Author: Occupied Cairo

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Communiqués

“We’re Not Leaving Until Mubarak Leaves”

Kara N. Tina


The Battle for Lazoughli Square ??????? ????? ??? ????? ????????

This interview with Egyptian revolutionary socialist journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy was conducted on Saturday, February 5th at 8pm (Egyptian time). Due to time limitations we were only able to address half of the questions we had prepared. Below el-Hamalawy comments on the current decisive moment faced by those on the streets of Egypt, working-class participation and action, and the role of the army amongst other topics.

The situation in Egypt is developing incredibly fast, can you describe what’s happening in the streets right now?

As i am talking to you there are more than 15,000 demonstrators in Tahrir square who are still occupying it. Earlier in the day the army came to evict the protestors by trying to destroy the barricades they set up near the Egyptian Museum and although the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in the square Dr. Beltagui had ordered and called upon everybody via the microphone to not resist the army, people shouted back at him including the base cadres of the Al-Ikhw?n [Muslim Brotherhood] who were there. People ran and lay in front of the tanks in order to stop them which they managed to do. Later the army sent the commander of the central region, which is basically Cairo and the surrounding areas, along with three generals, to convince the protesters to leave but they shouted back at him saying “We’re not leaving until Mubarak leaves.”

It’s raining in Cairo now, it’s very cold but the protestors are holding out and more from the other provinces, specifically from Suez, have descended on Cairo to join the occupation today. In the meantime the government is continuing with its witch-hunt and demonization campaign against the protestors, blaming them for whatever malaise the country is going through at the moment which is actually the fault of the government and not the protestors.  This follows twelve days of continuous protests starting on the 25th of January. The 25th of January is National Police Day here in Egypt and that’s when the protests actually started. The Egyptian government wanted to basically liberate the Liberation Square, Tahrir Square, from the protestors today. And they started that in the morning but they have failed. It has been announced that tomorrow the government will resume work and they have called on all civil servants to attend to their jobs and to go to their factories. They wanted to smash the occupation of Tahrir today. But as I’m talking to you that occupation continues.

What are some of the hurdles the protest movement is facing, are there divisions emerging while trying to find common ground?

Yesterday the square was completely packed with more than one million protestors and Alexandria witnessed similar protests as well as the other provinces. But there are definitely big problems that the protest movement is now facing. Which way is the way forward? Today it has been announced that Gamal Mubarak and Safwat El-Sherif, who is one of the most hated figures and was the secretary general of the National Democratic Party, will be removed from their positions and one of Gamal Mubarak’s associates, Dr. Hossam Badrawi was to take the secretary general position instead. There was also news that appeared on Al Arabiya, BBC and Al Jazeera  that Hosni Mubarak had resigned as the president of the NDP, but of course not from his post as President. But now there is confusion because these reports have been denied, then confirmed again and then denied, so we are waiting to see.

It is true that virtually all the opposition groups, whether they are the traditional political parties or the youth groups, have taken part in the uprising but the protests still remain spontaneous. Which means on the one hand, the people always surprise you by their militancy from below that exceeds all expectation, but on the other hand, there is always confusion about what is the way forward and what the clear alternative is. This could pose the threat of this revolution being hijacked. At the moment we have many people claiming to represent the downtown occupation and some of them are even engaged in negations with the government. Some groups say they will not negotiate until Mubarak goes, some think that if Mubarak goes we can negotiate with Omar Suleiman [vice president appointed by Mubarak on January 29th, ex-director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Services and the CIA’s go-to-guy on rendition], others say both Mubarak and Omar Suleiman have to go.

Is there momentum towards protestors taking over the means of production and other institutions of Egyptian society?

On the ground, organizing mechanisms are evolving slowly. Protestors have set up security committees to watch the exits and entrances to the square and to defend it from attacks by Mubarak’s thugs. There are makeshift hospitals that have also been erected in the square to treat the injured form the clashes with the thugs.

Discussions continue in circles that the protestors have put together in order to try to reach some unified demands and people take the platform where there is a mic and address the protestors. Whatever resolutions that the people like they cheer and whatever they don’t like they boo. The uprising up until now contained elements from all Egyptian society, whether it is the urban poor, the working class, and even sons and daughters of the Egyptian elite could be seen in the protest. But as the revolution continues, some polarization has started to happen naturally. Between those who are tired, meaning the middle class and the upper middle class who are saying that we should stop now and try to reach some compromise with the government, and those who basically have nothing to loose and who have sacrificed a lot, like the urban poor and the working class.

The intervention of the working class in the movement is also another question mark, because definitely in some of the provinces where mass protests were organized they contained a majority of workers. But we still haven’t seen an independent movement by those workers. Except in very few cases. For example I received a report about a textile mill owned by a company called  Ghazl Meit Ghamr in Daqahliya, which is a province in the Nile Delta. The workers there have kicked out the CEO, they have occupied the factory and are self-managing it. This type of action has also been repeated in a printing house south of Cairo called Dar El-Ta’awon. There as well the workers have kicked out the CEO and are self managing the company. There are two other cases in Suez, where the clashes were the worst with the security forces during the uprising. The death toll is very high in Suez, we don’t actually know the real death toll until now. In two factories there, the Suez Steel Mill and the Suez Fertilizer Factory, workers have declared an open-ended strike until the regime falls. Other than that we have not seen, at least to my knowledge, independent working class action.

The last thing i would like to note is that the so-called popular committees have been springing up in the neighborhoods here in Cairo and in the provinces. This happened following the collapse of our police force and their cowardly withdrawal in front of the people last Friday [January 28th]. The government started whipping up the security paranoia amongst the citizens in addition to sending plainclothes thugs who were affiliated with the security services, just as it happened in Tunisia, to attack public and private property and fire shots in the air. Citizens immediately stepped in and started forming these popular committees to protect their neighborhoods. They have set up checkpoints, they are armed with knives, swords, machetes and sticks and they are inspecting cars that are coming in and out. In some areas, such as the province of Sharqiya, the popular committees are more or less completely running the town, organizing the traffic etc. But in many cases they also work in coordination with the army.

The army has played an important role in the uprising in Egypt, even receiving support from the US. Can you explain the role of the army amidst the protests?

Our army as you probably know is the biggest army in the Arab world. It receives 1.3 billion dollars from the USA every year. The military institution has always been the ruling institution we have in Egypt, even if our President hasn’t put on the military uniform since 1952. Their intervention by descending on to the streets on the night of Friday, the 28th of January, was based upon the order from the chief of the army, who at the end of the day is Hosni Mubarak. When the army first appeared in the streets they were positively welcomed by the people since the police is hated much more than the army here in Egypt. One reason is that the army does not have much contact with the civilians on a daily basis, unlike the police of course. Since people were sick of the police and paranoid of the security situation they initially welcomed the army to the neighborhoods and also to the entrances and exits of Tahrir Square. However we all know that, number one, the army can’t be trusted and number two, that when you hear Obama and the US administration coming out strongly in favor of a power transition supervised by the Egyptian military you understand what their role is in keeping Egypt stable. Specifically making sure there isn’t a radical regime that could threaten the security of Israel, the security of the Suez Canal and the continuous flow of oil.

The US administration itself has probably made a fool of themselves for the zillionth time owing to their position vis-a-vis the Egyptian revolution. Initially when the protests started HIllary Clinton immediately announced that they were not worried whatsoever and that the Mubarak regime was stable. And Joe Biden went on air and refused to label Mubarak as a dictator. Why? Because Mubarak is a friend of United States and a friend of Israel. This shows you the hypocrisy of the Americans when it comes to their barometer of who is a democrat and who is not. And now when they have finally reached the conclusion that Hosni Mubarak was to be overthrown, they are working day and night in order to secure his removal as smoothly as possible.

Cross-national inspiration was crucial for the wave of uprisings that we are witnessing, has there been the emergence of networks of coordination across Arab nations that are continuing and can pose as a viable alternative to the political landscape we see today?

The domino effect was definitely evident after the uprising in Tunisia. When Ben Ali was overthrown this was very much positively received by Egyptians who could draw parallels between the Tunisian situation and the Egyptian situation. There were also several protests that had already broken out in solidarity with Tunisia. The main slogan chanted in Tahrir Square and around the country is “El-Sha’ab yourid isqat el-Nizam” . This was the same slogan chanted by the Tunisians, “The people want the government to fall.” It is true that in the days leading unto the uprising there was much discussions over the internet and Tunisian activists were transferring some of their experiences when it comes to confronting the police, such as activist kits you should have with you when you are facing the police. But we don’t have any concrete mechanisms for coordination yet. All we get are tweets and emails saying “solidarity”, “we like what you are doing”, “you are a source of inspiration” etc. But i’m afraid that there aren’t any governing or coordinating mechanisms between these two movements yet. How will this develop in the future no one knows but I am personally hoping that this will be the start of something bigger. Because already the domino effect is spreading. You’ve seen Yemen. They have had mass protests against their dictator, who had to come out promising not to run again in elections and not to groom his son for succession. There were similar protests in Jordan and the King was quick to intervene and dissolve the cabinet and bring in a new one. There was already a mini-uprising in Algeria even before Egypt, which was put down brutally by the usual force of the Algerian state. But they have also had to make concessions , they removed the emergency law and they lowered the prices of basic commodities. It is still to early to judge, the uprising here is only 12 days old, in Tunisia it took one month. We’ll see how it goes.

Hossam el-Hamalawy’s photography from the streets:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elhamalawy/sets/72157625821089247/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elhamalawy/sets/72157625947671262/

His Blog:
http://www.arabawy.org/blog/

His Twitter:
http://twitter.com/3arabawy

source: “We’re Not Leaving Until Mubarak Leaves” | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=300

Categories
Communiqués

Denying evil genius

The Arabist wrote a pretty good analysis today about the continuing NDP shuffle. I was initially taken in by the idea of the evil genius of the ruling party, but to think that this is some long-term “slow coup” overestimates not only the cognitive but also the predictive powers of those would-be conspirators. Besides the fact that I don’t believe anyone in the NDP could keep a plan like this together and secret for long enough, there are too many moving parts that could not have been predicted. The key trigger that led us to this point was a coup in itself, namely the ability of protesters to assemble sufficient numbers to capture, hold and defeat the security forces. Also, I think we have to consider that just because events might spin such that they work well for the NDP or the US government even (mother of all conspiracies) doesn’t mean they planned it. They don’t deserve the credit unless we or they can prove they earned it.

Now, I can see this as a “short coup” maybe, or a “slowish coup” where the pieces were already in order (e.g. Suleiman’s been floated for a while as a front-runner, particularly as Gamal has grown increasingly loathsome to the citizenry) and when the events of the past days took place this plan came together. Political musical chairs is after all an old game, so we only have to see this as pulling out a few extra seats once the music stopped abruptly last week. Nobody expects such a change of the rules, but they might infer pretty quickly that they still want to have their butt on a chair as quick as possible.

Of course, on the other hand, this isn’t over yet. The protesters, while they may spend most of their time chanting that the people want the fall of the president or the “nizam” (a term which could have a lot of depth to it itself), have almost to the last person a significant and relatively consistent set of structural demands (e.g. constitutional reform, end to the emergency laws, new elections). Also, the mood within Tahrir hasn’t been favorable towards Suleiman or other members of the “new” government. Some of this may perhaps be a bit of optimism – who knows when people finally will decide they’ve gotten enough – but at the same time it’s been an articulated position amongst people.

Ultimately, while I think the Arabist is largely right about this sequence of events and how it plays into the NDP’s hand, there is not only a difficulty but also a danger in reading into the intentions of political actors, giving them credit at times where they may have just found a lucky break, but also it may partially blind us to the on-ground effects of events or, worse yet, continue a habit of thinking that if we only remove the bad seeds then things are all going to come up roses.

As I’m writing this, another NDP resignation from Mostafa el Fikki. So maybe they’re just crumbling and we’ve overestimated their cleverness even more so. Granted that’s still not yet a real concession, but it doesn’t seem that these are the actions of a functioning political party. The battle is far from won, but it seems that the main threats aren’t coming from the party but other state institutions.

source: Denying evil genius | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=282

Categories
Communiqués

The Henchman

A strange peculiarity about the Egyptian regime is its insistence on attempting to retain a veneer of legitimacy – even after 30 years of flagrantly falsified elections, torture, corruption and, most recently, an ill-advised Internet blackout that succeeded in making Egypt a trending topic on the instant messaging service.

It’s a habit they clearly find difficult to shake off. We woke up today to the news that thousands of “pro-Mubarak supporters” had gathered in the Mostafa Mahmoud Square, Cairo (incidentally the scene of the 2005 massacre of over 30 protesting Sudanese refugees by security bodies). I arrived at Tahrir Square around 3 p.m. The atmosphere in the area around the central grassy area was peaceful and positive, as it had been on Tuesday when tens of thousands congregated.

Down the road however in Abdel Meneim Reyad Square, next to the Cairo Museum, just beyond a couple of tanks stood a dense crowd of people, clearly separated from the Tahrir protestors. I stood on top of a building and watched as suddenly the “pro-Mubarak protestors” burst through the tanks and towards Tahrir Square. There was something incredibly unsettling about this assault, conducted as it was on camels, and on the short-tailed skinny horses tourists ride around the pyramids. The brutality of it all, as the terrified animals mowed down protestors and their riders hit out with their whips at anyone who crossed their path and people were crushed underfoot.

The use of hired thugs is classic Mubarak. The regime’s relationship with its people has always depended on intimidation and violence, which proved problematic with the wave of demonstrations and labour protests that have been a growing phenomenon since 2003. In 2005 elections young men were paid to sexually assault female protestors. Last year during the trial of two policemen accused of involvement in the death of Khaled Said a rowdy group of teenagers stood outside the courtroom and accused anti-torture protestors of being Israeli spies, before launching missiles at them. During the elections boys in matching t-shirts danced in front of polling stations while burly colleagues intimated voters on behalf of National Democratic Party candidates.

The idea is that these groups of men – who receive a modest daily stipend for their services – can execute the orders of the regime without their actions being directly attributable to them. In the current scenario we are meant to believe that after four days of absolute silence peaceful pro-Mubarak protestors so irrevocably moved by the president’s speech and promise not to stand for another term decided to organise mass counter protests. And attend these protests on camels and horses. And launch rocks and Molotov cocktails at camping Tahrir protestors whose only act of physical aggression has been against litter in the camp.

Purely coincidentally, the Internet was turned back on in Egypt on the day these millions of Mubarak “loyalists” decided to take to the streets, so the whole world can see the love and respect he commands.

They are a sad, troubled knot of poverty, miseducation and anger, these hired fists, some of them reportedly recruited today for LE 50 (according to activists speaking to thugs detained by anti-government protestors).

More than anything they are a reminder why, no matter what the cost to protestors and to Egyptians struggling to accept the interruption to daily life, the Tahrir occupation must continue. An NDP promise cannot be trusted, and if every last bit of the NDP is not removed Egypt will never heal.

Mubarak’s regime is a cancer that has metastasized and spread to every part of Egyptian society. It has stripped the act of earning a living of its nobility and cheapened the currency of dreams. On our way home we talked to a taxi driver who expressed support for Mubarak. We asked him how exactly he had benefited from Mubarak’s rule and he said “stability”- not opened up new horizons for his children, not given him the opportunity to consider a life of doing something other than taxi-driving. Mubarak has simply ensured that Egypt does not enter into conflict while declaring a war of never-ending grinding attrition on his own people.

Originally published on www.inanities.org

source: The Henchman | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=271

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Communiqués

The nomenclature of a protest

There’s now a lot of coverage (too much, too late) on the protests in Cairo and the subsequent ‘pretexts’ by state lackeys dressed up as pro-Mubarak supporters. Despite the general sentiment towards the protesters, however, there’s a problem of language that disguises the actual mechanisms of what’s happening on the ground. Particularly in the symmetrical usage of the term ‘violence’ to describe actions by both protesters and thugs. Doing this seems to level the playing field in a false and dangerous way, giving the impression of trading blows between pitched armies or perhaps even two groups equally culpable for their actions. Even the presumption that the same actions, throwing stones for instance, bear the same meaning when done by thugs as protesters seems intolerable in the face of the aggression, hostility and aura of death that the pro-Mubarak lackeys brought onto the camp on Wednesday.

The word ‘clashes’ is similarly abhorrent in the face of the siege raised against protestors and their attempts to barricade the very space they have peacefully occupied. This brings up another point about symmetry of rights, as one particularly apathetic army officer was overheard to say “why should i stop [the pro-Mubarak crowd], what gives you any greater right to be in this square than them?”.

To describe the attacks on protesters as clashes presumes some sort of ineffable, sectarian sort of sporadic violence, skirmishes on an already named front. What we saw today was a peaceful protest being borne down on by horses and camels, then later thousands of thugs armed with white weapons, rocks, Molotov cocktails and guns. Moreover the thugs had a plan, they came at the square like it was a castle or hilltop to be besieged and overtaken, amassing at all sides of the square and waging simultaneous assaults on people who had been, this whole time, checking their own to ensure there were no weapons in the camp. To describe these military tactics (and paramilitary weaponry) with the same words as the protesters’ attempts to resist the state’s violence shows either ignorance or callousness, or both.

As this continues, one is heartened by the sympathies of the international media towards the Egyptian people standing against the mess that government tactics have thrown them into. Nonetheless, it should be considered imperative that we be watchful of the languages used to describe these events, and ensure that our vocabulary suits our politics.

source: The nomenclature of a protest | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=261

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Communiqués

The Problem of the Baltagayyah

The most recent story in this lamentable chain of media reports is that of “protestors” in Alexandria turning on one another — internecine  violence tainting otherwise peaceful, festive demonstrations of the Egyptian people. This story is, of course, patently untrue. To see the enormity of this falsehood and the many others like it (e.g. “protests turn to looting”) one truly has to understand the reach and extent of the Egyptian security services, particularly the notorious Baltagayyah. Loosely translated to “thugs”, Blatagayyah are more than just your run of the mill voyous. The word has a special relevance for just about everyone in Egypt: that of the paid paramilitaries of the Egyptian state. There are a lot of these fuckers, and they are the prime agents provocateurs of the Egyptian state. Conspiratorial stories of security services actually perpetrating looting, attacking peaceful protestors, or destroying property, too often turn out to be true. Many have been apprehended by ordinary citizens who have discovered state security IDs on them (they appear to have been ordered to carry such IDs in case they are stopped by the army).

Let’s get this straight, this is not the worry about a few bad seeds on the murky fringes of the para-state. The Mubarak regime has maintained a concerted policy of introducing plainclothes thugs into protest situations, sometimes armed with weapons, but always with the impunity to violently quash even the slightest dissent (and the presence of these baltagayyah is inevitably in addition to the obscene amount of uniformed security officers the government will usually deploy to any demonstration, no matter how small).  It’s not always certain whether these thugs are full time employees of the regime or simply bored individuals with a penchant for violence and a hankering for a few extra bucks and a chicken sandwich in exchange for a day’s work of beating the hell out of some demonstrators. What is certain is that rarely does any political protest or demonstration go down in Cairo without a healthy dose of baltagayyah violence.

As far as the current protests in Egypt are concerned, we’ve seen them setting fire to cars, destroying small businesses, terrorizing protestors and ordinary citizens alike and looting neighborhoods. All this while disguised as “ordinary Egyptians.” This has been enough to confuse and distort much of the international reporting of protest events. What must be understood is that the baltagayyah are sowing fear and violence to deliberately frighten and terrorize ordinary people. They work by making Egyptians and the outside world question who is perpetrating this violence, but this gruesome charade must be known and publicized because the only result of such fear and doubt is further violence against demonstrators.

source: The Problem of the Baltagayyah | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=251