Standing on my apartment’s balcony over Tahrir, I imagine what someone would’ve thought, staring at the exact same spot in the middle of “Liberation” Square three years earlier. With Mubarak finally removed, the square’s circular roundabout, usually crammed with cars and microbuses, would have been filled with civilians and soldiers alike, a mixture of uniformed and plain-clothed Egyptians crying in celebration after the fall of decades-long repression. And the soldiers, promising their citizens that they wouldn’t fire upon them, swore that “until the last drop of the Egyptian general’s blood was spilled, soldiers and citizens would stand eid wahda”—as one. It seemed that Egypt’s dismal track record of violent oppression would change for the better. But a different change came instead—one for the worse.
In March of 2011, an ongoing sit-in at Tahrir, intended to move beyond Mubarak’s overthrow and cry for a purge of his corrupt government, was dispersed violently by security forces and hired civilian thugs. Protesters were beaten and dragged to the nearby Egyptian Museum, where soldiers tortured, interrogated, and electrocuted them. Over twenty were killed and many more injured as victims of police and civilian assault. The revolutionaries discovered to their horror that the military, albeit headed by freshly minted SCAF chief Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, stood firm in its goal to continue ruling the Egyptian state, widespread civilian death notwithstanding.
At that critical moment, when confusion and disillusionment darkened the once-bright smiles of Egyptian demonstrators, the Muslim Brotherhood took the revolution by the reins. In a swift and decisive attempt to co-opt the revolutionary effort, Brotherhood leaders began calling their members to the streets, joining revolutionaries too fatigued and disorganized to refuse. Within weeks, those who cried for social reform and justice found themselves drowned out by crowds who chanted for Islamic rule and a return to traditionalism. Suddenly, the original protesters found themselves between a rock and a hard place—they had little choice beyond accepting the Brotherhood’s show of support.
The military, as expected, did not respond well. Instead of distancing themselves from the political arena as they had done previously, the Ministry of Interior began to approve measures allowing for security forces to violently put down protests “at discretion”. It had seen people pack the squares and overthrow the government just months before—military leaders recognized that they needed to stop biding their time and make a move, or else be trampled underfoot. And so they did, taking a two-fold approach—silencing all dissent that dared question its legitimacy, and fooling others with propaganda against the Brotherhood and any other groups sympathetic to the dying revolutionary cause.
The Military Knows Best
Tanks that once carried chanting revolutionaries on their rooftops were now directed to crush them under their tires. The summer and fall that followed were stained by police brutality and gross human rights violations. Students, teachers, and mothers protesting peacefully were fired upon with both birdshot and live ammunition, and hospitals caring for the injured were attacked and gassed. Violence against both Copts and Muslims became commonplace. And as quickly as they came, Muslim Brotherhood members slipped off the streets and stayed home, accused by their brethren to have cut a deal with the military and guaranteed power in exchange for non-participation. In such an arrangement, the military had allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to field their candidates without intervention—a rarity in Egyptian politics—for the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
The ensuing June 2012 presidential election gave Egypt little say in its future. Civilians who had risked life and limb found the two remaining candidates, Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, both equally undesirable. A saying rang through the streets: “One ballot box for a traitor, one ballot box for the killer.” The vote was in: Egypt chose the traitor, Morsi, by a margin of less than 4 percent, razor-sharp for the usually one-sided presidential election. As one student described it to me while sitting in an ahwa, or café: “The election led to two losers: the second place candidate, and Egypt”.
It was as if the people’s revolution—which had originally sought to dissolve the hard-handed policies of Mubarak’s dictatorial regime—had been hijacked and morphed into a conflict pitting religious rule against a modern secular one. The revolution was now careening down a path that had increasingly distorted and undermined its initial ideals and demands of “bread, freedom, and social justice” while violently polarizing its population.
A Failed Project
Morsi’s rule, albeit accomplished in the name of the Muslim Brotherhood’s zealous ideals, was no better than that of his military predecessor. In his brief one-year reign as president, Morsi’s uncompromising hardline rule fomented enough social turmoil and pressure to allow the once despised Mubarak-era military elite to reemerge as the defender of Egyptian peace and nationalism. The more things change, the more they seem the same, tells Cairo’s history, as cyclical as the tide of the river that divides it in two.
One year after Morsi’s election, Egyptian citizens took to the streets to tear down their newborn “trial run” of Brotherhood rule. The perception, according to state-run news station Al-Ahram and its political commentators, was that Morsi had had his turn. As one analyst put it, democracy, though “possible for the passive and impotent foreigners of the West”, was not meant to be for the lionhearted people of Egypt. Others disagreed, knowing the consequences of turning back to military dictatorial rule that makes false promises of protection and democracy. “We love human rights, but for which humans?” said Bassem Youssef, a comedian known for his critiques against Egypt’s misshapen regimes, to a roaring crowd. It was his first talk show after the government shut down his previous television station for allegedly spreading lies. “We love democracy, but which democracy?”
Instead, people looked to rising military star Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who announced Morsi’s ouster on 30 June 2013, to take the reins and correct Egypt’s erratic path. Those who worried about allowing a military ruler to continue a regime guilty of widespread human rights violations and violent crackdowns on dissenters found themselves viewed more as itching troublemakers than as the fervid revolutionaries of 2011.
These days, Egypt’s politics is further complicated by a clear age gap between ideological lines. While younger people have experienced the revolution from a more modern perspective and are supportive of its progressive ideals, parents and older citizens have loudly voiced complaints of physical and economic insecurity, and desire to go back to a previously stable society, even if it means having a dictator at helm. Such attitudes manifest in protests around Cairo, in which plain-clothed adults and older men have carried pistols and even automatic rifles to quell university protests.
Now that it has taken firm grasp of the political arena, the military has taken bold steps as to not run risk of losing its power a second time. Having labeled the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, it now stands to eliminate any and all opposition, a situation much darker and direr than before. Even worse, Egypt’s cabinet has censored the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, and has labeled its leaders criminals. In a self-fulfilling prophecy that eliminates virtually all peaceful options of political organization, the Brotherhood soon may find itself squeezed out of the political arena altogether and into insurgency. With the most recent constitution passing a referendum with over 98% of the vote, the stable façade of the Egyptian state duly hides its crumbling interior. And until its military bulwarks give way, reform-starved revolutionaries might not see change for a long time.
After suffering three years of political instability and uncertain rule, the Egyptian population has warmed to the pre-revolution regime, acquiescent towards and forgetful of the crimes that it had committed against their neighbors, friends, and families. With fervent hopes for a new, less repressive Egypt left unrealized, civilians are more than willing to settle with Field Marshal Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, in hopes that he will bring back a golden Nasserist era and restore social and political order.
As I stepped into the taxi that would take me back to the airport, a co-worker and leader of the January 25 revolution laughed suddenly and said, “Ya Andrew, I hope you come back, inshAllah.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I responded briskly, somewhat troubled at being labeled the vacationing foreigner.
“Because that’s what people do in Egypt – they look and stare for a couple weeks, they go back and write from their comfortable, big homes, and then khalaas, that’s it. But I can’t blame them. Egypt is more confusing than it is dangerous.”
“Why do you say that?”
He let out a little laugh, this time with an air of disdain. “Because I’m not sure the people even know what they want, let alone the rest of the world.”