Revolt in Egypt (1)

8/3/2019 Revolt in Egypt (1)

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new left review 68mar apr 201117

a. the movement

Ater a reign o thirty years, Mubarak was overthrown by a popular movement

in less than three weeks. How did the uprising originate?

O

ver the last ew years, a rebellion had been brewing under

the surace. There was a general sense that the status quo

could not be sustained. Movies, novels, songs were perme-

ated by the theme o revolt: it was everywhere in peoplesimagination. Two developments were responsible or making ordinary,

apolitical Egyptians eel they could no longer carry on with their normal

lives. The rst was the dissolution o the social contract governing state

society relations since Nassers coup in the ties. The contract involved

a tacit exchange: the regime oered ree education, employment in an

expanding public sector, aordable healthcare, cheap housing and other

orms o social protection, in return or obedience. You could haveor

at any rate hope orthese benets, so long as domestic or oreign poli-cies were not questioned and political power was not contested. In other

words, people understood that they were trading their political rights

or social welare. From the eighties onwards, this contract was eroded,

but it was not until the new millennium that it was ully abrogated. By

this time the regime elt that it had eliminated organized resistance so

thoroughly that it no longer needed to pay the traditional social bribes

to guarantee political acquiescence. Viewing a population that appeared

utterly passive, ragmented and demoralized, the regime believed it wastime or plunder, on a grand scale. In the ruling National Democratic

Party (ndp), a action clustered around the Presidents son Gamal

hazem kandil

Interview

REVOLT IN EGYP T


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18nlr 68Mubarak increasingly took charge through a new body called the Policy

Committee. It had two components. One consisted o corrupt, state-

nurtured capitalists with monopoly control over protable sectors o the

economy. The other was composed o neo-liberal intellectuals, typically

economists with links to international nancial institutions.

In 2004, the businessmens cabinet o Ahmed Nazi marked the rst time

this group actually took over government. Monopoly capitalists assumed

cabinet positions relevant to their elds o activity. For example, Mohamed

Mansour, one o the biggest car dealers in Egypt, became Minister o

Transport. A tycoon in the tourist industry, Zoheir Garraneh, became

Minister o Tourism. Neo-liberal intellectuals were no less prominent.

The Minister o Investment, Mahmoud Mohieddin, went on to becomeManaging Director o the World Bank in 2010. The Minister o Finance,

Yousse Boutros-Ghaly, was a senior imf executive, and remained linked

to the Fund, or example, by chairing the International Monetary and

Financial Committee, the main policy-planning body advising its Board

o Governors. The result was a combination o outrageous looting by

these insider capitalists, and blatant neo-liberal exactions on the popu-

lation. The budgetary process was reorganized, services were privatized

and a new scal regime introduced. In 2005, corporate tax rates werecut in hal, rom 40 to 20 per cent o earnings, though even this was

rarely paid, while taxes alling on the mass o the population were sharply

raisedmost notoriously on housing. In 2010, many Egyptians with

no property other than the roo over their heads, living on pensions o

less than $50 a month, were suddenly aced with steep tax bills or their

homes. The result was such a level o protest, with pleas and appeals to

the President to intervene, that Mubarak suspended implementation o

the new tax two months beore it was due to come into orce. By 2010,however, the belie was widespread that Mubarak was not going to run or

the Presidency again in September o this year, but pass it on to his son.

The prospect o Gamal, no longer heir apparent, but exercising absolute

power with his cronies, scared many people. Lie was already extremely

dicult economically or most Egyptians. What would it be like i there

was no appeal against him, and everything he had come to represent?

Parallel with this social change, and related to it, was an alteration in theorms o political repression by the regime. Back in the ties and six-

ties, it was understood that you would suer arrest or torture only i you

were politically organized. The military took care o domestic repression,


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kandil:Interview19which was brutal but highly targeted. In the seventies and early eighties,

this unction was transerred rom the army to the police. Repression

now became more indiscriminate, but it was still carried out within a dis-

cernible structure and certain limits. Calling the shots were colonels or

captains, people with names and ranks and aces, who bore some kind o

responsibility or the decisions they took, and you still had to have some

kind o political involvementnot necessarily organized, now, but saying

something that crossed a red line or upset some ocialto all into their

hands. By the nineties, however, the regime had become so condent

it aced no challenges that it treated criticism in the press, or on satel-

lite television or later the internet, as harmless banalities. This was also

the attitude taken by the police: day-to-day repression o citizens was too

mundane to be carried out by uniormed ocers. Why would police oc-ers waste their time and energy on intimidating a ew students, cracking

down on the occasional hot-headed labour organizer or molesting some

emale human-rights activists to keep them o the streets?

So, more and more, plain-clothes assistants were used or these tasks.

Sadat had started to use low-level thugs o this kind in the seventies, but

on a very small scale. In order not to implicate the police, raids were

passed o as maniestations o popular support or the regime. Mubarakemployed them in parliamentary elections in the eighties. From the

nineties onwards, however, deployment o these seasonally hired thugs,

on the pay-roll but not in the ranks o the police, became the norm, and

with it repression became ar more random. They would oten harass or

manhandle ordinary people or no political reason, simply or purposes

o extortion. It was a dramatic case o this widespread phenomenon

which eventually triggered the uprising. Khaled Said was an educated

youth in his twenties, rom a good amily in Alexandria. In the summero 2010, he exchanged words with a couple o these police assistants

in an internet cae, so they simply smashed his ace on the pavement.

Later they claimed he was suspected o carrying drugs, and that, beore

they could search him, he committed suicide. Pictures o him were soon

everywhere on the internet. In Dubai, a Google executive named Wael

Ghonim created a group on Facebook called We are all Khaled Said,

and asked everyone who had aced this kind o barbarism to join it. In

a couple o months, over a hundred thousand people had done so. Thiswas the contingency that started the whole movement. Behind it was

this double deteriorationin the scale o economic exploitation and

plunder, and in the extent o arbitrary molestation and repressionthat


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20nlr 68made the lives o ordinary Egyptians who had nothing to do with politics

increasingly unbearable.

Khaled Said was killed in the summer o 2010. What explains the timing o

the revolt six months later?

January 25 is a national holiday commemorating the heroic resistance o

police ocers in Ismailia, a city on the Suez Canal, against a British orce

that asked them to hand over their weapons on that day in 1952. Over

orty ocers were killed and dozens injured in what became known as

Police Day. To underline the contrast between the police back then and

the police now, the We are all Khaled Said group decided to stage a dem-

onstration near the State Security headquarters in downtown Cairo, inTahrir Square. They hoped or a turnout o about 57,000, but even that

seemed too ar-etched at the time. Under Mubarak, the largest dem-

onstrations had never exceeded a ew hundred people. But encouraged

by the all o the Tunisian dictatorship on January 14, and supported

by other internet-based and opposition groups, the call brought out

perhaps 20,000 people.

Over the next two days, not only did protests continue, but dierentoppositional groups came together or a bigger mobilization. Now the

police began to hose and tear-gas them. Instead o making them back

down, police brutality uelled another major protest ater Friday Prayers

on January 28, the Day o Rage. Coming together rom dierent assem-

bly points, and gathering steam as they marched towards Tahrir Square,

crowds snowballing to some 80,000-strong were now ready to take on

the police. Caught o-balance by the size and persistence o the demon-

strators, the police were nally overwhelmed. It was a rude awakening.Suddenly the police were conronted with the reality that, as a result o

the transormations I have described, they were not equipped or trained

to deal with massive unrest. What ensued was an epic battle on the Qasr

al-Nil Bridge, which links Tahrir Square to the west o the city where

most o the demonstrators were coming rom. I you examine the vid-

eos o this battle, you can see how incompetent and disorganized the

repression proved to bethe police clumsily manoeuvring a handul o

armoured vehicles, zig-zagging about in the crowds and trying to hit peo-ple, bombarding them with assorted missiles, and then beating a retreat,

hosing and shooting at people, which only made them angrier. Ater a

couple o hours o this tug-o-war, personnel carriers were overturned by


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kandil:Interview21demonstrators, the police withdrew, abandoning not just the bridge but

the whole centre o the city, while crowds torched the headquarters o the

ndp and occupied the Square. At this point, the Minister o the Interior

told Mubarak that the situation was out o control, and the army needed

to come in. Troops were deployed around strategic sites and government

buildings across the city, a curew was declared, and by the next morning

the military was out in orce.

What were the orces behind the mobilization o January 28, and to what

extent were they coordinating among themselves?

We can speak o some six groups propelling the movement. Two were

based on Facebook networks. The rst was the We are all KhaledSaid group o which I have spoken. The second was the April 6 Youth

Movement, which came into being around support or a general strike

called or that date in 2008. Only one o the small industrial towns o

the Delta heeded the call, and there the workers were brutally repressed,

with some shot and killed. The ollowing year, the organizers o the sup-

port set up a Facebook account called the April 6 Youth Movement and

asked everyone to stay at home on that same day rather than mass on the

streets. The police made sure that nothing happened, but by 2010 thegroup had some 70,000 members. So it was older and had a more polit-

ical prole, combining labour and liberal concerns, than the network

created by Wael Ghonim. Although a mass demonstration was contrary

to their strategy o a stay-at-home strike, they decided to join orces with

We are all Khaled Said or the mobilization in January.

A third important group was the Youth o the Muslim Brotherhood that

had emerged in the last three years. Within the Brotherhood, reorm-ers had or some time been trying to change the traditional positions

and strategies o the movement. Their aim was to orm a political party

with its own organization and leaders, linked only loosely to the gen-

eral cultural movement o the Muslim Brotherhood. Their campaign

was urther uelled by news that the movements gains in the 2005

parliamentary elections, in which it won 88 seats, was part o the State

Securitys plan to dissuade the us rom pressuring Mubarak to democ-

ratize. In other words, the movements leaders willingly played intothe regimes hands, accepting the undignied role o a scarecrow. In

2010 reormers experienced a serious setback, when a conservative old-

guard gure was elected General Guide and ignored calls to join secular


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22nlr 68opposition groups in boycotting the raudulent elections staged by the

regime. To add insult to injury, the Brotherhoods complicity was not

rewarded; it did not secure a single seat in the new parliament. From

that point on, the Youth o the Muslim Brotherhood openly challenged

its Guidance Council, called on reormers to resign rom it and go ahead

with orming a political party anyway. So when the call or a demonstra-

tion on January 25 went out, they decided to join it.

A ourth group was composed o what might be called a new let in

Egypt. These were mostly young and middle-aged letists, whose rela-

tions with the original leaders o the Communist movement were not

unlike those o the Youth o the Muslim Brotherhood to the Guidance

Council. The Communist veterans, who go back to the middle o thelast century, are now old men who made their peace with the regime

a long time ago. Their excuse was that Islamization poses the biggest

threat to Egypt, and that commitment to secularism binds them to the

supposedly liberal ruling group. They thereore agreed to play according

to the regimes rulebook, which allowed them to write and lecture, while

orbidding them rom building a real base among the working class. But

or younger letists, there were threats other than Islamization, namely,

unbridled neo-liberal exploitation. From their perspective, the prioritywas to organize resistance in the actories. So or at least ve years, they

had been trying to develop a orce o their own, creating, among other

things, a journal called Al-BouslaThe Compass in Arabicto bring

together the most active layers o the Egyptian Let. These are mostly

urban intellectuals, many o them assistant proessorsyoung histori-

ans, political scientists or sociologists.

A th group had gathered around Mohamed El-Baradei, the ormerhead o the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, who came

back to Egypt last year and let it be known he would run or President

i the Constitution were changed to allow ree elections. Rumour has it

that El-Baradei had a alling-out with Mubarak, because as an ambas-

sador he was once Egypts ocial nominee or the top position at the

iaea, but at the last minute the president ditched him or another nomi-

nee. El-Baradei was elected nonetheless, but with Arican votes. Ater

that he kept his distance rom the regime, though Mubarak had to treathim with some respect because o his international standing. On getting

back to Cairo, he attracted disenranchised youngsters around a gen-

eral appeal or reorm, without more denite contours, creating a group


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kandil:Interview23called the National Association or Change. It is a medley o individuals,

ranging rom liberals to progressive Islamists to a handul o letists,

some aliated with political parties, notably the Democratic Front, and

many reelancers. One o the main spokesmen o this group was the son

o Yusu Al-Qaradawi, a high-prole cleric; others were young entrepre-

neurs and corporate executives. But El-Baradei still spent most o his

time in Europe, preerring to play the role o inspirer rather than eec-

tual leader o the group. The result was again a group o angry young

men let to their own devices. The perect storm gathering in January

2011 had just ound another collaborator.

Finally, a sixth group consisted o a disparate collection o human-rights

activists, who had been working either or Egyptian outts, or AmnestyInternational, Human Rights Watch or other international organiza-

tions. This was a very eclectic collection o young people united only

by the act that they had not ound any political organization capable

o mobilizing them to contest the regime more directly. The common

characteristic o all six groups is that they were disillusioned with the

traditional alternatives to the dictatorship. They beneted rom con-

temporary communication technologies, o course. In the big cities,

internet caes are everywhere, and even the poor have cell-phones.This is principally a culture o youth, but it is very widely available,

across social classes. But social network sites, one must note, played

a role in the preliminary stages only. Once the snowball started roll-

ing, their value depreciated in avour o more traditional media, such as

television and radio.

From the demonstration o January 28 onwards, Tahrir Square was continu-

ously occupied by protesters. On February 1, a still larger demonstration theredemanded that Mubarak go. The next day, police thugs let loose to attack the

occupation were driven rom the Square. A much larger mobilization ollowed

on February 4. Strikes had become widespread by February 7. On February

10 the Supreme Military Council was in session or the frst time since 1973.

Mubarak ell on February 11, to a continuously expanding popular uprising.

How should its social composition be described?

The crowds in Tahrir Square represented the critical mass o Egyptiansociety, extending rom the lower-middle to the upper-middle class.

There you could nd everyone rom wealthy businessmen and traders

on the stock exchange to clerks and shopkeepers, porters and security


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24nlr 68guards. Across this gamut, there were people o all ages, rom grand-

parents to small children, o both sexes and both major conessions.

Women were active rom the very rst day, veiled old mothers and

unveiled emale activists holding hands. Very striking in the crowds was

the complete absence o sexual harassment, which has become a serious

issue in Egyptian street lie in the last couple o years. Likewise there

was no tension between Muslims and Copts. For quite some time the

Ministry o the Interior had been covertly anning antagonism between

the two communities, but rom day one o the movement you could see

Christians holding hands and orming a circle around Muslims when

they were praying, and Muslims orming a cordon around Christians

when they were at Mass in the Square.

The working class?

In terms o the distribution o income, actory workers belong to the

lower-middle ranks o Egyptian society, and they too were active rom the

rst day; not in Tahrir Square, but in Alexandria, which has many big

actories on its outskirts, and in provincial cities around the country. A

common estimate is that the whole revolt may have involved between 10

and 15 million people; o these a maximum o 5 million in Cairo. In thepart played by workers in the movement, demonstrations came beore

strikes. There was a huge amount o popular turbulence across the coun-

try in every kind o economic setting, rom the Canal cities o Port Said,

Ismailia and Suez to tourist oases o the Western desert. In the al-Wahat

oases, where a luxury hotel is being carved into the mountains at huge

cost and millions are being spent on opulent tourist amenities, while

the local people get virtually nothing, social anger was so strong that

the police chie had to be transerred or ring on demonstrators, evenbeore Mubarak ell. Repression and exploitation were the two matches

setting re to popular action; repression aecting the more afuent

ranks o the middle class, and exploitation the lower ones.

Strikes came later, our days beore Mubarak ell. These were common

in the last ew years: it is estimated that some two million workers had

been involved in some kind o strike activity over the previous decade.

But strikes had been by and large apolitical, restricted to wage demands,resistance to lay-os, pressure or earlier retirement; and they had been

strictly localthere had never been an attempt at any industrial action

on a national scale. That was in part because surveillance was so tight


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26nlr 68But are those who come rom the ashwaiyyat so homogeneous? It is esti-

mated they make up a fth o the total population, ater all. Do sociological

studies not show that they include quite a ew educated young, or not so

young, people who cannot aord to live in the centre o the city, but are not

destitute slum-dwellers?

Yes, those who live in the peripheries o the big cities are composed o

at least two distinct groups, which by and large correspond to dierent

neighbourhoods. On the one hand are people who can no longer aord

to live in the city proper, and move out to what are in act historic neigh-

bourhoods, which in the case o Cairo have been there since at least the

eighteenth century, but have deteriorated really badly in the last thirty

years or so. They still have strong social networks and are quite politi-cized, but are terribly run down because o state neglect. On the other

hand, you have the shanty towns proper, made o random shacks built

in the last ten to teen years, with no services or inrastructure at all,

crowded with those who are desperately poor, moving in rom rural or

small-town hinterlands.

Still, are they really the contemporary equivalent o the classes dangere-

uses o nineteenth-century bourgeois imagination? Those who dwell in theashwaiyyat comprise over a quarter o the population o Greater Cairo. How

could there be any hope o an Egyptian democracy i they were excluded rom

political mobilization in advance, as liabilities or any demonstration?

I you separate out the historic neighbourhoods, the proportion is sig-

nicantly lowermaybe two to three million people. That being said, i

it is to be realistic, a revolutionary politics has to take the existing ears

and anxieties o a class society into account. The organization o theuprising sprang into being in a matter o days, and remained tenuous

and improvised. There was no way it could have canalized a violent col-

lective explosion rom the shanty towns, which would only have helped

the dictatorship to batten down the hatches. It would also have been

put at risk i there had been any outbreaks o individual criminality or

looting, once the police were withdrawn rom the streets. So it must

be reckoned ortunate that neither o these things occurred. Certainly,

the act that they didnt was also an expression o the tragic isolationo this mass o the poor rom normal links to the rest o society. The

priority is to re-integrate them back into city lie. Most i not all o the


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kandil:Interview27presidential candidates to emerge rom the uprising have said that,

i elected, the rst item o their programme would be to extend pub-

lic inrastructure and servicesdecent housing, clean water, schools,

policinginto the ashwaiyyat, to restore the peripheries to the cities

to which they belong.

The peasantry was the other major class to all appearances passive during the

uprising. Could that have been predicted?

Conditions in the countryside are the product o a long historical pro-

cess. In the ties, when Nasser came to power, peasants made up at

least 80 per cent o the population, and he made sure they were never

politically mobilized. It is true that he was equally wary o workers, butat least these were concentrated in big cities where he could watch and

control them. The peasants were much more numerous and scattered,

and could not be dealt with in the same way. His regime proclaimed a

land reorm, but it did not lead to a redistribution o benets to the mass

o the peasantry. The big landowners were warned there would be a ceil-

ing on their properties, but they were given plenty o time to dispose o

holdings above it, either by transerring them to relatives or selling them

on the open market. The result was the emergence o a new class o mid-dling landowners, holding between 20100eddans, built into the party

o the regime, which was then the Arab Socialist Union. The peasantry

was essentially transerred rom the tutelage o the large landowners to

that o this stratum. Dependent on these exploiters, they remained alien-

ated rom the lie o the state.

But their tenancies were protected: they could not be kicked o their

plots by landlords raising rents on them. In the early nineties, however,Mubarak passed a law, implemented in 1997, which allowed landlords to

do just that. The result was a wave o peasant revolts over the next two

years, when tens o thousands o villagers reused eviction, torched crops

and attacked their oppressors. The central security orces were sent in,

entire villages were razed to the ground and the unrest was contained.

Thereater, little more was heard rom the peasantry. I it was dicult

or opposition activists to reach the workers, it was even more so to

make contact with the peasantry, orcibly still more depoliticized. So itis not surprising that in the three short weeks o the uprising, the rural

populationwhile tacitly welcoming the revoltplayed so small a role.


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28nlr 68Are there any signifcant regional dierences in the countryside?

Historically, Egypt has always been divided into two parts, Lower and

Upper, the ormer stretching rom a ew kilometres south o the capi-

tal down to the Mediterranean, and containing around 85 per cent o

the population, the latter extending southwards all the way to Sudan.

This southern region, commonly known as the Said, could be seen as

an Egyptian version o Sicily, with traditions o amily honour, vendet-

tas, maa-like tracking in weapons and drugs. Unlike the rest o the

country, the rural population tends to be armed, and has its own spe-

cic grievances against the regime. Though it has relatively more Copts,

the Said bore the brunt o Islamist militancy rom the late seventies to

the mid-nineties. Also, the state has oten sent its toughest governorssouth to try to bring the region under tighter control, while at the same

time investing much less in it than the north, precisely because o its

insubordinate character. Few tears will have been shed there over the

deenestration o Mubarak.

b. the regime

Mubarak has gone, but the apparatuses on which his dictatorship rested have

not vanished. The armed orces currently hold ultimate power, in the shape o

the Supreme Military Council. How should the Egyptian military be charac-

terized, and what role is it now likely to play?

When a regime has come to power through military orce, either by coup

or conquest, it typically issues into a tripartite structure, with a division

o labour between its three component parts, each crystallizing into sep-arate institutions. The rst component o this power triangle consists

o those who take over daily government through a political apparatus,

typically composed o a presidency (or monarchy) and a ruling party.

The second component consists o military ocers who handle domes-

tic repression through a multilayered security complex, which includes

police, intelligence and paramilitary orces. The third group consists o

those who return to the barracks and continue to represent the mili-

tary proper. Over time, each develops dierent agendas, which observersmistakenly minimize or confate. For institutions develop their own

identities, orm their own corporate interests and shape their mem-

bers in their own image. Thus in the case o Egypt, analysts across the


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kandil:Interview29board tend to speak o Mubarak, Omar Suleiman and Ahmed Shaq

as military gures, because Mubarak was head o the air orce thirty-

ve years ago, Suleiman was an army general over twenty years ago,

Shaq commanded the air orce ten years ago. But this sort o classi-

cation is illusive. Once they pass into the regimes political or security

apparatus, these agents no longer represent the interest o the military

as an institution.

By temperament and training the military is not particularly bent on exer-

cising either direct governance or domestic repression. Its interest tends

to lie in enhancing its repower and overall combat readiness, in addi-

tion to the economic status o the armed orces as a whole. The ocer

corps is oten content, as in Turkey or Latin America, with setting up apolitical process in which there are competing parties, and then stepping

back to act as the guardian o the system it has just createdintervening

only when necessary through warnings or limited corrective coups.

Quite dierent is the security coterie, an unnatural creature that can

thrive only in an authoritarian environment. Should the regime democ-

ratize, it becomes completely defated, its infuence diminished. Equally

important, its members realize they will be held accountable or theatrocities they committed; compared to the military, the security appa-

ratus is much more implicated in human-rights violations and much

less able to guarantee amnesty or its own. When there is a democratic

change, the new rulers finch rom antagonizing the military, but do not

hesitate to mark security ocers or trial. So unlike the military, security

organs always push or authoritarian rule to continue.

The political leadership in this system is normally suspended in themiddle. It is vulnerable in so ar as it has no direct means o repress-

ing the population without the support o the military or the security

complex. At the same time, it does not necessarily require a permanent

ultra-authoritarian setting; it can still cling to power while oering lim-

ited compromises leading to so-called semi- or quasi-liberalization.

Because o these varying dispositions and capacities, the three compo-

nents o this kind o regime both cooperate and compete, their interests

both overlapping and diverging all the time, according to domestic orinternational developments. What complicates the picture even urther

is that none o these components is monolithic in character; each has its

own internal subdivisions and tensions.


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30nlr 68The Egyptian military have embodied this schema?

Under Nasser, as I have mentioned, the military was originally in charge

o domestic repression. But ater the Six-Day War in 1967, the political

apparatus decided it had had enough o the mood swings in the armed

orces, and began the process o isolating the military politically under

the pretext o proessionalizing it. This process was taken to great lengths

by Sadat in the days leading up to the October War o 1973, and in its

atermath. Mubarak pushed it even urther in the eighties. The last char-

ismatic leader o the Egyptian military, Field Marshal Abd Al-Halim Abu

Ghazala, was removed in 1989. From that point on, the armed orces

were politically sterilized.

Today, the total size o the military establishment is somewhere over

450,000. O these, around 300,000 are conscripts. All Egyptian males

are called up or a year i they have a college degree, and or three i they

do not, unless they have either a amilial (no siblings to look ater par-

ents) or medical exemption. Conscripts generally have little to do with

combat trainingthey might end up shooting a rife a ew times, but

that is it. They basically perorm logistical and oce boy services: clean-

ing and mopping, delivering things, buying groceries or ocers. Thereal strength o the military lies in its proessional ocers and ncos.

Their position within the ruling system, and society at large, is oten

misunderstood abroad. It is much less privileged than many observers

imagine. Politically speaking, under Mubarak the leverage o the military

was much less than that o the ruling party and the security agencies.

Socially too, the position o army ocers depreciated, i we compare it

to that o their counterparts in the police, or the ndp. No one thought o

them as masters o the country.

Economically, ocers were granted some autonomy; they were given

control o their own enterprises and a good deal o land, to keep them

docile. Sadat and Mubarak understood that i they were going to open

up the economy, they could not aord to leave the military at the mercy

o market orces; they had to be assured o sel-suciency. So they were

given projects that would provide prots which could und a decent lie

or ocers: a car, a fat, a vacation house, and so on. But this is no eco-nomic empire on the scale the Turkish army has built up, or example.

It is a much more modest enterprise. Military acilities are quite shabby

compared with what is on oer in the wealthy districts o Cairo. Ocers


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kandil:Interview31have not grossly enriched themselves. What you gain in the army or air

orce pales in comparison to what you can get as a senior police ocer or

member o the ruling party. Under Mubarak, the Minister o the Interior

stashed over $1 billion in his bank account. The Minister o Deence

could not dream o that kind o money.

Strategically, moreover, behind all its modern weaponry the Egyptian

military has been suering an identity crisis. Ater the October War,

Sadat knew that to prevent them rom becoming too rustrated, he had

to give the armed orces considerable symbolic satisaction. So he made

sure the us provided them with state-o-the-art weapons and training,

and the prestige o being the tenth biggest military in the world. But

they have come to realize that these things are or display only, and eelcompletely toothless. They have no ability to project strategic power into

any country around themnot only Israel, but also the rest o Egypts

neighbours. Ater the First Gul War, there was talk o Egyptian orces

becoming part o the Gul security systemwhat was reerred to as the

Damascus Declaration o 1991but the Americans said no, they would

handle that through installing their own bases in Gul countries. Then

there was the question o playing a more active role in stabilizing Gaza

or Lebanon. That came to nothing too. But it was the division o Sudan,weeks beore the January revolt, which sent shock waves throughout the

armed orces. Sudan occupies a central place in Egypts national secu-

rity doctrine. The secession o the South threatens Egypts control over

the head-waters o the Nile. But again the military was told that this is

an area o American infuence. So there was now a widespread eeling

among ocers that to enlist in the army is to build roads, run sheries,

or anything else other than play the role o soldiers. The rst captain to

raternize with demonstrators in the Square started complaining aboutthis. What have we actually been doing? What is our mission? What have

we done in Gaza or Sudan?

The evidence o this malaise could be seen ater Mubarak was gone.

For more than thirty years, since the all o the Shah, the regime never

allowed vessels rom Iran, whether civilian or military, to pass through

the Suez Canal. Within a month o Mubaraks departure, the Egyptian

military gave passage to two Iranian warships bound or Syria, reusingto comply with demands rom the us and Israel that they be blocked, or

at the very least searched. The military has no intention o burning its

bridges with either country. They were just sending a message that they


16/39

32nlr 68would decide what is in the national interest, as the Turkish military

does, or example. Further steps were taken in that direction when the

Supreme Military Council sent the new director o General Intelligence

to Syria and Qatar in mid-March to discuss ways o enhancing strategic

relations. O course Syria and Qatar, in concert with Turkey and Iran,

are part o a new regional power bloc that is trying to secure relative

autonomy rom the Western agenda, without necessarily antagonizing

any o the key Western powers.

In all this, there is no signas yeto any serious divisions within

the Egyptian military apparatus. Had there been real ractures between

the upper and lower ranks o the army during the popular revolt, we

would have seen some evidence o thatthe lower ranks, or exam-ple, deying orders to end the demonstrations. Or we would have seen

dozens o soldiers and junior ocers breaking ranks and joining the

demonstrationsthe kind o wide-scale raternizing that happened dur-

ing the Iranian Revolution, or instance. We did not see any o that in

Egypt. So ar the military has been speaking with a unied voice, across

services and across ranks.

Under Mubarak, how did the political and military apparatuses connectwithin the regime?

From 1967 onwards the President has been Commander-in-Chie o

the Armed Forces. He appoints the Minister o Deence, the heads o

all the services, and the general sta. He also has directly under him

the Republican Guard, which the press calls the Presidential Guard,

which orms a th service alongside the Army, Navy, Air Force and Air

Deence. The Guard remained quite small or a decade and a hal aterits creation in 1953, numbering no more than a ew hundred. When

Nasser began to marginalize the military politically, ollowing its deeat

in 1967, he raised this elite corps to battalion strength; Sadat then

expanded it to a brigade o around 1530,000 troopsthe numbers are

not certainequipped with heavy armour. Unlike other military units,

the Guard is not stationed in barracks outside the city, but around the

various Presidential palaces, and its commander has always been picked

or special loyalty to the ruler. On February 11, demonstrators eared thatMubarak would mobilize the Guard to quench the revolt. But in the end

it sided with the rest o the military, not the President.


17/39

kandil:Interview33How do the security orces compare with the regular army?

When Nasser rst came to power he charged one o his closest asso-

ciates, Zakaria Mohieddin, with developing the Special Section o the

Ministry o the Interior, created by the British, into a renamed General

Investigations Department responsible or surveillance and disrup-

tion o any political activity, with the help o the newly created General

Intelligence Service. But the Army decided to shoulder the task o regime

maintenance. Under its charismatic commander, Field Marshal Amer,

Military Intelligence, Military Police and Military Prisons played the

leading role in internal security. Ater the 1967 war, when Nasser sought

to cut the Army down to size, Military Intelligence was conned to spy-

ing on other countries militaries; General Intelligence was redirectedtowards oreign espionage and domestic counterintelligence (against

enemy agents in Egypt); while the General Investigations Department

was restored to sole control o internal repression.

Then Nasser decided he needed another body to control the streets, and

created the Central Security Forces, based like the army on conscription,

and on the same scale300,000 strong. Their job would be to main-

tain order and protect strategic sitesthe tv building, the Ministries,the Parliament, oreign embassies and banks. So now domestic repres-

sion had a head and an arm: the head was the General Investigations

Department and the arm was the Central Security Forces. Sadat upgraded

the ormer into the State Security Investigations Sectorour own ss

and also beeed up the Central Security Forces. Under Mubarak, total

personnel engaged in domestic repression has been estimated at the

heroic gure o two million operatives. O these, however, a million

and a hal were hired thugs or inormers without uniorms or ranks,oten people with a criminal record who had cut deals with the authori-

ties; they were neither part o the police corps proper nor o the Central

Security orces nor o the ss. So while the overall number is very infated,

the unleashing o so many people with shadowy relations with the police

has terrorized citizens.

I you exclude these, you are let with a security apparatus o about

400,000, o which 300,000 are conscripts armed with bludgeons,but led by an elite usually reerred to as the Special Forces, which are

equipped with armoured vehicles, rubber bullets, water hoses and tear

gas or riot control. Then you have about 70,000 police proper, dealing


18/39

34nlr 68with drugs, vice, tourism etc. Finally State Security, the most lethal orce,

has some 3,000 ocers. These rely on the latest technologies or detec-

tion o political dissent and torture o detainees.

What about the party organization o the dictatorship, thendpcheek by jowlwith New Labour, the ps and spd and the rest o European social-democracy

as ellow members o the Socialist International? What kind o structure is it?

In 1953 Nasser, at that point not yet Prime Minister, decided to orm

what he called the Liberation Rally: a loose mass movement intended to

undermine rather than replace all the other political orces o the time.

Five years later he turned that into the National Union, to stage demon-

strations in support o the regime, garner the necessary votes i electionsand reerendums were needed, and generally act as a sounding-board

or him in society. He entrusted some o his closest lieutenants with

the task o creating this party, which by 1962 had developed into the

Arab Socialist Union. Amer had proved impossible to remove as head

o the army, and Nasser wanted to supplement his own charisma and

popularity with an entrenched political organization as a counterweight

to the military. Nominally the aim was mass mobilization, but in prac-

tice the asu simply plugged into the existing power structures in thecountryside, where three-quarters o the Egyptian population still lived,

co-opting middling landowners, who were economically dominant g-

ures in the villages, to tot up votes rom peasants.

In the towns, Nasser had relied on capitalists throughout the ties, but

they held back investment because they did not trust the military. With

the wave o nationalizations in 1961 most o these capitalists became

part o the state machinery. The most amous example is Osman AhmedOsman, the construction magnate and richest man in the country. When

his company was nationalized he became its ceo, working or the gov-

ernment. Once this layer was incorporated into the bureaucracy, it too

became a key component o the Arab Socialist Union. Naturally, there

was nothing socialist about it, nor anything to do with mass mobiliza-

tion. The unction o the party was simply to rally the bureaucracy and

the workers in the public sector on the one hand, and the peasants on

the other, to clientelistic support o the regime.

This was the structure Sadat inherited in the seventies. Towards the end o

the decade, he decided to create more o a aade o democracy, allowing


19/39

kandil:Interview35some people with letist tendencies to orm the Tagammu party, others

with more liberal tendencies to operate as the Wad and Liberal parties,

as decoration or a system in which the ruling party was reborn as the

National Democratic Party in 1978, with exactly the same patronage net-

works o old. In due course, this was taken over by Mubarak. But by the

late nineties, once the economy was opened up and the regime set about

trying to attract oreign investment, another acelit was required. Here

Gamal Mubarak played a key role. His circle persuaded him that he could

change the ndp by sidelining the technocrats who headed it, who had typ-

ically enriched themselves with bribes and commissions as middlemen,

in avour o real businessmen who were younger, better educated and,

most importantly, linked to global capitalist centres. They could inuse the

ndp with new thinking to make it more appealing, and at the same timegive Gamal a platorm or his presidential ambitions.

Mubarak, who wanted to pass the baton on to his son, backed the crea-

tion o the Policy Committee which became the new core o the party, at

the expense o its traditional patriarchs. One o these, Kamal El-Shazly,

amously portrayed in the best-selling novel The Yacoubian Building,

died a timely death.Another, Sawat El-Sheri, was kicked upstairs as

the partys Secretary General. So there were hurt egos in the change,but no real divisions in the party. Old and new guards were in the same

boat together, and it was a ormidable vessel. Millions held a nominal

membership in the ndp, o whom maybe two million were active. I you

were a young businessman who wanted to get ahead, or a small trader

who did not want to be harassed by the police, you joined the party. So a

lot o this membership was accommodation without commitment. But

that should not blind us to the act that many have a good deal to lose i

the ndp were to be dissolved.

You have given a vivid account o the power triangle on which the dictatorship

rested. But, o course, there was another decisive power on which it depended,

outside the country. The United States was the ultimate guarantor o the

regime, rom the moment Washington saved Sadat rom Israeli encirclement

in 1973, when the idf was about to cut o the Egyptian armies in Sinai and

repeat its crushing victory o 1967. The price o that rescue was Camp David

and the conversion o Egypt into a pivot o the American strategic system inthe Middle East. The popular uprising against Mubarak put the us on red

alert, and it is airly clear that the decision o the military fnally to abandon

him was taken in consultation with the White House, not to speak o the


20/39

36nlr 68Pentagon. How would you describe the interace between the dierent compo-

nents o the regime and their American patrons?

From the eighties onwards, three institutions were in regular interaction

with the us: oreign intelligence, the military and the presidency. The

General Intelligence Service under Omar Suleiman was, o course, ater

the Mossad the cias key partner in the Middle East, working hand in

glove with it to manipulate the pla, throttle Hamas and torture prisoners

in the American rendition system. Ater 9/11, its importance or Langley

naturally soared. Suleiman was probably the single most valued Egyptian

ocial in the eyes o Washington. Mubarak could be slow and stubborn.

Suleiman was neither, and both the us and Israeli establishments looked

to him as the best possible successor as ruler o the country.

On the political side o the regime, rom the time o Sadat onwards there

was always close contact between the presidencies o the two countries,

with many a state visit back and orth, once Egypt had become Americas

staunch regional ally. Obama made Cairo his rst stop in the Middle

East, to deliver the speech which won him his Nobel Prize, and Mubarak

was being toasted in Washington a couple o months later. Alongside

this traditional diplomatic alignment went increasingly close commer-cial ties. Sadat openly said his best riend was David Rockeeller, rom

whom he took his ideas about how to shape the Egyptian economy.

The president intervened to bring rst Chase Manhattan, then Boeing,

Westinghouse, gm and other American corporations into Egypt. Beore

the eighties came to a close, the American Chamber o Commerce in

Egypt was the strongest business lobby in the country. Door-knocking

expeditions in the us became constant. Each President visiting the

us would be accompanied by a large entourage o businessmen andocials o the ruling party, who would call on the various lobbies in

Washington and then an out across the country ater the President had

let, in search o deals and investors. These connexions became much

closer when Mubarak ormed the businessmens cabinet under Ahmed

Nazi in 2004, which was greeted with enthusiasm on Wall Street.

Corporate America stood to gain handsomely rom the new neo-liberal

team in Cairo, while the new business elite entrenched in the ndp could

expect healthy prots rom increasedus

investments and the change inus aid policy mooted at this time. Civilian assistance o between $850

million and $1 billion that in the past had always been disbursed to the

Egyptian government would now be redirected to the private sector, or


21/39

kandil:Interview37projects at which it is amously more ecient and less corrupt, as every

right-thinking economist knows. Naturally, decent us consultancy ees

would be involved, and us advisors would be on hand to ensure the right

policy conditions were in placeWashington in act has hundreds o

these operating as a kind o collective shadow cabinet in Egypt. So there

is a close, mutually protable interlocking o interests between corpo-

rate America and Egyptian big business, which extends into the political

establishments o the two countries.

As or the military, it goes without saying that the relations with the

Pentagon have been extremely close. Annual fows o over $1 billion or

weapons and trainingmore than to any armed orces in the world save

Israelsspeak or themselves. Whether this has bought unconditionalealty to the United States is another matter. The Pentagon has a vital

stake in its relations with the Egyptian military, to preserve strategic con-

trol o the Middle East, and no doubt personal ties between the top brass

o the two are oten quite intimate. But it does not ollow that the Egyptian

ocer corps are thereore playthings o Washington. They have their own

outlook on the world, and corporate interests to consider. Once the upris-

ing started this year, it is pretty clear that the message rom the Pentagon

was: the best-case scenario is or Mubarak to stay on till September andthen graceully step down, orstill betteror Omar Suleiman to take

over. It is equally clear the Egyptian military at some point told them that

was no longer possible: you have to cut your lossesi you want to avoid

chaos, stop an Islamist takeover, prevent any destabilization that could

aect Israel, we need to nudge the President out o power. In the end

the us assented. So while the military certainly consulted Washington, I

think it made a rational decision or its own reasons.

c. the first month

The Supreme Military Council that met on February 10 was the body that

took this decision. What is its status, who does it consist o and how does

it operate?

The Council is theoretically convened when the country is at war. Soit was called into session in 1967 and 1973, each time chaired by the

President as the Commander-in-Chie o the Armed Forcesthat is,

Nasser in the rst case and Sadat in the second. So when the Council


22/39

38nlr 68convened on February 10 without Mubarak, and a military analyst

explained on television that it had met o its own accord, without an

invitation o the Commander-in-Chie, or his presence, it was equivalent

to a mutiny, announcing that the Mubarak regime was over.

Since then the Council has been in permanent session, meeting in the

Deence Ministry. It is composed o the Deence Minister, the Chie

o Sta, the heads o the ve services, o the ve military districts into

which the country is divided, and the heads o each o the specialized

departmentsintelligence, legal and so on. But we can be sure it is the

rst twelve who call the shots. As ar as we can tell, decisions are taken

collectively, by consensus. So ar the Council has been careul to rotate

the members speaking or it to avoid any impression that just two orthree people dominate it.

The Chairman o the Council, Deence Minister Tantawi, is a long-time asso-

ciate o Mubarak, not long ago contemptuously reerred to as his poodle by

middle-ranking ofcers, according to us dispatches revealed by Wikileaks.

How would you assess his present role?

Tantawi was the head o the Republican Guard, protecting the President,beore becoming Minister o Deence. As Minister, he wore two hats

one belonging to the military establishment, the other to the political

apparatus around the Presidency, even i since the days o Sadat the

Deence Minister cannot technically be a member o the ndp. Certainly

he is a close associate o Mubarak, but he understood that Mubarak had

to be abandoned, and so he took o his political hat and decided to go

along with the rest o the military. That being said, Tantawi is now an old

manseventy-veand it is not clear how much authority he wields inthe Supreme Military Council.

Would it be correct to say that the turning-point since the all o Mubarak

has been the eviction o the Prime Minister, Ahmed Shafq, another inti-

mate, whom he appointed to put down the uprising, and whose removal the

Supreme Military Council was orced to acceptit was certainly not its own

initiativeon March 3?

Shaq was an air-orce general who proudly declared that Mubarak taught

him fying, and many other skills. Mubarak made him commander o

the air orce, and they have always been close riendsmany people,


23/39

kandil:Interview39indeed, say they are related by marriage. Ater retirement, Mubarak

appointed him Minister o Civil Aviation, a position in which huge pro-

its were to be made, with a big new international airport, renovation

o the Egyptian national airline, and so orth. So he had been a civilian

politician adorning the ruling party or nearly a decade when he was

appointed Prime Minister. His perormance was miserable. He mocked

the demonstrators, calling Tahrir Square an imitation Hyde Park Corner,

saying people there should be given candy and chocolates. Instead there

came the brutal assault by police thugs on February 2. His promise o

swit justice came to nothing, and he amously insulted reporters who

asked him inconvenient questions. Ater fatly declaring that Mubarak

would never step down, he then hailed the great revolution o January

25. Meanwhile, it was widely reported that Shaq was still in touch withMubarak in his luxury hide-out in Sharm el-Sheikh.

On March 2, Shaq appeared as Prime Minister on a talk show with

Naguib Sawiris, the Coptic telecommunications millionaire and liberal

patron o the arts, a sort o Egyptian George Soros, the popular broad-

caster Hamdi Kandil (no relation), and the novelist Alaa Al-Aswany,

author oThe Yacoubian Building. There he was publicly taken to task or

the assault on the Square on February 2, and his ailure to bring anyoneto account or the deaths and injuries incurred at the hands o the police

during the uprising (which latest reports estimate at 685 dead and over

5,000 injured). Al-Aswany asked him how on earth Mahmoud Wagdy,

his new Interior Ministerrst appointed during the revolt, and reap-

pointed by Shaq ater Mubaraks departurecould still be claiming

that it was oreign snipers who had killed people and that the police had

done a superb job. Losing his temper, Shaq shouted back Dont you

don the veil o patriotism when speaking to me! Kandil bluntly told himhe had no shame continuing in his post when it was perectly clear the

people rejected him. Within twenty-our hours o this exchange beore

the whole nation, he was out.

This extraordinary episode raises the more general question o the role o the

dierent mediatelevision, the press, radio and social networksbeore, dur-

ing and ater the uprising. Could you say something about that?

For orty years, the media were all controlled by the state, under what

Nasser rst called the Ministry o National Guidance and later Sadat

the Ministry o Inormation. But in the nineties, out o the condence I


24/39

40nlr 68have described that no serious opposition remained, Mubarak allowed

independent media to appeara certain number o newspapers, satel-

lite television channels, and a very strong independent cinemathat

openly criticized the President, his amily and the state o the country.

There were only a ew red lines that could not be crossed. Foreigners are

oten surprised that a movie like The Yacoubian Buildingcould be made

in Egypt, but there were many other lms no less critical o the regime,

some o them more so. How was all this possible? In good measure, the

attitude o the regime was that i there is no organized opposition, all this

would be just talk. It could even be useul as a saety valve: i you allow

people to let o steam once in a while, that might be better or the sys-

tem. But history was also important. The rst Egyptian lms appeared

already in the 1920s. Egyptian television, which started in 1960, was therst in the Arab world. There was a long cultural tradition in the country,

not to be compared with anything in the Gul, or instance. So it was

dicult to keep the new technologies o satellite broadcasting and the

internet bottled up. The regime decided it was more prudent to permit

expression within certain negotiated limits.

Politically, television talk shows became the most important orm in

the new landscape. These go out at night on the independent satellitechannels, with very high-prole anchors, and last two to three hours,

sometimes even longer, discussing and arguing about everything that

has happened during the day. There are our or ve o these, to which

Egyptians have been glued every evening to get a general idea o the

state o the country. Towards the end, o course, the regime started to

target some o them, banning certain shows and tempering others. But

they were never shut down completely, and thus played a key role during

the revolt, and continued to do so aterwards. Abroad, the impression iswidespread that Facebook was the leading medium in the uprising, and

it was certainly critical or the younger generation in the rst ew days o

the protests. But or most ordinary Egyptians, the talk shows were much

more widely accessible. Once the uprising was under way, they would

invite the demonstrators to come onto the shows, they would interview

policemen, reporters, businessmen, serving as an open orum or dis-

cussion. The eect was very powerul.

Once Mubarak was ousted, the military nally yielded to popular demands,

and the Ministry o Inormation was abolished. Overnight, the state

media changed their tune with comical speed, and started denouncing the


25/39

kandil:Interview41ormer President and his amily, and singing the praises o the movement

that overthrew him. But they have zero credibility. It is the independent

talk shows that hold public attention. The organizers o the youth groups

have been welcomed on them, members o the committee to amend the

constitution explained its work on them, representatives o the Supreme

Military Council appeared on a our-hour show, elding calls rom view-

ers about what they were doing, the leaders o the Muslim Brotherhood

and other opposition groups were also eatured; in short, all the players in

the unolding political drama. People not only watch these programmes

to eel the pulse o what is happening in the country, they become political

events in themselves, as in the recent episode with Shaq.

What then o the cabinet that has replaced Shafqswhat is its character?

The new Prime Minister, Essam Shara, is an engineer who holds a

chair at Cairo University. He was briefy Minister o Transport in the

Nazi government o 2004, but resigned ater conficts with it. During

the uprising, he came to the Square and expressed his solidarity with

its occupiers, which is why he was one o the names proposed by the

demonstrators to the Supreme Military Council to head the government.

O the three most important Ministries, the portolio o Foreign Aairshas gone to Nabil El-Araby, a diplomat who accompanied Sadat to Camp

David and dissented rom his deal with Begin, and then made a career

on various un commissions and the International Court o Justice.

The Minister o the Interior, Mansour Al-Essawi, is a police general

rom one o the southernmost parts o the Said, known or his eorts

to ght corruption, who was living on and o in Paris, alienated rom

the regime. He has already dissolved the ss. The Minister o Justice,

Mohamed Abdelaziz El-Guindy, is an independent-minded judge, or-merly Attorney-General; the Ministry is politically critical, since it is in

charge o electoral supervision. Two other signicant gures are Samir

Radwan at the Treasury and Gouda Abdel-Khaleq at Social Welare, both

proessors o economics with clear letist tendenciesin act Abdel-

Khaleq is a member o Tagammu, the licensed Communist Party.

So they belong to the tradition that collaborated with Mubarak?

When the Free Ocers took power in 1952, there were three commu-

nist organizations in Egypt: the Egyptian Communist Party, the Workers

Vanguard Party and the Democratic Movement or National Liberation.


26/39

42nlr 68The latter attached itsel to Nasser rom the beginning, but the other two

did not and were repressed by him. Eventually, in the sixties, he released

their members rom prison on condition that the whole communist

movement dissolve itsel and join the Arab Socialist Union. His plan was

to co-opt its intellectual elite, using them or his purposes in ocial posi-

tions, and get rid o the rank and le completely. This continued until

the seventies when Sadat called on the one veteran o the Free Ocers

who had always been close to the communists, Khaled Mohieddin, who

had been purged by Nasser in 54, to set up a party that would bring

together what remained o this tradition, as a minor loyal opposition to

the ndp. So Mohieddin ormed the National Progressive Unionist Party,

or Tagammu, as a respectable shelter or let intellectuals o this descent.

In 2003, Mohieddin stepped down, and the partys new leader, ReaatEl-Saeed, came to terms with Mubarak on the pretext that Islamism was

the common enemy o both. So throughout the nineties, and the rst

decade o this century, Egyptian communism was completely aligned

with the government. But what is let o it still contains intellectuals o

some proessional competence, o whom the pair now holding cabinet

posts are good examples.

Why have the detested emergency laws not already been lited, now thatMubarak has gone?

The military promise that they will be rescinded once a new President and

Parliament are in place. However, the truth is that these laws have been

on the books almost continuously since 1948. The emergency laws are in

a sense a ormality, the symbol o a state o aairs more than o the state

itsel. The real problem is the culture o the police: the law, emergency or

otherwise, does not exist or them. They have come to assume they can doanything they wanttap your phone, search your house, put you in jail,

beat you up. The day ater the emergency laws are rescinded you can still

have a police ocer who has been on the street or twenty years and does

not understand why he needs a court order to tap the phone o someone

he suspects is dealing drugs, or why a suspect who does not want to talk

cannot be slapped around and electrocuted. He does these things because

that is the only way to do business he knows.

Popular anger at this daily oppression runs very deep. An incident a ew

weeks ago in Maadi, a very upscale part o Cairo, can give you an idea o


27/39

kandil:Interview43the tensions it creates. A young police ocer got into a trac dispute

with a bus driver. Becoming annoyed, he pulled out his gun and shot

the citizen in the arm. Instead o turning away, on this occasion onlook-

ers were so inuriated they attacked him and beat him almost to death.

This is the kind o thing that is all too likely to happen, so long as this

culture o arbitrary police violence persists. The emergency laws need to

be abolished, but it is the empowerment o ordinary people that will do

most to change it.

In Tunisia the ruling party has been declared illegal. In some respects, Ben

Alis dictatorship was even more repressive than Mubaraks, but as a ruling

party the ndp was much like the Neo-Destour. What are its prospects now?

Banning the ruling party would remain largely a symbolic act, because

as long as there is no radical change in the socio-economic landscape,

the orces ensconced within it will eventually regroup in a dierent body.

But it is true that i the party were dissolved now, or its leaders orbidden

to run in the next election, but allowed to regroup in our years or so,

you would be likely to have an organization that was more thoroughly

reormed at the end o the process. But in all probability it would retain

considerable electoral strength, preserving strong clientelistic networks,and remain a key economic and political player.

I it was stripped o its assets?

The ndp does not own many assets in its name directly. What it pos-

sesses are two important bases. One is its grip on the bureaucracy, which

amounts to six million people, who have been its ready supporters and

voters, whose budget has allowed a steady fow into its coers, and whoseservices have always been at its disposal. That will be removed rom the

party. Its other base will not dwindle so easily, since it comprises private-

sector businessmen and wealthy landowners who have their own assets,

which they used both to support the party and to gain rom it, making

sure o a return on their investments. Short o conscations o their

wealth, they will have the wherewithal or a comeback. The critical point

will be subtraction o the bureaucracy rom the ndp. How ar that will go

remains to be seen. The party possesses a lot o inormal networks that itdeveloped over time. To what extent can these be disrupted?


28/39

44nlr 68When elections are called, the ruling party is likely to put up a pretty strong

perormance?

I it is allowed to run or election this year, it will certainly do so.

Optimists estimate that a third o the seats might go to the ndp, a third

to the Muslim Brotherhood and a third allocated among all the others. A

more pessimistic view is that the ndp and the Brotherhood will divide

80 per cent o the electorate between them. Even on the most optimistic

view, i the ndp were banned, people running as independents but actu-

ally representing the old order would probably make up a third o the

Parliament or more. The orces that actually brought down the dictator-

ship will constitute a minority in the assembly.

Whatever orm the constitution takes, it looks as i the President will have very

extensive powers. Is it possible to make any kind o guess as to who is likely to

gain the position?

He will certainly not be anyone too obviously connected with the rul-

ing party. So ar, a ew candidates have emerged. One is Amr Moussa,

Secretary-General o the Arab League, somewhat marginalized by the

regime in recent years, but or a decade Mubaraks Foreign Minister.El-Baradei is another leading contender, much less associated with the

dictatorship. Also in the eld is senior judge Hisham Al-Bastaweissy, a

staunch critic o the regime, and a long-time advocate o judicial inde-

pendence. Some talk o Mohamed Abdul Salam Mahgoub, a colonel

rom military intelligence regarded as a very successul governor o

Alexandria, where he became so popular he was promoted to head the

unimportant Ministry o Local Development. So he is not seen as com-

ing rom the top cohort o the ruling party. The Muslim Brotherhoodhave said they will not run a candidate, but whoever they support will

have a solid vote-bank.

What political direction might the Muslim Brotherhood take, now that it is

overground?

We are at a point where all major actors are redening themselves, in a

completely new situation. There are many reasons or the Brotherhoodto prove weaker than it was beore. Most importantly, it drew its main

strength rom the act that it raised the banner o opposition to the bru-

tally authoritarian regime, and many o its militants were tortured or


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kandil:Interview45died in prison. But in even a limited sort o democracy, there is no need

or martyrs any longer. The other great strength o the Muslim Brothers

was that in a very corrupt system that provided little or nothing to the

poor, their welare services oered real material assistance and solidar-

ity. But that appeal too will decline i you have a government that is or

the rst time responsive to peoples needs.

Then too there has long been a confict within the Brotherhood between

the old guard and a new guard. The old guard are people who have spent

most o their lie in prison. Their main claim to authority is that they

know how to work in the shadows, sustaining an underground move-

ment, and young idealistic reormers do not. But once political work

moves above ground, this stock argument ails. In the absence o mortaldanger, it is no longer credible to maintain that you will ruin everything

i you leave the party. The Muslim Brotherhood can emerge as an impor-

tant actor but not as the organization we have known until now. It would

have to become another kind o party, with a vaguer Islamic identity,

perhaps like the akp in Turkey.

What about the January 25 Coalition and the array o orces that sprang rom

the uprising?

There was a heterogeneous ront, and there is no sign yet that it is capa-

ble o consolidating into a single political party. I it were to do so, the

critical weight in it would be liberal. But these liberals would nd it

dicult to work together with letists and Islamists. So more likely, we

will have a majority organization that is very liberal, with smaller letist

and reormist Islamic groups alongside it. That is where developments

seem to be heading now, dispersing the potential o the movement.The hope that they could rise above their dierences to orm one truly

radical party looks unrealistic. They dier on too many basic issues. In

co-operation, they might be able to carry a third o the vote, but that is

a best-case scenario.

Who are the liberals in todays Egypt, and what is their outlook?

Those gathered around Mohamed El-Baradei and the party he is mostclosely associated with, the Democratic Front, can airly be described as

liberals, as can those who orchestrated the appeals on Facebook at the

start o the uprising. So too supporters o Ayman Nour and the El-Ghad


30/39

46nlr 68party he created beore he went to prison. Many o the organizers in this

area o opinion come rom the historic Wad, the party o liberal nation-

alism under the monarchy, which seems to be making a comeback. In

the media and the intelligentsiaactually in the culture at largethere

is now a great nostalgia or the time when the Wad was the leading

political orce in the country. In the past ve or six years, a sort o xa-

tion on the Egypt o the twenties, thirties and orties has developed,

an idealization o the period as a liberal utopia that has become very

widespread in novels and movies. Al-Aswany is a prime example. One

o the advantages the Islamists possessed lay in the captivating image o

the Prophet and his lie in Medinaanother kind o utopia to return to.

Now it is the golden age o the 1920s that has taken hold o the Egyptian

imagination. All the Presidential candidates are evoking this image o abetter, more open and cosmopolitan past.

d. prospects

How is the reerendum on amendments to the constitution to be assessed?

The Supreme Military Council created a committee to propose consti-tutional amendments, headed by a jurist and historian with Islamist

sympathies, Tareq El-Bishri, and including a member o the Muslim

Brotherhood. The choice o El-Bishri is quite signicant. Not only is

he generally considered one o Egypts oremost intellectuals, but his

main historical treatise, which examines Egyptian politics between the

end o the Second World War and the coup that took place seven years

later, is ramed by the ollowing question: how did it come about that

the vibrant street politics o the late 1940s and early 1950s, pregnant asit was with revolutionary movements and alternatives, produced no sei-

zure o power, allowing the military to step in instead? In other words,

one o El-Bishris primary obsessions is how the military rode the crest

o radical protests in 1952 and stole the revolution. Every interview he

has given since his appointment by the Supreme Military Council has

refected his determination not to let this happen again.

The committee drated a set o changes that scrap the dictatorshipsrestrictions on Presidential candidates; reduce the Presidency rom

ve to our years, allowing a maximum o two terms; and limit the


31/39

kandil:Interview47Presidents power to declare a state o emergency to six months,

renewable only by reerendum. At military insistence, these were put

at virtually point-blank notice to voters on March 19. The ndp and

Islamists, spearheaded by the Muslim Brothers and Salas (puritani-

cal Muslims), called or approval o the package. The Youth Coalition

o the January 25 Revolution, El-Baradei and other presidential candi-

dates, in addition to liberal and letist orces, opposed it, asking why the

constitution abricated by the dictatorship should be amended, rather

than a new constitution democratically decided. The proposed pack-

age requires a Constituent Assembly to be nominated by a Parliament

elected also at short noticethis autumnto write a new constitution.

Those who supported the procedure o the plebiscite argued that it

minimizes the danger o the military entrenching themselves in power(in keeping with the logic o El-Bishris concern). Those who rejected

it argued that the rush to a plebiscite o such narrow scope was calcu-

lated to ensure that the two longest-established organizations, the ndp

and the Brotherhoodeach in their way thoroughly conservative, and

least likely to upset the High Commandwould capture the atermath

o the regime.

The turnout was 41 per cent. By what kind o yardstick should this be judged?

By Egyptian standards, it is a airly high gure. The population o the

country is now close to 85 million, o whom 45 million have the right

to vote, and 18 million did so. This sounds like a low turnout, com-

pared with ocial gures or various reerendums and elections held

under the old regime. But these were always raudulent. It was easy to

tell that because you never actually saw people casting their votes in

signicant numbers. It was completely dierent this time. In Cairo,every single voting station was completely packed, with long lines rom

7 in the morning until 8 or 9 at night. O course, as you would expect,

turnout was highest in the big cities, and much lower in the country-

side. Technically, nearly 60 per cent o the population is still classied

as rural, even i in practice most people now live in villages the size o

small towns; today the peasantry proper is only about a quarter o the

labour orce. There are no registration problems, since everyone is now

issued with a magneticid

, and turnout will probably be much higherin the elections or parliament.


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48nlr 68How should the overwhelming vote in avour o the constitutional

amendments77 per centbe interpreted?

This is now much discussed. What seems clear is that a Yes vote meant

dierent things to dierent people. A great many voted or the amend-

ments in the belie that approval was needed to get the country running

again. This was probably the dominant reason or the size o the Yes

votea ear that to vote No would be to prolong chaos and uncertainty,

preventing any return to lie as normal. One could oten hear people

saying they were going to vote Yes because they wanted to get back to

work, and to see the economy start picking up; it was very dicult or

them to understand that this had nothing to do with voting Yes or No.

Another major actor was the belie, equally mistaken, that a Yes votewas necessary to preserve Article Two o the constitution, which declares

the principles o sharia to be the basis o legislationthat a No vote

meant abolition o the existing constitution. In act a new constitution is

going to be ramed anyway, regardless o the result o the reerendum.

The common people essentially voted Yes or these reasons. They were

deluded, but comprehensibly so. Three organized actions, o course,

urged them on: the remnants o the ndp, the Muslim Brotherhood

and the Sala undamentaliststhe latter two playing particularly onthe second ear.

When does Article Two o the constitution date rom?

Actually, though ew people are aware o this, its history goes back to the

rst Egyptian constitution o 1923, which included an article stating that

the sharia was one o the main sources o legislation. There was a similar

article in the 1954 constitution, drated ater the Free Ocers came topower, and it was reintroduced in the charters o 1964 and 1971. Then

in 1980 Sadat proposed two amendments to the constitution. The rst

upgraded the sharia rom being just one o the main sources o legisla-

tion to become the main source, and the second allowed the President to

be re-elected indenitelyhis real objective. The rst was designed as a

cover or the second, in a package deal ormally submitted to a reeren-

dum. Ater its passage Sadat set up a committee that was supposed to

ensure that all laws were in line with the sharia. It met or ve monthswithout reaching any conclusion, and was never heard o again.


33/39

kandil:Interview49The No vote was concentrated in Cairo, where it reached 39.48 per cent,

Alexandria at 32.87 and Giza at 31.82 per cent. How should these results be

assessed?

Given the strength o the desire or a return to normalcy and attachments

to religion in popular consciousness, the size o the No vote in Cairo

almost two-ths o those who votedwas impressive. The campaign

to reject the package o amendments was led by the liberals and letists

who were at the oreront o the uprising. In terms o political organiza-

tion, these are still quite small groups. What the No vote in Cairoo

which Giza is practically an extensionand Alexandria showed is the

considerable social base these orces could potentially enjoy in a demo-

cratic Egypt, principally in the educated middle class, but also amongurban workers. It is a tribute to the political authority they have gained

in leading the uprising that so many voters ollowed their advice in a re-

erendum held at such short notice, and amid so much conusion about

its meaning. But i this still-potential vanguard role does not speedily

acquire organizational orm, memories o Tahrir are likely to ade away.

So ar there are very ew signs o such organization. Most non-Islamist

activists are still engrossed in the same casuistic debates that preceded

the revolt. Although the practical liting o censorship now oers theman expanded public platorm, too oten they seem still to be splitting

hairs as i nothing has changed.

A couple o other, non-metropolitan, zones registered No votes well above the

national averagethe Red Sea and South Sinai governorates, at 36.62 and

33.06 per cent. What explains these scores?

Probably ear o Islamism. These are areas where the livelihood othe population depends on tourism, which they suspect might suer

i restrictions on alcohol or swim-gear come into orce. When they see

which way religious groups are going, they tend to vote the opposite.

What is the eective upshot o the reerendum?

The ocial position o the armed orces is that they dont want a new

constitution to be drated under military ruleit should be written in ademocratic atmosphere. So ater the reerendum the agenda is supposed

to go like this. First, there will be parliamentary elections, probably in


34/39

50nlr 68September, ollowed by presidential elections in December or early

January. The Parliament will be required to appoint a Constituent

Assembly within six months, which will then have another six months

to drat a constitution. Once completed, the new constitution will be

submitted to a reerendum within teen days. The campaigners or

a No vote have argued that in this scenario Parliament is likely to be

controlled by remnants o the ndp and the Muslim Brotherhood, and

the Constituent Assembly will refect that balance. The militarys reply

has been that i a Constituent Assembly were elected right away, it

would probably produce the same balance o orces as a Parliament in

September, so there should be no objection to the latter.

The Youth Revolution Coalition has ormally demanded the dissolution o theruling party. Has that been taken up by anyone else as a demand?

Yes, this is a big issue at the moment. But its not yet clear what the

ate o the ndp will be. The pattern so ar has been that the Supreme

Military Council is unresponsive to popular demands at the start, and

then suddenly acts on them later. This was the case with the dismissal

o the Shaq government, the abolition o the ss, and beore that o the

Ministry o Inormation. So well have to see. Certainly, there is a verygeneral hope that at least the leading members o the ruling party will

be excluded rom participation in the next elections. The military says

it will be announcing the rules or the ormation o parties and holding

o elections shortly.

How have the media evolved since the overthrow o Mubarak?

This is another key issue. Along with the call or a dissolution or neutral-ization o the ruling party, there have been widespread demands or a

purge o those in charge o the state media. This is not just because people

have been irritated by the ludicrous spectacle o notorious mouthpieces

o the dictatorship suddenly presenting themselves as champions o the

revolution. It is also because the state media have continued to play a

double game by whipping up every kind o scare as a threat to the great

achievements o the revolution, trying to sow panic that would avour a

restoration o the old order. Ater demonstrations strongly demandingthe removal o the leaders o the tv stations and newspapers controlled

by the state, on 2 April the prime minister issued two decrees purging

close to a dozen such gures.


35/39

kandil:Interview51What about developments on the industrial ront?

Very contradictory. There is still rather little pressure coming rom

below. Most workers are still essentially concerned with their daily

needspay, holidays, working conditionswith very ew overarching

political demands so ar. On the other hand, there is a kind o polit-

icization rom above, as the new Minister o Labour, Ahmed Hassan

El-Boraia jurist specializing in labour relations, who has long been

sympathetic to workers and is much respected by thempromises that

within six months there will be a new statute or labour, with a guaran-

teed minimum wage and the right o workers to organize independent

trade unions and a national ederation o labour. Yet at the same time

the new government has drated a law criminalizing strikes, protests,demonstrations and sit-ins that interrupt private or state-owned busi-

nesses or aect the economy, as long as the emergency laws remain in

orce. Naturally, this attempt at repression is meeting with vehement

opposition rom independent trade unions, not to speak o let and lib-

eral groups at large.

Meanwhile, what has been happening among the liberal and let groups that

powered the uprising? Is the landscape there sti

Documents

Revolt in Egypt (1)