Tahrir Square crowds vow 'fight to death' for end of military rule

Egypt's ruling junta has slowly transformed from heroes of uprising to the focus of its wrath

Jack Shenker in Cairo
The Guardian, Monday 21 November 2011


Amid the gloom, the smoke and the deafening chants of thousands around them, the middle-aged couple looked like they had been photoshopped on to the scene. He was wearing a smart jacket, she a dress and a headscarf. They both walked silently forwards across the debris, hand in hand and staring straight ahead. Each was carrying a rock.

The scene was Talaat Harb street, usually one of downtown Cairo's busiest thoroughfares and a shopping mecca for cut-price shoes and clothing, just after darkness fell across the capital on Sunday evening. The store shutters were down and the dying and the injured were propped up against them. Ahead, beyond a wall of teargas, stood the troops of Egypt's once-venerated army, and the new frontline of this country's reawakened revolution.

The ruling junta's slow transformation from heroes of the uprising to the focus of its wrath has taken many months, and left far too many victims in its wake. Some, like outspoken radical Alaa Abd El Fattah or critical blogger Maikel Nabil, are behind bars; the latter's hunger strike is now entering its 90th day. Others, like Mina Daniel – shot from two directions last month as he called for the rights of Egypt's minorities – and police torture victim Essam Atta, now lie cold below the ground.

Throughout those crises a small and dedicated group of activists attempted to galvanise popular resistance, but failed to make much headway with the broader Egyptian population who saw the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) as a necessary pillar of stability in troubled times, despite the processing of 12,000 ordinary civilians through military tribunals – more in 10 months than Mubarak managed in 30 years.

In the end, the tipping point emerged from an unexpected source: a piece of constitutional legalese which would have shielded the army from political oversight for decades to come and given it an effective veto over the writing of a new constitution. The document was pushed by the military to Egypt's often-pliant political elite, which finally balked at the idea of having less power than they imagined in a Scaf-dominated future.

The marches and protests that followed last Friday attracted the largest crowds since Mubarak was toppled, an early indication that concern about the junta and scepticism of their heavily curated vision of democratic transition was beginning to go viral. As usual, the security forces – whose much-promised root-and-branch reform has proved as illusory as their claims of "admirable" self-restraint during the bloodshed this weekend – waited until numbers had dwindled before launching their assault the next morning.

They thought they were battering a rump, but instead the 200 or so demonstrators still camped out in Tahrir proved to be fuel for a fire which is now sweeping the nation.

By Sunday morning, following 24 hours of fierce street fighting and the conquest of Tahrir by revolutionaries, the furniture of the anti-Mubarak uprising was once again wheeled into place in the capital. Civilian checkpoints dotted the square, corrugated iron sheets were torn down for barricades, and the makeshift field hospital – the scraggiest, saddest and often most inspiring cog in the revolution's street battles – was back in action, treating hundreds of youths ferried in by motorbike from the edge of no-man's land, which lay just a couple of blocks away.

"We'll stay here until we die, or military rule dies," said 27-year-old Mahmoud Turg with a matter-of-fact intensity. One side of his face was bandaged because a rubber-coated steel bullet had hit his ear; another had carved a chunk out of his back. "Scaf must leave, because the people have seen through them," added the political researcher. "It has taken a long time, but the mask has slipped."

On the battlefront, order prevailed through the chaos. Scouts and lookouts took to the balconies with their faces wrapped in scarves against the gas; on their instruction waves of protesters surged forward towards the police lines hurling rocks and molotovs, only to be beaten back by a blitz of teargas canisters and a volley of "birdshot" pellet cartridges, almost always aimed at head height. Those staggering blindly towards safety would quickly be supported by those who had stayed behind, with rows of revolutionaries spaced out across the rubble-strewn street handing out tissues and firing short bursts of cooling fluids into burning eyes.

It's a paradox of this year's vast political upheavals across the Arab world that liberation struggles feel simultaneously so local and so global. As the sun began to set, other side streets around Tahrir took on the eerie quality of discarded warzones specked with flashes of ordinary life; two blocks away you could get a shisha – carefully balanced on the paving stones now ripped up and broken in the search for something to throw – while the occasional taxi, having taking a wrong turn, would sail by bewildered.

Except for the thuds and cracks in the air, one could imagine the violence was miles away, yet at the same time it had never felt as intimately close. Activists showed each other Twitter, Facebook and SMS updates from every stretch of the Nile, from Alexandria to Aswan, indicating that all four corners of Egypt were once again in revolt. Others held up teargas cartridges with the name and address of a Pennsylvania company stamped across it; some wondered aloud whether protesters in Cairo and America were being hit by weaponry produced by the same firm.

When the military attack finally came, dissolving once and for all any lingering boundaries in protesters' minds between the army on the one hand and the hated black-clad riot police that symbolised Mubarak's security apparatus on the other, it was brutal and ephemeral. Guns were fired in the air, civilians were beaten on the ground; several soldiers appeared to drag lifeless bodies – unconscious or dead, no one could tell – towards small piles of rubbish by the roadside.

But, just as on 28 January, the turning point of the anti-Mubarak uprising when state brutality mysteriously began to conjure up courage in its victims instead of fear, those scattered by the move simply regrouped, sang at the top of their voices and marched back towards their tormentors. The middle-aged couple were among them. Outnumbered and outfought, the soldiers fled, though not before some had been captured by protesters. Fires blazed in all directions, but Liberation Square – the plaza's name in Arabic – had once again been liberated, although how long for, no one dares predict.

And so, in a year when Egypt's uprising against tyranny helped inspire protests around the world even as it stuttered and stumbled at home, the cycle of change has come full circle and revolution has sprung to life here once again. "People have come down from their homes to join us; they removed the head once, and now they are back again to strike down the body," said Mai Adly, a 25-year-old reporter who was setting up for the night in Tahrir.

"Scaf's crimes are too much," she added. "For the first time in months I think people can see that the remnants of the old regime live on, and we have to finish the job."

Tahrir Square crowds vow 'fight to death' for end of military rule | World news | The Guardian

Egyptian protesters reject military's timetable for elections

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gather in Tahrir Square to demand immediate exit of Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi

Ian Black, Middle East editor, and Jack Shenker in Cairo
The Guardian, Wednesday 23 November 2011


Egypt's revolution has been plunged into fresh uncertainty after hundreds of thousands of angry demonstrators rejected a promise by the country's military council on Tuesday to accelerate the transition to civilian rule.

In an extraordinary display of people power, protesters at a mass rally in Cairo's Tahrir Square demanded the immediate departure of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), just as they had demanded President Hosni Mubarak's humiliating exit in February.

"We are not leaving, he leaves," the crowd chanted.

Tantawi, who served as Mubarak's defence minister for two decades, appeared on state television in full military uniform to announce that a first round of parliamentary elections would go ahead as planned next week and that presidential elections – seen as crucial to real civilian rule – would be brought forward to next summer.

Previously the military had floated late next year or early 2013 as the date for transferring power.

Tantawi said he was accepting the resignation of the civilian caretaker government led by Essam Sharaf, and that he was sorry for the estimated 30 people who had died in the latest unrest.

Egyptian media reported that Sharaf could be replaced as the head of a new government of national salvation by Mohamed ElBaradei, the former chief UN weapons inspector.

Turnout in Tahrir Square was less than the million people that organisers had hoped for, but it was still a massive display of popular will on a scale that was also the hallmark of the uprising in January that ousted Mubarak. Hours before the rally was due to begin makeshift hospitals around the site were struggling to cope with the injured. Medical sources said 500 people were injured in two hours alone – one every five seconds, Al-Ahram Online reported.

"The armed forces, represented by their supreme council, do not aspire to govern and put the supreme interest of the country above all considerations," Tantawi declared.

The military did not "care about who will win" and "it's up to the people to decide who will rule," he said. The army was "completely ready to hand over responsibility immediately", and to return to its original mission to protect the country if the country wanted that, via a popular referendum if need be.

"Some tried to drag us into confrontation," he said. "But we will control ourselves to the maximum. We will never kill a single Egyptian."

As his broadcast ended, chants of "go, go, the people demand the overthrow of the regime," erupted from the crowd in Tahrir Square. Tantawi, like Mubarak in February, appeared to be far behind popular demands.

Not all reaction was negative. The Muslim Brotherhood, likely to emerge as frontrunner in the parliamentary elections, and anxious they take place on schedule, appeared to indicate that it was satisfied with the amended timetable.

But there was a powerful sense that popular pressure had forced the pace.

Earlier, in an electrifying moment, an army officer left his men to join the protesters while an effigy of Tantawi was hanged to cheers.

Huge crowds also gathered for a fourth consecutive day in Alexandria, Egypt's second city, where dense clouds of tear gas and gunfire could also be seen and heard live on television as uniformed police and plainclothes agents were deployed.

Opposition leaders said after talks with Scaf earlier that the military's position was inadequate. "Our demands are clear. We want the military council to step down and hand over authority to a national salvation government with full authority," said Khaled El-Sayed, a member of the Youth Revolution Coalition and a candidate in the parliamentary election.

The commander of the military police and the interior minister, who is in charge of the police, must be tried for the "horrific crimes" of the past few days, he added.

The pace of events caught western governments on the hop, unsure whether to go beyond demands for an end to the violence, to call for the imminent elections to be postponed, or, more ambitiously, for the Scaf to surrender power.

In Washington, the White House and state department condemned the force used in the last few days. "We are deeply concerned about the violence. The violence is deplorable. We call on all sides to exercise restraint," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

In London, the Egyptian crisis was discussed at the National Security Council and in talks between David Cameron and Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

Human Rights Watch urged Egypt's military to immediately order riot police to stop using excessive force against protesters. "This latest crisis is a reminder of everything that has not happened in the past months during Egypt's promised transition," it said. "We have yet to see the military begin reforming the security services or ending the abusive practices and policies of the Mubarak era."

Egypt's health ministry said at least 29 people have died in clashes between the security forces and demonstrators since Saturday. Medical sources counted at least 36 dead and more than 1,250 wounded. Three people died early yesterday in the Red Sea port city of Ismailia.

Egyptian protesters reject military's timetable for elections | World news | The Guardian