End aid to Egypt’s ‘president’

The United States has been monetarily supporting the autocratic leadership of Egypt, under President Hosni Mubarak, for more than 30 years, giving more than $50 billion in military and development aid.

It is a telling fact that Mr. Mubarak has been continuously president for the past 29 years. Political freedoms in Egypt are limited, with Freedom House, an international agency that ranks countries according to their levels of human rights, political freedoms and social opportunities, classifying the state of Egypt as “Not Free.”

The Egyptian public is given no real opportunity to choose their leaders as enormous barriers exist to preclude any candidate who is not at least nominally loyal to Mubarak from running for office, and in presidential elections, only one name appears on the ballot: Hosni Mubarak.

It is into this situation that an inspiring man has stepped and declared he’s interested in replacing the ailing, autocratic Egyptian president. Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the former Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, should receive the support of all people who are concerned about democracy, social justice and political freedom.

ElBaradei has active public support, with over 60,000 followers on his Facebook page. He is waging a positive but low key (as is necessary in Egyptian politics under the current state of affairs) campaign that deserves the support of the international community.

Needless to say, the United States should not be providing military aid to a regime whose president imprisons political opponents and critics and neither allows its people to freely criticize their government nor to freely choose their political representatives.

Egypt is at an important crossroads. It is widely known that Mubarak is grooming his son to take over in his place after he either retires or dies, and the Egyptian public and the global community of aid donors to Egypt have an important choice to make.

I cannot speak for the Egyptian people, but with an enormously intelligent and inspiring democrat — ElBaradei — actively campaigning for the presidency, the Western world — in particular, the United States — should strongly reconsider its aid commitments to Egypt (especially its military aid, which could be used to suppress dissent).

If successful, ElBaradei could easily represent the future of democracy in the Middle East, one of the least politically free regions on Earth. Rather than supporting and financing costly and artificial regime change in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States could actually save money by ceasing to prop up autocratic governments such as Egypt’s and support a home-grown and publicly supported movement for democratic change in Egypt.

If U.S. foreign policy leaders truly placed democracy as a value that should be held above all others when making decisions about aid and to whom they lend their support, they would end financial support of regimes like Egypt’s.


E-mail: zammerma@indiana.edu