chapter 24 Story of an Uprising (II)

During the Friday of Anger the mass demonstrations of 25 January turned into a popular uprising that defeated the hated police in the streets. This chapter continues the story of the insurrection after the Friday 28 January protests.

Gaining Confidence

Because of the defeat of the police and the csf in the streets, Mubarak had to call on the army to restore order (Khalil 2012, 193). Tanks and apcs rolled into the center of , , and Suez, where they were welcomed by dem- onstrators who hoped that the army would side with them against the police. This episode evoked a moment from the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, narrated by Trotsky:

Soon the police disappeared altogether – that is, begin to act secretively. Then the soldiers appeared – bayonets lowered. Anxiously the workers ask them: “Comrades, you haven’t come to help the police?” […] The police are fierce, implacable, hated and hating foes. To win them over is out of the question. Beat them up and kill them. It is different with the soldiers: the crowd makes every effort to avoid hostile encounters with them; on the contrary, seeks ways to dispose them in its favour, convince, attract, fraternise, merge them in itself. trotsky 2011, 128

At this point, the Egyptian military did not intervene in clashes between pro- testers and police. They did, however, disperse a group of protesters who tried to storm the Maspero state television building, sealed off access to parliament and cabinet buildings, and took control over .1 At around mid- night president appeared on Nile tv, declaring that he would fire the cabinet and appoint a new one on Saturday. In the same breath he warned the Egyptians that he would not condone any more chaos in the streets. Even though the army called on the population to respect the curfew, thousands­

1 Interview with Wael Tawfiq, Cairo, 8 March 2011.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004262669_026 Story Of An Uprising (ii) 315 continued to protest throughout Saturday 29 January in Cairo, Alexandria, Ismailiya, Suez and Damanhur. After the withdrawal of police forces from the streets, the revolutionary masses faced a new threat: criminal gangs, some of them escaped/released prisoners, and baltageyya, ‘thugs’ who terrorized neighborhoods and looted houses, shops, and supermarkets (Stacher 2011a). These attacks were widely covered by state television and framed as a consequence of the anti-régime protests (Khalil 2012, 202). Blogger Issandr al-Amrani, however, criticized this type of coverage:

There is a discourse of army vs. police that is emerging. I don’t fully buy it – the police was pulled out to create this situation of chaos, and it’s very probable that agent provocateurs are operating among the looters, although of course there is also real criminal gangs and neighborhoods [sic] toughs operating too. al-amrani 2011b

Civil vigilante groups were improvised during the evening and night in order to protect neighborhoods from the attackers. The people, both in popular and wealthy areas, organized themselves to maintain order “[…] while plain clothes policeman [sic] try to create the impression of anarchy” (Guardian News Blog 30/1, 2011). At around 17 h30, Mubarak appointed intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as vice-president and Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force com- mander and civil aviation minister, as prime minister.2 This move did not pla- cate the masses, who continued their protests throughout the evening and the following day. Most banks, offices, and shopping malls remained closed. At noon on Sunday 30 January, new tanks rolled into Tahrir Square, fortify- ing the salient military presence in the heart of the revolution where some 20,000 protesters were still gathered, chanting slogans against the president and the régime. In a ploy to divide the revolutionary movement, Mubarak blamed the for the chaos and looting, and warned Egyptians that the Society was taking advantage of their economic and politi- cal grievances. Meanwhile, the Ikhwan and four other opposition movements called for a temporary ‘national salvation government’, headed by al-Baradei,

2 Suleiman had been the régime’s favored candidate for the position of vice-president for two years. He headed the General Intelligence Services, which were directly dependent on for- eign funding and worked closely with the usa and Israel, and which were distrusted by the general public (Hajjar 2011). Ahmed Shafiq, for his part, had been a Chief of Staff of the Air Force, which together with the Republican Guard constituted the two elite branches of the armed forces and those sections of the military that were closest to Mubarak.