U.S. Chickens Come Home to Roost in Egypt

Barack Obama, like his predecessors, has supported Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak to the tune of $1.3 billion annually, mostly in military
aid. In return, Egypt minds U.S. interests in the Middle East, notably
providing a buffer between Israel and the rest of the Arab world.
Egypt collaborates with Israel to isolate Gaza with a punishing
blockade, to the consternation of Arabs throughout the Middle East.
The United States could not have fought its wars in Iraq without
Egypt's logistical support.

Now with a revolution against Mubarak by two million Egyptians, all
bets are off about who will replace him and whether the successor
government will be friendly to the United States.

Mubarak's "whole system is corrupt," said Hesham Korayem, an Egyptian
who taught at City University of New York and provides frequent
commentary on Egyptian and Saudi television. He told me there is
virtually no middle class in Egypt, only the extremely rich (about 20
to 25 percent of the population) and the extremely poor (75 percent).
The parliament has no input into what Mubarak does with the money the
United States gives him, $300 million of which comes to the dictator
in cash each year.

Torture is commonplace in Egypt, according to Korayem. Indeed, Omar
Suleiman, Egypt's intelligence chief whom Mubarak just named
Vice-President, was the lynchpin for Egyptian torture when the CIA
sent prisoners to Egypt in its extraordinary rendition program.
Stephen Grey noted in Ghost Plane, "[I]n secret, men like Omar
Suleiman, the country's most powerful spy and secret politician, did
our work, the sort of work that Western countries have no appetite to
do ourselves."

In her chapter in the newly published book, "The United States and
Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse," Jane Mayer cites
Egypt as the most common destination for suspects rendered by the
United States. "The largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after
Israel," Mayer writes, "Egypt was a key strategic ally, and its secret
police force, the Mukhabarat, had a reputation for brutality." She
describes the rendering of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi to Egypt, where he
was tortured and made a false confession that Colin Powell cited as he
importuned the Security Council to approve the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Al-Libi later recanted his confession.

The State Department's 2002 report on Egypt noted that detainees were
"stripped and blindfolded; suspended from a ceiling or doorframe with
feet just touching the floor; beaten with fists, metal rods, or other
objects; doused with hot or cold water; flogged on the back; burned
with cigarettes; and subjected to electrical shocks. Some victims . .
. [were] forced to strip and threatened with rape."

In 2005, the United Nations Committee Against Torture found that
"Egypt resorted to consistent and widespread use of torture against
detainees" and "the risk of such treatment was particularly high in
the case of detainees held for political and security reasons."

About a year ago, an Italian judge convicted 22 CIA operatives and a
U.S. Air Force colonel of arranging the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric
in Milan in 2003, then flying him to Egypt where he was tortured.
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr told Human Rights Watch he was "hung up like
a slaughtered sheep and given electrical shocks" in Egypt. "I was
brutally tortured and I could hear the screams of others who were
tortured too," he added.

A former CIA agent observed, "If you want a serious interrogation, you
send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send
them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear - never to see them
again - you send them to Egypt."

So what will happen next in Egypt?

Suleiman, who is intensely loyal to Mubarak, will not be an acceptable
successor to the Egyptian people. Some fear the Muslim Brotherhood,
which supports Hamas, will take power once Mubarak is forced out. But
"[t]hough it is the largest opposition group, it by no means enjoys
overwhelming support, and its leaders are for the most part moderate
and responsible," Scott MacLeod, Time magazine's Middle East
correspondent from 1995 to 2010, wrote in the Los Angeles Times.
Korayem concurs. He says the Brotherhood, which has formally renounced
terrorism and violence, is more educated and peaceful now. The
Brotherhood provides social and economic programs that augment public
services in Egypt.

Indeed, the Brotherhood supports Mohamed ElBaradei to negotiate with
the Egyptian government. ElBaradei, the former U.N. International
Atomic Energy Agency chief and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, recently
returned to Egypt to stand with the protesters. He told Fareed Zakaria
that the Brotherhood favors a secular state, and "has nothing to do
with the Iranian movement, has nothing to do with extremism as we have
seen it in Afghanistan and other places."

The Obama administration has been slow to acknowledge that Mubarak is
on his way out. Vice President Joe Biden, still in denial, said on the
PBS News Hour, "I would not refer to him as a dictator." ElBaradei
criticized Obama for supporting Mubarak in the face of the popular
revolt in Egypt. "You are losing credibility by the day," he told CBS
News. "On one hand you're talking about democracy, rule of law and
human rights, and on the other hand you are lending support to a
dictator that continues to oppress his people."

Korayem sees the United States' uncritical support for Israel as key
to the problems in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. If the
United States acted as an honest broker, even "slightly fair to the
Palestinians," that would go a long way to solving the difficulties,
he said. But, according to Gareth Porter, "The main function of the
U.S. client state relationship with Egypt was to allow Israel to avoid
coming to terms with Palestinian demands." Chris Hedges adds, "The
failure of the United States to halt the slow-motion ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians by Israel has consequences. The failure to acknowledge
the collective humiliation and anger felt by most Arabs because of the
presence of U.S. troops on Muslim soil . . . has consequences."

We are seeing those consequences in the streets of Egypt and the
likelihood of similar developments in Jordan, Yemen, and other Middle
Eastern countries. Until the U.S. government stops uncritically
supporting tyrants, torturers, and oppressors, we can expect the
people to rise up and overthrow them.