CAIRO — Hosni Mubarak’s woes could be traced back to Egypt’s 2005 election, when an army of tech-savvy poll watchers, with a little help from foreign friends, exposed the president’s customary “landslide” vote as an autocrat’s fraud.
In nearby Jordan too, an outside assist on election day 2007 helped put that kingdom’s undemocratic political structure in a harsh spotlight — and the king in a bind.
And when 2011’s winter of discontent exploded into a pro-democracy storm in Tunisia and then Egypt, opposition activist Bilal Diab broke away from his six-month “young leaders school” and its imported instructors, and put his new skills to use among the protest tents of Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
“It helped us organize the revolution,” Diab, 23, said of his made-in-America training. “People were scattered, but we had learned how to bring them together and we did, and when we opened our tent, we announced formation of the Revolution Youth Union.”
The revolutionary roar from the Arab streets — shaking the palaces of the privileged and toppling presidents — has echoed around the globe, dominating the headlines and airwaves for weeks. But behind this story of political upheaval lies another, quieter story of outside organizations that, with U.S. government and other money, tutored a young Arab generation in the ways of winning in a political world.
All involved emphasize that what has happened sprang from deeply rooted grievances in the autocratic Arab world, not from outside inspiration. But they say the confidence-building work of democratic coaches, led by the U.S. but also including Europeans, was one catalyst for success.
That success, meanwhile, points up a core paradox: A U.S. government that long stood by Mubarak and other Arab leaders as steadfast allies was, at the same time, financing programs that ultimately contributed to his and potentially others’ downfall.
Some see American shrewdness at work, covering multiple political bets in Egypt and elsewhere. Others see an America too big and complex to be consistent.
“Speaking as a Canadian, one of the beauties of the U.S. system is that there are many, many entry points in many centers of power, and they can have conflicting policies,” said Les Campbell, Middle East chief for the U.S. National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.
The NDI, affiliated with the Democratic Party, and the GOP-affiliated International Republican Institute are links in the nurturing “democratic assistance” web, key conduits for grants from the State Department’s Agency for International Development and from the National Endowment for Democracy, a private organization funded by the U.S. Congress.
National Endowment money, $100 million-plus a year, is at work in more than 90 countries worldwide.
But it is the USAID grants, from an $800 million budget for developing “political competition” and “civil society” in 67 nations, that have proved vital to activists in a half-dozen Arab lands, from Morocco to Yemen. About $104 million was requested for them in the proposed 2011 budget.
In post-Mubarak Egypt, that help is about to balloon.
Of a $150 million Egyptian “transition fund” announced by Washington, $50 million will go toward democracy and governance programs such as the ones that have nurtured hundreds of Egypt’s rising democrats, The Associated Press has learned. That would triple the 2011 funding previously planned.
“We need more support, and fast,” said Abdallah Helmy, 34, co-founder of Egypt’s dissident Reform and Development Party. He has already benefited in recent years from “hundreds and hundreds of hours” of U.S.-supported training in everything from managing campaigns and elections to using social media for political messaging.
It’s estimated more than 10,000 Egyptians since 2005 have participated in USAID-financed democracy and governance programs, carried out by NDI, IRI and 28 other international and Egyptian organizations — not only political training, but also projects to prepare judges, build PTA-style school associations and otherwise deepen civic involvement.
