By Abdel-Rahman Hussein
CAIRO: No one saw it coming; when protesters and journalists headed to the streets on Jan. 25 no one expected that less than two weeks later the demonstrations would bring the 30-year regime of Egypt’s President Mubarak almost to its knees.
And yet the crackdown on peaceful protesters and the lengths it was willing to go to decimate the will of the Egyptian people who had taken to the streets indicate that the continued presence of this regime is unsustainable.
It began with the jamming of phone signals on Jan. 25 in the area surrounding Tahrir Square, right before security forces blasted almost 500 tear gas canisters into the square to break up the protesters.
As the protests continued, and the people refused to be cowed into submission, greater steps were taken to suppress them. It culminated by Friday Jan. 28 into a complete shutdown of the internet and mobile phone communications.
The government literally stopped short of shutting down landlines, television, water and electricity to throw Egyptians back into the Stone Age.
This is a government that in recent years had prided itself on its modernity, its rhetoric about the advancement of Egypt into the age of foreign investment and prosperity; a bombastic calling card for the puffed-out suited chests.
And that wasn’t the end of it. By Friday evening — after having failed to end the demonstrations with tear gas, water cannons and bullets — security forces disappeared en masse to leave Egypt in a state of chaos.
A video that surfaced later showed prisoners breaking out of a prison in Fayoum with security forces standing around and not intervening. Numerous reports of the looting that followed seemed to indicate that it was the work of government-affiliated thugs who would also surface later in an even more outrageous maneuver.
The army was deployed to restore order and a curfew was implemented. After the million-man march on Tuesday Feb. 1 the president announced in a televised speech that he would not run for president again.
Less than 15 hours later government-sponsored armed thugs descended on Tahrir Square in another attempt to crackdown on the protests. The army did little to stem the attacks, which led to an overnight battle where the protesters managed to keep control of Tahrir Square.
By Thursday the death toll since Jan. 25 was conservatively placed at 300 with another 5,000 injured, according to some accounts. All violence was allegedly instigated by the regime, whether through the Interior Ministry’s security forces or the plainclothes thugs.
Meanwhile, Egyptian state television continued to broadcast what can only be described as the news service from the Twilight Zone, a world where things that were happening on the ground weren’t happening at all, or if they were, were the work of a surreptitious, foreign, sabotaging hand.
Accusing the protesters of being agents of Israel, America, Hamas and Hezbollah, state TV also neglected to mention that regime was a close ally of the US and that Israel was one of the few governments to staunchly support the president, along with Silvio Berlusconi and Dick Cheney.
What resulted from that State TV propaganda — masterminded by Information Minister Anas El-Fiqi — was a witch-hunt of journalists and foreigners in Egypt that led to stabbings and neighborhood watches suspecting even Egyptians of being foreigners.
A girl who claimed that she was an activist who was trained by Israelis and Americans in Qatar to create chaos in Egypt aired on Mehwar TV in pixilated glory turned out to be a reporter for the newspaper “24 Hours” who had fabricated the story and has now been suspended.
State TV presenters Hala Fahmy and Shahira Amin resigned their posts and headed to Tahrir Square.
The behavior of the regime since Jan. 25 makes it very difficult to accept its continuation in power for the next six months. It can no longer be trusted and its actions have shown, what many protesters see as a callousness to the future of Egypt and its people; a stubborn resolve to cling to power at the expense of the country.
What also galls has been the reaction of Mubarak’s Western allies, whose role will not be forgotten in the annals of history nor by the Egyptian people. A major reason for the reticence of Western governments to ask Mubarak to stand down is concern for Israel’s security. The support of citizens — and not governments — in the international community has been its one saving grace.
There is also a fear of an Islamist takeover in case Mubarak stands down. A cursory trip to Tahrir Square will show this to be an absurd notion. The protesters are a wide cross-section of Egyptians: young and old, religious and secular. And even if Egyptians do pick an Islamic government — which is highly doubtful — is that not democracy, many ask. Many also hope to hear the last of the lip service by American officials about democracy and human rights.
Protesters and the wider informed Egyptian community reject the foreign-led conspiracy theory, and are convinced that elements in the regime were behind the terror and sabotage that has gripped Egypt since Jan. 25 and it is that which makes their position untenable.
Protesters believe that the government is now paying lip service to reforms they forcibly withheld for three decades and are only seemingly giving in because of the resilience of those still in Tahrir and the men and women who gave their lives hope of a better Egypt. They believe that government should not be leading reforms, but should be held accountable for their actions.
The one source of optimism is for people to continue to hold fast inside Tahrir Square, many believe. These protesters have managed to overturn negative perceptions of the Egyptian people as a passive, disheveled and unorganized populace. Standing side by side, cleaning up the square, the people in Tahrir hold the key to Egypt’s future. It will be a gross miscalculation to think otherwise.
Abdel Rahman Hussein is a reporter with Daily News Egypt who covers local and regional politics.
