Young men helps put up a banner on a building while hundreds of thousands of protestors take part
during anti Mubarak protests in Tahrir Square.
Dominic NahrMagnum for TIME
You think you know what Arab rage looks like: wild-eyed young men shouting bellicose verses from the
Koran as they hurl themselves against authority, armed with anything from rocks to bomb vests. So who
were these impostors gathered in Cairo's Tahrir (Liberation) Square to call for the resignation of
President Hosni Mubarak? They were smiling and laughing, waving witty banners, organizing
spontaneous soccer tournaments and thrusting cigarettes and flowers into the hands of Mubarak's
soldiers. They may have turned U.S. policy in the Middle East on its head, but even the American
President was moved to praise the people who humbled a staunch Washington ally. Those "who believe
in the inevitability of human freedom," Obama said, would be inspired by "the passion and the dignity that
has been demonstrated by the people of Egypt."
Those qualities helped undermine one of the Middle East's most durable dictatorships, as well as any
number of stereotypes associated with the Arab street. The careful civility energized many thousands of
Egyptians who had never marched in protest in their lives to take their families to the city center to assert
their claims to freedom. It even seemed to embolden the American President, who like his predecessors
has celebrated the prospect of Arab democracy while supporting the dictators who suppress it. Speaking shortly after Mubarak's offer to step down ahead of general elections in the fall, Obama cited the maturity
and civic-mindedness of the protesters as reasons for hope that Egypt would deal successfully with
difficult questions in the weeks to come.
But the protests brought other scenes, more familiar and more ominous. Power abhors a vacuum, and on
Feb. 2, when armed pro-Mubarak forces — as faithful to the stereotype as to the President — confronted
the protesters with rocks and machetes and Molotov cocktails, it reminded the watching world that
historic change seldom comes gently: this is no velvet revolution. The rearguard action by Mubarak's
thugs felt very much like the final spasms of a dictatorship that won't go quietly. Provoked by the brutal
counterattack, the protesters abandoned their peaceful posture and fought back. The square became a
battleground between pro- and anti-Mubarak groups, with the military unable or unwilling to intervene.
The battles may continue, but it seems clear that the revolution is won: that Mubarak will go is no longer
in doubt. And that's because hundreds of thousands of people across Egypt joined an uprising that in its
first exhilarating week felt like none other in the history of the Middle East. So who were the people who
pulled it off? Here's a guide:
The Organizers
Most Egyptians who joined anti-Mubarak demonstrations in the week leading up to the Feb. 1 "march of
millions" in Tahrir Square say their participation was spontaneous. Many had never attended a political
rally before Jan. 25, the first day of protests. But the date and location of that demonstration were hardly
impromptu. The event had been planned weeks in advance by a loose coalition of activists who used
social-media sites to commemorate Khaled Said, a young Egyptian allegedly beaten to death by police
last summer. The cause was joined by some political groups, including the April 6 Youth Movement,
named after an industrial strike in 2008, and the Ghad (Tomorrow) Party of former presidential candidate
Ayman Nour.
Shadi Taha, 32, a Ghad Party member, says he and fellow organizers chose the date for a reason: Jan.
25 was Police Day, perfect for drawing attention to atrocities committed by a police force renowned for its
brutality. A protest at Tahrir Square, the site of past demonstrations like the bread riots in the late 1970s,
would be a good way to gain attention from the news media. In the early planning, Taha and his fellow
activists envisioned a gathering of about 200 protesters. Then, two weeks before the demonstration,
Egyptians, like Arabs everywhere, were mesmerized by the popular uprising in Tunisia. They watched
the Jasmine Revolution unfold on satellite TV and saw Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's ruler of more
than two decades, flee. "That gave us hope that this might happen in Egypt as well," says Taha.
Galvanized, the activists started going door to door, passing out flyers about the Jan. 25 protest. They put
up Facebook pages and posted on Twitter. Nour spoke out against the regime in a YouTube video.
Others exhausted their thumbs sending out text messages. "Tell your friends," the messages read. "Look
at what is happening in Tunisia. This is how people change their country." They even dialed random
numbers in the hope that the exhortations to demonstrate would fall on sympathetic ears.
For all that effort, Taha says that in his wildest dreams, he would not have expected to see 5,000 people
in Tahrir Square on Jan. 25. He counted more than 10,000. The turnout also caught the Mubarak regime
by surprise: police were unable to prevent the crowd from gathering and had to fire tear gas to get it to disperse. By Egyptian standards, the demonstration was a huge success, and it inspired other people to
join. "When the older people saw the younger people go out in the street, they started to come out too,"
says Amer Ali, a lead organizer in April 6. Spontaneous demonstrations began to break out elsewhere.
But Egyptians, long cowed by the heavy hand of Mubarak's police and intelligence forces, needed a
crash course in protest. Activists used websites and text messages to pass around how-tos, some
borrowed from Tunisian bloggers: Coca-Cola, they said, was good for washing tear gas from one's eyes.
The pro-opposition Al-Masry al-Youm newspaper published tips on staying safe in a demonstration: wear
comfortable clothes, tie long hair into a bun, bring water. And this: "Be careful whom you're talking to
[because] some 'protesters' may be plainclothes police and may arrest you."
The Protesters
The advice was aimed at people like Ahmed Shahawi. The unemployed engineer had been drawn to the
Jan. 25 demonstration, and he urged his 122 Facebook friends to join him. It was his first taste of political
protest — and of tear gas. Afterward, he updated his status: "I'm safe, guys. I'm going back to the Square
tomorrow." He was hooked.
Shahawi's Facebook alias is Nicholas Urfe, from the character in John Fowles' The Magus who thought
he knew everything but didn't. For Shahawi, the Tunisian revolution was an education. Egyptians his age,
born right around the time Mubarak became President, have never known any other leader and never
believed change was possible, he says. "Tunisians gave us a live example that, yes, you can change the
system, and they gave us the courage to do it."
When the government blocked the Internet on Jan. 27, Shahawi needed to find another way to
communicate with people who felt the way he did. "I got in my brother's car and said, 'Quick, let's go
downtown.'" In retrospect, he believes the government's decision to shut down the Internet backfired.
"When you block the Internet, you are asking people to come on the streets," he says, "and anything can
happen."
Forced to abandon his virtual world for the real thing, Shahawi found himself drawn into a new community.
On Feb. 1, the day of the million-person march, he and 50 other men hauled bags of trash from the city
center and piled them into a makeshift dump they'd created. Shahawi said the demonstrations had
fostered a sense of unity among people and a stronger civic sense. "This is the first time we see all the
Egyptian people all together like this," he said.
That sense of purpose was also apparent in neighborhoods far from the square, where people were left
to fend for themselves after police withdrew following the initial protests. Residents formed spontaneous
watch groups to guard homes and shops against looters. After vandals broke into the Egyptian Museum,
volunteer guards joined forces with the military to make sure they didn't return.
Grownup Rebels
If Egypt's rebels behaved like responsible grownups, it's because so many of them actually are.
Thirty-somethings like Taha and Shahawi, rather than hotheaded university students, have organized
and led the protests. The government employs a network of informants on campus to ensure that students stay apolitical, so it's usually after their university years, when graduates have endured long
unemployment — and its cultural consequence, the inability to marry — that some drift into politics.
The revolution also benefited from a cadre of political activists who had learned the ropes from
campaigning ahead of parliamentary elections late last year. When the vote was blatantly manipulated to
give Mubarak's National Democratic Party over 80% of the seats in the People's Assembly, it left
opposition activists bitter — and united in their desire for revenge.
That unity helped opposition groups coalesce briefly around Mohamed ElBaradei, the 2005 Nobel Peace
Prize winner and former head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog group. For Western observers, this allayed
concerns that Mubarak's exit would leave Egypt in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamist
group, which rarely goes along with secular parties, hung back and let them take the lead. The
Brotherhood seems to have made the shrewd calculation that the revolution would attract more
participants if it wasn't overtly religious. Abdel Mineem Abu al-Fotouh, a member of the Brotherhood's
powerful political bureau, told Time it would not seek power. "[We] will not have a candidate after
Mubarak, and we don't want to replace the regime. This is not our agenda," he said. The Islamists' goal,
at least for the moment, is to cultivate a moderate, democratic image in the eyes of fellow Egyptians as
much as with the West. That's another Arab stereotype turned upside down.
By the end of Feb. 2, the thinning crowds of protesters in Tahrir Square were sullen and somber, a far cry
from the ebullience of the previous day. There was no more talk of soccer matches, no praise for the
military's studied neutrality. But one emotion did survive the bloody denouement: a determination to keep
the revolution alive until the despot was gone. "He can't kill us all," said Mostafa Higazy, an engineering
professor. "This is an uprising for the freedom and dignity and justice that he took away from us." The
revolution, said many in the square, had brought them within a whisker of victory. This was no time to
quit.
— With reporting by Abigail Hauslohner, Rania Abouzeid and Vivienne Walt / Cairo and Aryn Baker /
Beirut |
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