Just Foreign Policy News
February 7, 2011
*Action: Urge Obama to Support UN resolution on Israeli settlement expansion
A resolution is before the UN Security Council that opposes Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, echoing longstanding U.S. positions. But President Obama is under pressure to veto the resolution from political forces that seek to maintain the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Urge President Obama to support the UN resolution. Jewish Voice for Peace, Americans for Peace Now, and Churches for Middle East Peace are speaking out. Add your voice.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/noveto
Boxer Introduces Legislation on Redeployment of U.S. Combat Forces from Afghanistan
S.186; similar to last year’s Feingold-McGovern bill; endorses 2011 drawdown, requires President Obama to set an end date for withdrawal of combat troops.
Press Release:
http://boxer.senate.gov/en/press/releases/012610a.cfm
Text of legislation:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.186:
Help Support Our Advocacy for Peace and Diplomacy
The opponents of peace and diplomacy work every day. Help us be an effective counterweight.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Leaders of the Egyptian democracy movement vowed Sunday to escalate their pressure for the resignation of President Mubarak, even as his government portrayed itself as already in the midst of US-approved negotiations, the New York Times reports. The government announced that the transition had begun with a meeting between Vice President Suleiman and two representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, part of a group of about 50 prominent Egyptians and opposition figures. Suleiman declared the meeting had produced a "consensus" about a path to reform, including the promise to form a committee to recommend constitutional changes by early March. Leaders of the protest movement, including both its youthful members and Brotherhood officials, denounced Suleiman’s portrayal of the meeting as a political ploy.
Though the movement has only a loose leadership, it has coalesced around a unified set of demands, centered on Mubarak’s resignation, but also including the dissolution of one-party rule and revamping the Constitution that protected it, and Suleiman gave no ground on any of those demands. "We did not come out with results," said a Brotherhood leader who attended, while others explained that the Brotherhood had attended only to reiterate its demands and show openness to dialogue. A lawyer who is one of the protest organizers and a member of the umbrella opposition group founded by Mohamed ElBaradei said ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood have committed to follow the lead of the young organizers.
Secretary of State Clinton said the US has been given assurances by the government of Egypt about steps toward democracy. But Mubarak’s government has often made similar pledges without delivering, the Times notes.
2) Despite reports to the contrary, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) has not approved a runoff election between candidates Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat, notes the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti in a press release. Haiti’s largest daily newspaper has confirmed that four of the eight Council members did not approve the runoff decision. Article 8 of the CEP’s bylaws requires the Council’s decisions be made by an "absolute majority of its members."
3) A New York Times story which noted reports that four CEP members did not sign the run-off announcement understated the case when it said this cast "further doubt" on the decision’s legitimacy, the Center for Economic and Policy Research notes: if four members didn’t sign, there was no decision to be announced. Although a CEP spokesperson has announced a run-off, the CEP has posted no final vote tallies, CEPR notes.
4) A Haitian government official said the Haitian government on Monday issued a new passport to former president Aristide, enabling him to end his exile and return to Haiti, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports, citing wire services.
5) The demonstrations against President Mubarak’s government have rocked the U.S. alliance with Israel, the New York Times reported. "The Israelis are saying, après Mubarak, le deluge," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. And that, in turn, Levy said, "gets to the core of what is the American interest in this. It’s Israel. It’s not worry about whether the Egyptians are going to close down the Suez Canal, or even the narrower terror issue. It really can be distilled down to one thing, and that’s Israel." But administration officials must balance support for Israel against the real desire among many Egyptians for an end to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, the Times notes.
Afghanistan
6) A report published by New York University says the Afghan Taliban have been wrongly perceived as close ideological allies of Al Qaeda, and could be persuaded to renounce Al Qaeda, Carlotta Gall reports in the New York Times. The report says there was substantial friction between the groups’ leaders before the Sept. 11 attacks and that hostility has intensified. The authors, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, have worked in Afghanistan for years and edited the autobiography of a Taliban diplomat, many of whose ideas are reflected in the report.
Some US officials have argued that the military surge in Afghanistan will weaken the Taliban and increase the incentive to negotiate. But the report cautions that the campaign may make it harder to reach a settlement, by eliminating older Taliban leaders and replacing them with younger, more radical fighters more susceptible to Al Qaeda influence. The authors suggest that the US should engage older Taliban leaders before they lose control of the movement.
In November 2002, the report says, senior Taliban figures agreed to join a process of political engagement and reconciliation with the new government of Afghanistan. Yet the decision came to nothing, since neither the Afghan government nor the US saw any reason to engage with the Taliban, the report says.
7) The central justification of the war against the Afghan Taliban – that the Taliban would allow al Qaeda to return – has been challenged by new historical evidence of offers by the Taliban leadership to reconcile with the Karzai government after the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, Gareth Porter writes for Inter Press Service. Porter notes that the NYU study’s account of the Taliban offer to reconcile with the Karzai government confirms an account by journalist Anand Gopal, who has reported on Afghanistan for the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor. The Taliban initiative was frustrated by the unwillingness of the US and the Afghan government to provide any assurance that they would not arrested and detained, Gopal wrote.
The NYU study also cites evidence that the Taliban leadership recognize that they will have to provide guarantees that a Taliban-influenced regime in Afghanistan would not allow al Qaeda to have a sanctuary, Porter notes.
Egypt
8) Writing in the Washington Post, Hossam Bahgat and Soha Abdelaty of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights enumerate concrete steps needed to enable a transition to democracy, including lifting of the state of emergency, making presidential elections open to all credible candidates, making elections supervised by judicial and civil monitors, civilian oversight of police and security forces, and neutrality of state media. Claim that time is short are disingenuous, they write: four years ago, Mubarak and his ruling party amended 34 articles of the constitution in only two months.
9) ProPublica published a FAQ on U.S. aid to Egypt. The Bush administration threatened to link military assistance to Egypt’s human rights progress, but didn’t follow through. When exiled Egyptian dissident, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, called on the U.S. government to attach conditions to aid to Egypt, U.S. officials dismissed the idea as unrealistic.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) After First Talks, Egypt Opposition Vows New Protest
David D. Kirkpatrick and David E. Sanger, New York Times, February 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/world/middleeast/07egypt.html
Cairo – Leaders of the Egyptian democracy movement vowed Sunday to escalate their pressure for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, even as his government portrayed itself as already in the midst of American-approved negotiations to end the uprising, now in its 13th day.
The government announced that the transition had begun with a meeting between Vice President Omar Suleiman and two representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Islamist group the Egyptian government has sought to repress for many years as a threat to stability. They met as part of a group of about 50 prominent Egyptians and opposition figures, including officials of the small, recognized opposition parties, as well as a handful of young people who helped start the protest movement.
While both sides acknowledged the meeting as unprecedented, its significance quickly became another skirmish in the battle between the president and the protesters. Mr. Suleiman released a statement – widely reported on state television and instantly a focal point in Washington – declaring that the meeting had produced a "consensus" about a path to reform, including the promise to form a committee to recommend constitutional changes by early March. The other elements echoed pledges Mr. Mubarak had already made, including a limit on how many terms a president can serve.
Leaders of the protest movement, including both its youthful members and Brotherhood officials, denounced Mr. Suleiman’s portrayal of the meeting as a political ploy intended to suggest that some in their ranks were collaborating.
Though the movement has only a loose leadership, it has coalesced around a unified set of demands, centered on Mr. Mubarak’s resignation, but also including the dissolution of one-party rule and revamping the Constitution that protected it, and Mr. Suleiman gave no ground on any of those demands.
"We did not come out with results," said Mohamed Morsy, a Brotherhood leader who attended, while others explained that the Brotherhood had attended only to reiterate its demands and show openness to dialogue.
[…] More than 100,000 turned out again on Sunday in the capital’s central Tahrir Square – more than expected as the work week resumed here. And some of the movement’s young organizers, who were busy meeting to organize their many small groups into a unified structure, said they were considering more large-scale demonstrations in other cities, strikes or acts of civil disobedience like surrounding the state television headquarters.
Zyad Elelaiwy, 32, a lawyer who is one of the online organizers and a member of the umbrella opposition group founded by Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate, acknowledged a generational divide in the movement. Some older leaders – especially from the recognized parties – were tempted to negotiate with Mr. Suleiman, he said, but the young organizers determined to hold out for sweeping change. "They are more close to negotiating, but they don’t have access to the street," Mr. Elelaiwy said. "The people know us. They don’t know them."
Mr. ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest opposition group, have committed to follow the lead of the young organizers, he said.
[…] Some in Washington said they welcomed Mr. Suleiman’s statement, arguing that it echoed points that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has pressed for: a clear road map and timetable of reforms, starting with the end of one-party rule and protections for political opponents and the media.
Though Mr. Mubarak’s government has often made similar pledges without delivering, American officials pursuing a strategy of slow and steady motion toward a few clear goals suggested they were gratified.
In an interview with National Public Radio on Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that she and Mr. Biden had held many conversations with Mr. Suleiman about steps toward democracy. "We hear that they are committed to this," she said, "and when we press on concrete steps and timelines, we are given assurance that that will happen."
[…]
2) Human Rights Group Notes that Haiti’s Electoral Council Did Not Approve Run-off Elections
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, 7 February 2011
http://ijdh.org/archives/17156
The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) notes that despite reports to the contrary, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) has not approved a runoff election between candidates Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat. Although CEP spokesman Richardson Dumel announced such a runoff on February 3, CEP member Ginette Chérubin stated that only four of the CEP’s eight members approved the first round of elections in writing. Haiti’s largest daily newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, has confirmed that four of the eight Council members did not approve the runoff decision.
Article 8 of the CEP’s bylaws requires that the Council’s decisions be made by an "absolute majority of its members." Therefore, a valid decision regarding the runoff would require five votes.
[…] IJDH notes that the current runoff controversy is the result of trying to create a "good" result from the deeply flawed November 28 elections in Haiti. IJDH supports the efforts of many Haitian civil society groups and political parties, joined by the Congressional Black Caucus and several U.S. human rights groups in calling for new, inclusive elections as the only practical solution to Haiti’s election crisis.
3) Actually, the CEP Has Yet to Decide Who Will Proceed to the Second Round
Center for Economic and Policy Research, Monday, 07 February 2011 14:05
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/actually-the-cep-has-yet-to-decide-who-will-proceed-to-the-second-round
[links at original]
Despite the announcement last week by CEP spokesperson Richardson Dumel, numerous media reports, and laudatory statements from by the United States, France and other foreign governments, it now appears that the CEP did not in fact make a decision as to which Haitian presidential candidates should proceed to the runoff election. As the New York Times reported yesterday:
At least one of the eight C.E.P. members, Ginette Chérubin, also sent a letter to Haitian news outlets this week saying she and three of her colleagues did not sign on to the decision adding Mr. Martelly to the runoff, casting further doubt on its legitimacy.
But if what Chérubin says is true, "further doubt on its legitimacy" is an understatement. It would in fact mean that the CEP did not make a decision.
[…] Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste spoke with Chérubin (in English via Google Translate), the representative to the CEP from women’s associations, who told them: "No. I did not sign. I was the first to leave the room, well before the end of discussions," and continued:
"I know that Jean-Pierre Toussaint Thélève did not sign. I just talk to him, and he gave me permission to quote his name. However, I know that we are 4 not to have signed these results."
Haiti Libre posted what it claims are the names of the four CEP members who did not sign on Friday.
The CEP currently consists of only eight members, as former CEP member Jean Enel Désir was forced to resign months ago due to a corruption scandal. The fact that four did not sign off on the final results means no majority was reached.
[…] CEPR, who conducted the only independent recount of the tally sheets posted by the CEP, found there to be so many irregularities that "it is impossible to determine who should advance to a second round. If there is a second round, it will be based on arbitrary assumptions and/or exclusions." Although the CEP announced a run-off election with Manigat and Martelly, they have posted no final vote tallies for either candidate.
4) Haiti issues passport to Aristide, ending exile
South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Wire reports), 3:58 PM EST, February 7, 2011
http://southflorida.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-haiti-aristide-passport-20110207,0,879568.story
Port-au-Prince – The Haitian government on Monday issued a new passport to former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, enabling him to end his exile in South Africa and return to Haiti, a government official said.
"The passport was issued on Monday. All the formalities have been completed," the official said, asking to remain anonymous, adding the document had been handed over to one of Aristide’s lawyers, Ira Kurzban.
Kurzban, who is based in Miami, arrived in recent days in Haiti to take possession of the passport, the official added.
Aristide has been living in South Africa since being ousted in 2004, and in recent months has repeatedly requested to be allowed to return home to the Caribbean nation.
[…]
5) U.S. Trying to Balance Israel’s Needs in the Face of Egyptian Reform
Helene Cooper and Mark Landler, New York Times, February 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/world/middleeast/05israel.html
Washington – The demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak’s government in Egypt are rocking the relationship between the United States and its most important Arab ally. But they are also rocking an even more fundamental relationship for the United States – its 60-year alliance with Israel.
Obama administration officials have been on the telephone almost daily with their Israeli counterparts urging them to "please chill out," in the words of one senior administration official, as President Obama has raced to respond to the rapidly unfolding events.
But the crisis raises many questions about how the United States will navigate its relationship with Israel – in particular the balance between encouraging the development of a democratic government in Egypt and the desire in Washington not to risk a new government’s abandoning Mr. Mubarak’s benign posture toward Israel.
[…] Israeli government officials started out urging the Obama administration to back Mr. Mubarak, administration officials said, and were initially angry at Mr. Obama for publicly calling on the Egyptian leader to agree to a transition.
"The Israelis are saying, après Mubarak, le deluge," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. And that, in turn, Mr. Levy said, "gets to the core of what is the American interest in this. It’s Israel. It’s not worry about whether the Egyptians are going to close down the Suez Canal, or even the narrower terror issue. It really can be distilled down to one thing, and that’s Israel."
[…] But administration officials must also balance support for Israel against the real desire among many Egyptians – and others on the Arab street – for an end to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
[…] Supporters of Israel in the United States have been focusing on playing up the dangers they see as inherent in a democratic Egyptian government that contains, or is led by, elements of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, which opposes Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
[…] Obama officials say that the United States cannot rule out the possibility of engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest opposition group in Egypt – at the same time that it is espousing support for a democratic Egypt. If Egyptians are allowed free and fair elections, a goal of the Obama administration, then, administration officials say, they will have to deal with the real possibility that an Egyptian government might include members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
[…]
Afghanistan
6) N.Y.U. Report Casts Doubt On Taliban’s Ties With Al Qaeda
Carlotta Gall, New York Times, February 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/world/asia/07afghan.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – The Afghan Taliban have been wrongly perceived as close ideological allies of Al Qaeda, and they could be persuaded to renounce the global terrorist group, according to a report to be published Monday by New York University.
The report goes on to say that there was substantial friction between the groups’ leaders before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that hostility has only intensified.
The authors, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, have worked in Afghanistan for years and edited the autobiography of a Taliban diplomat, many of whose ideas are reflected in the report. The authors are among a small group of experts who say the only way to end the war in Afghanistan is to begin peace overtures to the Taliban.
The prevailing view in Washington, however, is "that the Taliban and Al Qaeda share the same ideology," said Tom Gregg, a former United Nations official in Afghanistan and a fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at N.Y.U., which is publishing the report. "It is not an ideology they share; it is more a pragmatic political alliance. And therefore a political approach to the Taliban ultimately could deliver a more practical separation between the two groups."
Some American officials have argued that the military surge in Afghanistan will weaken the Taliban and increase the incentive to negotiate. But the report cautions that the campaign may make it harder to reach a settlement.
The report, "Separating the Taliban from Al Qaeda: The Core of Success in Afghanistan," says attacks on Taliban field commanders and provincial leaders will leave the movement open to younger, more radical fighters and will give Al Qaeda greater influence. The authors suggest that the United States should engage older Taliban leaders before they lose control of the movement.
The authors do not oppose NATO’s war, but suggest that negotiations should accompany the fighting. A political settlement is necessary to address the underlying reasons for the insurgency, they write. Otherwise, they warn, the conflict will escalate.
The report draws on the authors’ interviews with unnamed Taliban officials in Kabul, Kandahar and Khost, and on published statements by the Taliban leadership. The authors indicate that Taliban officials fear retribution if they make on-the-record statements opposing Al Qaeda.
Nevertheless, Taliban leaders have issued statements in the last two years that indicate they are distancing their movement from Al Qaeda. The report says the Taliban will not renounce Al Qaeda as a condition to negotiations, but will offer to do so in return for guarantees of security.
The report reflects many of the arguments put forward by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, whose autobiography, published in English as "My Life With the Taliban," the authors edited. Mullah Zaeef lives under a loose house arrest in Kabul after being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and has been an intermediary between the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and the Taliban.
The report argues that Taliban leaders did not know of the Sept. 11 attacks in advance and that they appeared to have been manipulated by Osama bin Laden, who then lived in Afghanistan.
In November 2002, the report says, senior Taliban figures gathered in Pakistan and agreed to join a process of political engagement and reconciliation with the new government of Afghanistan. Yet the decision came to nothing, since neither the Afghan government nor the American government saw any reason to engage with the Taliban, the report says.
[…]
7) Evidence of 2002 Taliban Offer Damages Myth of al Qaeda Ties
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service, Feb 7
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54384
Washington – The central justification of the U.S.-NATO war against the Afghan Taliban – that the Taliban would allow al Qaeda to return to Afghanistan – has been challenged by new historical evidence of offers by the Taliban leadership to reconcile with the Hamid Karzai government after the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001.
The evidence of the Taliban peace initiatives comes from a new paper drawn from the first book-length study of Taliban- al Qaeda relations thus far, as well as an account in another recent study on the Taliban in Kandahar province by journalist Anand Gopal.
In a paper published Monday by the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn recount the decision by the Taliban leadership in 2002 to offer political reconciliation with the U.S.-backed Afghan administration.
Citing an unidentified former Taliban official who participated in the decision, they report that the entire senior Taliban political leadership met in Pakistan in November 2002 to consider an offer of reconciliation with the new Afghan government in which they would "join the political process" in Afghanistan.
"We discussed whether to join the political process in Afghanistan or not and we took a decision that, yes, we should go and join the process," the former Taliban leader told the co-authors.
They cite an interlocutor who was then in contact with the Taliban leadership as recalling that they would have returned to Afghanistan to participate in the political system if they had been given an assurance they would not be arrested.
But the Karzai government and the United States refused to offer such an assurance, the interlocutor recalled. They considered the Taliban a "spent force", he told Strick van Linschoten and Kuehn.
Gopal, who has covered Afghanistan for the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal, provided a similar account of the Taliban attempt to reconcile with the Karzai government in a lengthy study published by the New America Foundation last November, based on his interviews with present and former Taliban as well as with officials in the office of President Karzai.
The entire senior Taliban leadership, meeting in Karachi, "agreed in principle to find a way for them to return to Afghanistan and abandon the fight", Gopal wrote, but the initiative was frustrated by the unwillingness of the United States and the Afghan government to provide any assurance that they would not arrested and detained.
The Taliban continued to pursue the possibility of reconciliation in subsequent years, with apparent interest on the part of the Karzai government, according to Gopal. Delegations "representing large sections of the Taliban leadership" traveled to Kabul in both 2003 and 2004 to meet with senior government officials, according to his account.
But the George W. Bush administration remained uninterested in offering assurances of security to the Taliban.
Robert Grenier, then the CIA station chief in Islamabad, revealed in an article in al Jazeera Jan. 31, 2010 that former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil had been serving as an intermediary with the Taliban on their possible return to Afghanistan in 2002 when he was "arrested and imprisoned for his pains".
The CIA sought to persuade the U.S. Defence Department to release Muttawakil, according to Grenier. But Muttawakil remained in detention at Bagram Airbase, where he was physically abused, until October 2003.
The new evidence undermines the Barack Obama administration’s claim that Taliban-ruled areas of Afghanistan would become a "sanctuary" for al Qaeda.
Strick van Linschoten and Kuehn suggest that the proposed reintegration of the Taliban into a political system that had been set up by the United States and its allies was "totally alien to al-Qaeda ideology but logical for the Taliban".
They acknowledge that the Taliban have welcomed the support and assistance of al Qaeda cadres in the war. But they argue in the new paper that the relationship is a "marriage of convenience" imposed by the foreign military presence, not an expression of an ideological alliance.
They also cite evidence that the Taliban leadership recognise that they will have to provide guarantees that a Taliban-influenced regime in Afghanistan would not allow al Qaeda to have a sanctuary.
They note in particular a Taliban public statement released before the London Conference of January 2010 that pledged, "We will not allow our soil to be used against any other country."
An earlier Taliban statement, distributed to news media Dec. 4, 2009, said the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" – the term used by the insurgent leadership to refer to the organisation – had "no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal guarantees if foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan".
Independent specialists on the history of the relationship have long questioned that assumption, and have emphasised that the Taliban leadership was never very close to al Qaeda.
Leah Farrell, senior counter-terrorism intelligence analyst with the Australian Federal Police from 2002 to 2008, wrote in her blog that the relationship "is not a marriage, it’s friends with benefits". Farrell has also said that jihadi accounts of the late 1990s have shown bin Laden was not that close to Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar before the 9/11 attacks.
The new paper, based on both Taliban and jihadist documents and from interviews with Taliban and former Taliban officials, points to basic differences of ideology and interest between the Taliban and al Qaeda throughout the history of their relations.
Relations between Taliban and al Qaeda leaders during the second half of the 1990s were "complicated and often tense", according to Strick von Linschoten and Kuehn, even though they were both Sunni Muslims and shared a common enemy.
They recall that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s plotting against the United States was done in direct violation of Mullah Omar’s directives to him.
[…]
Egypt
8) What Mubarak Must Do Before Stepping Down
Hossam Bahgat and Soha Abdelaty, Washington Post, Saturday, February 5, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/04/AR2011020404123.html
[Bahgat and Abdelaty are, respectively, executive director and deputy director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (www.eipr.org)]
Cairo – As Egyptian citizens and human rights defenders, we have been on the streets here, including in Tahrir Square, since Jan. 25 to demand dignity and freedom for all Egyptians. There is nothing we want more than an immediate end to the Mubarak era, which has been marred by repression, abuse and injustice. We are heartened by the international community’s shift from demanding "restraint" and "responsiveness" to echoing our call for Hosni Mubarak to step down and for an immediate transition toward democracy.
But for a real transition to democracy to begin, Mubarak must not resign until he has signed decrees that, under Egypt’s constitution, only a president can issue. This is not simply a legal technicality; it is, as Nathan Brown recently blogged for ForeignPolicy.com, the only way out of our nation’s political crisis.
Egypt’s constitution stipulates that if the president resigns or his office becomes permanently "vacant," he must be replaced by the speaker of parliament or, in the absence of parliament, the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court. In the event of the president’s temporary inability to exercise his prerogatives, the vice president is to take over as the interim head of state. In both cases a new president must be elected within 60 days. Significantly, the constitution prohibits the interim president from introducing constitutional amendments, dissolving parliament or dismissing the cabinet.
If today Mubarak were no longer available to fulfill his role as president, the interim president would be one of two candidates. If he chooses to leave the country, say for "medical reasons," the interim president would be Omar Suleiman, the former intelligence chief who was recently made vice president. Egyptians, particularly those of us calling for an end to Mubarak’s three-decade rule, see Suleiman as Mubarak II, especially after the lengthy interview he gave to state television Feb. 3 in which he accused the demonstrators in Tahrir Square of implementing foreign agendas. He did not even bother to veil his threats of retaliation against protesters.
On the other hand, if Mubarak is pushed to resign immediately we would have an even worse interim president: Fathi Surur, who has been speaker of the People’s Assembly since 1990. Surur has long employed his legal expertise to maintain and add to the arsenal of abusive laws that Mubarak’s regime has used against the Egyptian people. Since neither Suleiman nor Surur would be able to amend the constitution during the interim tenure, the next presidential election would be conducted under the notoriously restrictive election rules Mubarak introduced in 2007. That would effectively guarantee that no credible candidate would be able to run against the interim president.
So before Mubarak resigns he must sign a presidential decree delegating all of his authorities to his vice president until their current terms end in September. Mubarak issued similar decrees, transferring his powers to the prime minister, when he was hospitalized in 2004 and 2009. In addition, Mubarak must issue decrees lifting the "state of emergency" that has allowed him to suppress Egyptians’ civil liberties since 1981 and ordering the release or trial of those held in administrative detention without charge – estimated to be in the thousands.
Also before Mubarak resigns, an independent commission of respected judges, constitutional law experts, civil society representatives and all political movements should draft language to amend the constitution to ensure that presidential elections are open to all credible candidates; that Egyptians abroad are allowed – for the first time – to vote; that any elected president is allowed to serve only two terms; and that the elections are supervised by judicial and civil monitors. Most of this will be a matter of undoing the damage Mubarak inflicted with his constitutional changes in 2007.
These amendments must be introduced in parliament and put to a public referendum immediately. Suleiman’s claim that time is short is unfounded and disingenuous; four years ago, Mubarak and his ruling party amended 34 articles of the constitution in only two months.
Next, a diverse caretaker government must be appointed to serve the people until a president is elected and, importantly, to oversee the interim president. This broad-based cabinet must include well-respected representatives of all the country’s political forces. Once a new president is elected, we can move toward drafting a constitution that ensures Egypt’s transformation from a dictatorship to a democracy and enshrines full equality and human rights. Free and fair parliamentary elections would follow.
Three additional elements are key for the transition to succeed: First, civilian oversight of the police and security forces will deter abuse, hold abusers accountable, and help ensure the safety of those participating in the democratic uprising. Second, establishing an independent board of trustees for state television and radio would ensure neutrality in programming and representation of all political views. Third, a strong commitment by the army to act as a neutral custodian of the transition, serving the interests of the people and not the delegitimized regime, is critical.
Egyptians have paid a heavy price the past three decades and an even steeper one since this revolution started. Let’s end Mubarak’s rule the right way so we can start building a better future.
9) F.A.Q. on U.S. Aid to Egypt: Where Does the Money Go-And Who Decides How It’s Spent?
Marian Wang, ProPublica, Jan. 31, 2011
http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/f.a.q.-on-u.s.-aid-to-egypt-where-does-the-money-go-who-decides-how-spent
The protests in Egypt have prompted renewed questions about the U.S.’s aid to the country-an issue that the U.S. government has also pledged to reconsider. We’ve taken a step back and tried to answer some basic questions, such as how as much the U.S. has given, who has benefitted, and who gets to decide how its all spent.
How much does the U.S. spend on Egypt?
Egypt gets the most U.S. foreign aid of any country except for Israel. (This doesn’t include the money spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.) The amount varies each year and there are many different funding streams, but U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt has averaged just over $2 billion every year since 1979, when Egypt struck a peace treaty with Israel following the Camp David Peace Accords, according to a Congressional Research Service report from 2009.
That average includes both military and economic assistance, though the latter has been in decline since 1998, according to CRS.
What about military aid-how much is it, and what does it buy?
According to the State Department, U.S. military aid to Egypt totals over $1.3 billion annually in a stream of funding known as Foreign Military Financing.
U.S. officials have long argued that the funding promotes strong ties between the two countries’ militaries, which in turn has all sorts of benefits. For example, U.S. Navy warships get "expedited processing" through the Suez Canal.
Here’s a 2009 U.S. embassy cable recently released by WikiLeaks that makes essentially the same point: "President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the USD 1.3 billion in annual FMF as "untouchable compensation" for making and maintaining peace with Israel. The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the U.S. military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace."
The military funding also enables Egypt to purchase U.S.-manufactured military goods and services, a 2006 report from the Government Accountability Office explained [PDF]. The report criticized both the State Department and the Defense Department for failing to measure how the funding actually contributes to U.S. goals.
Does this aid require Egypt to meet any specific conditions regarding human rights?
No. Defense Secretary Gates stated in 2009 that foreign military financing "should be without conditions."
Gates prefaced that comment by saying that the Obama administration, like other U.S. administrations, is "always supportive of human rights."
The administration of former president George W. Bush had threatened to link military assistance to Egypt’s human rights progress, but it didn’t follow through. When exiled Egyptian dissident, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, called on the U.S. government to attach conditions to aid to Egypt, U.S. officials dismissed the idea as unrealistic.
[…]
–
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans. The archive of the Just Foreign Policy News is here:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/blog/dailynews