As an Egyptian citizen, I have no idea how I should feel about America. On a daily basis outside the American embassy you can find lines for visas longer than the ones outside of Best Buy on Black Friday. The cinemas in my country are full of American movies. The television channels are loaded with American sitcoms. Every time an Egyptian president visits America, the state-run media cover the visits with more attention than TMZ would do for another Kardashian wedding. When Barack Obama visited Egypt in 2009, everyone was charmed by his “Al salamo alikom” greetings and were elated that Obama might have actually owned up and returned to his Muslim roots. A headline in one of the biggest Egyptian newspapers announced that Obama enjoyed his Egyptian breakfast and fell in love with our falafel. With all the money the American government funnels into our military, the least we could do was give him a good meal.
We receive $1.3 billion in military aid each year from America, plus more money to “support democracy.” Big mistake! In order for Egypt to get the $1.3 billion in deadly weapons, we needed to appear as if we were financially supporting free speech and democratic organizations. In turn, these outspoken organizations would come right back and object to the American money used to grow the military. It was a vicious, vicious cycle.
A big chunk of that money to support democracy went to human rights organizations and institutions to train individuals in different aspects of the democratic process: how to manage candidates and voters, and even how to organize your potluck events. For years, the American government had been financing these activities right there under the nose of Mubarak, the army, and intelligence agencies.
And then one day, in a beautifully orchestrated manner, the state-run media and Islamist media decided that Egypt wasn’t going to support those organizations anymore. Weird characters started becoming regular guests on television shows, and they talked about their experiences with these “shady” organizations. A short, fat guy who looked exactly like Megamind (even I have seen that movie), minus the blue skin, came on many TV shows to expose the “American plot against Egypt.” This guy gave more or less the same story each time but tweaked it according to each show’s audience. For Islamic channels he would emphasize the grave danger these organizations posed to Islam, while for state-run media he’d explain how America was conspiring against the Egyptian army. You know—that same army that willingly accepted $1.3 billion each year from the U.S. He would show his membership cards for these organizations and say, “There is no honor for me to stay a part of these heinous establishments,” before ripping them up. He did that on four different shows. How many membership cards did this guy have? And if he tore up all of his membership cards how was he going to get his tenth smoothie for free?
This guy is what we call in Arabic amnag y, which is a derogatory term for being a dog to different branches of the secret police. There are many of these amnagy-type characters to be found—whether they are working for newspapers or television channels, or even as university faculty members. When needed, they will write articles or appear on television spouting whatever is dictated by the secret police.
Two of my dear friends were working in one of these organizations with Americans who were helping different political parties manage their elections. They called to tell me that the police and the Egyptian NSA had already cracked down on their headquarters and that they might be pressing charges.
Again I decided to go and expose this problem for what it really was while every other television program waged war on international human rights and American aid organizations. For the most part, I am not a fan of American aid. I personally think a lot of it is a big scam aimed to line the pockets of many American contractors. But the hysteria that was building just meant that everyone would be accused sooner or later of supporting human rights.
“Human rights” became an infamous phrase. In the state-run media, they accused anyone supporting human rights of using it as an excuse to create chaos to destroy the country from within. On religious channels, human rights were synonymous with unchecked freedom that would lead to every single person in the country having promiscuous sex or being gay or both! Oh brother, here we go again with the sex shaming!
Now, I should give my American readers some context here. Not since the French came to your aid during the Revolutionary War have you had an entire country assist in fighting a common enemy on your soil. South Africans don’t come tell you how to run your government elections. Japanese don’t donate money to support your homeless. Norwegians don’t call you out for your treatment of minorities. And Brazilians don’t give you over a billion dollars to help you purchase tanks and fighter jets with the caveat that you’d better support free speech too. So it may be difficult for you to understand the mentality other countries have about America when it deals with the rest of the world’s “human rights.” There is a certain amount of suspicion about what kind of closed-door trade-off must be occurring for the aid to be provided. Considering America is the biggest supporter of Israel, which has fought four wars with Egypt, Egyptians can’t help but throw some side-eye at your “good intentions.” Now, we all know that a lot of people have been positively impacted by this kind of work, but our state-run media have twisted it into another reason we shouldn’t trust the Western world.
So against the advice of my own team, I hosted a friend of mine who worked with Human Rights Watch on the program. They didn’t want me being associated with an entity that was perceived as on its way down in society. However, it astounded me that many of the Islamists parties went to these organizations to get training in election management and campaigning. Many of those made it into the parliament because of the training they received.
As predicted by the earlier arrival of the amnagy, paid public service announcements by the state’s intelligence agency suddenly started hitting the airwaves. They showed a foreign man sitting in a coffee shop among the locals. The camera showed his evil hawkish eyes scanning the perimeter for vulnerable Egyptians to extract information from. A close-up of his ear insinuated he was eavesdropping on their conversation. I don’t know what kind of important information some foreigner would get from sitting in a local coffee shop, since Egyptian men usually go to these shops to get away from their wives, bitch about their wives, or brag about imaginary sexual adventures not involving their wives. In the PSA the alleged “spy” tries to get friendly with the locals and starts speaking in broken Arabic. The gullible Egyptians start to pour their souls out, supposedly giving him valuable information. Finally, a dude tells him something that is supposedly very important, and after hearing it he sits with a sinister smile on his face while saying in a horrible English accent, “Really?”
How they couldn’t get a guy to pronounce that right is beyond me! It was one fucking word, people! The screen abruptly freezes and a voice-over states, “Every word has a price, a word can save a nation.” This was kind of a throwback video version of the WWII posters warning you that “loose lips can cost lives.”
This particular PSA caused the guy who played the foreign spy to get into some real trouble. He was actually a struggling Egyptian actor trying to make his way, when he was recognized at a coffee shop and drew suspicion from some locals. They actually beat this guy up, and he had to come out to the newspapers swearing he was a real, red-blooded Egyptian.
This backlash caused the Egyptian government to decide to shut down those American centers and detain many of their employees. My friends were among the detained.
All the media hailed the decision as a move to restore Egypt’s sovereignty. Pundits came out on television declaring the end of American dominance and of American attempts to affect Egyptian political decisions. Media campaigns were launched to free Egypt from the “humiliating chains” of American aid. Celebrities and Islamic leaders were on magazine covers leading donation campaigns to collect money from Egyptians to compensate for American dollars. Officers vowed to punish all the American operatives who had played parts in sabotaging Egypt from the inside. Photos of them standing trial were all over the news.
Then out of nowhere, all the Americans who were on a no-fly list were driven to the airport in the middle of the night and sent back home; the army moved in on the various organizations and NGOs for some cheap local publicity, but eventually let those “spies and operatives” go because you can’t really piss on your sugar daddy when he’s giving you $1.3 billion every year.
After collecting millions from the pockets of hardworking Egyptians, the donation campaign disappeared as fast as it appeared. To this day, no one knows where the money went.