The United States has been quietly targeting aid to Egypt's Coptic Christians, according to documents obtained by Emad Mekay in Washington The United States has been quietly funnelling millions of dollars from its annual aid budget to Egypt to groups coming from the country's Coptic Christian community as part of an effort to "empower" the religious minority, according to a review of recent US congressional documents. Most of the money, hidden in a little-noticed part of the multi-year aid programme, has been channelled through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), part of the US State Department. Up until July last year, the programme had benefited more than 40 Coptic non-governmental organisations at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. Egypt is already struggling to contain tensions between its Muslim and Christian populations, which are simmering over issues including a spate of recent conversions from Islam to Coptic Christianity. The most detailed account of how the US has been silently targeting Egypt's Christian community with humanitarian and political assistance came in a written document submitted to Congress last year by James R Kunder, USAID assistant administrator for Asia and the Near East, the most senior officer overseeing aid to Egypt at the agency, which has its headquarters in Washington. At a hearing before the US House of Representatives Sub-Committee on Middle East and Central Asia on 17 May 2006, Kunder read an abbreviated version of the written testimony and made only brief mention of the issue. However, a full copy of his written testimony, obtained in its entirety by Al-Ahram Weekly, gives a first-time peek into how USAID has put US government dollars into what the senior US official repeatedly called areas "with significant Coptic populations". "USAID's projects in health, education, infrastructure, and civil society development operate in every district with a significant Coptic population, mainly in Upper Egypt and cities such as Cairo and Alexandria," he said. "USAID's water programmes have installed slow sand filter water treatment plants, improved wastewater collection and treatment systems, or rehabilitated and expanded water treatment plants for about 18 villages with significant Coptic populations." "Funding allocated to villages with significant Coptic populations under the water treatment programmes alone exceeded $200 million over the last five years," Kunder said. The funds were channelled "through direct grants to Coptic NGOs", he said. The aid distribution has also been fine-tuned to cover religious issues in Egypt, previously untouchable, and the senior US official reported to Congress that the Egyptian government did not have direct oversight over money going to the programmes. "With more than $2.2 million in grants to 40 Coptic NGOs over the past six years, USAID has helped to strengthen Coptic communities and civil society organisations," he added. The programme has also bankrolled several projects designed to increase "religious tolerance and promote inter-faith understanding between the Muslim and Coptic communities", according to Kunder. He cited several examples of this, including a plan, still under the direct grants programme, to support the efforts of a local Egyptian NGO to establish a Media Monitoring Observatory to track religious tolerance in the Egyptian media. For most of their nearly 40 years in Egypt, US aid programmes have shied away from meddling with the sensitive sectarian issue. However, the new revelations represent a shift in how Washington now views the role of its aid to Egypt, a point Egyptian officials are not missing. An Egyptian Embassy spokesman in Washington told the Weekly that the Egyptian government objected to faith-based measures by any foreign donor. "Any legally registered NGO in Egypt is qualified to receive foreign assistance contingent on certain procedures," the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "However, we do not support, and we take issue with, the disbursement of foreign assistance based on faith or ethnicity." Yet this is exactly what the State Department has been asked to do by Congress. In a congressional report accompanying the US Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill for 2008 that came out last month, the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee explicitly called for American funding of politically active Christian NGOs. The committee, eyeing the Coptic Christian community, said that no less than 50 per cent of the $50 million slated for "governance and democracy" in its aid to Egypt, which cover Coptic Christian activities, should be provided through non-governmental organisations and away from Cairo's gaze. Supporters of the measures in Washington say the main justification for the measures is what they term the "abuse" of Copts in Egypt. "One of the concerns is that many reports from Egypt show Christian Copts are increasingly under pressure. They are suffering from more attacks. There's increasing persecution of Copts in Egypt," said Paul Marshall, an expert on Islam and Religion at the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, a right-wing think-tank in Washington, DC. "I think this has caused concern in Congress, so I believe it is for that reason they directed USAID to make sure that some of its aid in Egypt also addresses Coptic needs." But delicate questions remain, chiefly regarding Egyptian sensitivities about the level of involvement of the US in such a sensitive issue and on Egyptian soil. There is already concern in the State Department that Washington, already reeling from an image problem in the Middle East because of its invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq, may now be seen to be favouring Christians in a predominantly Muslim nation. State Department officials are reportedly trying to find out how the statements about the Coptic Christian community "slipped" into Kunder's written testimony, which is usually reviewed by several staff members. USAID officials did not return calls from the Weekly asking for comment on the story. Rights groups also say that a faith-based approach may not be the right one for Washington to take, even if its concerns are genuine. "There's nothing wrong per se with helping the Coptic communities if they felt they were otherwise discriminated against, or are not getting their fair share of Egyptian resources," said Sarah Lee Whitson, Middle East director of Human Rights Watch. "But if the only reason they are helping these communities is because they are Christians, I think that's a big problem." "You do not want US aid money to be seen as missionary money meant to support one religious community over another, particularly in a country that is overwhelmingly Muslim. I do not think that would sit well with the Egyptian population." (see p.3)
