Topic: Egypt

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Why is USAID Celebrating “Global Female Condom Day”?

Michael Rubin 09.12.2012 - 8:00 PM

The attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the U.S. consulate in Benghazi have sparked a debate in Congress about the efficacy and wisdom of foreign aid in both Egypt and Libya, and more broadly throughout the region; some congressmen are already calling for stripping aid to Egypt and Libya. Aid and assistance have their purpose but, against the backdrop of a severe financial situation at home and a looming threat that sequestration could decimate defense, the State Department and the larger aid community do themselves no good when, on a day of mourning, they prioritize this:

Today is the first-ever Global Female Condom Day, and women and men around the world are celebrating. They’re also speaking out for increased recognition of a prevention method that is too often overlooked… One new type of female condom is the Woman’s Condom, developed in part with funding from PEPFAR through USAID. PATH, CONRAD, and our research partners in several countries developed the Woman’s Condom using feedback from women and their partners. Their input helped us design a female condom that’s easy to insert, secure during use, and comfortable for both partners. Through our Protection Options for Women Product Development Partnership, we are now working to bring the Woman’s Condom to market in China and sub-Saharan Africa.

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Media Building False Narratives on Top of Already Debunked Ones

Seth Mandel 09.12.2012 - 5:25 PM

Today’s furious attack on Mitt Romney by the media—epitomized by reporters’ embarrassing behavior at a morning press conference—presented a perfect example of the media’s proud perpetuation of their own false narratives. These narratives don’t just win or lose the news cycle in which they are invented, but reappear later on as building blocks to the newest such narrative.

Today’s piece on the complaints about Romney’s statements on the embassy attacks over at Buzzfeed is a great illustration of this. Ben Smith writes (emphasis mine):

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Media Confuse Egypt with Libya

Bethany Mandel 09.12.2012 - 4:40 PM

During the question-and-answer portion of Romney’s remarks this morning, a reporter asked the following: “The world is watching. Isn’t this itself a mixed signal when you criticize the administration at a time that Americans are being killed? Shouldn’t politics stop for this?” While the media seems outraged over Romney’s statements about the events that took place in the Mideast yesterday, they seem unaware of the fact that Romney’s remarks were not about the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and events in Libya, but instead about the attacks on our embassy in Cairo as well as the embassy’s own response beforehand and afterwards.

Late last night Mitt Romney made the following (poorly worded) statement on the attacks,

“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

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Embassy Attack Perpetrators Do Not Represent Islam

Max Boot 09.12.2012 - 4:00 PM

The U.S. should respond strongly and sternly to the unprovoked attacks on our consulate in Benghazi and the embassy in Cairo and to the deaths of our ambassador to Libya and several of his aides. But we must also react smartly and not succumb to the rage of the moment into thinking that Sam Bacile, the amateur filmmaker whose anti-Mohammad video was initially blamed for these assaults, is right when he says, “Islam is a cancer.”

Not only is that hate speech, it is also wrong on its face because it assumes that the kind of people who carried out these outrages are typical Muslims—that somehow Islam by its very nature drives its adherents to intolerance and violence. That is not the case—Islam, like other religions, is complex and multifaceted. It has meant many things to many people over the ages. Most of its followers, like the followers of other religions, are peaceful and law-abiding and not interested in attacking anyone. The radicals are hardly representative of the mainstream, but even small numbers of extremists can sully the image of an entire country or religion by skillful attacks and manipulation of the news media.

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Nothing Stops the Campaigner-in-Chief

Bethany Mandel 09.12.2012 - 2:50 PM

Yesterday, as the world mourned the 11th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on New York City, Washington D.C. and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the Obama campaign was still in campaign mode. Kevin Eder showcased the different ways the Obama and Romney campaigns marked the day on Twitter. The first tweets of the day from each campaign were as follows:

On this most somber day, America is united under God in its quest for peace and freedom at home and across the world.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) September 11, 2012

The election is in 8 weeks. Sign up to volunteer: OFA.BO/s3tXFz

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 11, 2012

The president, hours later, eventually sent a personal tweet (which is marked by the tweet signing off with his initials “bo”) to mark the anniversary of the worst attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. Mitt Romney’s social media accounts went on campaign blackout yesterday outside of the messages related to 9/11, and he suspended any campaign-related events or appearances. Despite media claims that both campaigns came to a truce on the 9/11 anniversary, only one actually held to that promise.

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Report: Riots Actually About Release of Blind Sheik

Alana Goodman 09.12.2012 - 2:20 PM

USA Today reports that the riot at the U.S. embassy in Cairo appears to have been planned well before the Egyptian media reported on the anti-Islam YouTube film that was blamed for sparking the protest. The protest was reportedly announced on August 30 by Gamaa Islamiyya, an Egyptian terrorist group, to call for the release of its leader, Sheikh Omar abdel Rahman — aka the blind sheik, who is serving a life sentence for the first World Trade Center bombing:

Days of planning and online promotion by hard-line Islamist leaders helped whip up the mobs that stormed the U.S. Embassy in Egypt and launched a deadly attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya that killed an ambassador and three others. …

The protest was planned by Salafists well before news circulated of an objectionable video ridiculing Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, said Eric Trager, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was announced Aug. 30 by [Gamaa Islamiyya], a State Department-designated terrorist group, to protest the ongoing imprisonment of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

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A Problem With State Department Security?

Alana Goodman 09.12.2012 - 12:25 PM

CBS reported earlier today that members of the Libyan security detail hired by the U.S. tipped off rioters about the location of the U.S. ambassador, who had apparently been moved from the consulate to a “safer” building (h/t Ed Morrissey) — an extremely troubling detail by itself. But Breitbart’s Michael Patrick Leahy also adds that the ambassador was being guarded solely by Libyan nationals, and the two Marines who were killed were only sent in after the violence broke out:

Security at the consulate was apparently provided by Libyan nationals hired by the United States. While security for American embassies is typically provided by our own Marines, the two Marines reported killed in yesterday’s attacks appear not to have been stationed at the embassy, but were sent there from another unknown location as the violence erupted. There is also no indication if these two Marines were the only American military personnel on site at the time of Ambassador Stevens’s death.

All reports indicate that the security forces at the consulate were overwhelmed by the size of the militant crowds and offered no resistance as they stormed the building, looted it, and killed the four Americans.

As the facts surrounding the destruction of the American consulate and death of Ambassador Stevens become known, investigators will focus on these questions: Did the State Department provide adequate security for our embassy staff there? If not, why not?

And finally, the most important question of all: Where were the Marines?

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Cairo Encouraged Embassy Attack by Letting Previous Attackers Walk

Evelyn Gordon 09.12.2012 - 11:30 AM

As Jonathan noted earlier, the Obama administration’s behavior to date has given Egypt every reason to think it can let a mob attack the U.S. embassy in Cairo with impunity. But there’s a very specific precedent he failed to mention: Just two weeks ago, a Cairo court sentenced 76 people indicted over last September’s mob attack on Israel’s embassy in Cairo. The net result is that not a single person is going to jail over that attack, sending the clearest possible message that mobs can attack foreign embassies in Cairo with impunity. Yet no world leader has lodged even a pro forma protest over this decision.

A brief recap: On September 9, 2011, thousands of Egyptians stormed the Israeli embassy, broke through the security wall and proceeded to loot it. No Israeli diplomats were present at the time, but six Israeli security guards were, and Israel was afraid they would be lynched: They had barricaded themselves in an interior room, but the mob was trying to break down the door. And not only did Egyptian police do nothing to stop the assault, but government officials in Cairo refused even to take calls from their frantic Israeli counterparts. Only after Washington intervened did the Egyptians finally send troops to rescue the Israelis.

The attack was denounced by leaders and diplomats worldwide, and ultimately, 76 people were put on trial for it, as well as for having stoned the nearby Saudi embassy–or, at least, so say various foreign media reports. Two Egyptian media sources, MENA and Al-Ahram, actually reported the indictments as being for attacking the Saudi embassy only, meaning those who attacked Israel’s embassy enjoyed complete immunity.

Either way, the charges were weighty, including “an assault against diplomatic missions” and “sabotage.” But the sentences handed down on August 26 were a joke: All the defendants received suspended sentences except for one who was tried in absentia. He was sentenced to five years, but according to Al-Ahram, less for the embassy attack than for “inciting violence against police” by authoring a book about police brutality and torture. And in any case, since he’s abroad, he won’t be serving any time, either.

The message couldn’t be clearer: The Egyptian legal system doesn’t view attacking embassies as a serious crime. Yet no world leader or diplomat thought this message worth protesting. Indeed, just a week after that verdict, the Obama administration announced that it was about to approve a sweeping debt forgiveness deal for Egypt, and would also back Egypt’s request for a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan. Is it any wonder if official Egypt concluded that Washington doesn’t care all that much about embassy attacks?

The man on the street got the message as well: Attacking embassies is a risk-free endeavor. And today, a crowd of them applied this lesson by attacking another.

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Romney Stands by Criticism of Obama Response on Egypt

Alana Goodman 09.12.2012 - 11:10 AM

At a press conference this morning, Mitt Romney did not back down when asked whether he spoke too soon in criticizing the Obama administration’s initial response to the attack on the U.S. embassy in Egypt.

Earlier today, Romney slammed the administration’s response as “disgraceful,” saying that it appeared to “sympathize” with those who waged the attacks. As Jonathan wrote earlier, the initial statement from the Obama administration — which was released before the embassy attack — seemed to apologize for an anti-Islam movie that Egyptian extremists used as a pretext for the violence. The White House has since distanced itself from the statement, saying it didn’t sign off on it.

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Will Morsi Meet Obama?

Michael Rubin 09.12.2012 - 10:45 AM

Last month, the White House confirmed that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi would visit Washington on the heels of the United Nations General Assembly session. The White House spokesman was cagey about whether Morsi would meet President Obama, but if Morsi is coming to Washington, he will have high level meetings.

Obama has now confirmed that he will not meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is too busy; after all, the David Letterman Show calls. Given the attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo yesterday, and the inability of the Egyptian government to take full responsibility for the safety and security of American diplomatic personnel, it will truly be a reflection of where the White House stands if he meets with Morsi after the outrage in Cairo, but declines to meet with the Israeli prime minister.

It is time someone ask Obama just what Morsi is going to do in Washington and whether he should have any meetings until those responsible for the attack in Cairo are brought to justice.

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A Foreign Policy Challenge Emerges

Max Boot 09.12.2012 - 10:00 AM

Given how common attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic personnel have become since the 1970s–the great age of international terrorism–it is a little startling to realize that it has been 33 years since an American ambassador was murdered by terrorists. It makes sense that the last such death–that of Ambassador Adolph Dubs in Afghanistan, on February 14, 1979–occurred in Afghanistan at the dawn of its agony, after a Communist coup but before the Soviet invasion. The year 1979 was, in fact, the year when militant Islam first became a major threat to the West. That was the year of the Iranian hostage crisis, the siege of Mecca, the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and, of course, the Red Army’s invasion of Afghanistan. That last gave rise to mujahideen groups some of which (e.g., the Haqqani Network) are now fighting American forces. We must hope that the tragic deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and other personnel at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya does not signal yet another era of anti-American attacks in the Middle East–but it might.

At the very least it suggests the uncertainties inherent in the Arab Spring, even in a country such as Libya, where relatively moderate forces have triumphed. The difficulty has been that the government in Tripoli has had trouble asserting its authority and disarming militia groups. Thus it was apparently a radical Islamist militia group that was behind the attack that killed Stevens. Some, no doubt, will take this attack as all the more reason why the U.S. should take a hands-off attitude toward the region. If only we had that luxury. But Libya and its neighbors remain of vital strategic importance for a variety of reasons–not least their oil–and our interests lie in helping the Libyan government to establish its authority. Indeed this latest attack shows just how important it is to step up security assistance–providing everything from weapons to advisers–so that the Libyan government can assert its authority over its own territory.

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How to Respond to the Embassy Attacks?

Michael Rubin 09.12.2012 - 9:35 AM

It’s all well and good to condemn the film clippings that precipitated the attacks—I myself find them noxious—but neither anger at United States policy nor at the insensitivity or insults of one’s speech ever excuses an attack on an embassy or diplomatic personnel. Diplomats are meant to be representatives and problem-solvers stationed abroad for the convenience of both the United States and the host government; they are not meant to be hostages against which to retaliate.

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are eulogizing the slain American ambassador and staff members, as they should. The question of what comes next is trickier.

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Palestinians Joining the Arab Spring?

Seth Mandel 09.11.2012 - 12:00 PM

The Arab Spring has made reporters understandably excitable at the first sign of popular discontent in the Arab world, especially in places previously unaffected by the revolutionary wave. And so the Associated Press report out of Hebron yesterday took the step of repeating for readers just how unprecedented the Palestinian anti-government protests were. It began with this sentence: “Palestinian demonstrators fed up with high prices and unpaid salaries shuttered shops, halted traffic with burning tires and clashed with riot police in demonstrations across the West Bank on Monday— the largest show of popular discontent with the Palestinian Authority in its 18-year existence.”

Seven paragraphs later, the reporters made explicit the comparison, and in an attempt to ward off the dismissal of the analogy repeated again the rarity factor at work here: “The unrest was reminiscent of the mass demonstrations of the Arab Spring that topped aging dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and sparked civil war in Syria. While there is no sign that the protests are approaching that level, they nonetheless are the largest show of popular discontent with the governing Palestinian Authority in its 18-year history.” Yes, the AP is right: the protests have reached unprecedented levels. But the more interesting aspects of the public unrest are not the parallels with the Arab Spring, but the contrasts.

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Is Morsi Preparing for War?

Evelyn Gordon 09.10.2012 - 8:00 AM

When the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate won Egypt’s presidential elections, the comforting theory pronounced by diplomats and pundits worldwide was that power would force the Brotherhood to moderate its views: Once in power, its first priority would have to be rescuing Egypt’s shattered economy, and this would force it to avoid radical steps liable to antagonize Western donors.

That power isn’t moderating the Brotherhood is crystal clear already: Within two months of taking office, President Mohamed Morsi had already blatantly violated the cardinal principle of the peace treaty with Israel–the demilitarization of Sinai–by sending tanks into the area near the Israeli border without first obtaining Israel’s permission. But now it turns out the Brotherhood also doesn’t care about the economy. It’s only Morsi’s third month in office, and he is already negotiating to spend hundreds of millions of dollars he doesn’t have on something that won’t help the economy one whit: two state-of-the-art submarines from Germany.

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Aid to Morsi’s Egypt Is the Right Call

Max Boot 09.04.2012 - 12:10 PM

I am as skeptical as anyone of the intentions of the new Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt led by Mohamed Morsi. From the appearance of a veiled newscaster on Egyptian state television to the attempted remilitarization of the Sinai, there are certainly troubling signs of what the new regime intends. But there are also some positive signs—from Morsi’s interest in free-market reforms to the offensive he ordered in the Sinai against militants who attacked Egyptian outposts and his willingness to stick it in the face of his Iranian hosts by backing the Syrian revolt while on a visit to Tehran. It is simply too soon to tell how much of a threat—or not—the new Egypt will be.

Nevertheless the Obama administration is right to extend roughly a billion dollars in debt forgiveness to Egypt and to support a new IMF loan that could approach five billion dollars.

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Think Khomeini When Brotherhood Talks

Michael Rubin 08.29.2012 - 2:00 PM

Almost a decade ago, former Iranian literature professor Jalal Matini penned a piece in the U.S.-based, Persian language journal Iranshenasi, entitled, “The Most Truthful Individual in Recent History.” It was a study of Ayatollah Khomeini’s statements prior to seizing power, and his actions afterwards.

Shortly after, Iranian.com, an online Iranian-interest website, translated key portions of the article, only a few examples of which I reproduce here:

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In Egypt, Up from “Realism”

Seth Mandel 08.27.2012 - 4:00 PM

Western analysts and political scientists will be learning lessons from the Arab Spring for a long time. But among the most important and immediate was the revelation that the cynical core assumptions of realist foreign policy were disastrous for the region and the West. The mirage of stability lured president after president, all the while helping to stifle democracy, education, and women’s rights. The inevitable and violent end of that “stability”–which of course was anything but–has finally reset the Western outlook on dealing with the newly emerging regional power brokers.

Or has it? Freedom House’s David Kramer and Charles Dunne aren’t so sure the West isn’t about to relapse. Egypt’s foreign policy, under its new Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, is adapting to new realities—and so should Washington’s, they write in the American Interest:

First, bedrock principles should guide U.S. policy, and we need to be clear in public and in private what those principles are, stressing the importance of institutions versus personalities. The United States must stand firmly on the side of basic human rights, especially those of the most vulnerable, including women and religious minorities, and uphold freedom of the press, expression and association. It is particularly important that the United States press the Egyptian government to liberalize the environment for civil society and end its prosecution of international non-government organizations for their efforts to help Egyptians as they work toward democracy; investigations into domestic NGOs should also be ended. There must be rewards for advancing the political transition and real consequences for pushing it back.

The United States must also engage broader segments of Egyptian society and politics. The temptation is to pay too much attention to traditional political elites as well as President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood as they seek to consolidate power, but that is a mistake. The U.S. needs to reach out consistently to young activists and liberal and secular parties; however feckless they might seem now, their ideas on democracy and governance were the ideological underpinnings of the revolution against Mubarak and have been broadly, if tacitly, accepted by wide swaths of the Egyptian body politic, including the Muslim Brotherhood. They will continue to play a significant role in Egyptian politics.

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When Israel and the Arab States Agree

Seth Mandel 08.24.2012 - 11:30 AM

The New York Times’s regular feature “Room for Debate” often brings together a fairly diverse and interesting group of commenters on the chosen topic, and today’s is no different. The topic this time is about American support for Israel, and whether that hampers American influence in the Middle East. The debate group features Aaron David Miller, Rashid Khalidi, Daniel Gordis, Daoud Kuttab, and others.

But the strangest part of the debate is not what any of the contributors said, but how the topic is introduced. Here’s the Times’s opening explanation for the debate:

The president of Israel is resisting calls for a unilateral strike against Iran, but it’s just the “unilateral” part that he finds troubling: “It is clear to us that we have to proceed together with America.” Even if this is just posturing, the statement shows one reason the U.S. struggles to make allies in the Arab world: Israelis and Arabs alike assume that the U.S. will take a side in Mideast conflicts, and that the U.S. will side with Israel. Are they right?

In light of the long history of lobbying (and junkets for members of Congress), is support for Israel so entrenched in American politics that the U.S. can no longer exert influence and broker peace?

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Egyptians Reevaluate Their Real Enemies

Evelyn Gordon 08.08.2012 - 9:17 AM

As I noted yesterday, the Muslim Brotherhood is busily propagating conspiracy theories about Israeli guilt for Sunday’s terror attack in Sinai, which killed 16 Egyptian soldiers. But there’s a bright side to this story: For the first time ever, many Egyptians aren’t buying it.

True, dozens of demonstrators converged on the Israeli ambassador’s house Monday to demand his expulsion, asserting that Israel was to blame. But the real mob scene occurred at the slain soldiers’ funerals – where crowds chanted slogans denouncing not Israel, but the Muslim Brotherhood, and physically attacked a representative of the Brotherhood-led government, Prime Minister Hesham Kandil.

Nor did the media blindly regurgitate the usual conspiracy theories of Israeli guilt: They duly reported the Egyptian military’s assertion that the attack was perpetrated by terrorists from Sinai aided by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Prominent Egyptian commentators even criticized the army for ignoring the intelligence warning Israel had shared, and President Mohammed Morsi for pardoning thousands of radical Islamists and freeing them from jail. And both in television interviews and on social media sites, many ordinary Egyptians blamed the attack not on Israel, but on Morsi, for having reopened the Gaza-Egypt border.

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Report: Precious Little Religious Freedom

Ben Cohen 07.31.2012 - 2:38 PM

Here’s a pretty gruesome story from Pakistan that began circulating yesterday:

At least 11 nurses, including three Christians, were poisoned at Civil Hospital Karachi for eating during Ramadan. During their afternoon break yesterday, the 11 nurses went to the hostel cafeteria for some tea and food. Rita, a Catholic nurse, collapsed first after drinking her tea. Now all the nurses are in the hospital’s intensive care unit, some in very serious conditions.

It was an appropriate day, then, for the State Department to publish its 2011 report on religious freedom around the globe. And the bottom line is that, throughout the Islamic world, as well as in the unreconstructed communist and authoritarian states, there’s precious little of it.

What kind of ranking does religious freedom hold in the conduct of American foreign policy? As of this morning, the State Department’s website had on prominent display the following declaration from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “For the United States, religious freedom is a cherished constitutional value, a strategic national interest, and a foreign policy priority.” No room for misinterpretation there, then.

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