Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters
Months before the military takeover, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi discussed the new era of public scrutiny of the army.
By MARK LANDLER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: October 8, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to suspend a substantial portion of American military aid to Egypt, several administration officials said Tuesday, after last summer’s deadly crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and the recent surge in violence there.
The administration’s move follows a lengthy review that began in August after days of bloody attacks on supporters of Egypt’s ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, which left hundreds of people dead. The administration had already frozen the shipment of four F-16 fighter jets and canceled joint military exercises with the Egyptian Army.
The United States will also suspend nonmilitary aid that flows directly to the government, but not support for other activities like education or hospitals, the officials said.
The decision, which was first reported Tuesday by CNN, does not amount to an across-the-board cutoff of aid to the Egyptian government, officials said. But they said Mr. Obama felt compelled to take stronger action, especially after street clashes erupted in several Egyptian cities on Sunday, killing more than 50 people.
Under the administration’s plan, officials said, the military aid could be restored later if the Egyptian government showed signs of restoring democratic institutions and a new government.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said: “Reports that we are halting all military assistance to Egypt are false. We will announce the future of our assistance program with Egypt in the coming days.”
Mr. Obama, she noted, said at the United Nations General Assembly last month that the “assistance relationship will continue.”
In that speech, however, Mr. Obama was critical of Egypt’s military-backed government and warned that the delivery of American military hardware could be affected if it did not take steps to put the country on the path to a democratic transition.
While acknowledging that Mr. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-led government had lost the support of a large part of the Egyptian public before the military ousted him in July, Mr. Obama said the interim government “has made decisions inconsistent with inclusive democracy.”
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Timeline of Turmoil in Egypt After Mubarak and Morsi
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US to cut military and economic aid to Egypt in shift of policy after 'coup'
Obama administration set to suspend military and economic assistance to Egyptian government in protest at Morsi ousting
Egyptian supporters of
ousted president Mohamed Morsi confront troops during a protest in
Cairo last week. Photograph: Khaled Elfiqi/EPA
The US has been considering such a move since the Egyptian military removed the country's first democratically elected leader in June. It would be a dramatic shift for the Obama administration, which has declined to label President Mohamed Morsi's ousting a coup and has argued it is in US national security interests to keep aid flowing.
The decision is likely to have profound implications for relations between the US and Egypt after decades of close ties that have served as a bulwark of security and stability in the Middle East.
The US officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk publicly before the administration's official announcement.
President Obama's top national security aides recommended the aid cutoff in late August – a policy shift Obama had been expected to announce last month. But the announcement got sidetracked by the debate over whether to launch military strikes against Syria.
The US provides Egypt with $1.5bn (£940m) a year in aid, $1.3bn of which is military assistance; the rest is economic. Some of the aid goes to the government and some to other groups but it is only the money that goes to the government that would be suspended.
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