Tag: Egypt
Freedom of the press in 2014
Today is World Press Freedom Day. So here is an appropriate post:
Thursday morning Freedom House released Freedom of the Press 2014, its annual report assessing media freedom around the world. The event featured a panel discussion with Karin Karlekar (Freedom of the Press project director), Scott Shane (New York Times national security reporter), and Sue Turton (Al Jazeera correspondent). Jim Sciutto, CNN chief national security correspondent, moderated.
Jim Sciutto asked panelists why they thought global press freedom has fallen in the past year. Karin Karlekar said that technology can be a source for good that enables a large audience to publish and access information. However in many countries, particularly ones with authoritarian governments, governments are increasingly cracking down. In some cases governments have used new tactics. In others, their methods are just an extension of the traditional media censorship methods they have used in the past. Governments are using tools that are supposed to empower people to track and follow them instead.
In China, some of the search engines and social media outlets employ more people to censor them than they do to produce them. They have a large, widespread mechanism for controlling online content. But even governments that don’t have that technological capability have found ways to clamp down online. They pursue people after the material has been produced. That has been the case in some countries like Ethiopia, where they just imprisoned 6 bloggers.
Sciutto asked Scott Shane to put into context leaks and prosecutions. How much of that is a threat to freedom of exchange in the US and how the White House is covered?
Scott commended Freedom House for being objective on the issue of press freedom. It saddened him to see the US downgraded from 21 points last year to 18 points in this year’s report. This has to do with the fact that in all of American history until 2009, there were three government officials prosecuted for leaking classified information to the press. We are now up to eight with Obama. This affects the willingness of government officials to talk even on unclassified but sensitive issues. It affects the reporting that national security journalists do. The US is now ranked lower in press freedom than Estonia and the Czech Republic.
Sciutto: Has it reached a point where our leaders are not under the same level of oversight we expect them to be or that they were ten or twenty years ago?
Shane: In 1971 the New York Times Washington bureau chief Max Frankel wrote a memorandum about the Pentagon Papers arguing that covering secret, classified information is critical to informing the public. Some people take the attitude that it is secret; therefore, it should not be talked about. But that would make the White House and diplomacy impossible to write about.
As an example Shane mentioned how in 2011 the US deliberately hunted down and killed an American citizen in Yemen, the Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al Awlaki. There was a long legal opinion justifying the unilateral killing of an American citizen. That was classified opinion, so Shane made a Freedom of Information Act request for that document in 2010. Four years later, after filing a lawsuit, an appeals court ordered the government to release it. If he is lucky, Shane says he might receive a redacted form of this legal opinion 5 years later. When the president has the right to order the killing of an American citizen is a fairly fundamental question. Americans, Shane argues, have the right to know the legal basis.
Torton explained that she is being tried in absentia for aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood. She left Cairo on November 6, which was a month and a half before the Muslim Brotherhood was accused of terrorism. Her Al Jazeera colleagues were arrested three days after the Muslim Brotherhood was proscribed a terrorist organization. They have been in jail for 126 days. Originally, she believed that the three judges were independent of the state and that they would see the situation for what it is. It is a politically motivated trial and she hoped they would throw the case out. As the sessions go on, however, and the judges refuse bail, she is frightened of the outcome.
Sciutto: Did the Arab Spring fail on the issue of freedom of information?
Turton: Each country has its own situation and different outcomes. Broadly speaking, the Arab Spring did not deliver what Western governments were probably hoping it was going to, which was perfectly packaged democracy. Access to information and the media is freer in some countries. Tunisia has had a sophisticated reaction to the Arab Spring. Libya is still a mess. At the beginning, optimism was enormous and the situation improved, but since then Libya has backtracked. But Egypt has failed. Talking to people on the ground, you get a sense that conditions are worse than under Mubarak.
Sciutto: How much of its moral high ground in terms of pushing for internet freedom has the US lost with the existence of the NSA and other interference on the internet?
Karlekar: I think it is affecting our moral high ground. Many governments use surveillance and other repressive tactics. The US used to be able to say that they should not be doing that. Now it is becoming much more difficult to say that. It is particularly ironic because the US government is trying to sell itself as an open, transparent government, but it is not.
Sciutto asked, are your Al Jazeera colleagues more scared now when they work?
Turton: We have had to change how we operate. This is not just Al Jazeera; it is the media in general. In Egypt it is not just journalists being thrown in jail, but anyone with opposing views.
Sciutto: When you get into issues like coverage of leaks and you worry about your sources and your own legal situation, does that affect the overall quality of reporting?
Shane: I think it has chilled reporting on national security. What is interesting is the crackdown under Obama. There seems to be a random quality to it. All of the cases have involved electronic trails; emails or Internet chat logs. In the past the FBI would say that they would like to investigate this leak, but there are 1,000 people with security clearance. They had no good way of finding out who was responsible. Now, they can go into the government email system and find out exactly who has been talking to the reporter whose byline is on that story.
In fairness, technology is driving leakers as well. Two of the cases, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, are unique in American history. The volume of classified information out there is unprecedented. If our government is tracking leaks to the press in the US, it is obviously happening on an exponentially greater scale in countries like China or Russia.
Karlekar: The fear is that these issues will lead to self-censorship. What stories are not getting covered out of fear?
The entire Freedom House report can be viewed here.
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Triage, not retreat
I spent yesterday morning at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) annual shindig on the Middle East, “Allies, Adversaries and Enemies.” It began with a big-think panel on American foreign policy since 9/11: Robert Kagan, Walter Russell Mead and Leon Wieseltier. FDD President Cliff May moderated. The luminaries skipped any serious discussion of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Nor did they mention the drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen. The consensus was plainly and vigorously anti-Obama: he is shy of using force and leading an American retreat from the world that will get us into deeper trouble in the future. Congressman McKeon (R-CA) makes a similar argument in today’s Washington Post.
This is not my natural habitat, so I’ll try to give an account of the local fauna before launching into a tirade against them.
The panel hit President Obama hard and fast. Wieseltier criticized him for portraying all the alternatives to his policies everywhere as war. Spooked by Iraq, he trumps up phony dichotomies. The truth is he is looking for ways to pull the US out of overseas engagements, especially in the Middle East. As a result, all our friends need reassurance. His policy is one of introversion and absence. The President doesn’t see US power as a good thing and doesn’t recognize that even multilateralism requires US leadership. He wants no more land wars and is trying to ensure that with cuts at the Pentagon, an idea he admittedly inherited from Donald Rumsfeld.
Dissenting sardonically from the view that Obama is a Kenyan socialist, Mead offered a slightly more generous appraisal: Obama believes that as the US withdraws a balance of power will emerge, one that costs the US less than at present. This is a 1930s-style policy close to what most Americans want. But it won’t work, even if the limits of public opinion are real. We’ll get clobbered somehow. The president should harness pro-engagement sentiment and lead more forcefully. Only a balance of power under US hegemony can be stable and reliable.
Kagan concurred, remarking that Americans (unfortunately) have a high tolerance for a collapsing world. But the issue really is military power and America’s willingness to use force. We are on a slippery slope. The Obama doctrine is simply to avoid using force, which is undermining the world’s confidence in our ability and willingness to defend the liberal world order. That is the key objective for American foreign policy. We lost Iraq when Obama withdrew the American troops. The same thing could happen in Afghanistan. Nuclear Iran will be a big problem, but not a threat to the liberal world order, which is more threatened by the waxing military dictatorship in Egypt and the rebellion it will trigger in the future.
Doutbts about whether the US would attack Iran, or let Israel do it, wafted through the room. General Michael Hayden in the next session threw cold water on the idea that Israel either could or should undertake a military strike on its own. No one bothered to consider what would happen in the aftermath of a massive US strike on Iran. Would that stop or accelerate their nuclear program?
The only part of the panel presentations I would happily agree with is the well-established reluctance of the American public to be overly engaged abroad. It was notable that the panel offered not one example of something they thought Obama should do now to respond to the crises in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Egypt or lots of other places. They were full of examples of what he should have done in the past, and absolutely certain he would not do the right things in the future, including decisive military action against the Iranian nuclear program.
Time and energy don’t allow me to respond to all of the points above. Let me comment on three countries I know well: Iraq, Ukraine and Syria.
The notion that it was President Obama who decided to withdraw troops from Iraq is simply wrong. Here is a first-person account from Bob Loftis, who led the failed negotiations on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA):
[The decision to withdraw US troops] happened in mid-2008 [during the Bush Administration]. My team and I were instructed to work on an agreement that would allow a long term US military presence. At no time did the issue of withdrawal arise, even when the term “SOFA” became politically toxic in Baghdad. SOFA talks were suspended in May 2008, with the focus placed on negotiating the Strategic Framework Agreement (which would have some vague references to “pre-existing arrangements” (i.e. certain parts of CPA17). I then heard in September 2008 that…there were new SOFA talks which were about withdrawal. The “Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq” was signed on 17 November 2008 by Ryan Crocker: Article 24 (1) states “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.”
People will tell you that President Bush thought the agreement would be revised in the succeeding administration to allow the Americans to stay in some limited number. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was Bush, not Obama, who decided on US withdrawal. Once in office, Obama did try to negotiate permission for the Americans to stay. Prime Minister Maliki didn’t want to give up jurisdiction over crimes committed by US troops. Hard for me to fault the President for not yielding on that point, especially in light of the arbitrary arrests and detentions Maliki has indulged in since. Nor do I think US troops in the mess that is today’s Iraq would be either safe or useful.
Ukraine loomed large over this discussion. No one on the panel had a specific suggestion for what to do there, except that Kagan demurred from the President’s assertion that we have no military option. Of course we do, he said. We have absolute air superiority over Ukraine if we want it. That may be true. But it would require the use of US bases in Europe and Turkey. How long does Kagan think US leadership and the liberal world order would last after war between the US and Russia?
On Syria, I dissent from the President’s policy as much as any of the panelists. But I have specific suggestions for what he should at least consider doing: recognize the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) as the legitimate government of Syria, overtly arm its affiliated fighters and destroy as much of the Syrian air force and missile inventories as possible. I suppose big thinkers like Wieseltier, Kagan and Mead don’t trade in such small beer, but those of us who treasure concreteness think they should.
It seems to me what the President is up to is not retreat but triage: he is focusing on Iran’s nuclear weapons and the Asia Pacific because he thinks the issues there threaten vital US interests. Syria for him falls below the line. For me it is above: the threat to neighboring states in the Levant and the growth of extremism put it there. But that simple and entirely understandable distinction would not inspire the kind of disdain that the panelists indulged in and the audience applauded at yesterday’s event.
PS, May 6: For the skeptical masochists among you, here is video of the event, which arrived today:
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Obama’s foreign policy can still surprise
Monday President Obama defended his foreign policy by emphasizing his reluctance to use force, except as a last resort. Here is the press conference at which he spoke in the Philippines (the relevant remarks begin about minute 33 and go on for six more):
Knowledgeable defenders are also out in force: Steven Cook and Michael Brooks absolve him of responsibility for what ails the Middle East, while Heather Hurlburt ponders his legacy.
I think it is too early to make definitive judgments about Obama’s foreign policy. As we know only too well from the history of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, early judgments of success or failure are often premature. The President is right to emphasize that foreign policy requires lots of singles and doubles (not to mention walks) as well as home runs. It also takes the full nine innnings. Certainly on Ukraine it will be a decade or more to see how things work out. Ditto Egypt.
But that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to suspend judgment when the Administration strikes out. That’s what is happening in Syria. Somehow the President sees no viable options there besides American boots on the ground and arming the opposition. The former he correctly rules out as unacceptable to virtually everyone. The latter he pooh-poohs, but there are ample signs he is doing it, or at least more of it, than in the past.
But that does not exhaust the options in Syria. As Fred Hof points out, we could recognize the Syrian Opposition Coalition as the legitimate government of Syria and provide the resources required to help it govern. We could play a stronger role in coordinating and marshalling international assistance. We could also ground the Syrian air force, which is a major factor in preventing liberated areas from governing effectively.
In Egypt, too, the Administration is swinging and missing. It continues to pretend that there is a democratic transition in progress. That is far from true. Egypt’s election next month will coronate Field Marshall Sisi as president, restoring the military autocracy. His secular and Islamist opponents are jailed, hundreds condemned to death in one-day trials for which “show” would be a compliment. The media is under his control. The election, while “free and fair” at the polls, will be conducted in an atmosphere that does not allow open political competition. The Administration needs to find a way to acknowledge reality, even if it thinks continuing aid to Egypt is necessary for national security reasons.
The much-predicted failure of John Kerry’s efforts to revive the Israel/Palestine peace process does not, in my way of thinking, count heavily against the Administration. He was right to try. The stars were not well aligned on either side: the split between Hamas and the Palestinian authority as well as the heavy representation of settler and other right-wing interests in Netanyahu’s coalition militated against an agreement from the first. The supposed unity coalition on the Palestinian side–yet to emerge–will not improve the situation, so long as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel and Netanyahu insists that the recognition be of an explicitly “Jewish” state.
One key to Obama’s foreign policy legacy lies in the talks with Iran. If he is able to push Tehran back from nuclear weapons, putting at least a year between a decision to make them and an actual bomb, that will be a big achievement, provided there is iron-clad verification. Whether the Congress will go along with lifting sanctions in exchange is still a big question.
Another big piece of Obama’s foreign policy legacy could come from an unexpected direction: trade talks. In his first term, the president contented himself with ratification of free trade pacts that had been negotiated by his predecessor (with the Republic of Korea, Colombia and Panama). That was small beer compared to the two massive free trade negotiations he has pursued in the second term: the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Dwarfing even the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, these are giant trade deals, involving dozens of countries with potentially big impacts on trade, economic growth, and international relations.
Trade folks agree that President Obama has not yet demonstrated the kind of strong commitment to these negotiations that will be required to complete them and get them approved in Congress. But if he wants to have a serious legacy, he will turn to them as soon as the mid-term elections are over in November and try to conclude at least TTIP well before campaigning starts for the 2016 presidential contest. That would shore up America’s alliance with Europe (among other things by facilitating US energy exports), make the TTP more likely to happen, and align most of the world with the US as challenges arise from Russia and China.
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Fig leaf?
Nabil Fahmy, Egypt’s Foreign Minister, spoke today at CSIS. He was all sweetness and light: civil liberties, transparency, accountability, participation, inclusivity. He snarled, politely, on only two subjects:
- relations with Turkey and Qatar are “not good” because of their interference in internal Egyptian politics (read their support for the Muslim Brotherhood), and
- Egypt will seek to improve relations with Russia, which he averred will be possible without hurting relations with the US.
I might even say he relished using improved relations with Russia as a means of keeping the United States on the hook, but that would be reading between his lines.
The questioners were not so placid. Three or four asked about abuses by Egyptian courts: in condemning hundreds of people to death after show trials, in trying and convicting American and Egyptian democracy advocates, and in jailing journalists. Fahmy hid behind independence of the judiciary, reluctance to speak on any cases still before the courts, rule of law, and insistence that the death sentences were merely recommendations to the Mufti.
I’d have asked about the three-year sentence handed down (and confirmed on appeal) against activists of the April 6 movement, which has now been banned as well, for “tarnishing the image” of Egypt. But I didn’t get the chance. I admit the case seems small in comparison with some of the others raised, much as I am personally committed to trying to free the April 6 prisoners.
Fahmy said the justice system will evolve, like the rest of Egypt, in an open and democratic direction, but like all other countries it needs to deal with terrorism. The Egyptian embassy provided a handy fact sheet on “Terrorism in Egypt” to underline this point. They also provided a fact sheet on “Democratic Elections for a New Government.” Egypt, we are asked to believe, is headed for democracy at its May 26-27 election, despite the strain of the fight against terrorism. Note to the embassy: please post these fact sheets so I can link them!
I wish it were so. But there is a counter-narrative that appears much more likely. Egypt is using the courts to squelch any serious political competition (from the Muslim Brotherhood or secularists) while it cracks down in ways that spawn terrorism and conducts a sham election guaranteed to coronate Field Marshall Sisi as the “civilian” leader of a restored autocracy.
Fahmy, in this alternate narrative, is not the smooth-talking vanguard of eventual democracy all his friends in Washington (he served many years here as ambassador) would like him to be, but rather the urbane fig leaf hiding the ugly reality of a return to military rule. I don’t doubt Fahmy’s sincerity in wanting Egypt to be democratic. That’s not the issue. The issue is whether the military is using him and his sincerity to smooth relations with the US, attract diaspora and foreign investment, and avoid the wrath of those in Congress who think we should end aid to a military coup.
I’ll be very glad to see the latter narrative disproven. But I doubt it will be. A year from now, I expect to see the Field Marshall enthroned and an elected parliament firmly in his grip. The Muslim Brotherhood will no doubt still be banned as a terrorist organization. April 6 will be under lock and key. Democracy advocates will be allowed only if they are tame and obedient. Journalists will have to toe the line, or end up in prison.
What will the Americans do? Most likely nothing. Contrary to universal Egyptian belief, Washington has been consistent throughout Egypt’s various twists and turns: it supports whoever gains power. Its overriding priorities in Egypt are maintenance of the peace treaty with Israel, the fight against terrorists and military overflight rights and access to the Suez canal. Whoever helps America with those objectives will be considered acceptable, or better. How Egypt governs itself will be a secondary consideration, rising again in our priorities only if someone new turns up at the top.
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Pyramid schemes
The systematic looting of archeological sites and artifacts has reached crisis proportions in Egypt over the last three years. Thursday afternoon the Middle East Institute hosted Deborah Lehr, founder of the International Coalition for the Protection of Egyptian Antiquities, for a discussion about the sharp rise of cultural racketeering in Egypt. Kate Seelye, senior vice president of the Middle East Institute, moderated.
The world’s most precious sites are being senselessly looted, Lehr said. Egypt is not a unique case. Looting is a crime of global proportions. According to the FBI, art and cultural property crime is one of the top five international crimes. Unlike other illicit crimes, however, there hasn’t been a global effort to stop it. In Egypt, cultural theft has reached crisis proportions in the midst of its rocky transition to democracy. The country’s first priorities need to be its economy and electing a new president, but the ongoing art theft is tragic. Moreover, it puts the country’s economic recovery at risk.
Looting is particularly hard to stop in difficult economic times. In Egypt every archeological site has been subjected to some form of looting, which has increased since 2011 by 500-1000% percent. Some looters use major construction equipment to dig beneath the sand, destroying the historical context as they look for treasure. Conducted by criminal organizations, the looting is organized and systematic. The same groups that traffic guns, humans, and drugs deal also in art. Art theft is a very profitable trade.
At the local level, Egyptian youth have been campaigning using social media to protect sites and raise awareness of looting. In 2011, Egyptian protesters created a human shield around the Egyptian Museum. Nevertheless, looters have been successful in stealing valuable archeological items. Last year the famous Mallawi Museum was ransacked by Muslim Brotherhood supporters. They stole the majority of the museum artifacts and burned the remaining ones. Rising instability and insecurity in Egypt have caused tourism revenues to plummet. Last year was the worst in modern history. Tourism revenue is down when Egypt needs it most to protect archeological sites and artifacts.
Using satellite imagery to track looting, archeologists guess that sales in local Egyptian markets for stolen artifacts are estimated at $3 billion since the revolution began. Many think the number is closer to $10 billion. Behind guns and drugs, art theft is the most profitable crime in the black market. Many items are smuggled through the Sinai and diplomatic pouches. Switzerland and Israel are consolidation centers for distribution of stolen artifacts to the US, Japan, and other parts of the Middle East. Israel has acquired hundreds of stolen items, but has not yet returned them to Egypt.
Locals do not really benefit much from the international sale. Most of the financial gain goes to the middlemen in these transactions. The US government should take a leadership role to help save Egypt’s cultural heritage. Major institutions and organizations such as the UN need to take a comprehensive approach to address this crisis. Domestic governments need to increase security at archeological sites and other governments need to be ready to lend support as needed. Cultural racketeering may seem like an archeological crisis, but economics is at the root of the problem.
Photo credit: Dr. Sarah Parcak, University of Alabama-Birmingham
Photo credit: TheAntiquitiesCoalition.org
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Peace Picks April 21 – 25
1. America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East
Monday, April 21 | 4 – 5:30pm
6th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center; 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Reservations requested because of limited space: WHS@wilsoncenter.org
The CIA has an almost diabolical reputation in the Arab world. Yet, in the early years of its existence, the 1940s and 1950s, the Agency was distinctly pro-Arab, lending its support to the leading Arab nationalist of the day, Gamal Nasser, and conducting an anti-Zionist publicity campaign at home in the U.S. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Hugh Wilford uncovers the world of early CIA “Arabism,” its origins, characteristic forms, and eventual demise.
2. Iraq After 2014
Tuesday, April 22 | 12:30 – 2pm
Kenney Auditorium, SAIS (The Nitze Building), 1740 Massachusetts Ave NW
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, counselor at CSIS, President and CEO of Khalilizad Associates, and former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the United Nations, will discuss this topic.
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