Offering insights on Egypt's failed revolution—how it happened and why it did not succeed—author Samuel Tadros argues that, as Egypt continues on its destructive downward path, it is important to examine the role that its revolutionaries played in that trajectory. He raises long-unanswered questions about those revolutionaries: Who were they and where did they come from? What was their ideological and organizational composition? Why were they angry with the Mubarak regime? What were their demands and aspirations for a new Egypt? And how did they attempt to achieve them?
Offering insights on Egypt's failed revolution—how it happened and why it did not succeed—author Samuel Tadros argues that, as Egypt continues on its destructive downward path, it is important to examine the role that its revolutionaries played in that trajectory. He raises long-unanswered questions about those revolutionaries: Who were they and where did they come from? What was their ideological and organizational composition? Why were they angry with the Mubarak regime? What were their demands and aspirations for a new Egypt? And how did they attempt to achieve them?
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Overview
Offering insights on Egypt's failed revolution—how it happened and why it did not succeed—author Samuel Tadros argues that, as Egypt continues on its destructive downward path, it is important to examine the role that its revolutionaries played in that trajectory. He raises long-unanswered questions about those revolutionaries: Who were they and where did they come from? What was their ideological and organizational composition? Why were they angry with the Mubarak regime? What were their demands and aspirations for a new Egypt? And how did they attempt to achieve them?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817917463 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hoover Institution Press |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2014 |
| Series: | The Great Unraveling: The Remaking of th |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 75 |
| File size: | 786 KB |
About the Author
Samuel Tadros is a senior research fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom and a contributor to the Hoover Institution's Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. He is the author of Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity.
Read an Excerpt
Reflections on the Revolution in Egypt
By Samuel Tadros
Hoover Institution Press
Copyright © 2014 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8179-1748-7
CHAPTER 1
Reflections on the Revolution in Egypt
SAMUEL TADROS
It is said that ...
It is said that ... once upon a time / They stole our country, the Americans
They will enter Baghdad by noon / By evening they will enter Egypt
It is said that ... that what? / Our people grabbed the light with their hands
It is said that ... generation after generation / Egypt was born in Tahrir
It is said that ... our dawn is arising / And Roses are blossoming in the street
(Amin Haddad)
* * *
"But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind."
(Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France)
* * *
"It was not an event depending on chance or contingency. It was inevitable; it was necessary; it was planted in the nature of things."
(Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France)
AT 4:34 A.M. Cairo Time On March 20, 2003, coalition forces led by the United States began their invasion of Iraq. Less than six hours later security lines in Cairo's Tahrir Square were being overrun by the most unlikely protesters: students of the American University in Cairo. Egyptian opposition parties had called for a protest at one o'clock in Tahrir, but three hours earlier 1,000 students had taken the initiative, surprised security forces, and managed to reach the square. The smell of euphoria was in the air as the students set their gaze on a building a few blocks from the square, that symbolized US hegemony over their country, the fortified US Embassy. The mass of people did not hesitate as they attacked line after line of security forces trying to break through, their attacks bearing fruit. They reached Omar Makram Mosque and then set foot on Simon Bolivar Square. "Tell Bush, tell Blair ... Iraq is not Afghanistan," they shouted. There their attacks fell short; the security forces were better organized, and they could not break their lines no matter how much they tried. Some fell on the sides, their faces covered in blood; they were carried by their comrades. Half the protesters managed to reach the street leading to the Nile Corniche. Bringing traffic to a halt, they broke for freedom and tried to surround the British Embassy. They failed to encircle it, and two hours later they returned and joined their comrades in Simon Bolivar Square. They made a last attack and broke security lines back to Tahrir Square.
Opposition activists had arrived by then. Thousands were now in the square. They would attempt several times to reach the US Embassy but be rebuffed. Circles were forming in the square, graffiti was being drawn on the asphalt, and people were singing. Magda El-Roumi's famous song "The Street Is Ours" could be heard in the square. Voices chanting, "the street is ours ... the square is ours ... tomorrow Egypt will be ours." That generation of Egyptians had never seen anything like it. Egypt had not seen anything like this since the bread riots of 1977. The next day demonstrators started in Al-Azhar Mosque and took over the square again. Clashes continued throughout the day, and a fire truck used to disperse the crowds was reportedly set on fire. In the following days police arrested numerous activists of all political stripes. What remained of the crowd's spirit died twenty days later as they saw on TV Iraqis bring down Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad. The honor and dignity of a nation stretching from the Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean was lost in the streets of Baghdad.
The gods must have been rolling the dice that day on March 20, 2003. Little did the protesters in Tahrir Square know they were writing the first line in the story of the Egyptian revolution.
* * *
That Egypt's revolution has failed is hardly disputable today. The excitement of those magical eighteen days in Tahrir Square and the hopes of a dawn of democracy in Egypt are long gone. Replacing them is widespread despair among Egypt's revolutionary activists and their international cheerleaders, and who would blame them? The man they sought to topple enjoys his freedom after two years in prison, the old faces of his regime are now back, and the revolutionary activists — those who are not cheering the very military they were chanting against two years earlier — are now among the jailed, the cursed, the emigrant, and the depressed.
It is true some still believe the revolution continues or, more fancifully, the ouster of Mohamed Morsi is but the second wave of the original revolution. Joining the ranks of the delusional is the American Secretary of State John Kerry, who suggested the revolution was "stolen" by the Muslim Brotherhood, with Egypt now apparently set on the right path to democracy. But outside of those few voices — and regardless of whether one believes that Egypt is witnessing a counterrevolution, as the author contends, or a coup, or that no revolution occurred in the first place, as Hugh Roberts argues in the pages of the London Review of Books — the general consensus is that Egypt has returned to an authoritarian grip albeit this time with the masses cheering along. Whatever happened on January 25 failed miserably in transforming the country in the direction of a true democracy.
For those lamenting the failure of a revolution that captivated the world, the blame is usually placed on two forces: Egypt's military and the Muslim Brotherhood. A military that never accepted the notion of civilian control and that aimed to protect its exclusive domination of the state and its economy and a Brotherhood that ruled in a noninclusive manner and alienated many segments of Egypt's population have formed the basis of the explanations given by analysts as to why Egypt reached the state it is in today.
Remarkably little attention has been given to the actions and choices of Egypt's non-Islamist revolutionaries. Besides the usual criticism of their organizational weakness and the more recent critical look at those among them who supported the military coup, they have largely escaped any critical examination and hence blame. This is all the more surprising given the fact that three years earlier, when the crowds occupied Tahrir Square, both the media and Western analysts fixed their gazes on those young men and women, often described as liberals, democrats, moderates, and secular, to the extent of seeing nothing but them. Egypt's revolutionaries were hailed as the heroic force that ended what seemed like an eternal dichotomy between repressive authoritarian regimes and totalitarian Islamists. People like Google executive Wael Ghonim, April 6 founder Ahmed Maher, and international diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei would create the much-awaited third alternative or route.
On January 25, 2011, thousands of Egyptians — some of them veterans of earlier demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak, some of them demonstrating for the first time in their lives — took to the streets to demand change. Three days later hundreds of thousands joined them, and fifteen days later Mubarak resigned as Egypt's president. Who were those revolutionaries and where did they come from? What was their composition ideologically and organizationally? Why were they angry with the Mubarak regime and decided to bring it down? What were their demands and aspirations for a new Egypt? And how did they go about attempting to achieve them? To understand the story of Egypt's revolution, one has to begin, not on January 25, 2011, but years earlier when those revolutionaries were meeting one another for the first time and acquiring the skills that they would later use to bring down the regime.
The lack of a thorough investigation of Egypt's revolutionaries creates a serious gap in our understanding of the events that unfolded in the past three years. From their decision to call for mass demonstrations on January 25, 2011, their rejection of participating in politics, their calls for an end to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) rule, their continuous demonstrations and violent clashes with the police, and the choices they made in the parliamentary and presidential elections, Egypt's revolutionaries were not helpless victims but actors who affected and shaped the direction of the country. As Egypt continues on its destructive path into the abyss, it is important to examine what role the revolutionaries played in its trajectory.
* * *
On December 12, 2004, the Egyptian Movement for Change held its first demonstration. The movement quickly became known by its slogan Kefaya (Enough). Kefaya demonstrators were few in numbers, but their public act of defiance created a stir in the dull political scene that was Mubarak's Egypt. The demonstrators' chants, while attacking the regime's foreign policy and its capitulation to US and Israeli hegemony, also targeted the regime's domestic policies and, more importantly, the regime itself. Mubarak; his wife, Suzanne; and their son Gamal, rumored to be groomed for the throne, were no longer off-limits. A red line seemed to have been crossed. Taboos were being shattered.
The movement had its roots in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations in October 2000, with the start of the second intifada, but those had quickly fizzled away. Smaller campaigns had followed calling for the boycott of American products and organizing aid convoys to the Palestinians, but they had little effect. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 created the first real spark that gathered those opposition activists together. In July 2004 a new Egyptian government was sworn in that included a significant number of new faces, businessmen who had prospered in the private sector were recruited for government ministries. With Mubarak's health rumored to be in decline and Gamal's increasing public role, a transition moment seemed to be in the air. Roughly 300 intellectuals and activists gathered to write and sign Kefaya's manifesto during the hot summer months. Their demands were hardly small. They demanded real political change in the country. Mubarak's fourth term was to end in September 2005, and they wanted it to be his last. Gamal shall not inherit us from his father, they insisted.
Who were the 300 men who signed Kefaya's manifesto? They came from all stripes of the Egyptian opposition. Nearly all of them were veterans of the roaring '70s. George Ishak was the movement's first coordinator. A communist, he had used his official position in the administration of Catholic schools in Egypt to gather a group of young men around him. Abdel Halim Kandil was a committed Nasserite who was editor in chief of the leading Nasserite newspaper, in which he cursed Mubarak for abandoning Nasser's domestic project and his anti-American foreign policy. Abdel Wahab El Misiri, who was later chosen to lead the movement, dedicated his life to writing about Jews and Israel. His conspiracy-driven mind led him to believe the Camp David accords included secret clauses calling for the banning of his writings. Kamal Khalil was a Revolutionary Socialist, the name given to Egypt's Trotskyites, and a veteran demonstrator. Magdy Ahmed Hussein was the son of Ahmed Hussein, Egypt's fascist leader in the '30s and '40s. In the '80s Magdy had made the political transformation from socialism to Islamism, with the final outcome uniting the worst of both worlds. Kamal Abu Eita was another Nasserite who had never missed an anti-regime demonstration in his life.
None of these men could excite a revolutionary populace, let alone one that had been apathetic for years. They were more representative of the ills of Egypt than its cure. Formed by a group of communists, Islamists, and Nasserites, there was nothing novel about its message with the exception of its bald animosity toward Mubarak and his son. The message was simply the repetition of every long-held myth and demand of the Egyptian opposition; these men decried social and economic exploitation, believing that the country was rich but was being stolen by corrupt businessmen and that the regime was serving American and Israeli interests. Their hatred of Mubarak dwarfed the hatred they expressed toward the United States and Israel, and anti-Semitism was rampant among them. "Their real objection to Mubarak was not his authoritarianism, but his abandonment, like that of Sadat before him, of the pan-Arab vision Nasser had proclaimed," Roberts said. As Abdel Halim Kandil stated: "Egypt falls under American hegemony and Israeli occupation, and the regime is loyal to them. Therefore, opposition toward Israel and America is a cornerstone of Kefaya's program." What was novel was their decision to bring their message out of the salons of the leftist intellectuals and to the street.
Kefaya activists were soon creating sister organizations, the most important of which was Youth for Change. The initial members were hardly surprising. They were the sons and daughters of veteran leftist activists. However, they had at their disposal a tool not available to their parents' generation: blogging. Blogs became very powerful tools not just for self-expression, but more importantly for disseminating information. Through videos of police torture, election fraud, or demonstrations, activists were reaching a new generation of young, middle-class Egyptians. Citizen journalism was the new hit in town as thousands of young Egyptians started blogs. Naturally journalistic standards were hardly present and the quality and truthfulness of many of them were lacking. But with state propaganda techniques unchanged for decades, the activists held a significant advantage in the war of perception. Blogs also served as an important forum for networking. A bond was being created between activists across the political spectrum.
Blogs were hardly the domain of leftist activists alone. Numerous young Muslim Brotherhood members began blogging, and the new phenomenon caught the attention of analysts desperate for a "moderate Brotherhood." Kefaya was not the only group that took notice of the winds of change unleashed by President George W. Bush's Freedom Agenda and the opportunities it presented. The Muslim Brotherhood took note and attempted to present a new face. It increasingly coordinated with the rest of the opposition, though unlike them it always remained aware of the red lines imposed by the regime. Women were being presented as candidates for Parliament, and a platform for change was presented to the public and more importantly to Western analysts and policy-makers.
Egypt's official opposition parties were also influenced by the changing political environment. The parliamentary elections of 2005 were extremely frustrating to the two main parties: Al Wafd and El Tagamuu. Many of their members, especially the younger ones, had already begun to question the wisdom of their parties' tamed opposition approach to the regime. The man who best embodied those changes was Ayman Nour. An unimpressive journalist with Al Wafd newspaper, Nour had distinguished himself with fabricated and sensationalist stories. His relationship with the regime was hardly bad. He twice won a seat in Egypt's Parliament and had been useful as a controlled opposition face to use as a mouthpiece when the regime faced an international scandal over its police behavior in the El Kosheh massacre of Copts. His ambitions were matched only by his ego. He left Al Wafd in 2001 and sought to establish his own party. When he received the party approval from the regime-controlled committee in October 2004, it was another sign of the regime's approval. Suddenly on January 30, 2005, Nour was arrested on charges of forging applications for his new party. While the charges were correct, leveling them was indisputably a political decision.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Reflections on the Revolution in Egypt by Samuel Tadros. Copyright © 2014 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Hoover Institution Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Series Foreword by Fouad Ajami and Charles Hill,Reflections on the Revolution in Egypt,
About the Author,
About the Hoover Institution's Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order,
Index,