Many thanks to Dan for allowing me to guest blog about my research in Egypt this past summer. I conclude my time on Prawfs by highlighting some aspects of the Egyptian revolution that got little coverage in the United States.
The leaders and the participants in the Egyptian revolution whom I interviewed attribute the revolution’s success to the fact that no single group was behind the protests. Rather, Egyptians from all facets of the society—women and men, Muslims and Christians, secularists and Islamists—all joined hands in the aptly named al-Tahrir, or Liberation, Square in a call for freedom and democracy. The Mubarak regime thus had no single group it could target to nip the protests in the bud before they became uncontainable.
As the protestors grew in number and fervor, the Mubarak regime called in the much-reviled black-clad riot police, notorious for their brutal repression tactics. First came the tear gas.
That had little effect on the determined protestors, who had learned from their Tunisian counterparts via Facebook that masks and vinegar would mollify its adverse effects. Tear gas turned into rubber bullets, and rubber bullets into real ones. Eventually, the riot police entered al-Tahrir square on camelback and opened fire on the protestors. The bullets from the ground were accompanied by sniper fire from nearby buildings.
The images of the riot police shooting on the protestors, broadcast on Al Jazeera, enraged the Egyptian public. For those who decided to stay home, passive observance was no longer an option. Things could not get any worse. Contrary to the Mubarak regime’s expectations, the bullets fired upon the protestors fueled, not suppressed, the protests. Hundreds of thousands poured onto the streets despite—and indeed because of—the violence the riot police unleashed upon the protestors.
The Egyptian military also played a decisive role in the protests. Unable to confront the hundreds of thousands gathered in al-Tahrir, the Mubarak regime called on the military to intervene. But, as many of the protestors expected, the military did nothing to quash the protests and refused to fire upon the protestors, staying true to its stellar reputation in Egypt. The military has developed that reputation in part because of national conscription for all men and because the government ordinarily does not use the military to police the population. As one of the leaders of the protests explained to me, the soldiers in al-Tahrir were well aware that their friends and relatives were amongst the protestors and would not open fire upon the crowd. In fact, the protestors appeared to confide in the military’s presence, rushing in celebration towards the first military tank that rolled into al-Tahrir Square.
By refusing to fire on the protestors, the military deprived Mubarak of the power that his counterparts in Libya and Syria wielded on their own people to suppress the protests. The same soldiers thereafter staged a coup d’état to transition the nation to a democracy when Mubarak showed no signs of relenting. In the words of a popular chant in al-Tahrir, the people and the army were one hand. The Egyptian military joined the Turkish military from 1960 and the Portuguese military from 1974 in staging what I have called a “democratic coup d’état.”
The future of Egypt, and the other nations of the Arab Spring, remains uncertain. Regardless of the outcome, the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, and beyond deserve enormous credit for standing up to their oppressors in the face of repressive and fatal tactics. And at least for the time being, there is hope for democracy in the Arab world.
Posted by Ozan Varol on September 8, 2011 at 03:42 PM