February 1, 2010—One week ago, Egypt was a stable authoritarian regime, prospects of change were minimal, and every expert in Washington would have bet on the endurance of its regime. Today, Egypt is in a state of chaos. The regime, even after using its mightiest sword, hasn’t been able to control the country, and the streets of Egypt are in a state of utter lawlessness. As the world stands in awe, confusion and worry at the unfolding events, now is as good a time as any to write the first draft of what will surely be an evolving story.
Pace the pundits, it turns out that the Egyptian regime was neither stable nor secure. Moreover, this lack of its stability is not a reflection of its weakness or its lack of resolve to oppress; it is a reflection the regime’s inherent abrasions against the natural desire of men to enjoy basic freedoms. Egyptians might not know what democracy actually means, but that does not make the concept any less desirable for them. Perhaps it is precisely its vagueness and abstraction that makes the concept all the more desirable.
For two weeks, calls were broadcast via new social media tools for a mass demonstration on January 25. Observers dismissed those calls as just another instance of virtual activism that would never amount to anything. Similar calls in the past had generated very little public support, and demonstrations were limited to the familiar faces of political activists numbering only in the hundreds.
As the day progressed this time around, the skepticism once again seemed justified. While the demonstrations were certainly larger than previous ones, numbering perhaps 15,000 in Cairo, they were nothing worrisome for the regime. They were certainly much smaller than the 2003 protests against the Iraq War. Thus the police force was largely tolerant of the demonstrations, and when they finally decided to empty Tahrir Square, where the demonstrators had camped for the night, it took them less than five minutes to do so.
But initial appearances aside, things were very different this time. Social media had effectively given people something they had lacked: an independent means of communication and propaganda. In a matter of minutes, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians saw the demonstrations as they were uploaded to YouTube. For an apolitical generation that had never shown interest in such events, the demonstration seeemed unprecedented.
This semblance is even more remarkable considering that the protests, initially, were tremendously exaggerated. No more than 500 demonstrators had started gathering in the early morning on the first day, but it was simplicity itself for an Egyptian opposition leader to confidently Tweet that he was leading 100,000 in Tahrir Square. And the story stuck.
It should come as no surprise that Egyptians, at a minimum, disbelieved the opposite, government-approved narrative. After 58 years of organized state propaganda, people reflexively disbelieved the government’s media machine and its coverage of events. But why they chose this time to believe the alternative propaganda of the opposition leaders needs more explanation. People believed the Twitter and Facebook postings because they wanted to believe them.
Tunisia had broken the barrier for many people. It mattered not that the situation and ruling formula in Tunisia is very different than the one in Egypt; perceptions were more important than reality. “If the Tunisians can do it, then so can we.” As 15,000 demonstrated in Cairo, Egyptians had already begun texting each other stories about the President’s son, Gamal, fleeing the country. The only real question in Egyptians’ minds was whether Hosni Mubarak would escape to London or Saudi Arabia.
The demonstrations continued on the second day with a promise that they would resume on January 28 after Friday Prayers. This is the moment the regime began to panic. Imagine, for a moment, Mubarak’s advisers trying to explain to the 83-year-old dictator what Twitter is in the first place. What was more worrying for them was that the only real force in Egyptian politics, the Muslim Brotherhood, had announced its intention to join the demonstrations. Suddenly, they were faced with the prospect of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators from every mosque in the country. They acted as every panicky authoritarian regime would act: stupidly.
They cut Egypt off from the Internet. Mobile phone companies were ordered to suspend services. Simultaneously, they rounded up the usual suspects in the Muslim Brotherhood leadership. With these moves underway, things seemed under control. But this time they weren’t. With every stupid, panicky move, the regime only reinforced the narrative of its weakness. People saw a regime that was scared of the Internet, and they rightfully calculated that this was their golden opportunity.
Last Friday was unprecedented in Egypt. While it is impossible to guess the number of protestors on the streets that day, it is safe to say that they exceeded one million. Every mosque was a launching site for a demonstration. The Islamists were out in full force. The slogans that day were quite different than the previous ones. Islamic slogans and activists were clearly visible. The security forces were faced with wave after wave of protestors coming in from every street. Four hours later, the security forces had collapsed.
Whether Mubarak had previously been appraised of the deteriorating situation, or whether it only was at this moment that he suddenly realized the gravity of the situation, remains unknown. One thing is certain; the regime was not prepared. It is at this moment that it made the decision to call in the army, announce a curfew, and withdraw the security forces. Moreover, the army didn’t deploy immediately; the troops and tanks that first appeared in the streets were the Presidential Guard units deployed in Cairo.
Why the slow response? Because no one had imagined that the situation would totally be out of control, the army’s alert level had never been raised. Officers hadn’t been called in from their vacations, and the whole top command of the Egyptian army was actually thousands of miles away in Washington, DC, for strategic discussions at the Pentagon. Moreover, the army’s plan for these situations never imagined a scenario in which people would defy them. Planners had assumed that the mere mention of the army being called in, followed by the sight of a few tanks and a curfew, would send people home scared. Not this time.
The Egyptian army, incidentally, is hugely popular, due to a well-established myth in Egyptian politics. The army—which is for all intents and purposes the regime—is seen as separate from it by the people. The army is viewed as clean (not like the corrupt government), efficient (they do build bridges fast) and, more importantly, composed of the heroes who defeated Israel in 1973. (It’s no use debating this point with an Egyptian.) Thus people really did think the troops and tanks appearing in the streets were on their side—whatever that might mean. Egyptians, putting their own reading on why the President’s upcoming address kept being delayed, fully expected Mubarak’s resignation.
Mubarak was at a loss. The troops could not possibly shoot the people. That would not only destroy the army’s reputation; more importantly, the troops just couldn’t do it. This wasn’t, after all, what they were trained for. They don’t have rubber bullets and tear gas, but only live rounds and tanks. The thought of actually using these weapons in this situation was never an option. Thus, to the regime’s complete surprise, the people celebrated the army’s arrival and started dancing in the streets in further defiance of the curfew. This was the moment when an even more development began to take place: looting.
The decision to withdraw the security forces followed a certain logic. They were utterly exhausted and needed to rest and regroup. Second, they had become the symbol of the regime’s oppression, so their withdrawal was a necessary condition for calming things down. Third, and most crucially, it was important that there not be two separate armed forces patrolling the same streets but receiving orders from two different authorities. Even with the best of coordination, this would be a recipe for disaster.
What this logic failed to account for, however, was the sudden vacuum that was created. The security forces had withdrawn, and the army wasn’t yet in place. In this gap was an unprecedented opportunity for mayhem. First came massive anger directed at symbols of state oppression such as the ruling party’s headquarters. Second, in what can only be described as systematic targeting, police stations everywhere were attacked. Every police station in Cairo was looted, the weapons in them stolen, and the facilities then set on fire. The looting quickly became widespread, sparing not even Egypt’s most precious antiquities, as the Western press has already widely reported.
The scene by Saturday, January 29, was indescribable. Nothing I write can do justice to the utter state of lawlessness that prevailed. Every Egyptian prison was attacked by organized groups trying to free the prisoners inside. In the case of the prisons holding regular criminals, this was done by families and friends of the inmates. In the case of the political prisoners, this was done by Islamists. Attackers made free and full use of bulldozers and weapons captured from police stations. Nearly every prison fell to these attacks. Prison officials simply were not equipped to deal with this onslaught, and no reinforcements were available. Nearly every terrorist held in the Egyptian prisons—from those that bombed the Alexandria Church less than a month ago to Sadat’s assassin—was freed (the latter, reportedly, was re-arrested tonight).
The streets of Cairo were truly the scene of an urban jungle. With no law enforcement and the army at a loss at how to deal with the situation, the criminal element sensed a golden opportunity. In a city surrounded by slums, thousands of thieves fell on neighboring wealthier districts. People were robbed in broad daylight. Houses were invaded, and stores looted and burned. Egypt had suddenly fallen back to the State of Nature. Panicking, people started grabbing whatever weapon they could find and forming groups to protect their houses. As the day progressed, the street defense committees became more organized. Every building had men standing in front of it wielding guns, knives, sticks—whatever they could find. Women started making Molotov cocktails. Street committees began to coordinate. Every major crossroads now had groups of citizens who stopped passing cars to check ID cards and search for weapons. Machine guns were in high demand and sold openly in the streets for premium prices.
I don’t want to turn this into a personal story, but those people on the streets are my friends and family, so it is inescapably a personal story for me. My neighbors were all stationed in my father-in-law’s house with men on the roof to lookout for possible attackers. A gang of thieves shot at one friend of mine, and another friend actually killed a thief in defense of his house and his wife. Another friend’s brother reportedly arrested 37 thieves that day.
The army’s only role in all of this was to pass by each area to pick up the arrested thieves. Army officers informed the street committees that those with illegal weapons shouldn’t worry about using them, and that those who found it necessary to kill thieves and attackers wouldn’t be punished.
On the political front, the story was evolving just as quickly. More troops were pouring into Cairo. Mubarak decided to appoint Omar Suliman as Vice President and Ahmed Shafik as Prime Minister. Both are military men, Suliman being the Chief of the Egyptian Intelligence Service and Shafik being the former commander of the Air Forces.
To fully appreciate this move, one has to understand the nature of the ruling coalition in Egypt and the role of the army in it. The Egyptian regime has been based since 1952 on a coalition between the army and the bureaucrats. In this regard it fits perfectly into O’Donnell’s Bureaucratic Authoritarian model. The army is fully in control of both the actual reins of power and the economy. Ex-army officers are appointed to run state enterprises and occupy high-level administrative positions. More importantly the army has an enormous economic arm that runs enterprises as diverse as construction companies and food distribution chains.
In the late 1990s, however, this picture began to change. It is no news for anyone following Egyptian politics that Gamal Mubarak, the President’s son was being groomed to follow his father. In reality, the elder Mubarak was never fully behind that scenario. Whether because of a real assessment of his son’s capabilities or because of the army unwillingness to accept such a scenario, Mubarak was hesitant. It was Mubarak’s wife, rather, who was heavily pushing that scenario. Step by step, Gamal started to rise up the ranks of the ruling NDP party. He brought with him into the ruling coalition two groups. First were the Western educated economic technocrats, trained in international financial institutions. They shared adherence to the neo-liberal economic policies of the Washington Consensus. The second group was the emerging business community in Egypt. Together, these groups had begun the process of restructuring both the Egyptian economy and the ruling party.
For the technocrats, fiscal and economic policy was their domain, and they performed miracles. The Egyptian economy under the Nazif government showed unprecedented growth. The currency was devalued, investment poured in, and exports were growing. Even the economic crisis did not dramatically effect Egypt. The real disaster in all of this, however, was that no one rationalized or defended those policies to the Egyptian public. The country was moving toward a full capitalist system, but no one had explained why that was needed or why it was ultimately beneficial. Such restructuring is naturally painful for a population that had traditionally depended on the government for all its needs; the people were fed the same socialist rhetoric nonetheless. It mattered very little that the country was improving economically. People did not see that. It is not that the effects were not trickling down; they were. It is that the people were used to the nanny state for so many years that they could not understand why the government was no longer providing them with those services.
Businessmen greatly benefited from the economic improvement. Business was good, and they began to entertain political aspirations—first in the form of a seat in Parliament, which offered immunity from prosecution. They sensed even greater opportunity in Gamal, however. Gamal wanted to recreate the ruling NDP party. The NDP, which had always been more of a mass valueless organization of state operation, was suddenly turning into a real party. Businessmen like Ahmed Ezz, the steel tycoon, saw a golden opportunity. Alongside Gamal, they took full control of the party and, with it, power.
The army never liked Gamal or his friends. Gamal had never served in the military. And now to add insult to injury, their technocratic, neo-liberal policies were threatening the army’s dominance of the closed economy. The party was becoming, step by step, an actual organization capable of competing with army officers to fill administrative positions. Suddenly the path to power in Egypt was not a military career but a party ID card.
As long as President Mubarak was there, however, the army stayed silent. The army is 100 percent loyal to the President. He is an October War hero and their Commander in Chief. Moreover, Gamal Abdel Nasser, having conducted his own military coup in 1952, put mechanisms in the army to ensure that no one else would do the same and remove him.
As the recent events unfolded, the army was finally able to demonstrate their narrative to the President and get his backing—that narrative being that Gamal and his friends ruined everything. Their neo-liberal policies alienated people and robbed them of their subsidies, and they destroyed the political system by aiming to crush all opposition.
Mubarak had long ago mastered the art of co-opting the opposition. Sizes in Parliament differed in various elections, but there was always a place there for the opposition. The last elections in 2010 were different. No opposition was allowed to win seats. By closing off any legitimate method of raising political grievances, the opposition had no choice but to go to illegitimate ones—namely, street demonstrations.
Today, Egyptians are scared. They have been given a glimpse of hell and they don’t like what they see. Contrary to al-Jazeera’s propaganda, the Egyptian masses are not so much demonstrating as they are protecting their homes and families. The demonstration on January 31 had 5,000 participants, not 150,000 as al-Jazeera insists. At present, no one besides these political activists really cares if the President will resign or not. They have more important concerns now: security and food.
So where are we today? The answer still isn’t clear, but we can draw a few conclusions.
- The Gamal inheritance scenario is finished.
- Mubarak will not run for another Presidential term. His term ends in October and either he will serve the rest of his term or will resign once things cool down for health reasons. (These concerns, incidentally, are real; he is in fact dying.)
- The army is in control now. We are heading back to the “golden age” of army rule. The “kids” are not in charge anymore; the “men” are back in control.
- Until the economy fails again, neo-liberal economic policies are over. Forget about seeing an open economy any time soon.
The army’s first task is to stabilize the situation and enforce order; the security forces have been ordered to reappear in the streets starting tonight. It’s second task will be to deal with the political activists, and with the Muslim Brotherhood, which now dominates the scene. It is anyone’s guess how that will be done, but in a couple of days Egyptians will probably be begging the army to shoot them. The army’s third task is to get things back to normal again, to get people going back to their jobs, to get basic necessities like food flowing again. The political questions can wait.
And indeed there are many long-term challenges. First, you have a huge economic hit in terms of property destroyed. Adding to that, the minute the banks open back up for business, there will be a run on them, and capital flight will be the order of the day. For some time, no one with any sense whatsoever will invest in Egypt.
Politically, the army will aim to return to the pre-Gamal ruling formula. People will be appeased by increased salaries and subsidies in hopes that this will keep them quiet. Will it? Doubtful. The Egyptians have realized for the first time that the regime is not as strong as it seemed just a week ago. If the army couldn’t stop them, then why should they keep silent now? Moreover, Egyptians today feel pride in themselves. They have protected their neighborhoods, doing what even the army failed to do. This sense of empowerment will not be quashed easily.
Security-wise, the situation is a disaster. It might take months to arrest all the freed criminals again. Moreover, no one has a clue how the weapons that were stolen will ever be collected again, or how security forces can regain respect after having been humiliated and driven away in a mere four hours. More important, reports indicate that the borders in Gaza have been open for the past few days. What exactly was transferred between Gaza and Egypt is anyone’s guess.
You might, after all of this, be asking yourself where El Baradei and the Egyptian opposition factor into all of this. CNN’s anointed leader of the Egyptian Revolution must somehow be an important figure for Egypt’s future. Hardly! Outside Western media hype, El Baradei is nothing. A man who has spent less than thirty days in the past year and hardly any time in the past twenty years in Egypt is a nobody. It is insulting to Egyptians to suggest otherwise.
And what of the opposition? Outside the Muslim Brotherhood, no opposition group can claim more than about 5,000 actual members. With no organization, no ideas, and no leaders, the opposition is entirely irrelevant to the discussion. It is the apolitical-cum-political generation of young Egyptians that is the real enigma in all this.
It’s hard to say where Egypt is going now. In one sense, to be sure, everything will be the same. The army that has ruled Egypt since 1952 will continue to rule it, and the country will still suffer from a huge vacuum of ideas and real political alternatives. On the other hand, nothing will ever be the same again. Once empowered, the Egyptians will not accept the status quo for very long.
In the long run, these riddles are the same ones Egypt has been dealing with for a long time now. It is quite remarkable for people to be talking about the prospect for a democratic transition at this moment. A population that was convinced just two months ago that sharks in the Red Sea were implanted by the Israeli Intelligence Services is hardly ready to create a liberal democracy. Nevertheless, the status quo cannot be maintained, and the lack of any meaningful political discourse in the country is a problem that must now be addressed. Until someone actually starts addressing the real issues and stops the chatterbox of clichés on democracy, things will only get worse.