“President Sisi would like the international respect and legitimacy that would be conferred upon him by at least a correct relationship with the United States,” said Michele Dunne, a senior associate and Egypt expert with the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I’m sure he would like to be received in Washington as a legitimately elected president.”
Among the top goals for the new government is the resumption of suspended weapons deliveries the government says it needs to battle Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is also fighting back against growing bipartisan calls to cut bilateral foreign assistance that the Congressional Research Service (CRS) calculates at $74.65 billion since 1948.
Cairo has been able to count on $1.3 billion in annual US military aid since 1987, according to the CRS. But the military’s removal of democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi last year — followed by the continuing crackdown on political opponents under his successor, Sisi — has irritated the purse-holders on Capitol Hill like never before.
After a lobbying hiatus of more than a year, Egypt’s new rulers turned in October to the Glover Park Group, a lobbying firm formed by four former Democratic officials in former President Bill Clinton’s White House and former Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential run. In addition to 17 in-house lobbyists working at least part-time on the Egypt file, Glover Park has subcontracted some work to lobbyists with long-standing ties to Egypt’s military, William “Skip” Miner and Curtis Silvers, as well as Middle East expert David Dumke.
Glover Park replaced a trio of firms — the Podesta, Livingston and Moffett groups — that had long served former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Its mission to convince Congress and the administration that Egypt is implementing a “road map” for an “inclusive democratic state through parliamentary and presidential elections” has had mixed results so far.
Senate appropriators — encouraged by State and Foreign Operations panel leaders Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. — have led the charge to cut aid, with the panel voting 25-5 in June to lop off $300 million in military aid and another $100 million in economic assistance. The full House, by contrast, has voted to keep military aid intact.
“The taboo on reconsidering military aid to Egypt — how much there should be and what it should be spent on and what conditions it should be subject to — the taboo has certainly been lifted,” said Dunne, who co-chairs the Working Group on Egypt, a group of academics that supports an aid freeze.
To counter those critics, a handful of Sisi’s defenders in the House formed a Congressional Egypt Caucus last month.
“We need this caucus now more than ever,” Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said at the launch event. “What President al-Sisi is trying to do, quite frankly, is to set Egypt on a positive path toward prosperity and growth and peace in the Middle East region.”
The Obama administration has also been sending mixed messages.
Following Morsi’s ouster on July 3, 2012, the White House suspended planned deliveries of F-16 fighter jets, M1 Abrams tanks, Harpoon missiles and Apache attack helicopters. This June, Secretary of State John Kerry promised to restore $650 million in previously withheld aid as well as 10 Apache helicopters, although these remained in storage in Fort Hood as of mid-July. Kerry, however, declined to certify that Egypt was transitioning to democracy, which would have unblocked $975 million under current law.
The Egyptian government has been able to count on a lobbying assist from other foes of the Islamists that Sisi’s government is battling. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has joined the fight to preserve aid, as have some Gulf states; on the other side of the ledger, human rights groups and some foreign policy experts are urging a complete re-evaluation of America’s support for the Egyptian military.
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