Egyptian Military's Business Endeavors Complicate Aid
The New York Times reports:
In the late 1990s, the Pentagon announced that it would contribute tens of millions of dollars to a 650-bed International Medical Center that the Egyptian military was building in the desert outside Cairo. The money, for medical equipment, training and logistical support, would help improve health care for Egyptian soldiers.
Within a few years, though, an American training team realized that the Egyptian military was benefiting in a different way. The medical center was, as one Pentagon official called it, “a commercial enterprise,” and many of its patients were civilians, not Egyptian soldiers. The hospital was even venturing into medical tourism; its Web site promotes “a lavishly furnished Royal Suite” for international patients.
An American doctor who has worked there, Wayne F. Yakes, recalls what his hosts told him about the hospital: “It was built with U.S. tax dollars under President Bill Clinton.” Put simply, he said, “We bought it for them.”
Eventually, the United States moved to cut off financing and even recoup some of the money, said several former American military officials. The Pentagon, after all, is supposed to pay only for projects with a military purpose.
Yet with Washington giving Cairo $1.3 billion a year in military aid, the hospital episode shows that Egypt’s for-profit military has sometimes found ways to use that aid to further its economic interests. A review of the aid program raises questions about a variety of ventures — from the acquisition of a fleet of luxury Gulfstream jets to a company making Jeeps for commercial sale as well as for the army.
Now, as the generals steer Egypt toward a new civilian government after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, those questions about the aid program echo a broader uneasiness, especially in the pro-democracy movement: will a military so deeply invested in a system that conferred great economic and political power be willing to let go?
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