If the Tunisian revolution was sparked by the self-immolation of a poor fruit vendor, you could say that Egypt’s weeklong protests had their genesis in an equally gory death: that of 28-year-old Khaled Said, who was beaten to death by plainclothes police officers in the port city of Alexandria on June 6, 2010. Photos of Said’s battered face – fractured skull, dislocated jaw and broken nose – were widely distributed on the Internet, and belied the official police record that stated he died of asphyxiation after swallowing a plastic-wrapped packet of drugs. At the time there were protests, but Egypt’s now notorious riot police quickly quashed them. Still, resentment simmered – and boiled over last Tuesday on a national holiday meant to honor the country’s police force.
Shadi Taha, a 32-year-old activist and member of former presidential candidate (and ex-prisoner of the regime) Ayman Nour’s Ghad (Tomorrow) party, first came up with the idea of holding a protest on Police Day in early January. He was part of a group of like-minded Egyptians, the National Coalition for Change, who came from the country’s many illegal political parties. They wanted to make a statement, and thought that a protest at Tahrir Square, where President Hosni Mubarak was due to make a speech honoring the police, would be the most likely way to gain attention from the news media.
“We [the unofficial opposition parties] are not allowed to appear on state media, and the privately owned media doesn’t let us on either,” says Taha. “So the only way to get our message out was to make news.” The goal was simple: a peaceful demonstration, witnessed by millions. “When people see others protesting, and nothing bad happens to them, then even more people get encouraged to protest,” he says.
In the initial planning stages, Taha and his compatriots envisioned a couple hundred protestors. Then Tunisia happened. “That gave us hope that this might happen in Egypt as well,” he says. Members of the new opposition alliance started organizing in small groups of three to four people who went door-to-door passing out flyers telling people to go to the protest on Jan. 25. They put up Facebook pages and posted on Twitter. Nour spoke out against the regime in a YouTube video. Members exhausted their thumbs sending out text messages to everyone in the mobile phone books. “Tell your friends,” the messages read. “Look what is happening in Tunisia. This is how people change their country.” They even dialed random numbers in the hopes that the exhortations to demonstrate would fall on sympathetic ears.
It was the success of Tunisia that turned what was expected to be a small demonstration into a nationwide revolt, says Taha. “We used to say, ‘Hey, we are having a demonstration, come join us to change your country,’ but no one believed us that it would work. But the Tunisian tsunami gave everyone hope. People realized that if they joined, it would make a difference. And from there it snowballed.” In his wildest dreams, Taha wouldn’t have expected to see 5,000 people on Jan. 25. When he counted more than 10,000, he knew that the end of the regime was simply a matter of time. The police wouldn’t be able to stop them and the army wouldn’t dare fire on its own people, especially not in front of the media. “What happened on the 25th was a turning point,” says Taha. “The relationship between Mubarak and the people is over. Now he is just buying time. Even if he succeeds in ending the demonstrations by force, he will never be able to go back. The Egyptian people have tasted their power.”
The opposition, as newly vibrant as it may be, hasn’t quite gotten over the old habit of factionalism. The much ballyhooed formation of a united front to negotiate with the regime, if it came to that, isn’t quite final. “There is no official committee, and no negotiation [with the regime] has started. There will be a meeting [on Tuesday] to finalize this because there has been some disagreements about who can be on this committee,” says Hassan Nafaa, a political-science professor at Cairo University and one of the lead organizers of Mohamed ElBaradei’s National Coalition for Change. Even through all of this, some politicians are whispering that some of the older parties may be willing to be bought off with Cabinet seats.
But what happens when Mubarak does step down, as so many are demanding? Taha and members of his alliance – if they hang together – want to see a transitional government that can keep the country running while preparations are made for a referendum on constitutional amendments limiting how presidential elections are conducted (i.e., all the laws put in place that pretty much guaranteed that all but a few vetted opposition groups would be excluded from the process.) Then a real election. “If we can form a united transitional government to take control, if we can enact political and constitutional reform in this transitional period, and if we can let the people decide who they want in power for the next five years, I will consider this revolution to be a success,” says Taha.
History may show how significant Tuesday February 1st was in any eventual revolution. The eighth day of protests saw more than 100,000 people gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo by midday local time with organizers hoping one million will attend what is expected to be the biggest show yet. As of mid-afternoon local time, more than 200,000 had flooded into the heart of Cairo. The atmosphere was carnival-like, with protesters singing and chanting, as they laid down placards and banners daubed with anti-Mubarak slogans. And while military helicopters buzzed overhead, soldiers at checkpoints set up at the entrances of the square did nothing to stop the crowds from entering. Egypt’s second biggest city, Alexandria, has also seen thousands of people near the railway station hoping to travel to join the main rally in Cairo (protests were taking place in at least five other cities across Egypt) but unnamed security officials were reported as saying all roads and public transportation to Cairo had been shut down. Meanwhile, opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei has called on Mubarak to step down by Friday, according to al-Arabiya TV.
As for who would lead this transitional government, Taha isn’t sure. ElBaradei is a heavyweight, to be sure, he says, adding, “His strength is in foreign policy. But most problems in Egypt today are internal. So I want to see a coalition of opposition forces with experiences in many fields.” And yes, that coalition includes the Muslim Brotherhood. “We cannot do what the regime has done, which is exclude the Muslim Brotherhood. We need to hear their ideas as well, we need to talk to them.”
The Muslim Brotherhood has its own internal divisions, but very influential members of the group had been very actively involved in the opposition’s attempt to form a parallel parliament after the November elections, which were widely seen as rigged to benefit the regime. And while the leadership of the Brotherhood did not endorse the Jan. 25 Day of Rage, members of the Islamist group did actively cooperate with the other parties. Some were in the street every day, even before the leadership chose to participate last Friday.
It is not as if the Brotherhood will be the only potential source of anti-Americanism in a post-Mubarak Egypt either. “Shame on you, Americans! You are giving constant headaches about democracy,” says Wahid Fawzi, the foreign minister of the liberal Wafd Party, which helped organize the protests. Like many Egyptians, Fawzi believes U.S. policy toward Egypt derives from Israeli pressure to keep an Israel-friendly dictator in place. And Egyptians are angry. “The streets want one thing and America wants another,” he says. “I think America has lost this time. The Egyptians are never going to forget this position.”
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– With reporting by Abigail Hauslohner / CCairo
