The White House announced this morning that it would be cancelling the biannual “Bright Star” military exercises between Egypt and the United States. Scheduled to take place next month, the war games were cancelled in protest of ongoing violence which started after the Egyptian military overthrew President Mohammed Morsi.
“While we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back,” said President Obama.
This is the second straight time that the Bright Star exercises have been cancelled—the last scheduled meeting of US and Egyptian forces was slated to take place in 2011, but were cancelled due to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. Uncertainty and upheaval followed both presidential removals, but a period of particular volatility has formed after the canning of democratically-elected Morsi. Since the latest uprising an estimated 500 people have died violently according to the interim Egyptian government; the opposing Muslim Brotherhood (which supports Morsi) claims the death toll is closer to 2,500.
“We have repeatedly called on the Egyptian military and security forces to show restraint, and for the government to respect the universal rights of its citizens, just as we have urged protesters to demonstrate peacefully,” read statement from the White house issued on Wednesday, August 14. “Violence will only make it more difficult to move Egypt forward on a path to lasting stability and democracy, and runs directly counter to the pledges by the interim government to pursue reconciliation.”
President Obama has not announced plans to cut off any other form of interaction or aid to Egypt, and still refuses to acknowledge the removal of Morsi as a coup, as a peculiarity of US law would require America to cease sending $1.3 billion in yearly aid to the country upon such a declaration. He is, however, discussing with aides possible routes the United States could take if the interim government does not move swiftly to conduct democratic elections.
The decision comes a day after Egypt’s military forcibly cleared encampments of Morsi supporters, resulting in bloody scuffles across the nation; the interim government has now declared a state of emergency and established a nighttime curfew. Obama said the move is leading Egypt down a dangerous path of “arbitrary arrests, a broad crackdown on Mr. Morsi's associations and supporters, and now, tragically, violence that's taken the lives of hundreds of people and wounded thousands more.”
Cancellation of the Bright Star exercises comes less than two weeks after the president nixed a personal meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin for, among other reasons, the decision to grant NSA-leaker Edward Snowden a year’s asylum in Russia.
[Source: USA Today, White House]