[News] Is The Army Tightening Its Grip On Egypt?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Is The Army Tightening Its Grip On Egypt?

By <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/robertfisk>Robert Fisk

Source: 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/is-the-army-tightening-its-grip-on-egypt-2213849.html>Independent
Monday, February 14, 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/is-the-army-tightening-its-grip-on-egypt-2213849.html

Two days after millions of Egyptians won their 
revolution against the regime of Hosni Mubarak, 
the country's 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/is-the-army-tightening-its-grip-on-egypt-2213849.html>army 
– led by Mubarak's lifelong friend, General 
Mohamed el-Tantawi – further consolidated its 
power over Egypt yesterday, dissolving parliament 
and suspending the constitution. As they did so, 
the 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/is-the-army-tightening-its-grip-on-egypt-2213849.html>prime 
minister appointed by Mubarak, ex-General Ahmed 
Shafiq, told Egyptians that his first priorities 
were "peace and security" to prevent "chaos and 
disorder" – the very slogan uttered so often by 
the despised ex-president. Plus ça change?

In their desperation to honour the 'military 
council's' promise of Cairo-back-to-normal, 
hundreds of Egyptian 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/is-the-army-tightening-its-grip-on-egypt-2213849.html>troops 
– many unarmed – appeared in Tahrir Square to 
urge the remaining protesters to leave the 
encampment they had occupied for 20 days. At 
first the crowd greeted them as friends, offering 
them food and water. 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/is-the-army-tightening-its-grip-on-egypt-2213849.html>Military 
policemen in red berets, again without weapons, 
emerged to control traffic. But then a young 
officer began lashing demonstrators with a cane – 
old habits die hard in young men wearing uniforms 
– and for a moment there was a miniature replay 
of the fury visited upon the state security 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/is-the-army-tightening-its-grip-on-egypt-2213849.html>police 
here on 28 January.

It reflected a growing concern among those who 
overthrew Mubarak that the fruits of their 
victory may be gobbled up by an army largely 
composed of generals who achieved their power and 
privilege under Mubarak himself. No-one objects 
to the dissolution of parliament since Mubarak's 
assembly elections last year – and all other 
years -- were so transparently fraudulent. But 
the 'military council' gave no indication of the 
date for the free and fair elections which 
Egyptians believed they had been promised.

The suspension of the constitution – a document 
which the millions of demonstrators anyway 
regarded as a laissez-passer for presidential 
dictatorship – left most Egyptians unmoved. And 
the army, having received the fulsome thanks of 
Israel for promising to honour the 
Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, announced that it 
would hold power for only six months; no word, 
though, on whether they could renew their military rule after that date.

But a clear divergence is emerging between the 
demands of the young men and women who brought 
down the Mubarak regime and the concessions – if 
that is what they are – that the army appears 
willing to grant them. A small rally at the side 
of Tahrir Square yesterday held up a series of 
demands which included the suspension of 
Mubarak's old emergency law and freedom for 
political prisoners. The army has promised to 
drop the emergency legislation "at the right 
opportunity", but as long as it remains in force, 
it gives the military as much power to ban all 
protests and demonstrations as Mubarak possessed; 
which is one reason why those little battles 
broke out between the army and the people in the square yesterday.

As for the freeing of political prisoners, the 
military has remained suspiciously silent. Is 
this because there are prisoners who know too 
much about the army's involvement in the previous 
regime? Or because escaped and newly liberated 
prisoners are returning to Cairo and Alexandria 
from desert camps with terrible stories of 
torture and executions by – so they say – 
military personnel. An Egyptian army officer 
known to 'The Independent' insisted yesterday 
that the desert prisons were run by military 
intelligence units who worked for the interior 
ministry – not for the ministry of defence.

As for the top echelons of the state security 
police who ordered their men – and their faithful 
'baltagi' plain-clothes thugs -- to attack 
peaceful demonstrators during the first week of 
the revolution, they appear to have taken the 
usual flight to freedom in the Arab Gulf. 
According to an officer in the Cairo police 
criminal investigation department whom I spoke to 
yesterday, all the officers responsible for the 
violence which left well over 300 Egyptians dead 
have fled Egypt with their families for the 
emirate of Abu Dhabi. The criminals who were paid 
by the cops to beat the protesters have gone to 
ground – who knows when their services might next 
be required? – while the middle-ranking police 
officers wait for justice to take its course against them. If indeed it does.

All this, of course, depends on the size of the 
archives left behind by the regime and the degree 
to which the authorities, currently the army, are 
prepared to make these papers available to a new 
and reformed judiciary. As for the city police, 
who hid in their police stations before they were 
burned down on 28th January, they turned up at 
the interior ministry in Cairo yesterday to 
demand better pay. That the police should now 
become protesters themselves – they are indeed to 
receive pay rises – was one of the more 
imperishable moments of post-revolutionary Egypt.

Now, of course, it is Egypt's turn to watch the 
effects of its own revolution on its neighbours. 
Scarcely a family in Egypt was unaware yesterday 
of the third day of protests against the 
president in Yemen and the police violence which 
accompanied them. And it is remarkable that just 
as Arab protesters mimic their successful 
counterparts in Egypt, the state security 
apparatus of each Arab regime faithfully follows 
the failed tactics of Mubarak's thugs.

Another irony has dawned on Egyptians. Those Arab 
dictators which claim to represent their people – 
Algeria comes to mind, and Libya, and Morocco – 
have signally failed to represent their people by 
not congratulating Egypt on its successful 
democratic revolution. To do so, needless to say, 
would be to saw off the legs of their own thrones.




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