A People's History of the Egyptian Revolution 
Rami El-Amine and Mostafa Henaway
The Bullet
Socialist Project * E-Bulletin No. 525 July 11, 2011

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/525.php#continue

No matter how it unfolds, the Egyptian revolution will
go down in the history books as a defining moment in
the 21st century. Millions of Egyptians brought down
one of the world's most repressive regimes, that of the
U.S.-backed Hosni Mubarak, in just 18 days. Their
bravery, perseverance, and tactfulness in the face of
the regime's brutal crackdown not only triggered
uprisings across the Arab world but inspired and
influenced protests against government austerity in the
U.S., Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Despite the fact
that it is only a few months old, it's important to
begin piecing together a people's history of the
revolution to convey what happened and how it happened
so that the lessons from this critical struggle can be
disseminated.

The starting point for understanding the revolution is
the special role that Egypt played in supporting U.S.
domination and control of the region, vis-a-vis its
relationship with Israel. Egypt began establishing ties
with Israel under Anwar Sadat in the mid 1970s, and in
1979 the two countries signed the Camp David Accords
with Jimmy Carter's support. As a result, Egypt was
rewarded with billions in U.S. military aid, making it
the largest recipient after Israel. It's no coincidence
that this is when Sadat began eliminating many of the
'socialist' policies implemented under Gamal Abdel
Nasser in the 1960s, thus paving the way for the
introduction of neoliberal policies under Hosni
Mubarak. 

U.S. Domination

These measures increased the level of poverty in Egypt,
leading to massive disparities in wealth. Moreover, it
led to the emergence of a new group of super-wealthy
businessmen who benefited from their close ties to the
Egyptian state. Hosni Mubarak's son Gamal and steel
tycoon Ahmed Ezz were prominent figures of this wealthy
class. Both are now in prison, awaiting trials on
corruption charges.

Gamal's rise to power is emblematic of how detached and
corrupt the regime had become. "The line between
businessmen and government was completely erased" by
Gamal during this period, according to student activist
Hanah Elsisi. Not only did he appoint many of these new
rich businessmen to powerful government positions, but
together they pushed through more of the neoliberal
policies that had enriched them and impoverished most
Egyptians. They were seen as being responsible for the
regime's almost total shutout of the opposition during
the 2010 elections, giving the ruling National
Democratic Party (NDP) more than 80% of the seats in
parliament.

Most of the movements that have emerged over the past
decade have been a response to this transformation of
Egypt from epicenter of struggles against colonialism
and Zionism to defender of U.S. imperialism and Israel,
from a state based on the nationalization of industry
and benefits for workers and the poor to privatization
and the dismantling of the welfare state. It was not
just a fight for liberal democracy and against
corruption but for real self-determination, including
freedom from U.S. domination. 

Palestinian Intifada

The first signs of widespread opposition to this new
Egyptian power paradigm emerged at the end of 2000,
around a campaign of support for the second Palestinian
intifada. In Cairo, tens of thousands took to the
streets. University students had daily protests and
sit-ins for more than a week, and high school students
almost shut down the road to the airport. Like most
uprisings in the Arab world, the protests centered
around issues of democracy, poverty, corruption, and,
ultimately, opposition to the regime.

The second wave of mass demonstrations took place in
2003-04 in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and
the Egyptian regime's support for the war. At one point
more than 30,000 protesters fought the police, briefly
took over Tahrir square, and burned down a billboard of
Mubarak.

When the weapons of mass destruction failed to
materialize in Iraq, and George W. Bush shifted his
justification for the occupation to one of building
democracy, he went after Egypt to show that he was
serious. Although there was never any real pressure put
on the Mubarak regime to implement any democratic
reforms, the confrontation did, as Mohamed Elagati,
Executive Director of Arab Forum for Alternatives,
says, "force the Egyptian government to give some space
in terms of freedom of speech... more independence by
the judiciary as well as more fair elections in 2005."

Many of those involved in Palestine solidarity work and
opposing the Iraq war took advantage of this opening
and formed a coalition called the Egyptian Movement for
Change, or Kefaya, in 2004. They never gained a mass
following but were very daring in terms of protesting
even in small numbers. Most importantly, they knew how
to publicize their actions and use the media to their
advantage.

As Dina Shehata, a researcher at the Al Ahram Center
for Political and Strategic Studies, pointed out, many
of the youth who played an important role in the
revolution came out of the Youth for Change movement
which was essentially the youth wing of Kefaya. Leaders
like Ahmed Maher of the April 6th movement, the main
youth group behind the January 25 Police Day
demonstration which sparked the revolution, got their
start in Kefaya. 

Mahalla

The April 6 movement formed out of efforts, in 2008, to
support the protests and strikes against surging food
prices in the city of Mahalla, the site of the largest
textile mill in the Middle East and one with some of
the country's most militant workers. Textile workers
there have a long history of struggle, but the
repression that accompanied the imposition of
neoliberal policies in Egypt had kept a lid on any
fightbacks for almost 20 years. This peace was
shattered in 2006, just two years before the food price
riots, when the workers went out on strike over pay and
other issues and won. Their victory led to a wave of
strikes in the massive textile industry and spread to
other sectors. Workers from the Mahalla Textile Company
voice their numerous grievances.

Workers from the Mahalla Textile Company voice their
numerous grievances.

The name of the youth group comes from the date, April
6, on which they called for a general strike. While the
general strike never happened, there were militant mass
actions by workers and residents in Mahalla. Known as
the Mahalla intifada, it took the government two days
to shut it down. Three people were killed and hundreds
were detained and tortured. Nevertheless, strikes, sit
ins and protests continued for months in other places
and eventually led to the formation of the first
independent trade unions by the tax collectors, a
teacher's union, and a number of other small unions in
2009.

The organizing around this struggle served as an
important training ground for the future. The youth's
social media skills helped spread the word about what
was going on not only across Egypt but to the world.
Nothing exemplifies the tech and media savviness of
this movement better than Wael Ghonim, the Google
marketing executive who became one of the 'stars' of
the revolution. Even though it wasn't about one
particular individual, Ghonim played an important role
both in the lead up to the January 25, 2011 protest and
at a critical point in the final days of the
revolution. 

Khaled Saeed

Ghonim was first moved to political activism after
police beat to death a young man named Khaled Saeed in
Alexandria in June 2010. Ghonim set up a Facebook group
called "We Are All Khaled Saeed" to help publicize and
organize around the case. It attracted approximately
220,000 members within just a few weeks. The case of
Khaled Saeed became internationally known, in part
because of this Facebook group, but also because, as
Ahmed Shokr, a journalist with the English language
daily Al Masry Al Youm who is active with the
Association of Progressive Youth of the Revolution,
explains, "[it] was a campaign that appealed to many of
the elements of the Egyptian middle class... And the
basic idea of the campaign was, well, if it could
happen to Khaled Saeed it could happen to any one of
us."

Critics of the campaign cited the fact that most of the
cases of police brutality involve poorer Egyptians and
rarely receive publicity, let alone inspire protests.
Nevertheless, Shokr says that "at its height in the
summer of 2010 it was drawing literally thousands of
people out to protests and silent vigils mostly in
Alexandria. I remember some Fridays in Alexandria large
segments of the Corniche, the Mediterranean waterfront,
were lined up with thousands of people standing in
silent vigils to support Khaled Saeed and to demand
justice over his death."

Despite the success of this campaign, the decision to
put out the call for a protest against police brutality
and corruption on Police Day, a national holiday held
every year on January 25, was a bold and critical one.
The corruption and daily humiliation ordinary Egyptians
were experiencing under the regime were clearly at a
breaking point. 

Autumn of Fury

On 17 October 2010, Zeinobia, a prominent Egyptian
blogger wrote an entry in her blog Egyptian Chronicles
titled "The Autumn of Fury Mubarak Edition," a
reference to a book about Anwar Sadat's last days. She
said, "Strangely it is like history repeating in its
own way and I wonder if the climax that we will witness
Inshallah sooner or later is the end of a regime that
shows all signs of weakness and fragility."

A couple weeks later, well known socialist blogger
Hossam el-Hamalawy wrote a similar entry in his blog
Arabawy: "No one knows when the explosion is going to
happen, but it seems everyone I meet or bump into today
feel it's inevitable." He goes on to relay a very
telling conversation he had with a cab driver:

"Journalists and people on TV talk about Nazif [the
Prime Minister at the time] this and Nazif that. But
they never mention Mubarak. They are cowards. They
should say Mubarak is bad. Mubarak is responsible...
There will be another bread intifada, like that of
1977. And this time we will burn the country down. We
will not burn the cars, buses or shops. These are ours.
No. We will burn them. We will burn this government. We
will burn down the police stations."

To tap into this anger and widen its appeal, the main
organizers of the demonstration - We Are all Khaled
Saeed, the April 6 Movement, activists from Egyptian
politician Mohamed El Baradei's campaign, the youth of
the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Gabha party, and a few more
organizations - added other demands like a higher
minimum wage and an end to the state of emergency laws.

However, it was the unfolding Tunisian revolution which
had the most significant impact on Egyptians and their
view of the January 25 demonstration. In response to
the death of one of four Egyptians who had set
themselves on fire in a desperate protest against the
regime (like Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia), Asmaa
Mahfouz, an activist from the April 6 movement, made a
YouTube video appeal for the demonstration in which she
says:

"These self-immolators were not afraid of death, but
we're afraid of security forces? Can you imagine that?
Are you also like that? I will not set myself on fire.
If the security forces want to set me on fire, let them
come and do it. If you think yourself a man, come with
me on January 25. Whoever says that women shouldn't go
to protests because they could get beaten, let him have
some honour and dignity and come with me on January
25." 

January 25

Early on in the day it became clear that the protest
was going to be bigger than anything the organizers had
expected. Elsisi explained that when organizers fanned
out that morning to mobilize various neighborhoods in
Cairo, instead of getting 30 or 40 people to march to
Tahrir square with them, several hundred - and in some
places 1,000 people or more - joined them. In total,
more than 100,000 people participated in the protests
that day.

Ahmed Maher, one of the April 6 leaders, best captured
the significance of what was happening: "When I looked
around and saw all these unfamiliar faces in the
protests, and they were more brave than us, I knew that
this was it for the regime," he said.

Shehata reminds us that this "wasn't about planning a
series of events that would culminate in regime
breakdown... What happened was that the response to the
call for a protest on the 25th was overwhelming and it
gave rise to a momentum that [the youth organizers]
hadn't anticipated. So yes they played an important
role but also things took a course of their own and so
they had to respond to events as they happened."

Shokr adds,

"January 25 really unleashed something that was larger
than any Facebook group or any individual or any
political group. It unleashed something - there was
sort of a buzz in the air - and suddenly you had this
mass popular consensus around this single demand for
the ouster of the regime. And you had millions of
people on the streets... You know when you have
millions of people on the streets I don't think there
is any single individual or group that can claim sole
credit for that. There was a larger force at work
there." 

Protests Intensify

But how did events snowball from this uprising against
police brutality on January 25 to Mubarak being forced
to step down on February 11? First and foremost was the
success of the Tunisian revolution and the uprisings
across the Arab world that it ignited; these gave
Egyptians a sense that their actions could actually
bring down the regime.

Another factor was the spread of the uprising to other
parts of the country. Many used email and social
networking sites to spread the word to their networks
and others outside of Cairo and Alexandria - but the
internet and cell phones were cut off by January 26.
That's where independent Egyptian newspapers like Al
Shorouk and Al Masry Al Youm stepped in. As Elagati
points out, the former went from a distribution of
30,000 to 180,000 copies, and the latter doubled to
200,000 during the revolution.

Of course, Al Jazeera played the biggest role,
particularly since people were able to actually see
broadcasts of the violence being perpetrated by the
state forces. This was the case in Suez. Initially, the
bloodiest and most intense confrontations between the
people and the police actually took place in Suez, not
Cairo or Alexandria. Protesters there eventually drove
the police out, but, as Elagati explains, "It was a
real war - like what we're seeing in Libya or in other
countries... There were a lot killed. A lot more than
were killed in the first three days in Cairo and
Alexandria."

The scenes of the police beating and killing protesters
in Suez and elsewhere galvanized even more people to
come out for the "Day of Rage" protest called for
January 28. Not only did more people come out, but they
were better prepared. A pivotal battle took place that
day on the Kasr el Nile bridge leading into Cairo. A
few thousand protesters faced off against a thousand
heavily-armed riot cops for five hours, and eventually
beat them back.

Across Egypt, people began to shed their fear of the
police. "When they started shooting, people started to
move directly at them because after a certain limit of
violence people are not afraid anymore," Elagati says.
"Okay, we're going to die if we run. So we're not going
to run, we're going to attack."

Shokr says,

"The speed with which people suddenly confronted the
security forces and the violence that they used against
them came not just as a shock but as an inspiration to
all of us who were on the ground, and that fear barrier
was within the span of three days taken down."

He goes on to say that,

"Courage was never the absence of fear. It was the
realization that there's actually something more
important worth fighting for." 

Turning Point

On February 2 Mubarak unleashed his thugs, who rode
horses and camels into crowds of protesters. Even
though they were slow to get involved in the
demonstrations, the Muslim Brotherhood (not the youth
wing which was involved from the beginning) threw
themselves into the movement after this attack. They
made a big difference not only because of their
numbers, but because their military-like discipline was
critical in these situations. Shehata said that "the
Brotherhood was very much present in the square and
part of the organizing committee of the square, but
they... didn't raise their banners, [or chant]
religious slogans, and kept a lower profile. They were
careful not to overshadow the youth groups."

After what became the most violent day in the
revolution, the coalition of youth groups steering the
movement made a decisive move to call for mass
demonstrations on February 4 in order to regain
momentum. It worked. The reign of terror unleashed by
Mubarak had backfired, inspiring even more Egyptians to
join the uprising. A million people in Cairo alone
protested that day. It was at this moment that the key
demand for the downfall of the Mubarak regime was
solidified.

The final blow to the regime was in some ways its own
doing. The government said that they would let the
protesters remain in Tahrir, but people had to return
to work on February 9. "What happened is that the
people moved the revolution from the square to their
workplaces," says Elagati. Shehata adds that "groups
began to mobilize as journalists, lawyers, as factory
workers, under their professional and class identity.
They began to do work stoppages and strikes within
their workplace. And during the final two days of the
revolution, there were strikes in almost every work
location."

"The protests spreading around the country were
threatening to become, I don't want to say a real
revolution, but something that could remove the regime
completely and not just Mubarak," says Shehata. It was
at this point that the military stepped in to take
power.

Some argue that this intervention by the military and
its use of secret courts to detain and imprison
hundreds and perhaps thousands of activists shows that
the revolution has been derailed. They also argue that
the economic issues that fueled the revolution,
particularly the neoliberal policies, are still intact.

While this may be the case, the ousting and
imprisonment of Hosni Mubarak, members of his family,
and close associates - and the dissolution of the NDP -
has ended authoritarian rule in Egypt and greatly
weakened U.S. imperialism. Moreover, there are no signs
that the military is planning on standing in the way of
the first democratic elections for Parliament in
September, nor the writing of a new constitution and
election of a president. In short, the Egyptian
revolution is still unfolding. *

Mostafa Henaway is a Canadian-born Egyptian based in
Montreal where he is a community organizer with the
Immigrant Workers Centre. He is active with Tadamon!
Montreal which works in solidarity with struggles for
self-determination, equality, and justice in the Middle
East and an end to Israeli Apartheid.

Rami El-Amine is an editor of Left Turn magazine where
this article first appeared.

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