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Egypt Sees Economic, Strategic Rewards in Yemen Campaign
Saudi King Salman meets with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 1, 2015 (AP
plans apparently hatched to commit Egyptian troops to a possible Saudi-led ground invasion there, the Sinai Peninsula still smolders. Last Thursday, militants attacked checkpoints in the northern Sinai near the Israel-Gaza border, killing 15 soldiers and two civilians.
Threats to Egypt’s domestic security linger, but last week, el-Sissi said that Egypt was involved in Saudi Arabia’s campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen because “it was not possible for us to abandon the security of the Gulf.” That being said, Saudi Arabia and its fellow members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, have underwritten el-Sissi’s rise with tens of billions of dollars in aid to Egypt; in effect, he owes them. And after a strange and oddly underreported scandal earlier this year over leaked recordings of el-Sissi and his generals mocking their Gulf patrons, Egypt’s strongman has all the more reason to remain in lockstep with the oil-rich and increasingly assertive monarchies.
That partly accounts for why el-Sissi has taken the lead in promoting the creation of a joint Arab military force, a would-be Arab NATO. But what does el-Sissi really have to gain from a coalition force that, if the Saudi campaign in Yemen is any indication, could be dominated by Gulf agendas? For that matter, what does el-Sissi have to gain from committing Egyptian ships and possibly troops to Yemen, a country where former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser got bogged down in the 1960s and where 26,000 Egyptian soldiers died?
The fight in Yemen is really a Saudi maneuver to maintain influence there by getting the president it backs, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, in power again and rolling back Houthi advances. But launched with sectarian overtones that falsely portray the Houthis as purely Iranian proxies, the Saudi campaign is likely to lead to more blowback in Yemen, “prolonging and complicating the struggle inside the country,” as April Longley Alley of the International Crisis Group told The New York Times.
El-Sissi is risking Egypt’s involvement in what is likely to become a Yemen quagmire for both the economic and strategic reward of following an expanding, self-assured doctrine from Riyadh. Going along with the Saudi-led intervention “could lock in the billions of dollars in Saudi aid he has come to depend on, and elevates the role of Egypt’s military, from which he hails,” Shibley Telhami argued in Reuters.
The Yemen intervention and the mooted joint Arab force signal a wider regional shift toward a stronger alliance between Cairo and Riyadh that each government wants to expand. “The force provides a formula for broadening the Egyptian-Saudi relationship, now essential for both countries, into an Arab arrangement,” Telhami wrote, highlighting the substantive but also symbolic gains for Arab states and the Arab League.
That doesn’t preclude el-Sissi from having specific Egyptian interests in mind as well. If the Yemen campaign is a test case for the joint Arab force, from the Saudi point of view, according to Telhami, “the Egyptian vision is for using it in the growing chaos in Libya,” where Egypt backs the forces of Libyan Gen. Khalifa Haftar, which are engaged in a proxy war with Islamist militias reportedly supported by Qatar and Turkey. In Libya, Cairo has relied on another key Gulf ally that is also part of the coalition in Yemen: the UAE.
Led by the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi, the UAE has pursued a more expansive foreign policy, including backing Haftar in Libya. It has done so in part through deeper ties with Egypt, in which it has invested billions in loans and aid. Last summer, Emirati jets took off from Egyptian bases for a series of unexpected airstrikes on Islamist factions in Libya. Both Egypt and the UAE are close American allies and military partners. Yet, as Steven Cook has explained, their growing relationship has come as a result of tensions between Washington and Cairo.
Those tensions were mostly over arms shipments to Egypt—a plank of long-standing U.S. military aid—which U.S. President Barack Obama froze after el-Sissi’s 2013 coup. The Obama administration lifted the freeze last week, while also effectively taking away the Egyptian government’s credit card by planning to cut off, in 2018, the cash-flow financingthat has long allowed Cairo to buy billions in U.S. military hardware. But there are wider disagreements between the U.S. and Egypt, along with Washington’s other traditional Middle East allies, over everything from negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program to dealing with Syria’s civil war.
“Not only does this drive the Egyptians (and the Israelis, Saudis, and Emiratis) somewhat crazy, it also encourages them to explore alternatives to the relationship with Washington,” Cook wrote. “The United Arab Emirates is now Egypt’s strategic partner, more than making up for Washington’s diminishing diplomatic, political, and financial support.”
While the UAE, followed by Saudi Arabia, has started supplanting the U.S. as Egypt’s source for development aid, Washington still retains its primacy as the main supplier to Egypt’s military—as well as to the Saudi, Emirati and other Arab forces that have pledged to come together in a joint military command and are currently bombing Yemen. That’s why “the Egyptians have made it a policy to exhaust the Obama administration on the issue [of military aid] until it gave in,” Cook wrote.
Egypt still hedged, sealing arms deals with Russia, with which it has also expanded military cooperation, and France, from which it agreed to buy 24 Rafale fighter jets in February. But as Cook noted, “whether these deals actually happen is less important that what they represent”—a growing gap in the U.S.-Egypt relationship.
The surprisingly blunt way Obama described the threats facing Saudi Arabia and other American allies in the Gulf in an interview with The New York Times this week suggests other gaps. “The biggest threats that they face may not be coming from Iran invading,” Obama said. “It’s going to be from dissatisfaction inside their own countries.” It’s little surprise that Saudi Arabia and Egypt are taking matters into their own hands, for better or—more likely—for worse.
Egypt Sees Economic, Strategic Rewards in Yemen Campaign
plans apparently hatched to commit Egyptian troops to a possible Saudi-led ground invasion there, the Sinai Peninsula still smolders. Last Thursday, militants attacked checkpoints in the northern Sinai near the Israel-Gaza border, killing 15 soldiers and two civilians.
Threats to Egypt’s domestic security linger, but last week, el-Sissi said that Egypt was involved in Saudi Arabia’s campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen because “it was not possible for us to abandon the security of the Gulf.” That being said, Saudi Arabia and its fellow members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, have underwritten el-Sissi’s rise with tens of billions of dollars in aid to Egypt; in effect, he owes them. And after a strange and oddly underreported scandal earlier this year over leaked recordings of el-Sissi and his generals mocking their Gulf patrons, Egypt’s strongman has all the more reason to remain in lockstep with the oil-rich and increasingly assertive monarchies.
That partly accounts for why el-Sissi has taken the lead in promoting the creation of a joint Arab military force, a would-be Arab NATO. But what does el-Sissi really have to gain from a coalition force that, if the Saudi campaign in Yemen is any indication, could be dominated by Gulf agendas? For that matter, what does el-Sissi have to gain from committing Egyptian ships and possibly troops to Yemen, a country where former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser got bogged down in the 1960s and where 26,000 Egyptian soldiers died?
The fight in Yemen is really a Saudi maneuver to maintain influence there by getting the president it backs, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, in power again and rolling back Houthi advances. But launched with sectarian overtones that falsely portray the Houthis as purely Iranian proxies, the Saudi campaign is likely to lead to more blowback in Yemen, “prolonging and complicating the struggle inside the country,” as April Longley Alley of the International Crisis Group told The New York Times.
El-Sissi is risking Egypt’s involvement in what is likely to become a Yemen quagmire for both the economic and strategic reward of following an expanding, self-assured doctrine from Riyadh. Going along with the Saudi-led intervention “could lock in the billions of dollars in Saudi aid he has come to depend on, and elevates the role of Egypt’s military, from which he hails,” Shibley Telhami argued in Reuters.
The Yemen intervention and the mooted joint Arab force signal a wider regional shift toward a stronger alliance between Cairo and Riyadh that each government wants to expand. “The force provides a formula for broadening the Egyptian-Saudi relationship, now essential for both countries, into an Arab arrangement,” Telhami wrote, highlighting the substantive but also symbolic gains for Arab states and the Arab League.
That doesn’t preclude el-Sissi from having specific Egyptian interests in mind as well. If the Yemen campaign is a test case for the joint Arab force, from the Saudi point of view, according to Telhami, “the Egyptian vision is for using it in the growing chaos in Libya,” where Egypt backs the forces of Libyan Gen. Khalifa Haftar, which are engaged in a proxy war with Islamist militias reportedly supported by Qatar and Turkey. In Libya, Cairo has relied on another key Gulf ally that is also part of the coalition in Yemen: the UAE.
Led by the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi, the UAE has pursued a more expansive foreign policy, including backing Haftar in Libya. It has done so in part through deeper ties with Egypt, in which it has invested billions in loans and aid. Last summer, Emirati jets took off from Egyptian bases for a series of unexpected airstrikes on Islamist factions in Libya. Both Egypt and the UAE are close American allies and military partners. Yet, as Steven Cook has explained, their growing relationship has come as a result of tensions between Washington and Cairo.
Those tensions were mostly over arms shipments to Egypt—a plank of long-standing U.S. military aid—which U.S. President Barack Obama froze after el-Sissi’s 2013 coup. The Obama administration lifted the freeze last week, while also effectively taking away the Egyptian government’s credit card by planning to cut off, in 2018, the cash-flow financingthat has long allowed Cairo to buy billions in U.S. military hardware. But there are wider disagreements between the U.S. and Egypt, along with Washington’s other traditional Middle East allies, over everything from negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program to dealing with Syria’s civil war.
“Not only does this drive the Egyptians (and the Israelis, Saudis, and Emiratis) somewhat crazy, it also encourages them to explore alternatives to the relationship with Washington,” Cook wrote. “The United Arab Emirates is now Egypt’s strategic partner, more than making up for Washington’s diminishing diplomatic, political, and financial support.”
While the UAE, followed by Saudi Arabia, has started supplanting the U.S. as Egypt’s source for development aid, Washington still retains its primacy as the main supplier to Egypt’s military—as well as to the Saudi, Emirati and other Arab forces that have pledged to come together in a joint military command and are currently bombing Yemen. That’s why “the Egyptians have made it a policy to exhaust the Obama administration on the issue [of military aid] until it gave in,” Cook wrote.
Egypt still hedged, sealing arms deals with Russia, with which it has also expanded military cooperation, and France, from which it agreed to buy 24 Rafale fighter jets in February. But as Cook noted, “whether these deals actually happen is less important that what they represent”—a growing gap in the U.S.-Egypt relationship.
The surprisingly blunt way Obama described the threats facing Saudi Arabia and other American allies in the Gulf in an interview with The New York Times this week suggests other gaps. “The biggest threats that they face may not be coming from Iran invading,” Obama said. “It’s going to be from dissatisfaction inside their own countries.” It’s little surprise that Saudi Arabia and Egypt are taking matters into their own hands, for better or—more likely—for worse.
