Egypt, Part Two: It’s Going Down

NYU Local
NYU Local
Published in
3 min readFeb 10, 2011

--

By Ari Lipsitz

When we last left off, Egypt was in crisis. Millions of populist protesters, inspired by the overthrow of the Tunisian dictatorship and discontented with high food prices, stormed the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez, and began to call for President Hosni Mubarak to step down. Everything looked like it was going pretty smoothly, all things considered.

Then it all kind of went to hell. As far as anybody can tell, the Egyptian government sent anti-protester protesters to protest (i.e., violently clash with) the otherwise peaceful opposition.

On February 2nd, there were violent clashes in the middle of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, with the hundreds of thousands of citizens being swamped by trucks running over civilians (warning: graphic and gnarly images) and provocateurs on camelback. At the same time, the Internet was turned back on, as if to imply to the world that the protests were really incredibly violent, and that Mubarak had to step in to restore order, for decency’s sake.

It didn’t really work. International support has rallied behind Mohamed El-Baradei, former UN nuclear inspector and Nobel Laureate, to lead the Egyptian people. And Mubarak fired his entire government except for himself, which was the only part of the government the Egyptians are fed up with.

Meanwhile, many are captivated by Wael Ghonim, a young Google executive turned political activist who organized the Facebook profile for the January 25 protests. The Facebook protests were coordinated by young wealthy Egyptians, but quickly extended across classes and sects to become a pretty good signifier of how pissed the people were (answer: very pissed indeed). On January 27th, he was arrested and jailed — his Twitter feed leaves a chilling absence for ten days. Finally, Ghonim was released and gave a stirring interview to Egyptian Dream TV. It’s in Arabic, but there are subtitles, and as lazy as you are, please watch this thing. Or watch this English interview with CNN that’s slightly less stirring but proves the dude is eloquent in two languages. A lot of people want him to lead the protesters, including the protesters themselves. It’s an interesting development.

Speaking of CNN, you might have heard how the “Silver Fox” himself, Anderson Cooper, got accosted by protesters. They ruined his perfect hair. So he went home. So did Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and Christiane Amanpour, most likely because everyone knows news stories don’t last for more than a week at a time.

And now at least the United States is catching up. In a belated but totally necessary show of support, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged that there was no going back, and that the government should listen to the Egyptian people (which it’s not doing) if it wanted American support and aid. That’s savvy, because it keeps the Obama administration from sounding like they’re telling anybody what to do while still… telling people what to do.

So what next? Egypt’s workers are now on strike, giving what has been a protest led by mostly rich young people a strong cross-class vibe. The military is keeping a pretty great poker face, not putting its lot in with the government or the protesters — I don’t expect a Tienanmen Square-type situation, thank goodness. Oh, and in case anyone thought that the protests are Islamist in origin, they aren’t, as Suri explained earlier. That doesn’t mean that Democracy!® is on the way, however. The Egyptians still gotta find a way to get Mubarak out of power, get somebody useful in power, and placate Israel, which is nervous about what happens when populist uprisings go down in Arab nations.

(Image via)

--

--