Egyptian protesters tear down the US flag during a demonstration at the US Embassy in September 2012 [EPA]
Documents reveal US money trail to Egyptian groups that pressed for president's removal. |
Berkeley, United States - President
Barack Obama recently stated the United States was not taking sides as
Egypt's crisis came to a head with the military overthrow of the
democratically elected president.
But
a review of dozens of US federal government documents shows Washington
has quietly funded senior Egyptian opposition figures who called for
toppling of the country's now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi.
Documents
obtained by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley show the
US channeled funding through a State Department programme to promote
democracy in the Middle East region. This programme vigorously supported
activists and politicians who have fomented unrest in Egypt, after
autocratic president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising in
February 2011.
*
The
State Department's programme, dubbed by US officials as a "democracy
assistance" initiative, is part of a wider Obama administration effort
to try to stop the retreat of pro-Washington secularists, and to win
back influence in Arab Spring countries that saw the rise of Islamists,
who largely oppose US interests in the Middle East.
Activists
bankrolled by the programme include an exiled Egyptian police officer
who plotted the violent overthrow of the Morsi government, an
anti-Islamist politician who advocated closing mosques and dragging
preachers out by force, as well as a coterie of opposition politicians
who pushed for the ouster of the country's first democratically elected
leader, government documents show.
Information
obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, interviews, and public
records reveal Washington's "democracy assistance" may have violated
Egyptian law, which prohibits foreign political funding.
It
may also have broken US government regulations that ban the use of
taxpayers' money to fund foreign politicians, or finance subversive
activities that target democratically elected governments.
'Bureau for Democracy'
Washington's
democracy assistance programme for the Middle East is filtered through a
pyramid of agencies within the State Department. Hundreds of millions
of taxpayer dollars is channeled through the Bureau for Democracy, Human
Rights and Labor (DRL), The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI),
USAID, as well as the Washington-based, quasi-governmental organisation the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
In
turn, those groups re-route money to other organisations such as the
International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute
(NDI), and Freedom House, among others. Federal documents show these
groups have sent funds to certain organisations in Egypt, mostly run by
senior members of anti-Morsi political parties who double as NGO
activists.
The
Middle East Partnership Initiative - launched by the George W Bush
administration in 2002 in a bid to influence politics in the Middle East
in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks - has spent close to
$900m on democracy projects across the region, a federal grants database
shows.
USAID
manages about $1.4bn annually in the Middle East, with nearly $390m
designated for democracy promotion, according to the Washington-based
Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).
The
US government doesn't issue figures on democracy spending per country,
but Stephen McInerney, POMED's executive director, estimated that
Washington spent some $65m in 2011 and $25m in 2012. He said he expects a
similar amount paid out this year.
| : |
A
main conduit for channeling the State Department's democracy funds to
Egypt has been the National Endowment for Democracy. Federal documents
show NED, which in 2011 was authorised an annual budget of $118m by
Congress, funneled at least $120,000 over several years to an exiled
Egyptian police officer who has for years incited violence in his native
country.
This
appears to be in direct contradiction to its Congressional mandate,
which clearly states NED is to engage only in "peaceful" political
change overseas.
Exiled policeman
Colonel
Omar Afifi Soliman - who served in Egypt's elite investigative police
unit, notorious for human rights abuses - began receiving NED funds in
2008 for at least four years.
During
that time he and his followers targeted Mubarak's government, and
Soliman later followed the same tactics against the military rulers who
briefly replaced him. Most recently Soliman set his sights on Morsi's government.
Soliman,
who has refugee status in the US, was sentenced in absentia last year
for five years imprisonment by a Cairo court for his role in inciting
violence in 2011 against the embassies of Israel and Saudi Arabia, two
US allies.
He
also used social media to encourage violent attacks against Egyptian
officials, according to court documents and a review of his social media
posts.
US
Internal Revenue Service documents reveal that NED paid tens of
thousands of dollars to Soliman through an organisation he created
called Hukuk Al-Nas (People's Rights), based in Falls Church, Virginia.
Federal forms show he is the only employee.
After he was awarded a 2008 human rights fellowship at NED and moved to the US, Soliman received a second $50,000 NED grant in 2009 for Hukuk Al-Nas. In 2010, he received $60,000 and another $10,000 in 2011.
In
an interview with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley,
Soliman reluctantly admitted he received US government funding from the
National Endowment for Democracy, but complained it wasn't enough. "It
is like $2000 or $2,500 a month," he said. "Do you think this is too
much? Obama wants to give us peanuts. We will not accept that."
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| Join the discussion. #EgyptSpeaks |
NED has removed public access to its Egyptian grant recipients in 2011 and 2012 from its website. NED officials didn't respond to repeated interview requests.
'Pro bono advice'
NED's
website says Soliman spreads only nonviolent literature, and his group
was set up to provide "immediate, pro bono legal advice through a
telephone hotline, instant messaging, and other social networking
tools".
However,
in Egyptian media interviews, social media posts and YouTube videos,
Soliman encouraged the violent overthrow of Egypt's government, then led
by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party.
"Incapacitate
them by smashing their knee bones first," he instructed followers on
Facebook in late June, as Morsi's opponents prepared massive street
rallies against the government. Egypt's US-funded and trainedmilitary later used those demonstrations to justify its coup on July 3.
*
"Make
a road bump with a broken palm tree to stop the buses going into Cairo,
and drench the road around it with gas and diesel. When the bus slows
down for the bump, set it all ablaze so it will burn down with all the
passengers inside … God bless," Soliman's post read.
*
In late May he instructed, "Behead those who control power, water and gas utilities."
Soliman
removed several older social media posts after authorities in Egypt
took notice of his subversive instructions, court documents show.
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| Egyptian women supporters of ousted president Morsi [EPA] |
More
recent Facebook instructions to his 83,000 followers range from
guidelines on spraying roads with a mix of auto oil and gas - "20 liters
of oil to 4 liters of gas"- to how to thwart cars giving chase.
*
On a YouTube video, Soliman took credit for a failed attempt in December to storm the Egyptian presidential palace with handguns and Molotov cocktails to oust Morsi.
*
"We
know he gets support from some groups in the US, but we do not know he
is getting support from the US government. This would be news to us,"
said an Egyptian embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Funding other Morsi opponents*
Other
beneficiaries of US government funding are also opponents of the
now-deposed president, some who had called for Morsi's removal by force.
The Salvation Front main opposition bloc, of which some members received US funding, has backed street protest campaigns that turned violent against the elected government, in contradiction of many of the State Department's own guidelines.
A
longtime grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy and other US
democracy groups is a 34-year old Egyptian woman, Esraa Abdel-Fatah, who
sprang to notoriety during the country's pitched battle over the new
constitution in December 2012.
She exhorted activists to lay siege to mosques
and drag from pulpits all Muslim preachers and religious figures who
supported the country's the proposed constitution, just before it went
to a public referendum.
The act of besieging mosques has continued ever since, and several people have died in clashes defending them.
Federal records show Abdel-Fatah's NGO, the Egyptian
Democratic Academy, received support from NED, MEPI and NDI, among
other State Department-funded groups "assisting democracy". Records show
NED gave her organisation a one-year $75,000 grant in 2011.
Abdel-Fatah
is politically active, crisscrossing Egypt to rally support for her
Al-Dostor Party, which is led by former UN nuclear chief Mohamed
El-Baradei, the most prominent figure in the Salvation Front. She lent
full support to the military takeover, and urged the West not call it a
"coup".
"June 30 will be the last day of Morsi's term," she told the press a few weeks before the coup took place.
*
US
taxpayer money has also been sent to groups set up by some of Egypt's
richest people, raising questions about waste in the democracy
programme.
Michael
Meunier is a frequent guest on TV channels that opposed Morsi. Head of
the Al-Haya Party, Meunier - a dual US-Egyptian citizen - has quietly
collected US funding through his NGO, Hand In Hand for Egypt
Association.
Meunier's organisation was
founded by some of the most vehement opposition figures, including
Egypt's richest man and well-known Coptic Christian billionaire Naguib
Sawiris, Tarek Heggy, an oil industry executive, Salah Diab,
Halliburton's partner in Egypt, and Usama Ghazali Harb, a politician
with roots in the Mubarak regime and a frequent US embassy contact.
Meunier has denied receiving US assistance, but government documents show USAID in 2011 granted his Cairo-based organisation $873,355. Since 2009, it has taken in $1.3 million from the US agency.
Meunier helped rally the country's five million Christian Orthodox Coptic minority, who oppose Morsi's Islamist agenda, to take to the streets against the president on June 30.
Reform
and Development Party member Mohammed Essmat al-Sadat received US
financial support through his Sadat Association for Social Development, a
grantee of The Middle East Partnership Initiative.
The federal grants records and database show in 2011 Sadat collected $84,445 from MEPI "to work with youth in the post-revolutionary Egypt".
Sadat was a member of the coordination committee,
the main organising body for the June 30 anti-Morsi protest. Since
2008, he has collected $265,176 in US funding. Sadat announced he will
be running for office again in upcoming parliamentary elections.
After
soldiers and police killed more than 50 Morsi supporters on Monday,
Sadat defended the use of force and blamed the Muslim Brotherhood,
saying it used women and children as shields.
Some US-backed politicians have said Washington tacitly encouraged them to incite protests.
"We
were told by the Americans that if we see big street protests that
sustain themselves for a week, they will reconsider all current US
policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood regime," said Saaddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American politician opposed Morsi.
Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldoun Center in Cairo receives US funding, one of the largest recipients of democracy promotion money in fact.
His comments followed statements by other Egyptian opposition politicians claiming they had been prodded by US officials to whip up public sentiment against Morsi before Washington could publicly weigh in.
Democracy programme defence
The
practice of funding politicians and anti-government activists through
NGOs was vehemently defended by the State Department and by a group of
Washington-based Middle East experts close to the programme.
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| Symbolic coffins for the more than 50 people killed Monday [EPA] |
"The
line between politics and activism is very blurred in this country,"
said David Linfield, spokesman for the US Embassy in Cairo.
Others said the United States cannot be held responsible for activities by groups it doesn't control.
"It's
a very hot and dynamic political scene," said Michelle Dunne, an expert
at the Atlantic Council think-tank. Her husband, Michael Dunne, was
given a five-year jail sentence in absentia by a Cairo court for his
role in political funding in Egypt.
"Just because you give someone some money, you cannot take away their freedom or the position they want to take," said Dunne.
Elliot
Abrams, a former official in the administration of George W. Bush and a
member of the Working Group on Egypt that includes Dunne, denied in an email message that the US has paid politicians in Egypt, or elsewhere in the Middle East.
"The
US does not provide funding for parties or 'local politicians' in Egypt
or anywhere else," said Abrams. "That is prohibited by law and the law
is scrupulously obeyed by all US agencies, under careful Congressional
oversight."
But
a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because of the issue's sensitivity, said American support for foreign
political activists was in line with American principles.
"The
US government provides support to civil society, democracy and human
rights activists around the world, in line with our long-held values,
such as respecting the fundamental human rights of free speech, peaceful
assembly, and human dignity," the official wrote in an email. "US
outreach in Egypt is consistent with these principles."
A
Cairo court convicted 43 local and foreign NGO workers last month on
charges of illegally using foreign funds to stir unrest in Egypt. The US and UN expressed concern over the move.
Out of line
Some
Middle East observers suggested the US' democracy push in Egypt may be
more about buying influence than spreading human rights and good
governance.
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| Egyptians celebrate in Tahrir Square after Morsi's removal [AFP] |
"Funding
of politicians is a problem," said Robert Springborg, who evaluated
democracy programmes for the State Department in Egypt, and is now a
professor at the National Security Department of the Naval Postgraduate
School at Monterey, California.*
"If
you run a programme for electoral observation, or for developing media
capacity for political parties, I am not against that. But providing
lots of money to politicians - I think that raises lots of questions,"
Springborg said.
Some
Egyptians, meanwhile, said the US was out of line by sending cash
through its democracy programme in the Middle East to organisations run
by political operators.
"Instead
of being sincere about backing democracy and reaching out to the
Egyptian people, the US has chosen an unethical path," said Esam
Neizamy, an independent researcher into foreign funding in Egypt, and a
member of the country's Revolutionary Trustees, a group set up to
protect the 2011 revolution.
"The
Americans think they can outsmart lots of people in the Middle East.
They are being very hostile against the Egyptian people who have nothing
but goodwill for them - so far," Neizamy said.
Source:
Al Jazeera
