The U.S. government has continued providing military support to Egypt despite the 2013 military coup that overthrew then-president Mohamed Morsi. Moreover, the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense have failed to conduct proper vetting of human rights violations by Egyptian forces that receive U.S. aid, according to a recently published report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). The Cipher Brief spoke with the Director of International Counterterrorism and Security Assistance Issues at GAO, Charles Johnson, who also headed up the 2016 report.
The Cipher Brief: Why was GAO investigating U.S. Security Assistance to Egypt and what are the findings of the report?
Charles Johnson: Most of our work is congressionally requested, and this report was done in response to a House Foreign Affairs Middle East North Africa Subcommittee headed by Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). It is one of a series of reports on Egypt we’ve done over the last two years. Prior reports looked at U.S. assistance to Egypt and the democracy-governance issue in the country.
This latest report – unlike the other ones – looked at the internal controls that are in place for two factors: ensuring there are proper safeguards and also proper control of the end-use of U.S. provided equipment. There’s also what we call end-use monitoring requirements associated with equipment, whether it’s routine monitoring to make sure equipment is accounted for and being used as intended, or enhanced monitoring for certain more sensitive equipment like night vision goggles.
As the report notes, there have been many challenges with cooperation with our Egyptian counterparts that have made it difficult for the U.S. to really do its job. Our recommendation is the State Department should make use of outreach programs it already has in place to make clear to our counterparts what our requirements on monitoring are and to get more cooperation from the Egyptian government.
With regards to human rights vetting and violations, there are human rights requirements to ensure the U.S. does not provide equipment to foreign security forces when there is credible evidence of gross human rights violations. We did not find that DoD and State have done 100 percent of the vetting in Egypt that their policies call for. State has deemed the exact percentage as sensitive and not publicly releasable. But our conclusion is that they did not always follow their procedures. And we also found that U.S. Embassy Cairo was not uploading information of credible documentation into a communal database that tracks human rights violations. They had only uploaded around three documents in three or four years. If they’re vetting hundreds of individuals, there should have been more documents in there.
TCB: What is the main reason(s) for State and DoD noncompliance with human rights policies?
CJ: I’m not sure what excuse they have. State’s policy requires 100 percent vetting. So there’s no reason why they should have not done that.
TCB: Can you talk about changes in security assistance post-Mohamed Morsi’s overthrow in 2013? The U.S. did not use the word “coup” to describe the overthrow and continued to provide assistance to Egypt, although the government did suspend some assistance.
CJ: You are correct. The U.S. government did suspend some assistance during 2013 and 2014. This was lifted in March 2015. But overall, when you look at our numbers, it does not show a dramatic drop off in terms of funds allocated toward Egypt between 2011 and 2015.
The suspension impacted the economic support funds the most. But the bulk of assistance to Egypt is Foreign Military Financing (FMF) – Egypt is the second largest recipient of U.S. FMF funds (after Israel). Egypt gets roughly $1.3 billion every year of U.S. FMF money. That has been pretty consistent. Our biggest finding is that a lot of the money that was not obligated, or was obligated and not fully used, was the security-related non-FMF money, mostly from State.
I want to note here that we have also started to look at the State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) program and problems with obligating funding. We did some work in east and northwest Africa and found that about $9 billion dollars of ATA funding expired, and State was unware of that.
TCB: Part of the report noted that State officials said the Egyptian government is “sensitive” to impositions on sovereignty, and they can view end-use monitoring and human rights vetting as threats to sovereignty. Is this a broader issue across the Middle East, and what mechanisms do State and DoD have to deal with this?
CJ: Sovereignty is going to be an issue in Egypt and other Middle East countries. Obviously the U.S. has to respect the sovereignty of foreign governments, but it does pose some challenges. We have this issue with our Mexican counterparts as well, for example. So it’s not just in the Middle East, and it’s an issue that the U.S. just has to work with. To deal with this, the U.S. uses Letters of Offer and Acceptance in bilateral agreements, in which our partners agree to accept stuff from us, contingent on the U.S. having access to certain things we need to do our job. The U.S. can also use the outreach programs I mentioned earlier to remind our foreign partners of the requirements in place (something the U.S. has not been making use of as much in Egypt).
TCB: Egypt is one of only 10 countries that the U.S. Congress has made eligible to use FMF funds to make direct commercial sales purchases of defense goods and services, as opposed to purchases from the Foreign Military Sales program. What percentage of Egypt’s purchases come from direct commercial sales?
CJ: Less than three percent are direct commercial purchases. The bulk of sales is going through the Foreign Military Sales program with DoD. It should be mentioned that the most advanced weapons systems can only be sold through Foreign Military Sales, with the exception of night vision devices. This is an additional control mechanism to ensure our extremely sensitive or most advanced equipment does not fall into the wrong hands.
TCB: Is there anything more the U.S. should be doing?
CJ: As you pointed out, sovereignty is a big issue. State and DoD have got to work through those sovereignty problems. They have to do more on-the-ground outreach with our foreign partners. With regards to the military-to-military relationship between Egypt and the U.S., it has been pretty solid over time – even during the periods of unrest in Egypt. However, issues like democracy-governance are the ones that really don’t sit well with our Egyptian counterparts. For example, in June 2013, the Egyptian government convicted employees of four U.S. NGOs, who received funding from the U.S. government to promote democracy in Egypt, of establishing and operating unauthorized international organizations.
I think the U.S.-Egypt relationship in 2015 or in late December 2014 began to evolve in terms of a strategic alliance (after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power). Another boost to the relationship has probably has the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) and the cooperation between Egypt and the U.S. to fight the terrorist organization.
