Egypt: the revolt continues

Clashes between protesters and police on January 25th. Photo: Sarah CarrViolent
clashes are continuing in different parts of the country, particularly
Suez where anti-government demonstrators set fire to the local
headquarters of the ruling NDP party and continue to clash with security
forces. There have been some reports of workers joining in. There was a
protest in front of a metro station in Helwan, south of Cairo, in which
workers from Helwan factories and others participated. The Helwan
workers have organised strikes in defence of health and safety in the
last period, and some are now being tried by military tribunals.

All three protesters killed in demonstrations to date were in Suez,
where the movement appears to have gone furthest. There are reports of
other demonstrations in Ismailia and Alexandria, yesterday and today.
Around 600 protesters clashed with police in demonstrations across the
Egyptian eastern city of Ismailia today, witnesses said. They said the
police dispersed the crowds using tear gas.

The reports from Twitter, despite their incomplete and fragmentary
character, give the definite impression of a developing national
uprising. The president who has not been seen in public since the
movement broke out on Tuesday, has placed four armoured divisions on
emergency standby and cancelled all leaves – two on operational
preparedness outside Cairo and two near the towns on the banks of the
Suez Canal. Officers and men on furlough were ordered back to their
bases.

Mubarak is clearly desperate. After initial vacillation, he has
decided to cling to power and lean on the army to crush the rebellion.
The situation in the Army is contradictory. Security forces have made
some 2,500 arrests of opposition activists so far. But all this has
failed to quell the unrest.

Police on January 25th. Photo: M. SoliThe
appeal to force has come too late. On the streets the demonstrators
have learned their collective strength. The police have failed to stem
the advancing tide. The army’s reliability is increasingly in doubt. In
Suez it is reported that the soldiers are refusing to repress the
people. The growing desperation of the regime is shown by the treatment
of journalists, some 500 of whom are locked in the building of the press
association in the capital, including many foreign correspondents.
Security officers burst into the building, collected the journalists in
the lower floors of the building and prevented them from covering
events, reporting or taking photos.

The situation in Suez

In Suez city the situation is particularly explosive. On Wednesday night, debkafile reported:

“The level of anti-government protest and violence escalated in the
streets of Egyptian cities Wednesday night, Jan. 26th even after President
Hosni Mubarak ordered a million security officers to back up the police
and for the first time open fire on rioters in the town of Suez,
leaving scores of dead and wounded. Western sources told debkafile that
security forces lost control of the situation in the main Suez Canal
port after protesters managed to break through a line of police
defending the suburb housing government institutions and set them on
fire.”

The same report states that the demonstrators torched police
headquarters and the regional premises of Mubarak’s ruling NDP. A report
on Twitter adds:

"Large protests in Mahalla now. Suez is boiling. Our people say it is
no longer protests, it is a typical war zone between bare-handed
protesters and armed police. They will get tired soon. Protesters come
and go but police can’t. I think and hope that it is happening."

Illustration: LatuffA
Reuters witness said police fled the post that was burned on Thursday
when the protesters hurled petrol bombs over the killing of protesters
in anti-government demonstrations earlier in the week. On Wednesday they
had set a government building and another police post on fire, as well
as trying to burn down a local office of Egypt’s ruling party. The fires
were put out before they engulfed the buildings. But dozens more
protesters gathered in front of the second police post later on Thursday
morning demanding the release of their relatives who were detained in
protests.

Most important of all, there have been reports that some army units
in Suez refused to support the police to confront the demonstrators and
did not intervene until now. According to reports the police were forced
to withdraws from Suez city, which was said to be "burning, but in
hands of the protesters". Again: "Protests have renewed in Ismailliyya
as well (another city along the Suez Canal), to take the pressure off
protesters in Suez."

Obama’s dilemma

In Washington all the alarm bells are ringing. The earlier false
optimism has given way to something close to panic. A top US senator
called Egypt "an extremely important ally" on Wednesday but kept silent
on support for President Hosni Mubarak. "All I could say this morning is
that Egypt has been an extremely important ally of ours since Anwar
Sadat, and we’re all watching these developments in Cairo very
carefully," said Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In a further sign of desperation, Mubarak has sent his defence
minister Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi to Washington with an
urgent request for US backing for his embattled regime.  Debkafile’s
Washington sources report that in secret meetings, the Egyptian defence
minister put the situation before President Barack Obama and top US
political, military and intelligence officials.

January 25. Photo: Muhammad_GhafariAccording
to The Independent: “He warned them that by advocating a soft hand with
the demonstrators and responsiveness to their demands, American
officials were doing more harm than good. Without a crackdown, he said,
the regime was doomed.”

Tantawi tried to frighten the Americans by warning that the Muslim
Brotherhood, which initially stood aside from the opposition protests,
was merely biding its time for the right moment to step in and take
over. He asked the Obama administration for an urgent airlift of
advanced riot control equipment.

We do not know what the American response was. Probably he was
greeted with the usual smiles and handshakes and sent away with words of
encouragement. As we know, words are cheap and smiles cost nothing at
all. But behind his back his hosts must have shaken their heads and
wondered aloud whether it was wise to back an 82-year old man who shows
every sign of falling over. Question: what do you do when you see a man
falling over? Answer: Give him a push!

By dispatching his agent to Washington on the first plane Mubarak was
showing everybody where the real power lies. He was also making a
public confession of his own impotence. These things will not have gone
unnoticed either in the White House or on the streets of Cairo and Suez.
This also places Washington in a very awkward position. They do not
want their faithful stooge to be overthrown. But if they are seen to
openly come to his assistance, it will add fuel to the fires of
disaffection burning in cities across Egypt.

The protesters are proud of their Arab and Egyptian identity. Part of
the hatred felt for the Mubarak regime is precisely its slavish
collaboration with imperialism. Any sign that a foreign power is
propping him up will only heighten their resolve to fight the regime to
the death. Slogans of "US out" and "Death to the US" have already begun
to appear on anti-Mubarak placards.

A palace revolution?

Mohamed ElBaradei. Photo: Elijah ZarwanThe
bourgeoisie is increasingly worried. Egypt’s stock exchange halted
trading until 1130 am (0930 GMT) on Thursday after the benchmark index
slid more than 6% for a second day following the protests. The EGX30
index was down 6.2% before the suspension, adding to a 6.1% fall on
Wednesday. By 11.33 GMT today the stock market was down 11% to 5648. The
selling frenzy continued despite the briefly halting of trading to calm
nerves.

Something must be done! But what? Rachid M. Rachid, Mubarak’s
minister of trade had to withdraw from Davos and hurry back to Cairo.
Rachid has been one of the engineers of the so-called “neoliberal”
reforms. These have contributed to the hardship of the masses: high and
rising prices, unemployment and poverty. No good whatever can be
expected from his return. There are also rumours of a Cabinet reshuffle.
But that only means to reshuffle the same old ministers. That will
solve nothing. New faces are needed to calm the situation and soothe the
nerves of the investors!

In the old days, when the author of a play needed a dramatic change
in his plot, he produced a “deus ex machina”, or as we say in English, a
rabbit out of a hat. In the midst of these titanic upheavals, a
modest, neatly dressed gentleman suddenly makes an unannounced
appearance on stage. Resembling an aging university professor, Mohamed
ElBaradei, the former UN nuclear weapons chief is returning to Egypt,
announcing his intention to gracefully place himself at the head of the
democratic opposition.

If it were not so serious, it would be comical. The thousands who
have taken to the streets in the last two days have risked their lives,
while ElBaradei sat comfortably abroad, thinking beautiful thoughts
about democracy. The self-appointed Saviour of the Nation offered only
lukewarm support for the protests before they began. Now there is a
realistic prospect of their succeeding in overthrowing Mubarak, he
suddenly announces his is prepared to play a role.

Not surprisingly, some of the protestors are angry. They suspect –
not without reason – that this gentleman is acting in collaboration with
the US State Department. The Americans are now deeply concerned about
the situation and fear that Mubarak may not last. They need a suitable
replacement, and Mr. ElBaradei fits the bill perfectly. With his
reputation as a dissident rival to President Mubarak, he may get some
support among the respectable middle classes in Egypt, and his ideology
is not at all “extreme”. It is safe, respectable, reliable, liberal. In
other words, it is bourgeois.

ElBaradei has not lost time in appealing to his future electorate.
This is, however, not the people of Egypt, but the important people: the
ones in the White House, Wall Street and the Pentagon. He speaks to
them in terms of endearment, like a would-be lover wooing a shy maiden:

"Of course, you in the West have been sold the idea that the only
options in the Arab world are between authoritarian regimes and Islamic
jihadists. That’s obviously bogus. If we are talking about Egypt, there
is a whole rainbow variety of people who are secular, liberal,
market-oriented, and if you give them a chance they will organize
themselves to elect a government that is modern and moderate. They want
desperately to catch up with the rest of the world."

Al Baradei, then, is a rainbow politician: a man whose views are as
variable and elusive as the colours of the rainbow. To lay hold on these
views is indeed like trying to embrace a rainbow, for they are equally
as insubstantial. But this is just what is required! In order to deceive
the revolutionary masses, to soothe their anger, to pacify them, to
lull them to sleep, what is required is not a clear programme but vague
expression about human rights, freedom and democracy.

Such “democratic speeches” are effective because they are all things
to all men and women. They arouse the hope of improvement in the dim and
distant future without doing anything to change the existing order and
solve the immediate problems of the masses in the here and now. In the
legends of old people imagined there was a pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow. But as everyone knows, to actually arrive at the end of the
rainbow is an impossible task. There is no pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow, and there is absolutely nothing at the bottom of the empty
“democratic” phrase mongering of Al Baradei.

Washington is watching the situation very closely. They will wait to
see whether Mubarak can suppress the movement by force. If he succeeds,
they will continue to back him. If he fails – which is the most likely
outcome – they will conspire with the heads of the Egyptian army and
security forces (who are infiltrated by the CIA) to organize some kind
of palace coup. Mubarak will be put on the next convenient flight to
Saudi Arabia, where he can spend the rest of his days reminiscing with
his Tunisian counterpart about the good old days when they ruled the
roost.

Even now intrigues will be taking place. Plots are being hatched. The
purpose of a palace revolution will be to change the outward
appearances of things so as to leave the fundamentals just as they were
before. However, the situation is not decided by what is being planned
in the corridors of power. The decisive element in the equation is not
the intrigues at the top but what happens on the streets. It was
announced that there will be mass protests after Friday prayers. This
could well represent a vital turning point in the whole situation. The
next few days will be decisive.