Buzzfeed is out of its depth on Egypt and North Korea sanctions

If journalism can be reduced to its most fundamental purpose, that purpose is to tell the reader important things he does not know. Be mindful of this purpose as we review one example of the slapdash reporting one tends to see whenever North Korea intrudes into the headlines.

As the Trump administration scrambles to respond to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, it is trying to coax the country’s smaller trading partners, from Sudan to the Philippines, to ramp up the pressure on Kim Jong Un’s regime. Last week, the Trump administration announced that it would cut $96 million in aid and delay $195 million in military funding to Egypt, citing human rights concerns — and, according to reports, over the country’s robust relationship with North Korea.

One of the largest recipients of US aid, Egypt has also had a longstanding relationship with the isolated regime in Pyongyang, particularly trading in weapons. It’s unclear, though, what aspects of Egypt-North Korea relations the administration is displeased with, and whether it includes commerce not prohibited by sanctions. [Buzzfeed, Megha Rajagopalan & Maged Atef]

Not clear which aspect, you wonder? Might Buzzfeed have found some relevance in Pyongyang’s history of selling ballistic missiles to Egypt, no doubt to fund other missile programs that threaten the U.S. directly? Or that in 2015, the Obama administration sanctioned an Egyptian trading company for its ties to KOMID, North Korea’s principal arms exporter?

Buzzfeed’s reporters do finally get around to mentioning — near the very bottom of their piece, by which time wiser readers will have moved on — that “North Korea has even helped Egyptian scientists develop missile systems.” They do not mention that this is a long and ongoing relationship, that it flagrantly violates a U.N. arms embargo that has been in place for eleven years, that this embargo has been reaffirmed and strengthened by at least half a dozen resolutions since then, or that Egypt’s violation of it has been mentioned repeatedly by the U.N. Panel of Experts. Given the reporters’ emission of an inky cloud of confusion about what commerce is or isn’t prohibited by sanctions, wouldn’t more competent journalism have taken a moment to find the resolutions, read them, and explain them to its readers?

“The question is, if this North Korean issue is so important for the US, why didn’t they ever mention it with us before?” said Emad Gad, a member of the Egyptian parliament’s foreign affairs committee. “The Egypt-North Korea relationship is an old one, so why are we suddenly hearing they have problems with our relations with North Korea?”

Hey, I’m no human polygraph, but I know what bullshit smells like. A 30-second Google search yields this New York Times article (I know) noting that “[s]uccessive American administrations have privately raised the issue of North Korea in talks with Cairo, but with little success.” Suddenly?

Egypt makes up a very small part of the value of North Korea’s total trade — but it attracted headlines in 2008 when Orascom, an Egyptian telecom firm, set up the first North Korean 3G network. And Egypt is a well-known buyer of North Korean missiles and other weapons.

Again, Buzzfeed is out of its depth, leaving out revelations by better reporters that Orascom’s venture in North Korea was a likely violation of U.S. law, a fiasco for its shareholders, and a career-discriminating event for its CEO, Naguib Sawiris. All of which also goes unmentioned.

In Cairo, the development was met with confusion, and in some quarters, frustration.

“The North Korean-American issue is a conflict between the US and its allies against North Korea — not the whole world against North Korea,” said Gen. Hamdi Bakhit, a member of parliament who sits on the powerful Defense and National Security Committee. “China, for example, has a balanced relationship with both the US and North Korea … America is just fishing for a mistake to pressure Egypt.”

All of which Buzzfeed takes at face value, uncritically, without further inquiry or elucidation of its readers that a government’s mouthpiece has just lied to them like Anthony Weiner talking to a vice squad detective. Yes, we are but a simple junta leading a government that rules over almost 100 million people! We sing, we dance, we smoke our hookahs, and we craftily expunge all traces of shadowy extremist sects from every slum in Cairo, and that is all! We cannot be bothered to read U.N. Security Council resolutions or U.N. Panel of Experts’ reports, or file an implementation report that even fills a single sheet of paper.

Meaning, the Egyptian government knows damn well where to find these resolutions, what they mean, and what they prohibit. Which is more than I can say for Buzzfeed’s reporters.

Look, I understand that many journalists despise Donald Trump. I can understand why. It isn’t hard to find conservative pundits who share that sentiment. It isn’t hard to find journalists who would clearly despise a President Kasich almost as much for the sole reason that he’s a Republican. But something is terribly wrong with anyone whose moral lens is so monochromatic that she defaults to a certain sympathy for anyone whom Trump is against, even when that anyone is a sanctions-busting military junta. Or Kim Jong-Un.

In this case, however, the Trump administration is doing precisely what Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton ought to have done over the last 24 years — diplomatically, nonviolently, and consistently with a sheaf of U.N. Security Council resolutions — working to end a grave and direct threat to the United States and all of the world, and to prevent a nuclear war in Korea. Does understanding that really require extraordinary moral agility, or might a willingness to use Google suffice?