This is the crux of a paper titled Islam Al Tayeb: The West’s Egyptian quandary by Islam Al Tayeb, Research Analyst, IISS Middle East.
It is in Western interests to maintain good ties in the Middle East during the current political turmoil. With civil war in Syria, Iran still defiant over its controversial nuclear programme, renewed violence in Iraq and Turkey’s attempts to strike a peace deal with its Kurdish minority in difficulties, Egypt seems the most plausible partner. But with whom on the divided Egyptian political scene should the West partner?
The extreme polarisation of Egyptian society into secularists and Islamists, religious divides between Muslims and Coptic Christians, and the country’s fragile economy make it difficult for Egyptians to make sense of current matters – never mind Western officials. Domestic, regional and international vested interests complicate the picture.
The West has tried to contain the crisis, but has struggled. Even before the Muslim Brotherhood’s President Morsi was pushed out, the international community was attempting ad hoc mediation efforts, but without offering sufficient incentives for the military or the Muslim Brotherhood to cooperate.
EU foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton held talks with Morsi before and after the instalment of an interim military government. After the coup, US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, EU envoy Bernardino Leon and the Qatari and Emirati foreign ministers visited the Brotherhood’s deputy leader and chief strategist Khairat al-Shater in prison, but were still unable to bringing the rival parties to the table. The West failed to take a sufficiently unified stance to encourage Egyptian stakeholders to talk to each other.
Aid and arms sales remain the bedrock of the West’s relationship with Egypt. Each year, Cairo receives US$1.3 billion in military aid, plus an extra US$250 million in economic assistance, from the US. In the wake of the military coup, President Barack Obama has asked Congress to review this annual US$1.5bn aid package to Egypt. The EU has already made more than €1bn available to Egypt under its European Neighbourhood Partnership Instrument (ENPI). However, the fate of a €5bn package promised by the EU to Egypt in 2012 under the EU–Egypt Task Force framework is now unclear.
Different views among individual European nations on issues of human rights, democracy and the Middle East prevented the European Union from developing a swift response to the rapidly evolving situation. Some nations quickly stopped shipping equipment that could be used in internal repression. Yet it was only six weeks after the military regained power that the EU as a whole agreed to export restrictions on such equipment.
Europe stopped short of cutting financial or military aid altogether, for fear that this would inflict too much damage on Western relations with Egypt, including intelligence-sharing and other cooperation on regional security.
Reductions in both EU and US arms sales will affect defence contracts and employment within the defence industry back home. There is concern to keep US naval access to the Suez Canal and the 1979 Israel–Egypt Peace Treaty intact during this volatile period.
“Europe’s influence is no doubt limited, but even this limited influence must be used,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, quoted saying when the EU restricted equipment exports. Threats to the much bigger US military aid package are an important way of placing pressure on Egypt’s military regime. Ultimately, though, these are also of limited utility, because Gulf States would probably step into the void and provide money to the Egyptian military.
On the other hand, if it does not cut aid to Egypt, the West risks seeing its hopes for democracy in the Middle East dashed and its credibility weakened. Of course, foreign aid has failed to lead to political openness in Egypt in the past, and the West should now be careful to revise its aid policy in a manner that does not hurt the most vulnerable members of Egyptian society. Instead of attaching aid provision to the success or failure of particular groups or people in government, it should be focused on supporting civil-society initiatives promoting tolerance and democratic processes.
The best option for the West is not to coerce, but to play the role of mediator. Given the West’s diplomatic overtures to the Muslim Brotherhood government after Morsi’s election in 2012, the US and the EU could take the lead in promoting a better understanding of the group. A shift in how the Muslim Brotherhood is perceived as an existential threat to the militarised governments of North Africa and monarchies in the Gulf could alleviate tensions in the region. Whether the West would be ready to invest heavily in negotiations between parties with a deeply ingrained history of hostility is an open question.
While, ultimately, Egyptians need to be in charge of devising their own solutions to the current crisis, a long-term coordinated approach to boost reconciliation and post-crisis reconstruction could bolster democracy in Egypt.