jim hardy said:
Do you know Wael Ghonim ?
Every Egyptian knows Wael Ghoneim. I've never met him in person but we had a few online exchanges and he follows me on Quora (which I only joined after it acquired Parlio, a political and social network founded by Wael).
jim hardy said:
My take on events from six thousand miles away is we roused up an excitable segment of the population.
I'm very familiar with this narrative. But if I'm being perfectly honest, this does strike as slightly self-centric. Many people fought for this over many years, and hundreds paid the ultimate price in result. We obviously failed, but it is the youths of Egypt who deserve the credit for this failed revolution, rather than blame it on the US.
jim hardy said:
I'd like to hear your observations.
Thank you for the interest. I feel like I can only present how organic the uprising was, as opposed to being orchestrated/incited by the US, through a narration of how the events unfolded. But there is no way I can narrate this episode in a concise way. I'll do my best, but I'll understand if the moderators chose to remove this as off-topic.
Political dissent began to surface with the
Kefaya (Egyptian Arabic for "enough") movement, which began in 2005 as a reaction to the perceived attempts of preparing Mubarak's son Gamal to succeed him. They organised protests and I remember being absolutely astonished that they had the courage to explicitly and publicly speak against Mubarak (rather than criticize the cabinet, which was somehow normal). Protests normally consisted of about 200 activists chanting on the stairs of some public building surrounded by more than a thousand policemen, and before too long half of them would be 'welcomed' in jail. This routine changed on April 6th 2008 when a group of activists (some of them were from Kefaya) transformed a planned workers strike in El-Mahala to a national event with the help of the now-widespread social media. Millions of people saw the video of protesters stepping on a massive portrait of Mubarak. This was the start of the
April 6 Youth Movement which has been very influential ever since. With the help of Facebook, dissent became commonplace and for the first time you could see normal people speaking out against Mubarak on your way to work.
El-Baradei came back to Egypt around 2010 and started a campaign for democratic reform. He was a high enough profile (as well as the Nobel peace prize, he was awarded the Order of the Nile, Egypt's highest state honour) that he was safe from persecution from the government. He became the umbrella under which all opposition gathered (including Kefaya and April 6).
In the same year, a young man called
Khaled Saeed was beaten to death in a police station in Alexandria. A photo of his corpse went viral and it almost immediately became a symbol of the regime's oppression. Massive silent protests were organised (I went to one of them in Alexandria and it stretched for a few kilometres). Wael Ghoneim was the (then anonymous) founder of a Facebook page called "We are all Khaled Saeed" which had millions of followers and had a phenomenal levels of participation.
And then Tunisia happened...
Egyptians were following closely as Ben Ali fled Tunisia on the 14th of January 2011. Online groups suggested to plan protests only 11 days later on the 25th (as a spit in the face of the regime since the 25th of January is Egypt's national police day) instead of the usual April 6th. The idea got a lot of support and thousands of people took to the streets in Alexandria were I lived. I went home and turned on the TV and saw reports of similar protests in Suez and Cairo. Around 30.000 protesters occupied Tahrir square in Cairo and were then dispersed violently later.
Washington's reaction came that night when Secretary Clinton issued a statement saying the administration sees no reason to believe that the Egyptian government is unstable (I still remember more or less the exact words).
The Egyptian government shut down the internet and all cell phone communications in the hope that people won't be able organise themselves. This backfired badly. On Friday the 28th the thousands became millions in the streets. Hundreds were shot dead but the police quickly ran out of ammunition and disappeared from the streets. The protests became a full scale revolution and instead of political reform, people were demanding the immediate toppling of Mubarak. The army descended to the streets to protect public buildings as the police department evaporated, but did not clash with the protesters.
Many young people, including myself, were frustrated by the vague and overly cautious US stance. This was rectified on February 1st when Obama issued a statement saying that only the Egyptian people can determine their leaders. The clashes on the streets would continue until February 11 when Mubarak finally resigned.
These are the events as I lived them. I don't see how America would've "roused up" the rebellion. Yes, the US could've stood up for Mubarak a bit longer and made it more difficult for us (which would've costed many more lives), but I don't think the administration should be blamed for not doing so. It was clear for any keen observer that Mubarak is on the way out, and it was just a question of how many more lives will be spent.
