofficially describing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s support for a peace plan in Gaza as “a strategic terrorist attack.”

Angry at the remarks, State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki countered: “It’s simply not the way partners and allies treat each other.”

Still, the United States, per its usual norm, continued to absorb the punches thrown by Israel – right or wrong – in a veritable act of political masochism.

“If one is to parody a metaphor,” the Asian diplomat told IPS, “while Israel continues to bite the hand that feeds, the United States continues to feed the hand that bites.”

Despite the vitriol from Israel, the administration of President Barack Obama was quick to supply some 225 million dollars in ammunition and spares to Israel as emergency aid last week to bolster its defences in the month-long conflict with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The conflict is now under an extended 72-hour truce.

William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, told IPS, “If the Obama administration had wanted to exert leverage during the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, it could have threatened to cut off military aid until the Israeli government ceased disproportionate attacks that killed large numbers of civilians.”

Instead, he said, the U.S. administration re-supplied Israel with ammunition in the midst of the conflict.

Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS, “The U.S. government has continued to serve as an enabler for Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.”

He said the humane rhetoric from the Obama administration functions in tandem with huge U.S. military and intelligence help from Washington.

Last month, as the latest Gaza crisis escalated, the White House flashed an unmistakable green light for Israel to massacre — and keep massacring, said Solomon, co-founder and coordinator of RootsAction.org, a 450,000-member online activist group based in the United States.

The bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Israel has combined tragedy and farce in gruesome ways, he noted.

Both governments have regularised the matter-of-fact killing of civilians in Gaza as though they were nothing more than incidental to the geopolitical agendas of those two dominant military powers, said Solomon, author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death”.

At last count, about 1,875 Palestinians, including 426 children, were killed in the conflict– virtually all of them with U.S supplied weapons.

In contrast, the Israeli death toll was 64 of its soldiers and three civilians.

A preliminary survey by international organisations says the Israeli bombings destroyed some 37 mosques, 167 schools, six universities and more than 10,000 homes in Gaza.

Addressing the General Assembly Wednesday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said international humanitarian law clearly requires protection by all parties of civilians and civilian facilities, including U.N. staff and U.N. premises.

Ban said perhaps nothing symbolised more the horror that was unleashed on the people of Gaza than the repeated shelling of U.N. facilities harbouring civilians who had been explicitly told to seek a safe haven there.

“These attacks were outrageous, unacceptable and unjustifiable,” he added.

“Our U.N. flag must be respected and assure protection to those in need. U.N. shelters must be safe zones, not combat zones. Those who violate this sacred trust must be subject to accountability and justice,” he added.

Ban also pointed out that in the most recent case of shelling of a U.N. facility, the Israelis were informed of the coordinates 33 times.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regretted the civilian casualties but blamed it all on Hamas.

“Every civilian casualty is a tragedy, a tragedy of Hamas’s own making, ” he added.

Hartung told IPS although Israel has its own production capacity – particularly in areas like drones – the military is heavily dependent on U.S. aid.

From F-16 fighter planes to bombs and ammunition, the Israeli attacks on Gaza prominently featured weapons made in the United States and paid for by U.S. taxpayers, he pointed out.

In all, he said, the United States has provided over 25 billion dollars in military assistance to Israel in the 2000s — all in the form of grants that do not need to be paid back.

And while countries like Canada, France, Italy and Germany have supplied some military equipment to Israel, their sales are dwarfed by the equipment provided by the United States, Hartung added.

Solomon told IPS, “From Obama, no amount of discreet handwringing or personal dislike of Netanyahu has made an appreciable difference to the Israeli government.”

He said it can count on Washington to supply a steady stream of platitudes about seeking a broad solution via a peace process.

Directly aided and abetted by the U.S. government, Israel has opted for an ongoing iron fist — truly terrifying for the civilian population of Gaza, said Solomon. This U.S.-Israeli mode of operation remains highly functional in terms of diplomatic cover, military help and intelligence aid. In human terms, for Palestinians, the results continue to be catastrophic, he declared.

Before 9/11, he said, the scholar Eqbal Ahmad voiced a truth that is more cogent and crucial than ever: A superpower cannot promote terror in one place and reasonably expect to discourage terrorism in another place. It won’t work in this shrunken world.

Ahmad has passed away, but those words from him remain very much alive. They are true, and they condemn the U.S. role as enabler of Israel’s mass killing, said Solomon.

More than a decade ago, as the war on terror was gaining momentum, Martin Luther King III spoke at a commemoration of his father’s birth and asked: “When will the war end?…We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorising others.”

Today, the wisdom of his statement serves as an indictment of what Israel does in Gaza — and what the United States does to help Israel do it, declared Solomon.

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Violent demonstrations have followed branding of the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 29 2014 (IPS)

Five days after approving the transfer of 10 Apache helicopters to aid Egypt’s “counter-terrorism” campaign in Sinai, the administration of President Barack Obama denounced as “unconscionable” the latest round of mass death sentences against members of the Muslim Brotherhood handed down by an Egyptian court Monday.

Warning that the decisions “foster the instability, extremism, and radicalization that Egypt’s Interim Government says it seeks to resolve”, the State Department also complained that a ruling by yet another court to ban the April 6 Youth Movement was “troubling.”“This perceived non-action will empower the junta in its bloody crackdown on all kinds of opposition and its continuing massive human rights violations." -- Emile Nakhleh

“Supporters of the movement were at the forefront of the January 25, 2011 revolution that overthrew former president (Hosni) Mubarak, and the Government of Egypt must allow for the peaceful political activist that the group practices if Egypt’s Interim intends to transition to democracy, as it has committed itself to do,” according to a statement issued in the name of the Department’s spokesperson, Jan Psaki.

Human rights groups also harshly criticised the latest court decisions, arguing that the judicial branch of Egypt’s government appears to have lost its independence and become a willing tool of the dominant military whose former chief and defence minister,

Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi is virtually certain to win the presidential election scheduled for May 26-27.

“Egypt’s judiciary risks becoming just another part of the authorities’ repressive machinery, issuing sentences of death and life imprisonment on an industrial scale,” according to Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International in London.

Independent experts here also took exception to Washington’s reaction, suggesting that until the U.S. takes stronger action, notably a cut-off of all military assistance, its verbal condemnations will not be taken seriously.

Washington provides Egypt with about 1.5 billion dollars a year in aid, 1.3 billion dollars of which has been earmarked for the military.

The new rulings came just as Secretary of State John Kerry was scheduled to meet Tuesday with visiting Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy in what was billed as an effort to improve relations that were strained initially by Washington’s partial suspension of military cooperation and aid following last July’s coup against President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a former Brotherhood leader.

“For many Egyptians and other Arabs, including liberals and Islamists, the U.S. reaction is mere words that will have no effect on Egypt’s ruling junta,” according to Emile Nakhleh, a former director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Programme at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

“This perceived non-action will empower the junta in its bloody crackdown on all kinds of opposition and its continuing massive human rights violations,” he told IPS.

Nakhleh added that the delivery of the Apache helicopters, which was announced last week, as well as all military-to-military and intelligence cooperation with Egypt should be suspended “in reaction to the junta’s egregious human rights violations, sham trials, and summary convictions.”

Monday’s court decisions followed the sentencing last month of 529 people to death for a 2013 attack against a police station in Minya in which one officer was killed.

The same court announced Monday that it was commuting the sentences of 492 of those defendants to life imprisonment but was confirming the death penalty for the remaining 37.

The same court, however, proceeded to sentence another 683 people, including the Brotherhood’s top leader, Mohammed Badie, to death in connection with a separate attack in the same area.

Both incidents took place the same day last August after government forces in Cairo opened fire on demonstrators protesting against Morsi’s ouster, killing many hundreds of his supporters. Both trials took place in a matter of a few hours, and most of the defendants were tried in absentia.

“The only shocking thing about this latest sentencing is that they would do this again following the harsh international reaction to the outlandish verdicts from last month,” said Samer Shehata, an Egypt expert at the University of Oklahoma.

“It shows essentially a disregard not only for due process and Egyptian law, but also for international opinion,” he told IPS.

Since Morsi’s ouster, the military-backed regime has made clear its desire to crush the Brotherhood. In addition to arresting Morsi and charging the group’s leadership with capital offences, security forces have carried out several massacres of demonstrators, killing more than 1,000 people and detaining as many as 23,000 more, many of them in secret prisons where torture is routinely practiced, according to human rights groups.

They have also declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.

The regime has also proposed new anti-terrorist legislation that, among other provisions, would make holding a leadership position in the Brotherhood, despite its advocacy of non-violence, a capital crime; expedite procedures for prosecuting defendants accused of terrorism; and significantly broaden the definition of terrorism to include any action that could “obstruct” the work of public officials or various other institutions. It would also criminalise any action that could “harm national unity”.

“By these definitions, anyone who participated in the popular uprisings of 2011 or 2013 could be branded a terrorist,” noted Joe Stork, an Egypt specialist at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Monday’s third court decision – to ban the “pro-democracy” April 6 movement– was based on charges that the group had “tarnished the image” of Egypt and conspired with foreign powers.

Despite the group’s initial support for the military coup, three of its most prominent leaders were sentenced to three years of hard labour last fall for allegedly organising an unauthorised demonstration to protest police repression. Their sentences were upheld by an appeals court earlier this month.

“This reveals the true character of the regime in Egypt,” said Shehata. “It’s not interested in restoring democracy; it is interested in wiping out dissent – initially the Muslim Brotherhood and now liberal democracy activists and NGOs and human rights defenders.”

He expressed frustration with Washington’s reaction, insisting that military aid should be cut off.

“The United States seems not to be genuinely concerned about what is happening,” he complained. “What else would explain the recent Apache helicopters going to Egypt and the photo-op between Nabil Fahmy and Kerry?

“Unfortunately, the administration is behaving as if the Arab uprisings never occurred… and that all we care about is maintaining [the] Camp David [peace treaty between Egypt and Israel], passage through the Suez Canal, and counter-terrorism and forget about democracy and human rights.”

He added that Saudi Arabia, which hosted Obama last month during a key summit last month, and the United Arab Emirates were the main “cheerleaders and check-writers” for the regime and particularly its repression of the Brotherhood.

Along with Kuwait, the two Gulf monarchies have provided billions of dollars in aid. He also noted that Israel and its allies here have also lobbied in favour of continuing U.S. assistance.

CIA veteran analyst Paul Pillar, the government’s top Middle East intelligence officer from 2000 until his retirement in 2005, added that a combination of Israeli preferences and Islamophobia “has produced U.S. policy that has insufficiently recognised the repressive nature of the current Egyptian government.”

“Statements about how troubled we are will have little effect, coming at the same time the United States is partially resuming military aid to Egypt,” he told IPS via email.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Capt. Sean Spence, the commander of B Co. TF Eagle, rides shotgun on an AH-64 Apache during an Apache extraction exercise Aug. 25 at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo. Credit: public domain

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Apr 24 2014 (IPS)

Last October, the Barack Obama administration suspended the delivery of attack helicopters to Egypt’s interim government following the Jul. 2 military ouster of Egypt’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

“Delivery of these systems could resume pending Egypt’s progress toward an inclusive democratically-elected civilian government,” said Derek Chollet, the assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs, during testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee Oct. 29."There is a strong risk that they will be used in carrying out serious human rights abuses - basically collective punishment of entire communities - in the Sinai." -- Michelle Dunne

So the announcement late Tuesday by the Pentagon that 10 apache helicopters will now be delivered despite agreement by major rights groups that the Egyptian government has, if anything, increased its repression in the intervening six months is being met with concern.

“It’s abundantly clear that Egypt is not taking steps toward a democratic transition,” said Sarah Margon, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “It’s a very confused statement.”

Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel told his Egyptian counterpart that “we are not yet able to certify that Egypt is taking steps to support a democratic transition.” At the same time he confirmed the delivery of the Apache helicopters in support of Egypt’s counterterrorism operations in the Sinai, according to a readout of their phone call Tuesday.

Secretary of State John Kerry will also be certifying to Congress that Egypt is “sustaining the strategic relationship with the United States – including by countering transnational threats such as terrorism and weapons proliferation – and that Egypt is upholding its obligations under the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty”, according to a separate statement released Tuesday.

“The U.S. administration keeps trying to split the difference, sending the message that they want to keep up security cooperation with the Egyptian government but at the same time that they don’t approve of the coup and the massive human rights abuses that have followed,” Michelle Dunne, a former State Department Middle East specialist, told IPS.

“I think these helicopters are intended to show support for the fight against terrorism in the Sinai and not for General [Abdel Fatah] al-Sisi’s presidential campaign, but that’s not an easy distinction to make,” said Dunne, now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“The other problem with delivering the Apaches is that there is a strong risk that they will be used in carrying out serious human rights abuses — basically collective punishment of entire communities — in the Sinai,” she said.

“This would be a direct violation of President Obama’s January 2014 directive against providing conventional weapons in situations where they are likely to be used to commit human rights violations or to associate the United States with such violations,” added Dunne.

As noted by Dunne, rights groups worry that any distinctions the Obama administration may be trying to make between addressing legitimate Egyptian security concerns and disapproving of its human rights record will be lost as a result of the delivery of the Apache helicopters.

“Our concern is that these fine distinctions will be lost on most people in Egypt and will be distorted by the Egyptian government, that will claim that this indicates U.S. support,” Neil Hicks, the international policy advisor at Human Rights First, told IPS.

Almost one month ago, the Obama administration strongly denounced an Egyptian court’s decision to sentence 529 people to death for the killing of one police officer during protests of the coup against Morsi last July.

“The interim government must understand the negative message that this decision, if upheld, would send to the world about Egypt’s commitment to international law and inclusivity,” Kerry said on Mar. 26 in reaction to the mass death sentences.

The Obama administration has strongly condemned the violent crackdown by the Egyptian military against protesterrs following the ouster of Morsi, which many Egyptians supported at the time.

Citing statistics by Egyptian rights groups and other sources, a Carnegie report authored by Dunne and Scott Williamson in March found that the current level of repression in Egypt actually exceeds the scale reached under former President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who tried to crush the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s by rounding up hundreds of members and executing a dozen of their leaders, and in the aftermath of the assassination of former President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

A total of 3,143 people have been killed as a result of political violence between Jul. 3 last year and the end of January. Of the total, at least 2,528 civilians and 60 police were killed in political protests and clashes, and another 281 others are estimated to have been killed in terrorist attacks.

Some 16,400 people have also been arrested during political events, while another 2,590 political leaders — the vast majority associated with the Muslim Brotherhood — have been rounded up and remain in detention, the report said.

According to Stephen McInerney, the executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), the Obama administration’s decision to send the Apaches doesn’t contradict the law, “but sends the signal that concern for democratic progress is not an equal priority for this administration.

“Unfortunately, it’s not unexpected. It’s been clear that many in the administration have wanted to move forward with the resumption of military aid to Egypt,” McInerney told IPS.

Al-Sisi, who experts here say has exercised de facto power since the coup, is expected to be a shoo-in in Egypt’s presidential election late next month. He has returned many senior officials of the government of former President Hosni Mubarak, as well as many of his family’s business cronies, to positions they lost after Mubarak was forced to step down in the face of popular pressure and some urging by the U.S. and other Western governments in February 2011.

Citing increasing terrorist activity which has reportedly taken the lives of more than 430 police officers and soldiers since the coup, he urged the Obama administration Wednesday to re-instate all U.S. military and security all U.S. military assistance to Egypt. Washington has provided on average of about 1.3 billion dollars a year – almost all of it in military aid – in bilateral assistance to Cairo.

Next to Israel, Egypt has been the biggest beneficiary of U.S. bilateral assistance since the Camp David peace treaty was signed by the two nations in 1979. Besides helping to sustain the treaty, the aid has also ensured that U.S. warships are given priority access to the Suez Canal and U.S. warplanes can overfly Egyptian airspace.

The aid suspension last October infuriated the Egyptian military’s closest allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Riyadh has promised to compensate for any shortfall in U.S. military aid by buying weapons systems other arms suppliers, including Russia, on Egypt’s behalf.

Saudi complaints that Washington has not provided sufficient support to Al-Sisi and the Egyptian military since the coup reportedly figured importantly in recent exchanges between Washington and Riyadh, including a visit by Obama himself with King Abdullah last month.

Jim Lobe contributed to this article.

The aftermath of clashes between police and anti-coup demonstrators during the dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adaweya sit-in on Aug. 14 in Cairo. Credit: Amro Diab/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Oct 10 2013 (IPS)

The administration of President Barack Obama announced Wednesday it was freezing hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Egyptian military pending “credible progress” toward a return to democratic rule.

The State Department said Washington was suspending deliveries of big-ticket weaponry, including tanks, warplanes and attack helicopters, that make up much of the 1.3 billion dollars in military aid it provides Egypt annually.

Officials also said Washington would not provide the Egyptian government with 260 million dollars in cash to use as it sees fit, as it has in the past. Instead, it plans to work with the military-backed regime to bolster programmes in health, education, democracy promotion and private-sector development."The military isn't going to change their fundamental strategy over a few tanks and planes."
-- Robert Springborg

But officials who briefed reporters after the announcement insisted that the administration had still not determined whether the Jul. 3 ouster of President Mohammed Morsi constituted a “coup”, which under U.S. law would require the complete cutting of military assistance. They stressed that the latest steps were not intended to be “punitive” or to diminish “Egypt’s ability to be a strong security partner of the United States.”

One official characterised the telephone conversation in which Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel informed the regime’s strongman, Defence Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, of the freeze as “very friendly” and said that the fact that the two men had spoken 20 times over the last several months “underscores the importance of the U.S.-Egypt relationship.”

The State Department said Washington would continue to provide military training in the United States for Egyptian officers and spare parts for major weapons systems already in Cairo’s possession.

In what some critics called a major loophole, the State Department said the United States will also continue providing aid used for border security and counter-terrorism and for “ensur[ing] security in the Sinai,” the scene of growing anti-government violence since the July coup.

Too little, too late

Most Egypt experts here welcomed the State Department’s Wednesday announcement but complained that it may be a case of “too little too late.”

Al-Sisi appeared unaffected by the cuts and, in fact, emboldened by 12 billion dollars in aid from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, as well as a pledge by Saudi King Abdullah to compensate for aid withheld by Washington. By most accounts, the regime’s repression, including arrests of virtually all of the Brotherhood’s national leaders and thousands of its members, has intensified.

On Wednesday, hours before the State Department announcement, the regime officially dissolved the Brotherhood, while the Court of Appeals in Cairo announced that Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, will be tried on Nov. 4 on charges of inciting violence.

“This sort of step should have been taken more forthrightly earlier on,” Emile Nakhleh, a former director of the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis office, told IPS in reference to the military cuts. “This is better than nothing at all, but we haven’t really conveyed a clear message.”

Khaled Elgindy, an Egypt expert at the Brookings Institution, complained that Wednesday’s announcement was “sort of a half-measure that doesn’t appear to be part of a broader, overarching American vision for Egypt, or the region.”

“It’s very important to send a message when it comes to democratic and human rights standards, but I don’t think we’ve done that effectively,” he told IPS. “We’ve done it in a way that muddles that message and that makes it possible for any side in Egypt to characterise it in whatever way they want.”

Robert Springborg, an Egypt specialist at the Naval Post-Graduate School, said Wednesday’s announcement should be seen more as a “political and symbolic” gesture than one “where the capacities of the Egyptian military will be really impacted.”

“The military isn’t going to change their fundamental strategy over a few tanks and planes,” he said in a phone interview. “This will have zero impact on what the military and the government do over the next few months.”

“It’s certainly the right thing to do, but it’s overdue,” said Samer Shehata of the University of Oklahoma, who stressed that the administration should have called Morsi’s ouster a coup and suspended military aid from the outset.

“Of course, when you withdraw aid, there’s always a question of whether you give up influence,” Shehata said. “I don’t know the answer, but I do know that the U.S. should not be giving military aid to this regime right now.”

Contributing to repression

“The problem is that the kind of assets we provide for border security and counter-terrorism can be readily put to use in suppressing the opposition in Egypt,” noted Wayne White, a former deputy director of the State Department’s Middle East intelligence office who is currently based at the Middle East Institute.

“The F-16s and tanks [now suspended] are not relevant to the ongoing repression, so this may not do anything to reduce it,” he told IPS.

His concern was echoed by Amnesty International, whose U.S. director, Frank Jannuzi, warned that Washington should “stop providing arms or allowing back-door sales of weapons or equipment that Egypt’s security forces will likely use to violate human rights,” including shotguns, military rifles, machine guns, ammunition, spare parts for Apache attack helicopters, and armoured Caterpillar bulldozers.

Some lawmakers close with the Israeli lobby, which has strongly opposed cuts in military aid to Egypt out of fear they could diminish the Egyptian army’s commitment to uphold the 1979 Camp David peace accords with Israel, urged the administration to reconsider.

“I am disappointed that the Administration is planning to partially suspend military aid to Egypt,” said Eliot Engel, ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a statement issued before the actual announcement. “During this fragile period we should be rebuilding partnerships in Egypt that enhance our bilateral relationship, not undermining them.”

After Morsi’s ouster, the administration urged the new regime to include the Brotherhood in the process to return the country to democratic rule. When those appeals were ignored, it quietly suspended delivery of some F-16s and cancelled the annual “Bright Star” joint manoeuvres that U.S. forces have carried out with Egyptian counterparts for decades.

Obama’s decision to reduce aid followed a review launched in August after several massacres in which more than 1,000 Brotherhood protestors were killed. The president decided to act after violent clashes between Morsi supporters, security forces and anti-Brotherhood mobs killed more than 50 people last weekend, according to officials.

A military checkpoint on Colombia's Atrato River. Credit: Jesús Abad Colorado/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 19 2013 (IPS)

The United States needs to phase down its drug war and tighten the reins on its cooperation with local militaries and police in Latin America, according to a new report released here Wednesday by three influential think tanks.

Of particular interest is the increase in training deployments to Latin American and the Caribbean by the Special Operations Forces (SOF) – elite units like the Army’s Green Berets and Navy SEALS – due in part to the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and drawdown from Afghanistan.

Over the past decade, SOF ranks have more than doubled to about 65,000, and their commander, Adm. William McRaven, has been particularly aggressive in seeking new missions for his troops in new theatres, including Latin America and the Caribbean where they are training thousands of local counterparts.

“You can train a lot of people for the cost of one helicopter,” Adam Isacson, an analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told IPS.

He noted that the increased investment in SOF was part of a much larger Pentagon strategy of maintaining a “light (military) footprint” in countries around the globe while bolstering its influence with local military institutions.

The Pentagon, however, is much less transparent than the State Department, and its programmes are often not subject to the same human-rights conditions and do not get the same degree of Congressional oversight.

Moreover, McRaven has sought the authority to deploy SOF teams to countries without consulting either U.S. ambassadors there or even the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), making it even more difficult for civil society activists to track what they’re doing and whether they’re working with local units with poor human-rights records that would normally be denied U.S. aid and training under the so-called Leahy Law.

Last summer, according to Isacson, McRaven’s command even tried to work out an agreement with Colombia to set up a regional special operations coordination centre there without consulting SOUTHCOM or the embassy.

“What these developments mean is that the military role in foreign policy-making is becoming ever greater, and military-to-military relations come to matter more than diplomatic relations,” he said. “What does that mean for civil-military relations not only in the region, but also here at home?”

The 32-page report, entitled “Time to Listen”, describes U.S. policy as “on auto-pilot”, largely due to the powerful bureaucratic interests in the Pentagon and the Drug Enforcement Administration and their regional counterparts that have built up over decades.

“The counter-drug bureaucracies in the United States are remarkably resistant to change, unwilling to rethink and reassess strategies and goals,” said Lisa Haugaard, director of the Latin America Working Group Education Fund (LAWGEF) which released the report along with WOLA and the Centre for International Policy (CIP).

The report also noted that new security technologies, including drones, whose use by the U.S. and other countries is growing quickly throughout the region, and cyber-spying of the kind that prompted this week’s abrupt cancellation by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff of her state visit here next month, pose major challenges to the security environment and civil liberties in the region.

Total U.S. aid to Latin America hit its highest level in more than two decades in 2010 – nearly 4.5 billion dollars – due to the costs of the “Merida Initiative”, a multi-year programme for fighting drug-trafficking in Mexico and Central America, and a major inflow of assistance to help Haiti recover from that year’s devastating earthquake.

But aid fell sharply in 2011 – to just 2.5 billion dollars – and is expected to decline to just 2.2 billion dollars in fiscal 2014, which begins Oct. 1.

Military and security assistance also reached its height in 2010, at 1.6 billion dollars, but has since declined to around 900 million dollars, largely as a result of the phase-out of Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative. Central America is the only sub-region in which aid, including non-security assistance, is increasing significantly.

But Isacson says dollar amounts can be deceptive, and while “big ticket” aid packages are down, “other, less transparent forms of military-to-military co-operation are on the rise,” in part due to the migration of many programmes’ management from the State Department, which has more stringent reporting and human rights conditions, to the Pentagon.

A troubling trend, according to the report, is that some countries, especially Colombia, have begun training military and police forces in their neighbours, often with U.S. funding and encouragement.

In that respect, these third-country trainers act as private contractors who are not subject to U.S. human-rights laws and whose cost is a fraction of that of their U.S. counterparts.

Despite their security forces’ own highly controversial human rights record, Colombian officers have been given major roles, for example, in Washington’s Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) and the Merida Initiative, as well as in Honduras’ police reform, according to the report.

“Bringing the military into the streets can result in grave human-rights violations,” according to Haugaard who also noted U.S. involvement in poorly designed and heavy-handed counter-drug operations, such as one in Honduras last year in which four passengers in a river taxi were killed by a joint Honduran-DEA operation.

Washington’s record has not been all bad, according to the report, which praised the Obama administration’s insertion of human rights into its high-level bilateral dialogues with Mexico, Colombia, and Honduras and its emphasis on the importance of civilian trials for soldiers implicated in serious rights abuses in Colombia and Mexico.

The administration has also taken some steps to strengthen enforcement of the Leahy Law, which denies U.S. aid and training to foreign military units that are credibly accused of serious rights abuses, according to the report. It also praised Washington’s support for Colombia’s peace process and its defence of the Inter-American human rights system against recent attempts by Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia to weaken it.

Still, Washington’s own human rights record, including its failure to close the Guantanamo detention facility, its newly revealed extensive surveillance programmes, and a drone policy that justifies extra-judicial executions opens it to charges of double standard, the report noted.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

The killing of Muslim Brotherhood supporters has only strengthened resolve within the party to resist the current regime. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 11 2013 (IPS)

The United States, which is preoccupied with the ongoing political and military developments in Syria, is still saddled with an unresolved problem elsewhere in the Middle East: the military takeover of Egypt’s first democratically-elected government.

A three-member U.S. Congressional delegation of Republicans from Iowa, Texas and Minnesota, visiting Cairo last week, pledged to defend the 1.3 billion dollars in U.S. military aid which was under threat following the army coup last month and the killing of over a thousand civilians."Egypt would have to reconstruct its military if it were to change major suppliers." -- Dr. Natalie J. Goldring of the Centre for Security Studies

According to published reports, the leader of the military takeover, General Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, is contemplating a run for the presidency of Egypt, potentially legitimising the coup in a country described as one of the strongest U.S. allies in the Middle East, after Israel.

The administration of President Barack Obama, which has refused to cut off military aid to Egypt, has so far only meted out token punishment, suspending deliveries of two key weapons systems, namely F-16 fighter planes and Apache attack helicopters.

Taking its cue from the United States, Germany has also suspended arms supplies to Egypt, representing over 17.6 million dollars in contracts for the first half of 2013. The European Union has done likewise, with Britain revoking some of its arms export licenses, while Sweden has favoured freezing all aid to Egypt.

When Egypt signed the U.S.-brokered peace treaty with Israel in 1979, it was forced to switch political loyalties: from the then-Soviet Union to the United States.

And following that peace accord, Egypt abandoned its longstanding Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Moscow under which the Soviets supplied billions of dollars worth of weapons. These weapons included MiG-21 fighter planes and reconnaisance aircraft, Mi-8 helicopters, Antonov military transports, SA-6 and SA-7 anti-ship missiles and T-54 and T-62 battle tanks.

In a wide-ranging military modernisaton programme over the last 34 years, these weapons were gradually phased out and replaced largely with U.S. arms. But with the current strain in the political relationship with the United States, there is speculation the interim military government may be forced into the arms of the Russians – specifically for military needs.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Centre for Security Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, is sceptical.

She told IPS the Russian government would presumably be delighted if Egypt turned to it for weapons purchases, particularly given the strains in the current U.S.-Russian relationship.

“But I don’t think Egypt is likely to undertake a wholesale restructuring of its military at this point,” she said.

While any weapons contracts with Russia might be seen as important political statements, Goldring said, such contracts are unlikely to be militarily significant.

Nicole Auger, a military analyst covering Middle East/Africa at Forecast International, a leader in defence market intelligence and industry forecasting, told IPS Soviet arms deliveries continued at a pretty fast pace for more than 10 years after the initial 1955 transaction between Egypt and the Soviet Union.

Then the unwillingness of the Soviet Union to supply greater quantities of arms severely strained Soviet-Egyptian relations.

Egypt’s current military modernisation programme is driven by the process of refurbishing or replacing its ageing Soviet weapons systems purchased before it turned to the United States, she said. Because Soviet-ware accounted for nearly 50 percent of Egypt’s previous inventory, the U.S. has been helping Egypt modernise its military inventory through the gradual substitution of U.S. equipment.

Egypt planned to have an all-Western military force structure by 2005, but this was delayed in implementation, so large amounts of Soviet-era military equipment remain in inventory, mainly aircraft and ordnance, said Auger.

Goldring told IPS the U.S. government and U.S. military contractors have built the modern Egyptian military over the last three decades, an effort that has been funded by U.S. taxpayers.

“Egypt would have to reconstruct its military if it were to change major suppliers,” she pointed out.

The Obama administration has strongly supported the new U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), and may well sign the treaty in the next few weeks. One of the core principles of that treaty is that countries should not transfer weapons when there is an overriding risk that the weapons will be used to commit human rights abuses, said Goldring.

The intent of the ATT is to prevent exactly the sorts of killings that are taking place in Egypt right now.

She said current and past Egyptian human rights abuses have been documented by Human Rights Watch and others.

“Given that such abuses are already taking place, cutting off U.S. military aid to Egypt is a no-brainer,” she said.

Regardless of whether the U.S. government declares that a coup has taken place, “We shouldn’t be supplying weapons to Egypt right now,” Goldring declared.

The bare minimum the U.S. government should do is to publicly declare that it is reassessing its policies and aid toward Egypt, while suspending all military aid, contracts, and deliveries, she argued. This would avoid the automatic cutoff conditions that will be imposed if the U.S. government declares that a coup has in fact taken place, she said.

“If the U.S. government fails to respond to these human rights abuses, it risks emboldening other countries’ leaders to continue or worsen their own human rights abuses,” Goldring said.

“And if we are not willing to act when human rights abuses are so clearly documented, other leaders may assume that were simply unwilling to match our rhetoric with action,” she added.

An Egyptian army M1 Abrams tank placed near Tahrir Square during the 2011 Egyptian protests. Credit: Sherif9282 GNU license

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 16 2013 (IPS)

The United States, which has refused to cut off its hefty 1.3 billion dollars in annual military aid to Egypt, continues to argue that depriving arms to the 438,500-strong security forces will only “destabilise” the crisis-ridden country.

There is perhaps a more significant – but undisclosed – reason for sustaining military aid flows to Egypt: protecting U.S. defence contractors.

Virtually all – or an overwhelming proportion – of the 1.3 billion dollars granted under Foreign Military Financing (FMF) is plowed back into the U.S. economy, specifically into the U.S. defence industry.

William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Centre for International Policy (CIP), told IPS U.S. President Barack Obama’s refusal to cut-off military aid to Egypt while U.S. weapons are being used to murder protesters is “unconscionable”.

“The reasons given for continuing this aid no longer hold up to scrutiny. It is not a source of stability, as the Obama administration claims,” he said.

And it has certainly not given the United States any leverage to moderate the behaviour of the regime, said Hartung, who has written extensively on the politics and economics of the U.S. defence industry.

“One thing the aid has done and continues to do is to enrich U.S. defence contractors like Lockheed and General Dynamics,” he added.

With the exception of a tank factory built with U.S. assistance, he pointed out, the vast bulk of the roughly 40 billion dollars in U.S. military aid to Egypt over the past 30 years has gone straight into the coffers of U.S. weapons makers.

The sophisticated weapons systems already purchased by Egypt – with much more still in the pipeline – include F-16 fighter planes, E2-C Hawkeye reconnaissance aircraft, Apache and Sikorsky helicopters, C-130 transports, Sidewinder, Sparrow, Improved-Hawk and Hellfire missiles, M-1A1 Abrams and M60A1 battle tanks, and M113A2 armoured personnel carriers.

All of these weapons have either been delivered – or are in the process of being delivered – by some of the major U.S. defence contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Electric, Boeing, Sikorsky, General Dynamics, United Defence and Raytheon, among others.

Besides the 1.3 billion dollars in FMF outright grants, Egypt also receives 1.9 million dollars annually for International Military Education and Training (IMET) and about 250,000 dollars in Economic Support Funds (ESF).

Egypt also receives, at minimum cost as delivery charges, second-hand U.S. equipment under Excess Defence Articles (EDA) worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

The U.S. defence contractor General Dynamics is involved in helping Egypt co-produce the M1A1 Abrams battle tank, described as “one of the cornerstones of U.S. military assistance to Egypt”.

Additionally, there is an ongoing programme to continue upgrading equipment in the Egyptian arsenal and follow-on support and maintenance contracts for the upkeep of U.S. equipment.

In a piece published in Common Dreams online, Jacob Chamberlain, a staff writer, quotes a report from National Public Radio (NPR) as saying that every year, the U.S. Congress appropriates more than one billion dollars in military aid to Egypt.

“But that money never gets to Egypt. It goes to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then to a trust fund at the Treasury and, finally, out to U.S. military contractors that make the tanks and fighter jets that ultimately get sent to Egypt.”

So far, the Obama administration has penalised Egypt by suspending the delivery of four F-16 fighter planes (the Egyptian air force already has 143 F-16s, with the last order of 20 dating back to March 2010 still in the pipeline) and the cancellation of joint military exercises with Egypt scheduled for September.

The Obama administration has also refused to describe the military takeover of a civilian government as a “coup” because under U.S. legislation such a designation would automatically generate a cut off of U.S. aid.

As of Friday, the death toll from the military crackdown has been estimated at between 500 and 1,000, with nearly 4,000 injured.

Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher with the Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS, “It is correct that the U.S. military industry benefits from U.S. military aid to Egypt.

“And it is correct that if the United States would stop altogether with supplying such aid to Egypt, that would have some effect on the turnover of the U.S. arms industry,” he added.

However, he said, “I am doubtful if arms industry lobbying [or] concern for the arms industry is a reason of any significance for the U.S. to not halt all FMF aid to Egypt.”

There are several reasons, he said, including a temporary stop which would have only a minor effect.

“After all, some of the equipment that has been contracted for can be produced and stored by the U.S. government – which is, after all, the entity that signed the contracts with the U.S. industry – until the situation in Egypt changes.”

Presumably, funding not earmarked can be withheld and would benefit the industry later, he added.

Moreover, said Wezeman, the U.S. has embargoed major buyers of U.S. arms and cut military aid before, despite the obvious costs for the industry.

The best examples are Iran in 1979 – although that was arguably as well a decision by Iran at that time – Pakistan in early 1990s and India in 1963.

Citing other examples, he said, in the case of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the U.S. has foregone some major deals due to the fact they did want to supply certain advanced equipment. For example, it is generally assumed that France clinched a major deal for combat aircraft in the late 1990s because it included 300 km range cruise missiles which the U.S. had refused.

Military aid to countries like Greece has diminished from high in the 1980 and ’90s to a very low level now.

Wezeman said although 1.3 billion dollars a year is a lot of money, it is relatively small compared to the current cutbacks in U.S. military spending and the sequestration issue, which will have a much bigger effect on the U.S. arms industry.

One day after the killing by the Egyptian army and security forces of hundreds of civilian protestors, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced the cancellation of joint U.S.-Egyptian military exercises scheduled for September.

Cancellation of the biannual Operation Bright Star marked the first concrete step taken by Obama to distance Washington from the Egyptian military since the latter ousted President Mohamed Morsi Jul. 3 and installed an interim government which it increasingly appears to dominate.“There is no question this has highlighted the reduced significance and leverage the U.S. has with regard to Egypt.” -- Samer Shehata

The move came, however, amidst growing calls from lawmakers and others to go much farther by immediately suspending 1.3 billion dollars Washington provides in military aid to Egypt each year, a step that the administration is considered by most experts unlikely to take unless Wednesday’s bloody crackdown continues in the coming days.

“(W)hile we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back,” Obama declared in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where he is currently vacationing with his family.

“As a result, this morning we notified the Egyptian government that we are canceling our biannual joint military exercise which was scheduled for next month,” he added.

“Going forward I’ve asked my national security team to assess the implications of the actions taken by the interim government and further steps that we may take as necessary with respect to the U.S.-Egyptian relationship.”

With the official death toll from Wednesday’s violence climbing overnight to well over 600 and another 4,000 people injured, prospects for restoring stability to the country appear very uncertain.

The Muslim Brotherhood, whose partisans were the principal victims of the bloodshed and whose leaders are reportedly being rounded up throughout the country, has vowed to continue demonstrating until Morsi is re-instated.

Virtually all analysts here agree that Washington’s influence over events and the key protagonists in Egypt appears extremely limited at the moment.

Efforts by top U.S. officials, including, notably, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel, to persuade his Egyptian counterpart, Gen. Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, not to evict pro-Morsi protestors and two Cairo encampments with lethal force were clearly unavailing. Similar efforts to convince top Brotherhood leaders to drop their demand that Morsi be re-instated also came to naught.

“There is no question this has highlighted the reduced significance and leverage the U.S. has with regard to Egypt,” Samer Shehata, an Egypt expert at the University of Oklahoma, told IPS.

The suspension of military aid, he added, “seems to be the most extreme action the administration would take. If the levels of violence continue, it will be seriously considered, but if they diminish, I don’t think it will.”

Nonetheless, a number of influential lawmakers are calling for precisely such action.

“While suspending joint military exercises as the president has done is an important step, our law is clear: aid to the military should cease unless they restore democracy,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the key Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Thursday.

He was joined by Republican Sen. John McCain, who last week personally warned officials in Cairo that aid would be cut if the military carried through with its threat to use force in clearing two squares in Cairo that had been occupied by tens of thousands of pro-Morsi demonstrators since the coup.

Only two weeks ago, McCain had spoken in opposition to legislation mandating a cut-off of all aid to Egypt, arguing that it would reduce U.S. influence with the generals.

They were backed by the editorial boards of both the Washington Post and the New York Times which Thursday argued that until “the generals change their ways, …the United States should slam the door on an aid program that has provided the Egyptian military with a munificent 1.3 billion dollars a year for decades.”

The cancellation of Bright Star “falls short of what the circumstances on the ground merit, given the bloodshed and how many civilians have been killed,” Mona Yacoubian, an Egypt expert at the Stimson Centre, told IPS.

The administration, she added “should very strongly consider a suspension of aid until the situation improves.”

But a number of analysts believe the Egyptian military may be willing to forgo the aid in what it may believe is an existential struggle against the Brotherhood.

“[T]he military there are not concerned about American opinion,” wrote Col. Pat Lang (ret.), a former top Middle East analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) on his blog, “Sic Semper Tyrannis” Thursday.

“They don’t think the money will be cut off for long. They have other sources of money. They are basically an internal security force and do not need the fancy gear that we have provided them. Abrams tanks, F-16s, etc. are too sophisticated for them to use effectively in actual combat.”

Those other sources of money include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait which together have pledged 12 billion dollars for Egypt since the coup – almost 10 times the total amount of U.S. military aid, most of which ends up, in any event, in the coffers of U.S. arms manufacturers which, along with the Gulf states and Israel, can be expected to lobby hard against any aid cut-off.

“The calculation of the Egyptian generals is right,” noted Joshua Stacher, an Egypt expert at KentStateUniversity in Ohio. “As the administration, what’s your ultimate play? You’re [not] going to break 35 years of a policy …whose essence is reliance on the Egyptian military.

“The Israelis, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiratis are saying, ‘Don’t cut those relations.’ Not only are they allies and friends, but they also buy an enormous amount of military hardware [from U.S. manufacturers],” he told IPS.

According to Shehata, “What the U.S. is concerned about, first and foremost, is the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. That is the lens through which the U.S. sees Egypt.

“Secondary to that is military co-operation: expedited passage of naval vessels through the Suez Canal, overflight through Egyptian airspace, intelligence sharing in the so-called ‘War on Terror’. Of course, human rights concerns are there someplace, but, unfortunately, they are below these other concerns on the list of priorities.”

Indeed, in an op-ed published Thursday in the New York Daily News, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton of the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) noted precisely such considerations in arguing not only against cutting off aid but also against the administration’s appeals for a post-coup transition that would include, rather than repress, the Brotherhood.

“What Washington needs to do is clear. U.S. policy should be to support only Egyptian leaders unambiguously committed to Camp David [the Israeli-Egyptian treaty]…And we must assist those who place highest priority on repairing Egypt’s badly weakened economy and securing its international economic obligations, particularly safe transit through the Suez Canal.”

Even an aid cut-off which, according to Stacher, has become a real possibility, is unlikely to have the desired effect for the reasons cited by Lang.

“If you really want to get to the heart of the relationship, you have to attack the military-to-military exchanges – the training visits to the U.S., and the informal officer-to-officer relationships that take place outside the formal chain of command.

“As long as these informal officer-to-officer relationships exist, the generals won’t believe threats coming out of Washington as credible,” he said.

“Until these relationships are severed and the military-to-military relationship is formalised, any U.S. administration has wiggle room to look like it’s changing its policies without actually changing the essence of the relationship, which is U.S. reliance on the Egyptian military.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has denounced in unusually harsh terms Wednesday’s bloody military crackdown against supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

But, despite a growing chorus of calls by prominent lawmakers, commentators and Egypt experts here to suspend all U.S. aid to the interim government in Cairo that was installed early last month in a military coup d’etat against President Mohammed Morsi, the administration suggested only that it will review “the implications for our broader relationship which includes aid”.“You can’t sit idly by. There has to be an escalatory roadmap that at least has some teeth." -- Michael Wahid Hanna of the Century Fund

“The United States strongly condemns the use of violence against protestors in Egypt,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where Obama and his family are currently vacationing.

“The violence will only make it more difficult to move Egypt forward on a path to lasting stability and democracy, and runs directly counter to the pledges by the interim government to pursue reconciliation,” he noted.

Earnest added that Washington was also “strongly oppose[d]” to a return to a State of Emergency law which the military announced as the crackdown got underway earlier Wednesday morning.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who, in a widely criticised statement, praised the Egyptian military for “restoring democracy” by ousting Morsi earlier this month during a press conference in Pakistan, echoed Earnest in an unusual appearance during the daily State Department press briefing later in the afternoon.

“Today’s events are deplorable, and they run counter to Egyptian aspirations for peace, inclusion, and democracy. Egyptians inside and outside of the government need to take a step. They need to calm the situation and avoid further loss of life,” he added.

“The only sustainable path for either side is one toward a political solution. I am convinced from my conversations today with a number of foreign ministers, including the foreign minister of Egypt …that that path is, in fact, still open… though it has been made much, much harder, much more complicated, by the events of today.”

The statements were issued amidst horrific reports of the violence that began with a full-scale military and police effort to clear tens of thousands of pro-Morsi protestors from camps at two major Cairo squares that sprang up in the immediate aftermath of the Jul. 3 coup. Violent clashes between pro-military activists and Brotherhood demonstrators were also reported in Cairo and other cities.

Nearly 300 people were killed in Cairo and elsewhere around the country, according to an evening report by the government health ministry, although Brotherhood officials, which called the killings a “massacre”, said the death toll was many times that number in what was the worst day of violence in Egypt in living memory.

It was precisely the kind of crackdown that U.S. officials – both from the Pentagon and the State Department – had been trying to persuade their Egyptian counterparts to forgo over the past several weeks in hopes that the Brotherhood and its supporters would give up their demand that Morsi be re-instated and that some kind of reconciliation process could get underway.

The administration even appeared to approve a special trip to Cairo last week by two of its fiercest Congressional critics – Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham – for the purpose of conveying to the military, in particular, that any violent crackdown would result in a cut-off of the roughly 1.6 billion dollars, including 1.3 billion dollars in sophisticated weaponry, Washington provides Egypt in aid every year.

“As we predicted and feared, chaos in #Cairo,” tweeted McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, early Wednesday. “Sec Kerry praising the military takeover didn’t help,” he added in a jab at Kerry’s statement in Pakistan.

The administration clearly fears that Wednesday’s violence will greatly diminish, if not eliminate, the possibility of any reconciliation between the Brotherhood and other Islamist parties, such as the more fundamentalist Al-Nour party (which until now has taken a more-neutral role in the ongoing crisis), and the secular forces which backed the coup.

Indeed, the risk of even greater polarisation and escalating civil conflict in the Arab world’s most populous and influential country, whose stability has long been considered critical to U.S. strategic interests in the region, has risen sharply as a result of Wednesday’s bloodshed, according to independent analysts.

“The events in Egypt will provide a substantial boost to extremism, and specifically violent Islamist extremism,” Paul Pillar, a retired top CIA Middle East analyst who now teaches at Georgetown University, told IPS in an email.

“It was bad enough that moderate Islamists are being so clearly and completely excluded from a peaceful, democratic political process. Now the inevitable anger in response to large-scale bloodshed is being added to the mix.”

That observation was echoed by the interim government’s own vice president and a Washington favourite, Mohammed El-Baradei, who resigned in the face of Wednesday’s violence.

“Violence begets violence, and mark my words, the only beneficiaries from what happened today are extremist groups,” he said in his resignation letter.

What precisely Washington will do now remains to be seen. Despite increasing signs over the past month that the military was extending its control over the government – the latest coming Tuesday when the government appointed generals to 19 of the country’s 25 provincial governorships – it has refused to label Morsi’s ouster as a “coup d’etat”, a move that would force it to cut off all U.S. aid.

Cutting off aid, according to officials, risked reducing, if not eliminating, whatever influence Washington retained with the military.

But that position appears increasingly untenable in the wake of Wednesday’s violence. Indeed, the Washington Post editorialised Wednesday Obama’s decision not to cut aid made his administration “complicit in the new and horrifyingly bloody crackdown…”

“The bloody assault on the protester camps – after repeated American opposition to such a move – leaves President Obama little choice but to step away from the Egyptian regime,” wrote Marc Lynch, an influential Middle East analyst who has generally supported the administration’s “quiet diplomacy” with the generals, on his foreignpolicy.com blog Wednesday.

“Washington should, and probably will, call for a return to an elected civilian government, a rapid end to the state of emergency, and restraint in the use of force. When that doesn’t happen, it needs to suspend aid and relations until Cairo begins to take it seriously,” he wrote.

“Particularly after today, the country is much further away from a potential resolution and stability; compared to 24 hours ago, things are much worse,” Michael Wahid Hanna, an Egypt expert at the New York-based Century Fund, told IPS in a telephone interview from Cairo.

He said he favoured “an escalatory step-by-step process in terms of coercive measures or signals of displeasure (by the U.S.), as opposed to an all-or-nothing formulation.

“You can’t sit idly by. There has to be an escalatory roadmap that at least has some teeth,” possibly beginning with the cancellation of the bi-annual Bright Star joint U.S.-Egyptian military exercises which normally takes place during the fall.

“In the end, if we’re unsuccessful in changing behaviour, then we have a much more fundamental question about the sustainability of the bilateral relationship despite the strategic importance historically accorded it [by the U.S.],” he added.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Two days after a military coup ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, Washington appeared deeply divided over how to respond to what most experts believe is a critical moment for future relations between the U.S. and political Islam both in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

On the one hand, some analysts are arguing that the U.S. must try hard to dispel the notion that it supported or now accepts the coup, lest it persuade Islamist parties, including Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, that its purported promotion of democracy worldwide does not apply to them.“Those who, out of their distaste for anything Islamist, are welcoming the Egyptian military coup, ought to be careful what they wish for." -- CIA veteran Paul Pillar

“The Obama administration would be wise to distance itself from the army’s actions and use its leverage, particularly the promise of financial assistance, to pressure the military to respect the rights of Islamists,” warned Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, in an op-ed published Friday by the New York Times.

Like many other experts, he noted that the current moment recalled Washington’s acquiescence in the Algerian military’s last-minute cancellation of the 1992 elections which the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was poised to sweep – an action that resulted in a civil war in which an estimated 200,000 people were killed and that radicalised a generation of Islamists.

On the other hand, other analysts – many of them neo-conservatives and others closely associated with the Israel lobby — have greeted the coup in Egypt more positively, urging the Obama administration to accept the coup, continue aid, and work closely with the generals, who are now seen as in control despite their nominal transfer of power to the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, to ensure a return to democratic rule.

“(A)ctually cutting off the aid now would be highly counterproductive, turning the United States into the adversary of the very actors we now depend upon to return Egypt to a democratic path,” according to Martin Indyk, vice president of the Brookings Institution and founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).

Any distancing by the administration from the Egyptian military risked alienating U.S. allies in the Gulf who supported the coup, he wrote on foreignpolicy.com, and by Israeli leaders whose relations with the military “have grown much stronger since (former President Hosni) Mubarak’s overthrow; cutting U.S. aid is the last they will want.”

For itself, the Obama administration has maintained a studied silence since its initial reaction to Wednesday’s coup issued in Obama’s name several hours later.

“(W)e are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsy and suspend the Egyptian constitution,” Obama said.

He also called on the military “to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsy and his supporters” – a request that appears already to have been disregarded, as Morsi, as well as hundreds of other Brotherhood leaders, have reportedly been taken into custody.

Obama also directed the relevant U.S. agencies to “review the implications under U.S. law for our assistance” to Egypt – a reference to laws dating back nearly 30 years that require the government to suspend military and most economic aid whenever a democratically elected government is overthrown in a military coup d’etat or decree.

To most observers, Obama’s decision to apply the law would be the most dramatic way of distancing Washington from the coup and demonstrating to the Brotherhood and other Islamist parties that it is not applying “double standards” in the Middle East, as was already suggested during the George W. Bush administration when U.S. officials insisted on a Western diplomatic and aid boycott of Hamas, a Brotherhood affiliate, after it swept Palestinian elections in 2006, and then supported a failed coup against Hamas’ government in Gaza.

“…(T)here should be no question that under a law passed by Congress, U.S. aid to Egypt – including the 1.3 billion dollar annual grant to the military – must be suspended,” according to the lead editorial in Friday’s Washington Post, which argued that “if it does not provoke the eruption of violent conflict, this coup may well ensure that Islamist forces, including more radical groups, grow stronger.”

Some analysts gave voice to that fear even before the coup. “If the Brotherhood’s tenure in office is abruptly ended due to pressure from a secular military, opposition, media and judiciary,” warned Ed Husain, an expert on political Islam at the Council on Foreign Relations in another Times op-ed posted Wednesday, “then the more extremist Islamists in the Arab world will say: ‘We told you so. Democracy does not work. The only way to create an Islamist state is through armed struggle.’”

“Those who, out of their distaste for anything Islamist, are welcoming the Egyptian military coup, ought to be careful what they wish for,” noted Paul Pillar, a CIA veteran who headed U.S. intelligence analysis on the Middle East from 2000 to 2005.

“They may wind up with something that is not just distasteful but dangerous,” he added, recalling how some insurgents in the Algerian civil war have since mutated into Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Still, others, such as a former top Obama Mideast adviser, WINEP counsellor Dennis Ross, said the huge public anti-Morsi demonstrations that preceded the coup made Egypt different from Algeria and that what limited influence Washington still had in the country should be used to prod the military in the desirable direction.

“The last thing we want is for Egypt to become a failed state…” he wrote in a USA Today column Friday.

Similarly, the top Republican and Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee issued a joint statement Friday suggesting that Washington give the military the benefit of the doubt before taking action.

“It is now up to the Egyptian military to demonstrate that the new transitional government can and will govern in a transparent manner and work to return the country to democratic rule,” said Republican Rep. Ed Royce and Democrat Rep. Eliot Engel – both of whom are close to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

“We are encouraged that a broad cross-section of Egyptians will gather to rewrite the constitution,” they added.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal’s hard-line neo-conservative editorial board stressed Washington had too much at stake to disassociate itself in any way from the military, insisting that “cutting (military aid) off now would be a mistake. Unpopular as America is in Egypt, 1.3 billion dollars in annual military aid buys access with the generals. U.S. support for Cairo is written into the Camp David peace accords with Israel,” according to its lead editorial Friday.

It added that Egyptians “would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet…”

Other pro-Israel neo-conservatives insisted that Morsi’s tenure proved that Washington had been mistaken in engaging the Brotherhood or political Islam.

“(T)he lesson from Egypt is that democracy may be a blessing for people capable of self-government, but it’s a curse for those who are not,” wrote the Journal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs columnist, Bret Stephens, on the eve of the coup. “There is a reason Egypt has been governed by pharaohs, caliphs, pashas and strongmen for 6,000 years.”

Added the New York Times columnist David Brooks even more broadly, in a column entitled “Defending the Coup”: “It has become clear – in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Gaza, and elsewhere – that radical Islamists are incapable of running a modern government. …It’s not that Egypt doesn’t have a recipe for a democratic transition. It seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients.”

More moderately, Bush’s senior democracy and Mideast adviser, Elliott Abrams, called in nationalreview.com for suspending aid pursuant to the law, but noted that, because most of that assistance is already obligated, “…an interruption of aid for several months is no tragedy, so long as during those months we give good advice, stay close to the generals, continue counter-terrorism cooperation, and avoid further actions that create the impression we were on Morsi’s side.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Protests have been building against Morsi in Cairo since last summer. Credit: Gigi Ibrahim/cc by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jul 4 2013 (IPS)

Wednesday’s coup d’etat against the elected government of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has placed the administration of President Barack Obama in an uncomfortable position on a number of fronts.

Most immediately, it will be pressed to decide whether Morsi’s ouster constituted the kind of military coup that requires a suspension of some 1.6 billion dollars in U.S. military and economic assistance under U.S. law – a matter that is already being hotly debated both within and outside the administration now.“I think it would be very naïve to assume that this announcement today would necessarily move Egypt back to a democratic trajectory." -- Stephen McInerney of the Project on Middle East Democracy

But U.S. officials are also very concerned about the possibility of a violent reaction to the coup by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which, despite its dramatic decline in public popularity during Morsi’s one-year rule, remains Egypt’s most well organised institution, besides the military. Independent analysts have even suggested that conflict of the kind that wracked Algeria during much of the 1990s cannot be ruled out.

On the home front, the administration is also concerned that it will add ammunition to hawkish Republicans who have argued that Obama’s handling of the “Arab Spring” has been an abject failure and that his alleged “coddling” of the Brotherhood and other Islamist parties that swept elections in the region has backfired to the detriment of U.S. security interests.

Even as the current crisis began to crest Monday when, in the wake of massive anti-government demonstrations Sunday, the military issued an ultimatum for Morsi to work out a power-sharing agreement with his political foes, Republicans were already on the attack.

“The Egyptian turmoil stems from the Morsi government’s predictable power grab, which the Obama administration has been far too accepting of,” House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Republican Ed Royce told the cable blog on foreignpolicy.com. “U.S. aid has failed to compel the Morsi government to undertake the political and economic reforms needed to avert this crisis.”

Hours after the military’s announcement that the Constitution had been suspended and Morsi replaced by an interim government to be headed by the head of the Constitutional Court, the White House issued a statement in Obama’s name stressing that Washington “does not support particular individuals or political parties, but we are committed to the democratic process and respect for the rule of law.”

“(W)e are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsy and suspend the Egyptian constitution,” the statement said. “I now call on the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsy and his supporters.”

Under U.S. law, the president must suspend all military and most economic aid whenever a “duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.” In Egypt’s case, a not inconsiderable 1.3 billion dollars a year in military aid and another 300 million dollars in economic assistance could be at stake pending the installation of a new democratically elected government.

In his statement, Obama said he had directed the relevant U.S. agencies to review the legal implications on U.S. aid of Wednesday’s events.

But it may be difficult for the administration to avoid enforcing the ban. Indeed, the Honduran army followed precisely that scenario after ousting President Jose Manuel Zelaya in 2009, and, despite protests by Republicans and the Pentagon, the administration labelled it a coup and suspended aid.

Washington has much more at stake in Egypt, whose military leaders, with whom the U.S. wants to retain as much influence as possible, have already taken great pains to deny that their action amounted to a coup.

“I think it’s just better to say this was a government that lost its legitimacy in a failed (democratic) transition,” said Robert Springborg, an Egypt expert at the Naval Post-Graduate School.

But whether the military will do so remains a big question, particularly given its previous record, most recently during the failed 17-month rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that took power after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak.

The administration should “make it clear to (Egyptian Defence Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah al-) Sisi that Washington would not support the return of the military to politics under the guise of national security and stability. We’ve heard this song before,” said Emile Nakhleh, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Political Islam Strategic Analysis programme.

“I think it would be very naïve to assume that this announcement today would necessarily move Egypt back to a democratic trajectory,” said Stephen McInerney, the head of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), which had been strongly critical of the administration’s failure to press Morsi earlier to compromise with his secular opposition or publicly criticise unilateral actions by the ousted president that curbed civil liberties or polarised the country.

“I think there’s reason to really fear a serious escalation of violence in the short term,” McInerney told IPS. “And there are real questions about the rights of Islamists who feel their opportunity to participate in the political process has been undemocratically taken away from them, and the inclusion of the Brotherhood in any future government is an enormously important question.”

His concerns were echoed by the International Crisis Group, which said in a release Wednesday, “The forceful removal of the nation’s first democratically-elected civilian president risks sending a message to Islamists that they have no place in the political order; sowing fears among them that they will suffer yet another blood crackdown; and thus potentially prompting violent, event desperate resistance by Morsi’s followers.”

Obama made much the same point. “The United States continues to believe firmly that the best foundation for lasting stability in Egypt is a democratic political order with participation from all sides and all political parties – secular and religious, civilian and military.

“…The voices of all those who have protested peacefully must be heard – including those who welcomed today’s developments, and those who have supported President Morsy,” his statement said.

Springborg also expressed concern that the reaction of the Brotherhood, many of whose headquarters around the country have been burned down by anti-government protestors in recent days, could be critical.

“The thing that can run this off the rails would be if the Brothers go for the Samson-wrecking option, (although) I don’t think they have that power or the will to do it, because they have too much to lose organisationally and financially,” he said.

In his view, the new leaders must deal with the economic crisis most urgently by appointing civilian technocrats to finalise a long-pending 4.6 billion dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). That, in turn, would spur Saudi Arabia to provide major financial support that it has withheld in part because of its traditional distrust of the Brotherhood.

“When the Saudis come forward, then everyone else will, too,” he said, offering some real momentum to an economy that has spiralled downward under both the SCAF and Morsi.

*The story moved on Jul. 4, 2013 incorrectly quoted Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as saying: “(I)f it is clear that what the military has just done in Egypt has ended the career of an anti-democratic leader and the military is materially supporting democratising moves – including, importantly, the stepping aside of the military and genuine transfer of power to a legitimately elected civilian leadership by a certain date – then the United States should support those moves in the most concrete way possible by not interrupting aid.”

Those words were written by David Rothkopf in an article that appeared on the foreignpolicy.com website on Jul. 3, 2013, and were mistakenly attributed to Dr. Brown. IPS apologises for the mistake.

The Obama administration intends to militarily arm Syrian opposition. Credit: FreedomHouse2/CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 14 2013 (IPS)

Despite Thursday’s announcement that President Barack Obama has decided to provide direct military assistance to Syrian rebels, what precisely the administration has in mind remains unclear.

Analysts here are also questioning whether the decision is part of a deliberate strategy – and, if so, what that strategy is – or whether it is instead another in a series of efforts to relieve growing pressure from its allies in Europe and the Gulf and hawks at home to take stronger military measures designed to shift the 27-month-old civil war decisively in favour of the opposition.

“When Julius Caesar actually crossed the [Rubicon], he proceeded rapidly to mission accomplishment in accordance with a sound strategy,” noted retired Ambassador Frederic Hof, a Syria specialist at the Atlantic Council who has long called for stronger U.S. military intervention.

“Although the administration’s crossing [decision] is significant, welcome, and long overdue, it is far from certain whether this particular legion will move smartly toward an objective or simply mill around the river bank.”

The White House tied the decision to escalate the “scope and scale” of military aid to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Syrian Military Council (SMC) to the U.S. intelligence community’s determination that the Syrian forces had used chemical weapons – albeit “on a small scale” – against rebel forces in multiple battles over the past year.

It also cited the deepening involvement of Iran and Hezbollah militants from Lebanon in support of the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad, whose departure from office Obama has repeatedly demanded since hostilities first broke out more than two years ago."It is far from certain whether this particular legion will move smartly toward an objective."
-- Frederic Hof

The announcement, however, followed a series of intensive internal meetings over the past two weeks, as it became clear that the regime’s forces had made a series of battlefield advances – most importantly by capturing, with Hezbollah’s help, the strategic western town of Al-Qusayr close to the Lebanese border – that threatened to tip the war decisively in Assad’s favour.

With pro-government forces and Hezbollah fighters reportedly preparing a major assaults on the key city of Aleppo and other “moderate” opposition leaders appealing desperately for weapons, the administration has found itself under pressure from both its allies abroad and hawks here to “do something” that could halt, if not reverse, the regime’s momentum and restore the “strategic stalemate” that Washington considers essential to any prospect for a political settlement.

But what precisely that “something” is or will be remains unclear. In a briefing for reporters Thursday evening, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes repeatedly avoided answering the question, insisting, however, that Washington will increase “the scope and scale” of direct aid to the SMC which so far has received mainly humanitarian and “non-lethal” assistance.

According to various published reports, Obama has indeed decided to provide small arms and ammunition but still pending are decisions on rebel requests for anti-tank weapons and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Washington had previously ruled out the latter, in part due to Israel’s concerns that they could be used against its aircraft, particularly if they fall into the hands of radical Islamist factions among the anti-Assad forces.

But hawks here have argued that small arms and even anti-tank weapons are at this point insufficient to redress the rapidly tilting balance of power on the ground.

“The president must rally an international coalition to take military actions to degrade Assad’s ability to use airpower and ballistic missiles and to move and resupply his forces around the battlefield by air,” declared Congress’s most visible interventionists, Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham late Thursday. “We must take more decisive actions now to turn the tide of the conflict in Syria.”

They and others have called for Washington to create “no-fly zones” along Syria’s Turkish and Jordanian borders that would both safe havens for refugees and rebels and permit the latter to be trained, armed and supplied for operations against government forces inside Syria.

Hof has urged that such a zone also be used protect a rebel government that could gain formal recognition from the United States and other allies, request heavier weapons and eventually go to peace talks as diplomatic, as well as military, equals of the Assad government.

While Rhodes told reporters that Obama has “not made any decision to pursue a military operations such as a no-fly zone”, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that a Pentagon proposal still under consideration calls for a limited “no-fighting” zone extending up to 40 kilometres inside Syria that would be enforced by U.S. and allied aircraft operating from Jordanian airspace.

In recent months, Washington has set up Patriot air-defence batteries and sent fighter jets to bases inside Jordan, where it has also been secretly training rebel and Jordanian forces on securing chemical-weapons facilities and weapons in the event the Assad regime collapses, according to some reports.

Some analysts who have opposed escalating U.S. involvement in the civil war agree that directly supplying arms to the rebels would be unlikely to turn the military tide, certainly in the short term, and could carry additional risks.

“Selective arms shipments could [spur] clashes between rival rebel groups. Extremist elements might attack more moderate rebel units receiving better arms, driven by need, resentment or both,” according to Wayne White, the former deputy director of the State Department intelligence unit on the Near East, who noted that this could actually strengthen the regime. Indeed, he added, the “rebel military vanguard” for some time has been the “radical Islamist in character – even Al-Qaeda affiliated”.

He also expressed scepticism about the effectiveness of a no-fly zone, noting that it would risk swift escalation. “The rebels would remain at the mercy of the regime’s other heavy weapons on the ground, thus tempting those establishing any sort of no-fly zone to attack regime ground targets as well.”

“The first step on the slippery slope is always easy, but it’s much harder to actually resolve a conflict or to find a way out of a quagmire,” wrote Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at George Washington University, on the eve of the White House announcement.

For Lynch, who has long urged Obama to resist calls to escalate Washington’s intervention, the key issue is what U.S. policy ultimately aims to achieve and whether providing military aid or taking more aggressive measures will help achieve them.

“Should Syria be viewed as a front in a broad regional cold war against Iran and its allies or as a humanitarian catastrophe that must be resolved?” he asked, noting that very different strategies should be followed depending on the answer to that question.

At the moment, according to Lynch, “advocates of arming the rebels switch between making the case that it would strike a blow against the Iranians (and Hezbollah) and that it would improve the prospects for a negotiated solution.”

While the White House clearly framed its decision this week in the latter terms, it may nonetheless add momentum to those who tend to view the Syrian conflict more as part of the larger conflict against Tehran the model for which, according to Lynch, “would presumably be the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – a long-term insurgency coordinated through neighbouring countries, fuelled by Gulf money, and popularised by Islamist and sectarian propaganda”.

Central Asian states do not face an “imminent” threat posed by Islamic militants, but they need U.S. assistance to help defend against potential dangers, according to top U.S. diplomats.

Such assistance, it appears, may include drone aircraft delivered to Uzbekistan, which democratisation watchdogs rank as one of the most repressive states in the world.

“We do not assess that there is an imminent Islamist militant threat to Central Asian states,” said Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake, speaking at a hearing held by the U.S. House of Representatives on “Islamist Militant Threats to Eurasia” on Feb. 27.

“The most capable terrorist groups with links to Central Asia, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan [IMU] and the Islamic Jihad Union, [IJU] remain focused on operations in western Pakistan and Afghanistan,” added Justin Siberell, the State Departments deputy coordinator for counterterrorism. “Neither the IMU nor IJU are considered exceedingly powerful individually, and will likely remain focused on operations in this same region, even after 2014.”

The hearing took place as Congress, the State Department and Pentagon discuss expanding military aid to Central Asian countries, in particular Uzbekistan. These countries have cooperated with the United States in establishing transportation routes for U.S. and coalition military cargo to-and-from Afghanistan, a network known as the Northern Distribution Network.

Some Central Asian governments are arguing that they need U.S. assistance to protect themselves against Islamist militants following the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014.

The threat may not be imminent, but extending security assistance to the Central Asian states is justifiable, Blake maintained.

“Although the threat has been kept at bay, as our forces withdraw from the region we must continue our efforts to help prevent terrorist recruitment and strengthen the Central Asian countries’ [counterterrorism] capacities, so they can defend themselves in a responsible and measured fashion,” Blake said.

“With Uzbekistan, we’ve begun a very careful, calibrated approach to supporting the defensive needs – because they face real threats, not just because of their support to the Northern Distribution Network, but because of groups like the IMU and the IJU are actively targeting them.”

While Islamist threats do exist in Central Asia, they do not necessarily justify expanded U.S. assistance, said Nathan Barrick, a consultant for CLI Solutions working on a contract for U.S. Central Command, who also testified at the hearing. The threats are likely to be minor, and the security services of Central Asia have proven effective in containing them, he said.

“The desire in Central Asia for U.S. assistance in countering Islamist militants is not the same as a ‘need’ or ‘requirement’ for U.S. assistance,” he wrote in testimony for the committee.

Stephen Blank, of the U.S. Army War College, said that whatever the terror threats in Central Asia, the U.S. military would probably not be able to do much to counter them.

“To bring about good governance that would preclude the outbreak of terrorism in these and other places is probably beyond our capability and resources. … And the U.S. military is no more equipped to undertake those responsibilities than is the rest of the government,” he said in his testimony to the committee. [Editor’s note: Blank is an occasional commentator for Eurasianet.]

Ariel Cohen, of the Heritage Foundation, added that “U.S. assistance must be careful not to strengthen the repressive law enforcement and security services components that the regimes deploy against political opposition.”

The prospect of additional military aid to Uzbekistan has alarmed human rights activists, who assert that Uzbekistan exaggerates the threat of Islamist radicalism to justify its harsh dictatorship. Activists also say U.S. equipment is likely to be used against existing or future political opponents or protesters.

Blake attempted to downplay such concerns, saying he was confident “that the approach we have taken with Central Asia helps proactively strengthen the region’s capacity to combat terrorism and counter extremism, while encouraging democratic reform and respect for human rights.” He also said that Uzbekistan taking steps to improve its respect for human rights “will enable us to do more on the weapons side.”

Some members of Congress did not appear to be so concerned about Uzbekistan’s human rights record. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who was recently named chairman of the Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats Subcommittee, returned on Feb. 25 from a trip to Uzbekistan, where he met with President Islam Karimov.

Rohrabacher suggested that the Uzbek government’s restrictions on human rights are justified because of the threat of Islamism. “Some of the things that they are being criticised in Uzbekistan for denying religious rights and freedom of speech are basically trying to prevent radical sects of Islam from taking hold,” he said. And he recommended treating Uzbekistan like Saudi Arabia, another country with a poor human rights record to which the United States sells weapons for strategic reasons.

Ted Poe, a Texas Republican and chairman of the subcommittee on terrorism, nonproliferation, and trade, was in Uzbekistan with Rohrabacher, and said that Karimov’s concerns about Islamists were justified.

“They [Islamist groups] want to establish Islamic rule in the region, institute sharia law,” he said. “If they had their way they would take over Central Asia just like the Taliban took over Afghanistan. The issue is, can they?”

The particulars of expanded U.S. aid to Uzbekistan remain unclear. The White House agreed last year to reinstate military aid to Uzbekistan after freezing it for several years as a result of human rights concerns. The United States has already said it will provide Uzbekistan with global positioning system equipment, night-vision goggles and body armour. U.S. policymakers are now discussing various proposals for new aid, though few details have emerged.

After the hearing, Blake told reporters that the State Department has formally notified Congress of its intent to supply Uzbekistan with unmanned aerial vehicles, or drone aircraft, but State Department officials declined to provide any details.

Blake told the committee that “his supposition” was that the U.S. aid would not include lethal equipment. “Uzbekistan is not asking for major weapons systems, at least not offensive weapons systems. Their major ask of us these days is to help them defend themselves,” he said.

But Rohrabacher said that in his conversation with Karimov, the president indicated that he wanted dramatically expanded military cooperation with the United States. “They made it clear to us that they would prefer replacing all of their former Soviet equipment … with American equipment,” he said.

The United States is also expanding assistance to Uzbekistan’s law enforcement agencies. The FBI, for example, is providing an Automated Fingerprint Information System to Uzbekistan, which “will make it possible for authorities to identify fugitives while still in custody” and for Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to share that information, Siberell said.

And the United States and Uzbekistan are in talks about reinstating aid under the State Department’s Antiterrorism Assistance programme, which aids law-enforcement agencies and which had been suspended as a result of human rights concerns, Blake noted.

*Editor’s note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC-based writer who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. He is the editor of EurasiaNet’s Bug Pit blog.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Israeli air force F-16I's sit on the tarmac. Its air power includes F-15 and F-16 fighter planes, E-2C Hawkeye reconnaissance aircraft, Kfir military trainers, Boeing mid-air refueling aircraft, and Apache, Chinook and Sikorsky Blackhawk helicopters. Credit: Darrell I. Dean, U.S. Air Force

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 2012 (IPS)

When the late Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), was engaged in a heavily one-sided battle against a robustly-armed Israel in 2000, he admitted the Palestinians were completely outgunned by the Israelis.

As the the U.S.-supplied Cobra helicopters rained fire on the West Bank and Gaza, Arafat told reporters, “I have only one aeroplane,” alluding to his single-aircraft Palestinian airline.

Even in routine military jargon, an “aeroplane” no longer exists – particularly in an age of jet fighters and attack helicopters – proving how powerless the Palestinians remained as a fighting force against Israel.

The PLO’s rockets and machine guns at that time were overwhelmed by an Israeli military arsenal beefed up with some of the world’s most sophisticated military equipment.

The air force inventory included F-15 and F-16 fighter planes, E-2C Hawkeye reconnaissance aircraft, Kfir military trainers, Boeing mid-air refueling aircraft, and Apache, Chinook and Sikorsky Blackhawk helicopters – virtually all of them doled out mostly as outright military grants from the United States.

And as Hamas, the successor to the PLO, now finds itself in a military skirmish with Israel in Gaza, the long-range rockets falling on Israel are still unmatched by Israel’s missiles, warships, battle tanks, mortar, howitzers and air defence radar.

An Israeli fighter plane early this week blew up, with pinpoint accuracy, a vehicle carrying a Hamas military leader and his family.

Nearly 12 years after Arafat’s admission of military helplessness, the Palestinians seemed armed only with rockets, mortars, assault rifles and anti-aircraft guns against Israel’s laser-guided bombs, armoured vehicles, battle tanks and armoured personnel carriers.

In Middle Eastern politics, it is long established fact that no Arab country – or even a combination of Arab countries – would be able to overpower the Israelis.

The latest Global Militarisation Index released last week by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC) listed Israel as “the world’s most militarised nation”, followed by Singapore, Syria, Russia, Jordan and Cyprus.

Dan Darling, military markets analyst for Asia/Europe at Forecast International, told IPS that “in terms of raw firepower and military technologies Israel remains the most advanced military nation in the region”.

The defence exporting policy of the U.S., and to a lesser extent other European nations, is the retention of the status quo, he said.

“Thus every approved defence sale to an Arab nation in the Middle East is weighed against the consequent pressure brought to bear on Israel’s qualitative military edge (QME)”, he noted.

For instance, he pointed out, the next-generation F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter plane has been approved for sale to the Israelis, but is unlikely to get the go-ahead for interested Arab parties until the Israeli Air Force is equipped with the platform and its personnel brought up to speed on utilising and maintaining the aircraft.

“And even then the number of aircraft and the planes accompanying weapons and electronics suites approved for an Arab country will not be allowed to measure up to the level granted the Israelis,” said Darling.

The United States has also helped fund and develop Israeli anti-rocket/mortar/missile air-defence systems such as David’s Sling and Iron Dome.

Born in conflict, Israelis realise their country has to maintain a strong national security apparatus, Darling said.

On the domestic side, the Israeli defence electronics industry is well advanced in the area of unmanned aerial and ground platforms, he added.

In terms of pure spending, however, nobody in the region invests more in defence and security than Saudi Arabia (48-plus billion dollars in 2012).

Forecast International, a U.S. based company which also monitors arms sales worldwide, has ranked Israel second, regionally, in terms of defence budgets, at 14.7-15.0 billion dollars, just ahead of Iraq (14.6 billion dollars) and well ahead of the United Arab Emirates (10 billion dollars).

According to the 2012 Congressional Budget Justification put out by the U.S. State Department, outright U.S. military grants to Israel remained at 2.8 billion each in 2010 and 2011, rising to 3.1 billion dollars in 2012.

The State Department also said that 2009 marked the first year of a 10-year, 30-billion-dollar military financing memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Israel.

“U.S. assistance helps ensure that Israel maintains a qualitative military edge over potential regional threats, preventing a shift in the security balance in the region, and safeguarding U.S. interests,” the State Department said.

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday he was extremely concerned about the continued violence in Gaza and Israel and deeply worried by the rising cost in terms of civilian lives.

Ban, who is planning a visit to the Middle East, “urgently appealed to all concerned to do everything under their command to stop this dangerous escalation and restore calm”.

Walking a thin line between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he said, “Rocket attacks are unacceptable and must stop at once. Israel must exercise maximum restraint.”

Meanwhile, the 15-member Security Council met at a late night session Thursday. But there was no decision on how to deal with the escalating violence.

U.S. military assistance to key Central Asian governments has increased dramatically in recent years, but remains highly “unexamined”, according to new research presented in Washington on Tuesday.

Military assistance, which stood at around five percent of all U.S. aid to the region during the 1990s, today constitutes nearly a third the total. This added up to around 100 million dollars in 2010 alone, although these figures remain “opaque”, according to researcher Joshua Kucera, who is associated with the Open Society Foundations here in Washington.

In a new paper, Kucera notes that many of these aid programmes “do not require public notification (although they are not classified)” and that “recipient governments have chosen not to publicize the aid, afraid of arousing leftover Cold War suspicions of the U.S. military.”

He says the U.S. is especially focused on strengthening the special forces in the region’s militaries, particularly in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, while significant assistance is also going toward nonlethal equipment and some light weapons.

“Very soon, the military aid to these countries is going to enter a new phase,” he said on Tuesday. “As the U.S. starts to pull its forces out of Afghanistan by 2014, it has said that it intends to leave some of that equipment behind for its Central Asian partners. We don’t yet know what kind of equipment that will be.”

These programmes took a significant shot in the arm in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, with overall aid to the region more than doubling in 2002, to 476 million dollars. Within that, security assistance went up by a factor of five.

While those figures declined somewhat in subsequent years, U.S. military assistance to Central Asia really took off in 2007-08, as Washington turned its attention back to the situation in Afghanistan. Indeed, threats emanating from groups within Afghanistan continue to be the central public rationale – by both U.S. officials and Central Asian governments – for the need for the continued significant military assistance being poured into the region.

Kucera says that Central Asian governments have “a long history of overstating threats from Afghan groups” in order to gain international support and increased aid.

Quid pro quo</>

“You don’t need to scratch beneath the surface too hard to find another more significant justification for the aid, which is in effect to pay for the cooperation of the Central Asian governments for U.S. operations in Afghanistan,” Kucera said at a presentation of his work here on Tuesday.

“The United States needs these countries as transit points for shipments going into Afghanistan … It’s a fairly open secret that this quid pro quo is the real driver of the assistance.”

A key example of how this has hamstrung U.S. policy is Uzbekistan. In 2004, the U.S. Congress restricted military aid to the country due to its wretched record on human and civil rights. Yet last year several of those restrictions were lifted, despite the fact that the Uzbekistan’s rights record had not improved in any significant way.

“The U.S. needs Uzbekistan’s cooperation for the Northern Distribution Network,” Kucera says, referring to the critical western supply route into Afghanistan that bypasses Pakistan, where NATO supply trucks became a target of insurgent attacks over the past year. “So, the decision was made to reinstate that aid.”

The U.S. government roundly rejects any suggestion that military aid is being used as payment to Central Asian governments for Afghanistan operations.

“I really want to push back on this notion that Central Asia is adjunct to the Afghanistan operation,” Lynne Tracy, with the U.S. State Department, said Tuesday. “That conclusion is belied by our long history with the Central Asian states, dating back to their independence two decades ago.”

Tracy also urges caution on speculating that the U.S.’s assistance to the region would change significantly after U.S. troops pull out of Afghanistan in 2014. “Despite tight budgets, our assistance has stayed stable in recent years, and we have several other long-term interests in the region.”

Still, Tracy does allow that there is “room for debate” on the strength of the current threats emanating from Afghanistan, but she warns, “There is real reason for concern following 2014, and now is the time to prepare, while we’re in good position.”

Weakened leverage

A broader concern is that U.S. military assistance to authoritarian governments could be working directly against espoused U.S. values on democracy and rights.

Kucera’s work suggests that not only could direct aid be strengthening potential tools of government repression, but also that whatever tacit agreement may have been made regarding U.S. military aid might be undercutting Washington’s ability to enforce rigorous standards.

“It needs to be remembered that U.S. training focuses on special forces, because they’re the most capable units. But they’re also the units that would be the first to respond to internal instability,” Kucera says.

While there are mechanisms for oversight to ensure that such a situation doesn’t become a problem, Kucera says these depend on the United States’ political will to actually respond when that aid might be being misused.

“Instead, we have a situation in which both sides understand that the aid is not really meant to improve the capacity of the security forces, but rather in effect is payment for the services that those countries render to the U.S. vis-à-vis Afghanistan,” he says.

“In that situation, the U.S.’s leverage over these countries in the way they use that aid is limited. If the U.S. pushes too hard, those countries could cease their cooperation with the U.S. – and that is thought to be too great a risk.”