Obama Sends Wrong Signal By Giving Speech in Egypt

President Obama sent a signal of support to the Egyptian dictatorship by giving his speech to the Muslim world in Egypt.

Now, he may not have had much of a choice when it came to the Arab region (though in the broader Muslim world, there are a number of democracies, such as Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan and Bangladesh). And certainly Egypt is not socially retrograde in the way that Saudi Arabia is, as I discovered when I traveled the same route as Obama back in 2002.

Still, Egypt is in the grip of a geriatric dictator who will eventually yield in true monarchical fashion only to his son. Eighty-one-year-old Hosni Mubarak, who’s been helming his country since I was in seventh grade, shows no immediate sign of giving up his throne. And when he does, it will quite likely be to hand over the scepter to his younger son Gamal. Gamal holds a number of important positions in the ruling party, and there’s almost a consensus that he will be anointed the next in charge when his father exits the stage.

Obama did talk about U.S. support for democracy and human rights generally in his speech, but did not specifically mention the Egyptian government.

The Mubarak family and its cronies have been busy in the recent past trying to bludgeon the country’s opposition into submission. Ayman Nour, Mubarak’s main presidential rival, was released earlier this year after languishing for four years in prison. But his sufferings haven’t ended. Just a few weeks ago, an unidentified assailant sprayed flames into Nour’s face using an aerosol can. Nobody has been arrested yet.

A broad-based civil disobedience movement called Kefaya (Enough!) has met with similarly horrible repression. In 2005, when the group tried to step up the pressure on the regime by holding large street protests, the government responded by sexually molesting and assaulting the demonstrators.

In a recent letter to Obama detailing its concerns over his Egypt trip, Human Rights Watch expressed apprehension over the wrong message his visit may send. The letter details a litany of repressive measures that the Egyptian government engages in.

“President Mubarak in 2008 renewed the Emergency Law, in force since 1981, which allows authorities to detain persons arbitrarily and try them in special security courts that do not meet international fair trial standards,” the group states. “Security forces have violently suppressed strikes and peaceful demonstrations, arresting and sometimes torturing bloggers and other activists involved in promoting such activities.”

The mention of bloggers is interesting because they have been in the forefront of the pro-democracy movement and have particularly been the target of the government’s surveillance and wrath. An Egyptian immigrant I met during a recent visit to Northern Wisconsin told me that a techie friend of his back in his home country had been coerced by the regime to design software to keep tabs on activist websites and blogs. And he also told me that Egyptian bloggers have come up with creative ways of defiance. For instance, they use the Internet to spread the word about a “Don’t Go to Work Day,” where people stay at home as an act of protest.

Sadly, the Obama Administration seems to be backing away from support for these courageous Egyptian reformers. Andrew Albertson and Stephen McInerney of the Project on Middle East Democracy express concern in a recent Foreign Policy article about the United States tamping down its funding of such initiatives in Egypt. They note that the money requested for such activities has been slashed by 60 percent for the 2010 budget.

“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton … told reporters last Thursday that in contrast to U.S. aid for economic opportunity in Egypt, the U.S. government had spent ‘many billions of dollars over the last years promoting NGOs, promoting democracy, good governance, rule of law,’ ” they write. “In fact, from 2004 to 2009, the United States has spent less than $250 million on such programs. Next to the $7.8 billion Americans pumped into the Egyptian military during that period, that seems a small price to pay to maintain some measure of credibility with America's friends in the country—who quite justifiably argue that they, too, have a right to elect dynamic new leaders like President Obama.”

The cut in funding—coupled with Obama’s visit—has unnerved Egypt’s pro-democracy campaigners.

“We are alarmed by signals that the Obama’s Administration’s support for democracy may have waned,” writes Nour in the New York Times. “We don’t expect Mr. Obama to bring progress to Egypt. But we expect him to demand freedom for all and to restate his conviction that oppressive regimes march on the wrong side of history.”

Barack Obama needs to throw in his lot with human rights and democracy in Egypt, instead of being chummy with an aged autocrat.