A Pro-Cairo Lobby is Spending Big to Make Sure Biden Doesn't Cut Aid to
Egypt's Dictatorship
President al-Sisi is afraid that his free rein to commit human rights abuses
are over now that Trump is out of office, that's why he hired Brownstein
Hyatt Farber Schreck to the tune of $65,000 per month to whitewash his image
and keep the American money flowing.
Mint Press
by Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold
February 10th, 2021
By Medea Benjamin and
Ariel Gold
Under Donald Trump's presidency, Egypt, as well as Saudi Arabia, Israel, the
UAE, and other repressive regimes, had virtually free reign to commit
unchecked human rights abuses without worry that they might be chastised or
lose U.S. diplomatic and financial support. But when Joe Biden won the 2020
election, President Sisi of Egypt started to worry. That's when he
contracted lobbying powerhouse Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck for $65,000 a
month.
The pro-Cairo lobby team includes a number of former politicians, including
former Republican congressman Ed Royce, who chaired the influential Foreign
Affairs Committee from 2013-2018. The most shocking PR agent for the
Egyptian regime, however, is Nadeam Elshami, former chief of staff for House
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. "It's inconceivable that a man who spent his
younger years in Egypt, comes from a Muslim family that supported the 2011
Arab Spring and was a key Democratic staffer in the U.S. Congress would end
up lobbying for a regime that jails, tortures and murders tens of thousands
of Egyptians," says Mohamed Ismail of Egyptians Abroad for Democracy
Worldwide.
Brownstein boasts many accomplishments, including pushing Congress to obtain
compensation on behalf of the hostages held in Iran in 1979, recovering
artifacts plundered during the Armenian Genocide, securing compensation for
housing developers who had to mitigate asbestos from former U.S. military
sites, and securing increased funding for cancer research. Representing
Egypt under President Sisi is unlikely to be something Brownstein Hyatt
Schreck will brag about.
In July 2013, Sisi seized control of Egypt in a military coup that removed
Mohammed Morsi, the country's first democratically elected leader. The
following month, on August 14, his military massacred approximately 1,000
civilians engaging in peaceful protest at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square. Human
Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth called the Rabaa massacre, "one
of the worst killing of demonstrators in a single day in recent history,"
pointing out that the violence was "intentionally planned at the highest
levels of Egyptian society." Between July 2013 and May 2014, Egyptian
authorities detained, charged, or sentenced over 40,000 people. Many of the
detainees - demonstrators, dissenters, and journalists - were held without
trial. Others were tried without due process and sentenced to death.
In 2015, President Sisi governed without an elected parliament, giving
himself almost total impunity for the attacks he carried out against civil
and political rights. Effectively, all of the human rights gains that had
been achieved during the 2011 Arab Spring that ousted longtime Egyptian
ruler Hosni Mubarak were lost when Sisi took over. Sisi's reign of power has
continued in this fashion with Egyptians experiencing surging human rights
abuses and a large-scale breakdown of civil society.
In April 2019, Sisi's government passed constitutional amendments allowing
the leader to remain in power until 2030. In the fall of 2019, Egyptian
authorities launched their biggest crackdown since Sisi seized power in
2013. According to Amnesty International, over 2,300 people, including more
than 111 children, were taken into custody in sweeping and targeted arrests
of peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights attorneys, politicians,
and political activists. On January 13, 2020, Egyptian-born American citizen
Mustafa Kassem died following more than six years of incarceration in Egypt.
Kassem had been arrested in August 2013 in Cairo on claims that he had
participated in protests against Sisi's military regime. He suffered from
beatings and was held in pretrial detention for over five years before
finally, without due process, receiving a sentence of 15 years.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the already abysmal prison conditions
in Egypt and Sisi's government has used the crisis as a pretext to even
further silence critics and make use of pretrial detention without judicial
review.
Egypt's North Sinai, a sparsely populated area bordering Israel and the
Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, is a particularly egregious example of the
country's human rights abuses. Attacks by armed groups, including ISIS
affiliates, on Egyptian government installations, began to rise after the
2011 Arab Spring uprising but increased dramatically following Sisi's 2013
coup. Instead of protecting Sinai residents in their fight against
militants, the Egyption military has "shown utter contempt for residents'
lives, turning their daily life into a nonstop nightmare of abuses," said
Michael Page, Human Rights Watch's deputy director for the Middle East and
North Africa.
The Egyptian military in the Sinai has been engaging in torture,
disappearances (including of children as young as 12), mass arbitrary
arrests, extrajudicial killings, home demolitions, severe curfews resulting
in food shortages, and air and ground attacks against civilians. According
to Human Rights Watch, these actions amount to war crimes and, according to
a 2020 report by the U.S. Department of State, Egypt has repeatedly refused
U.S. requests to observe how its military equipment is being used in the
Sinai.
The history of U.S. financial support for Egypt dates back to the 1978 Camp
David Accords and 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty when the U.S. began to
provide Egypt with aid in a 2:3 ratio in accordance with U.S. aid to Israel.
According to the U.S. Department of State, since 1978, Egypt has received
over $50 billion in military and $30 billion in economic assistance.
Currently, the U.S. gives Egypt $1.3 billion per year ($3.56 million per
day) in military aid, making Egypt the second-largest recipient of U.S.
military assistance after Israel.
This largesse flowed during the reign of Hosni Mubarak and continues today,
despite Sisi's massive human rights abuses. Following the horrific 2014
Rabaa Square massacre, President Obama halted the delivery of U.S. tanks,
missiles, fighter jets, and attack helicopters to Egypt. However, by 2015,
he relented and lifted the arms hold, citing the need "to address the shared
challenges to U.S. and Egyptian interests in an unstable region." President
Trump famously referred to Sisi as his "favorite dictator," and praised Sisi
for doing a "fantastic job." In August of 2017, the Trump administration
did cut $96 million and delayed $195 million in military assistance to Egypt
over the country's failure to reduce its human rights abuses, a new law Sisi
approved to restrict the activities of non-governmental organizations, and
Egypt's relationship with North Korea. But these actions were not as tough
on Egypt as they appeared to be. According to The New York Times: "by
pausing the provision of $195 million in military funding, the Trump
administration saved the money from expiring entirely on Sept. 30. This way,
Egypt could eventually get the money if its record on human rights
improves." Indeed, the funding was later released without any change in
Egypt's policies.
Some members of Congress have tried to take action. In October 2020, 56
representatives - 55 Democrats and one independent - released a letter
urging Sisi to release prisoners "unjustly detained for exercising their
fundamental human rights." The call was echoed by over 220 European
lawmakers. In 2014, Congress began implementing the Leahy Laws on a portion
of aid money to Egypt. The law prevents U.S. security assistance to a
foreign security force unit when there is credible information that the unit
has committed a gross violation of human rights.
In December 2020, Congress made $75 million (a small portion of the total
$1.3 billion) conditional on human rights improvements, without the U.S.
State Department being able to waive the conditions by citing U.S. national
security interests.
Unlike Trump, Joe Biden has been quite critical of Sisi. Commenting on the
release of an Egypt-American medical student, then-candidate Biden wrote on
Twitter: "Mohamed Amasha is finally at home, after 486 days in an Egyptian
prison, for raising a protest banner. The arrest, torture, and exile of
activists like Sarah Hegazy and Mohamed Soltan or threatening their families
is unacceptable. No more blank cheques for Trump's favorite dictator."
Shortly after it became apparent that Biden had won the 2020 U.S. election,
Egypt began releasing some political prisoners, including three directors of
the well-respected Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights-Gasser
Abdel-Razek, Kareem Ennarah and Mohamed Basheer. On February 6, 2021, they
released Al Jazeera journalist Mahmoud Hussein, who had been in prison since
December 2016 for "publishing false information and belonging to a banned
group." After Hussein was arrested, Sisi banned Al Jazeera and other news
outlets critical of his rule. Reporters Without Borders has called Egypt one
of the world's biggest and worst jailers of journalists.
Certainly, President al-Sisi is afraid that his days of free rein to commit
human rights abuses are over now that Trump is out of office. That's why he
is so desperate for the help of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck to whitewash
his image and keep U.S. military assistance flowing. But the Biden
administration and Congress must not be swayed by Egypt's release of a few
select prisoners or the lobbying efforts of well-compensated Brownstein
employees such as Pelosi's former chief of staff Nadeam Elshami. They should
put a "stop payment" on the U.S. taxpayer-funded check that has enabled Sisi
to operate with impunity.
Feature photo | Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-
