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US
training quietly nurtured Arab democrats
Associated
Press

By Charles J. Hanley March 12,2013

By: CHARLES J. HANLEY

ASSOCIATED PRESS CORRESPONDENT

"It helped us organize
the revolution," Diab, 23, said of his made-in-America training

"All
these efforts, by local and international organizations, paved the way for
what's going on today," he said. "These youths didn't come from
nowhere and make a revolution."

"NDI,
IRI, Freedom House most of the leadership of the revolution are trained, like
80 percent," said Marwan Youness, an opposition trainee himself before
joining the NDP.

CAIRO \u2013 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 street, shaking the palaces of the
privileged, 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 (IRI) are links in the nurturing
"democratic assistance" web, key conduits for grants from the
State Department's Agency for International Development (USAID) 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's 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. Some $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 like
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 and one who
benefited in recent years from "hundreds and hundreds of hours" of U.S.-supported
training in everything from managing campaigns and elections to using Twitter,
Facebook and other 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.

The American democracy promotion campaign dates back to the 1980s, when
Poland's Solidarity movement was one beneficiary. But for Egypt, 2005 was the
watershed year, when Campbell's NDI opened a Cairo office and through Egyptian
groups trained 5,500 election observers to monitor a referendum giving Mubarak
another six-year term, his fifth.

From Egypt's polling places that September, NDI-paid teams reported
election violations via innovative cell-phone texting in code, deciphered by
headquarters computers.

The report was immediate: Widespread manipulation of the polls, and a
turnout of a mere 23 percent, shattering the myth of 90-percent landslides for
the "popular" Mubarak.

"It had the effect of showing the emperor had no clothes,"
Campbell said. "Egyptians could make a difference. They could change
things."

The government reacted, restricting NDI and IRI operations in Cairo, ordering
host hotels to cancel training sessions, putting security men in institute
offices.

But Mubarak couldn't be too tough on the Americans, donors of $1.5
billion in annual military and economic aid. And the democracy promoters
carried on, often sending Egyptian proteges abroad for sessions.

Bassem Samir is one example. A 23-year-old poll watcher in 2005, since
then this leader of the activist Egyptian Democratic Academy has been flown to
Washington, Hungary, Dubai and elsewhere to learn about political organization,
use of new media, protest campaigning and other skills, under both IRI and NDI
sponsorship.

In a two-week U.S. session underwritten by the Washington-based Freedom
House, another USAID grantee, Samir did intensive work on social media, visiting
Google's offices, hearing from a new-media specialist from the Obama 2008
campaign. This was "good one-on-one contact" and led to useful advice
from afar, he said, when Cairo's protesters struggled to counter the
government's suppression of Internet communications.

A blogger, Samir also took part in an NDI conference in Morocco last year as
the U.S. institute developed a new web portal, Aswat, gathering dissident
postings from around the Arab world, some by NDI-trained bloggers.

Such cross-border networking is spreading under the U.S. groups'
umbrella. Oraib al-Rantawi, a leading NDI-backed activist in Jordan, told the
AP he had been flown to Yemen twice to advise counterparts there on
policymaking.

With NDI support, Rantawi's Al Quds Center for Political Studies is
monitoring the work of Jordan's Parliament via regular online reports, the
first such scrutiny for a body whose makeup is widely viewed as
unrepresentative, based on an electoral system skewed to support King Abdullah
II's strong monarchy.

Weekly marches by thousands in Amman, Jordan's capital, have been demanding
an overhaul of anachronistic election laws and a stripping of the king's power
to appoint prime ministers. Those demands, in good part, sprang from a
years-long process that began with NDI support for monitoring Jordan's 2007
elections.

"They helped us tremendously. We wouldn't have been successful in
finding a local sponsor," said Muhyiedden Touq, whose National Center
for Human Rights led a 50-group coalition in also observing Jordan's 2010
elections, when 1,200 poll watchers were fielded at a cost of $250,000 in USAID
funds.

As the Mideast seethes with protest, new questions may arise about the role
played by democracy boosters, who also include affiliates of German political
parties and other European and Canadian groups.

For Jordan's Rantawi, there's no question.

"All these efforts, by local and international organizations, paved
the way for what's going on today," he said. "These youths didn't
come from nowhere and make a revolution."

In Cairo, an ex-official of Mubarak's own National Democratic Party sounded
a similar note.

"NDI, IRI, Freedom House most of the leadership of the revolution
are trained, like 80 percent," said Marwan Youness, an opposition trainee
himself before joining the NDP.

People in the streets created the revolution, not outsiders, he said. "But
they are the catalyst."

In emerging Arab democracies, questions also will arise over how the U.S.
and other powers will deal with Islamist political forces, generally anti-American.

Rohile Gharaibeh of Amman's Islamic Action Front, Jordanian political arm of
the regionwide Muslim Brotherhood, is dismissive of U.S. influence in recent
events.

"What has happened in Egypt or Tunisia has nothing to do with any
money spent by the U.S.," he said. "Things reached an explosion
point."

2 Years later in 2013:: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=569fkVP6l_s&feature=emb_logo

https://www.ndi.org/wollack-testifies-HFAC-061213

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