Misri Yaanza Safari Bila Dikteta Alhj Hosni Mubarak

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Uwezo Tunao

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Nov 14, 2010
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Egypt's army dissolves parliament

Military rulers say they will remain in charge for six months until elections
are held as some protesters vow to remain.

Last Modified: 13 Feb 2011 18:37 GMT



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A policeman looks towards the wreckage of burnt motor bikes near the site of ...
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Egypt,(GGS NEWS) 29 Jan 2011 : Anti-government protesters have taken to the ...
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Egypt's military has dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution, two days after Hosni Mubarak, the long-serving president, stepped down in the wake of a popular uprising.

The country's Supreme Council of Armed Forces announced on Sunday that it would remain in charge of the country for six months until a new government is formed.

The military council announced the move in a statement on state television, adding that it would form a panel to amend the constitution before submitting the changes to a popular referendum.

The announcement came shortly after Egypt's prime minister announced that the cabinet appointed by Mubarak shortly before he stepped down, would stay in place.

Ahmed Shafiq, speaking after his first cabinet meeting since Mubarak left on Friday, said Egypt's caretaker government will remain for the country's transition towards democracy.

He said that security would remain a priority and pledged to fight corruption and restore peace in the country, following 18 days of pro-democracy protests.

"The first priority for this government is to restore security and to facilitate daily life for its citizens," he said. "I guarantee that this [cabinet] will return rights to the people and fight corruption."

Military in charge

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Cairo, said the two announcements do not indicate that the prime minister and military council are talking against each other.

But it is "quite clear that the power now rests entirely" with the military council, he said. "They've taken on the role of the presidency and the prime minister and the other ministers carry out their orders.

"The key point is the military is saying they are only in power for a temporary basis, for six months or they'll go earlier if elections are called before six months.

But our correspondent noted that "one thing that wasn't in that communique that protesters have asked for, was the repeal of emergency laws".

Protest organisers had called for both the dissolution of parliament and the lifting of a 30-year-old state of emergency. Some protesters have vowed to remain in Cairo's Tahrir Square - the epicentre of the uprising - until all of their demands are met
Scuffles broke out early on Sunday as soldiers tried to remove activists from the square.

Soldiers shoved pro-democracy protesters aside to force a path for traffic to start flowing through Tahrir Square for the first time in more than two weeks.

Our correspondent in Cairo said the confrontations between troops and protesters was something of a "flashpoint".
"I think it reflects a bigger problem, that the military believes that now Mubarak is out, it's time for stability," he said.

"But some of the protesters think not enough has been done yet. They don't want to clear that square until the army has handed over to a civilian government."

Police protest

At one point a group of several dozen police officers marched into the square bearing flowers, proclaiming their solidarity with the uprising and chanting: "The police and the people! With one hand!"

But they were soon chased away by protesters, who accuse the police of decades of arbitrary arrests, torture and extortion, as well as a heavy-handed attempt to crush the revolt that left hundreds dead.

Elsewhere, even as the demonstrations against Mubarak wound down, new challenges emerged as workers went on strike.

In the latest such moves, employees at two public sector banks in Cairo went on strike demanding better pay. In addition, about 2,000 policemen demonstrated in front of the Interior Ministry, complaining about the gap in salaries between officers and enlisted.

Egypt's state news agency said that in light of the strikes, the Central Bank decided it will suspend work in banks on Monday. Banks will reopen on Wednesday, because Tuesday is also a public holiday.

Meanwhile, normality began to return to other parts of Egypt. The tents, where protesters camped out during the 18 days of protests, were removed from Tahrir Square.

In the northern city of Alexandria, Al Jazeera's Jamal ElShayyal said people had also begun to get back to work, adding that Sunday's military announcement was likely to reassure activists in the city.

"Alexandria didn't have the same amount of sit-in protesters that we've seen in Tahrir. However those that have said they will continue their demonstrations have been assured a lot more by this time frame given by the military."

But Ashraf Ahmed, a protester in Cairo, vowed that he was not going to leave "because so much still needs to be done. They haven't implemented anything yet".

Protest organisers have threatened more rallies if the governing military council fails to accept their agenda for reform. "If the army does not fulfil our demands, our uprising and its measures will return stronger," Safwat Hegazi, a protest leader, said.

UJUMBE HUMU:

Maisha Misri bila Dikteta Hosni Mubarak yawezekana na safari ndio imeanza kwa kuzingatia maslahi na matakwa ya wananchi mbeeele kwa kila kitu.

Siku chache baada ya 'Nguvu ya Umma' kujitwalia madaraka kwa kutumia silaha hatari za UMOJA, DHAMIRA YA DHATI NA IMANI KWAMBA 'UWEZO WANAO', sasa uongozi wa nchi hiyo chini ya serikali ya muda ya kijeshi waamua kujivua rasmi gamba la mwisho la joka Nyamwiru Hosni Mubarak kwa kutimulia mbali bunge lake lililochaguliwa hivi majuzi tu kwenye uchaguzi uliodaiwa kuchakachuliwa kila idara na chama tawala NDP.

Hii hali inaashiri lugha ya ishara kana kwamba Wa-Misri wameamu kumkataa shetani pamoja na mbuyu wake wote wakikemewa kwa sala nzito waelekee baharini hukohuko alikoelekea FISADI mwenzao.

Kwa gharama ya damu ya watu zaidi ya Mashujaa 300 'Nguvu ya Umma' nchi hiyo imeweza kujinunulia mwanzo mpya na matumaini kwa watoto wao na vizazi vijavyo kuendelea kufurahia wanatakavyojichagulia tu wenyewe.

Vita mbeele wananchi wa Misri mpaka haki sawa kwa wote ije ipatikane
 
yeah nimeona Bunge limeshavunjwa tayari.
Kitu cha kufurahia ni kuwa jama nimeona POLICE nao walikuwa wanaandamana kuwaunga wananchi, walikuwa na mabango wakisema kuwa kila kitu walichokifanya kilikuwa ni kwa saababu ya Amri(order) waliyopewa na Rais .N awanaogopa sana kwa sasa kwa sababu Jeshi limeshasema wazi kuwa kwa yeyote aliyehusika katika mauaji na uvunjifu wa amani akijulikana atakuwa excuted.
Waliomba nao kuwa mishahara yao iongezwe.
Kumbe hata sisi hawa mapolisi wanafanya mambo tu kwa amri bali wakijua haali halisi kuwa wanakosea??
Ngoja nguvu ya UMMA ije watatukoma tu hao.
Wfanyakazi wa mabenk nao jana waliaandama kwa kiasi kikubwa sana wakidai kuwa nyazifz zote ndani ya benki zimewekwa na Mubaraka huku akiweka watu na jamaa zake katika kila sehemu hivyo hiyo imesaidia sana kwa Mubaraka kuchota kiasi chochote cha pesa alichokuwa akihitaji.
 
Post-Mubarak era dawns on Egypt

People power has spoken in the biggest Arab nation just four weeks
after Tunisians toppled their own ageing ruler.

Last Modified: 12 Feb 2011 14:34 GMT

Egyptians have woken to a new dawn after 30 years of rule under Hosni Mubarak.

As the Muslim call to prayer reverberated across Cairo on Saturday, the sound of horns honking in jubilation could still be heard after a night when millions celebrated the fall of the president, who has handed over power to the military.

After 18 days of rallies at Cairo's Tahrir Square, resisting police assaults and a last-ditch raid by Mubarak supporters, people packed not just the epicentre but, it seemed, every street and neighbourhood of the capital. Similar was the scene in other cities and towns across the country.

Fireworks lit the night sky, cars honked under swathes of red, white and black Egyptian flags and people hoisted children above their heads. Some took souvenir pictures with smiling soldiers atop their tanks on city streets.

Everyone cried, laughed and embraced in the hope of a new era.

Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from Cairo, said that in the coming days people will have some concerns. "The obvious thing that is going to be concerning many people is to have some kind of a clear roadmap for the progress towards democratic elections," she said.

"After all this was a revolution not only to overthrow President Mubarak, but also to remove the whole system and install it with one where people would have freedom of choice with [regards to who] who runs the country."

The country's new military leaders sought to allay some of those concerns with an announcement on state television on Saturday, in which they promised to hand power to an elected, civilian government.

They also pledged to respect all international treaties - an apparent nod to the country's 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

State television also reported that the curfew in the country has been shortened and are now in effect from midnight to 6 am.
But some protesters vowed to remain in Tahrir Square until their democratic agenda is implemented.

The developments came a day after Omar Suleiman, the vice-president, said on Friday in a televised address that the president was "waiving" his office, and had handed over authority to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

Suleiman's 50-word statement was received with a roar of approval and by celebratory chanting and flag-waving from a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Tahrir Square, as well as by other pro-democracy campaigners who were attending protests across the country.

Tahrir Square responds to Mubarak's resignation
​
The top figure in Egypt is now Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the country's defence minister and head of the supreme council.

In its third statement to the nation, the council said in a televised address that it was examining the situation "in order to materialise the aspirations of our great nation".

The council spokesman said that "resolutions and statements regarding the ... actions to be followed" in order to achieve the demands of the people will be handed down later.

He also extended "greetings and appreciation" to Mubarak for his service to the country, and saluted the "martyrs and those who have fallen" during the protests.

Nezar al Sayyad, a Middle East specialist, told Al Jazeera that Egypt "is in a very critical stage in terms of what is going to happen next."

"I think it's extremely important to remember here that although Omar Suleiman made the announcement that Mubarak made the decision to step down, we don't really know if Mubarak decided to step down or [if] he was forcibly removed by the armed forces and by the supreme council," Al Sayyad said.

He said the next steps taken by Tantawi and other members of the supreme council, will "be extremely important in pushing the country forward".

'Dream come true'

The crowd in Tahrir responded to Suleiman's statement by chanting "we have brought down the regime". Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent opposition leader, hailed the moment as being "a dream come true".

"I can't tell you how every Egyptian feels today," he said. "We have been able to restore our humanity ... to be free and independent".

ElBaradei reiterated that Egypt now needs to return to stability and proposed that a transition government be put in place for the next year.
The government, he said, would include figures from the army, from the opposition and from other circles.

"We need to go on ... our priority is to make sure the country is restored as a socially cohesive, economically vibrant and ... democratic country," he said.

Ayman Nour, another opposition figure and a former presidential candidate, told Al Jazeera that he would consider running for the presidency again if there was consensus on his candidacy.

He said February 11, 2011 is "the greatest day in Egyptian history". "This nation has been born again. These people have been born again, and this is a new Egypt."

Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, said that he would resign from his post, one that he has headed for about 10 years, "within weeks". Some analysts say he may well run for the Egyptian presidency when elections are held.

Following Mubarak's announcement, our correspondent in Tahrir Square, said: "Tonight, after all of these weeks of frustration, of violence, of intimidation ... today the people of Egypt undoubtedly [feel they] have been heard, not only by the president, but by people all around the world."

'Explosion of emotion'

Our correspondents across the country reported scenes of jubilation and celebration on the streets of major cities.

"The sense of euphoria is simply indescribable," said our correspondent at Mubarak's Heliopolis presidential palace, where at least 10,000 pro-democracy activists had gathered.

"I have waited, I have worked all my adult life to see the power of the people come to the fore and show itself. I am speechless," Dina Magdi, a pro-democracy campaigner in Tahrir Square said.

"The moment is not only about Mubarak stepping down, it is also about people's power to bring about the change that no-one ... thought possible."

In Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, our correspondent described an "explosion of emotion". He said that hundreds of thousands were celebrating in the streets.

'Farewell Friday'

Suleiman's announcement came after hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took the streets for the 18th consecutive day, marching on presidential palaces, state television buildings and other government installations.

2011211143413116797_20.jpg


Thousands of pro-democracy activists took to the streets on Friday in several cities, including Alexandria [AFP]

They had dubbed the day 'Farewell Friday', and had called for "millions" to turn out and demand that Mubarak resign. Hundreds of thousands gathered at Tahrir Square, chanting slogans against the government.

Similar numbers were also reported from Alexandria, where some protesters marched to a presidential palace there. Protests were also reported from the cities of Mansoura, Mahalla, Suez, Tanta and Ismailia with thousands in attendance.

Violence was reported in the north Sinai town of el-Arish, where protesters attempted to storm a police station. At least one person was killed, and 20 wounded in that attack, our correspondent said.

UJUMBE HUMU:

Utawala Mkoloni mwananchi mwenzako niwa hatari zaidi kuliko hata ukoloni watu weupe miaka hiyo tunavyokaa tukisimuliwa katika historia.

Hii inatokana na ukweli kwamba mkoloni wa miaka alikua anavuna kutoka kwetu na vile vile anatumia japo kakijipande kukuendeleza nalo.

Lakini hawa wakoloni wa nyumbani wao wakiiba hukimbizia mavuno ya wiaazi nchini Uswisi ili ikakae salama zaidi na kuzalisha ajira hukohuko ila huku nyumbani ndio wanatuacha kama ambavyojione wewe mwenyewe maisha yako ya kudunduliza na kuungaunga bora tufike.
 


Egypt‑police‑protest‑clash‑2011‑02‑02.jpg

Egypt police, Hosni Mubarak. Policemen are carried during a demonstration in ...
globalpost.com



Mallaba said:
yeah nimeona Bunge limeshavunjwa tayari.
Kitu cha kufurahia ni kuwa jama nimeona POLICE nao walikuwa wanaandamana kuwaunga wananchi, walikuwa na mabango wakisema kuwa kila kitu walichokifanya kilikuwa ni kwa saababu ya Amri(order) waliyopewa na Rais .N awanaogopa sana kwa sasa kwa sababu Jeshi limeshasema wazi kuwa kwa yeyote aliyehusika katika mauaji na uvunjifu wa amani akijulikana atakuwa excuted.
Waliomba nao kuwa mishahara yao iongezwe.
Kumbe hata sisi hawa mapolisi wanafanya mambo tu kwa amri bali wakijua haali halisi kuwa wanakosea??
Ngoja nguvu ya UMMA ije watatukoma tu hao.
Wfanyakazi wa mabenk nao jana waliaandama kwa kiasi kikubwa sana wakidai kuwa nyazifz zote ndani ya benki zimewekwa na Mubaraka huku akiweka watu na jamaa zake katika kila sehemu hivyo hiyo imesaidia sana kwa Mubaraka kuchota kiasi chochote cha pesa alichokuwa akihitaji.
Click to expand...

Ni ajabu na kweli kwanba wao walikua wanawapiga na kuwaua wananchi wasiandamane kumbe na wao ule ule uchungu wa athari za mafisadi ndani ya serikali ya Mubarak ulikua ukiwafikia na wao.

Afadhali wale polisi wa Tunisia walikua wakweli kiasi kwamba siku ya pili tu ndani ya maandamano ya nguvu ya umma dhidi ya serikali ya Ben Ally na kutia timu mapeeema na waandamanaji.

Siju kwamba hapa kwetu vijana wa Mwema watakua na maana wanamegewa walau kakijipande cha mali ya ufisdi hivyo kubakia kuwa na hali njem.
 
Egypt's official media changes tone

post-MubarakPress Trust of India / Cairo February 14, 2011, 11:48 IST

The media apparatus loyal to Hosni Mubarak's regime until the end glorifying his 30-year rule are now celebrating the ouster of the longtime president, saying it will be more attentive to the Egyptian people.

The Egyptian uprising brought down the media apparatus which entirely dedicated its fourteen television stations, tens of radio stations and numerous dailies to glorifying Mubarak, his family and ruling National Democratic Party.

ut after Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that 82-year-old President Mubarak was stepping down, there was a drastic change in the tone of the state media.

Soon after the announcement, the state television took to the street and filmed people celebrating Mubarak's ouster. It aired numerous video clips of the celebrations and people's opinions and focused mainly on the new era.

For the first time the protesters found their way to appear on the national screen. A state TV reporter, covering celebrations outside Mubarak's palace, said that "Egyptians are breathing freedom."

The employees of once pro-regime Al-Ahram daily formed an emergency council to revamp the paper's coverage and its headline of the next day read, "The people ousted the regime."

For the first time since uprising, coverage of Al-Ahram provoked positive comments on facebook for its objectivity and fluent proper language instead of the usual cynicism preserved for its commentaries and lies.

Two days after the president stepped down, the state TV started referring him as Mubarak and not former president.

It also featured the investigations of origin of wealth of former ministers who were at the same time practicing businessmen.
The guests on television changed as well.

Independent analysts from international and regional strategic centers found their way to the screens of state tv which is currently providing the best coverage of events.

The station is also in touch with journalists of independent newspapers who happen to be in Al-Tahrir or other places witnessing protests.

The ceiling of freedom of expression granted to the guests and field reporters has been obviously raised remarkably.

One of the reporters mentioned that the forensic reports of the victims who died in the clashes noted the Ministry of the Interior had used live ammunition in facing the protesters "which may pave the way for the former minister of interior to be ruled in international courts".

The news bulletins started to cover activities of opposition parties as well as protests taking place in different parts of the country.

UJUMBE

Vyombo vya habari vikiwemo vya serikali sasa vimebadilisha mwelekeo n kusifi bosi mpya. Pengine na hapa huenda tungeona TBCCM1, Daily News, Uhuru na HabariLeo vikabadilika nayo.
 
Mallaba said:
yeah nimeona Bunge limeshavunjwa tayari.
Kitu cha kufurahia ni kuwa jama nimeona POLICE nao walikuwa wanaandamana kuwaunga wananchi, walikuwa na mabango wakisema kuwa kila kitu walichokifanya kilikuwa ni kwa saababu ya Amri(order) waliyopewa na Rais .N awanaogopa sana kwa sasa kwa sababu Jeshi limeshasema wazi kuwa kwa yeyote aliyehusika katika mauaji na uvunjifu wa amani akijulikana atakuwa excuted.
Waliomba nao kuwa mishahara yao iongezwe.
Kumbe hata sisi hawa mapolisi wanafanya mambo tu kwa amri bali wakijua haali halisi kuwa wanakosea??
Ngoja nguvu ya UMMA ije watatukoma tu hao.
Wfanyakazi wa mabenk nao jana waliaandama kwa kiasi kikubwa sana wakidai kuwa nyazifz zote ndani ya benki zimewekwa na Mubaraka huku akiweka watu na jamaa zake katika kila sehemu hivyo hiyo imesaidia sana kwa Mubaraka kuchota kiasi chochote cha pesa alichokuwa akihitaji.
Click to expand...

Heshima kuu kwa jeshi la MISRI.
 
Winners and Losers
Post-Mubarak Egypt: Winners and losers

Egypt rejoiced after the ouster of its 30-year strongman, but his departure also leaves a void. Who benefits now that Mubarak is gone?

posted on February 14, 2011, at 10:25 AM





Egyptian demonstrators successfully deposed President Hosni Mubarak -- proving the "power of peaceful protest." Photo: Corbis SEE ALL 34 PHOTOS


Egypt's longtime ruler, President Hosni Mubarak, stepped down Friday after 30 years in power and 18 days of largely peaceful protests. The military took control and declared martial law, suspending the constitution and dissolving parliament in what it called the first step toward transitioning Egypt to democracy. Here's a look at who came out on top in the new Egypt, and who is understandably nervous about what comes next. (Watch The Week's Sunday Talk Show Briefing about Egypt's future)
WINNERS
The protesters
The Egyptians who bravely used the "power of peaceful protest" to depose Mubarak deserve their big party, says The Baltimore Sun in an editorial. The world hasn't seen such an "outpouring of hope... since the fall of communism 20 years ago," and this triumph will reverberate among "all those around the world who believe in democracy." Their fight isn't over, but the protesters' demands can no longer be ignored.
Egypt's military
Democracy could eventually blossom in Egypt, but for now, Egypt's military has solidified its new power "by neutralizing the political institutions of Egypt," says Ed Morrissey in Hot Air. The suspension of the widely despised parliament and constitution actually "won praise from protesters," says NPR. But the army has good reason to placate them - as long as Egyptians see progress, the military gets to keep profiting from its "enormous stake in the national economy."
Al Jazeera
"Many are calling this al Jazeera's moment," says The Daily Beast. Its English-language coverage of the protests convinced many Americans that the Arab network is fair and balanced, not "Terror Television." Al Jazeera also busted Egypt's "government monopoly on information," says Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times, which made it "the most critical technology" in the uprising. In fact, Al Jazeera has "played a greater role in promoting democracy in the Arab world than anything the United States did."
Muslim Brotherhood
If "Egypt holds elections that allow an ardent Islamic populace to vote their preferences," the big winner will be the Muslim Brotherhood, says Lawrence Solomon in National Post. At least three-fourths of Egyptians favor imposing Sharia law, stoning adulterers, and embracing Islamic fundamentalism. Unless the Brotherhood is banned, the Islamic group stands to gain in an open election.
Obama
The president has been criticized for sending mixed messages and reacting slowly to events in Egypt, says John Dickerson in Slate. But "whether by design or dithering, U.S. policy makers didn't get in the way of events in Cairo. That strategy appears to have been successful." Yes, there was a "long wishy-washy phase," agrees Kristof in The New York Times, but "Obama got it pitch-perfect on Friday," backing the people and their right to determine their future.
LOSERS
Mubarak and his cronies
The Egyptian ruler was not only deposed, but Swiss, U.S., and British authorities are now racing to freeze the billions of dollars in "allegedly ill-gotten gains" thought to have been amassed by Mubarak and "several cronies," say Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein in the New York Post.
Other Arab autocrats
Mubarak's fall has sent "a shockwave of both unease and hope throughout the Islamic world," says Bruce Riedel in The Daily Beast. Already facing protests of their own, the "autocrats in Algiers, Manama, Sana, Riyadh, and Tripoli will be wondering if they are next." Iran's leaders and their "clients in Syria and Lebanon" have particular reason to worry, says Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post. This uprising "will spell the final doom of the Arab governing model of autocratic nationalism."
Israel
"The damage to Israel" from Egypt's revolution "may well be existential," says Henry Siegman in The Huffington Post. Israel was allowed to pursue its "confiscations of Palestinian territories" because U.S. influence kept Mubarak looking the other way. Now, "no surviving Arab regime will dare challenge the popular anger that exists in every Arab country toward Israel" for its humiliating, "never-ending occupation" of Palestinian lands.
Al Qaeda
Mubarak's ouster leaves Al Qaeda "closer to the brink of annihilation than ever before," says Adam Serwer in The American Prospect. Osama bin Laden promised that "the only way to topple the oppressive dictators of the Muslim world was through violence and terrorism." Well, "Egyptians proved the extremists wrong." Al Qaeda's decades of brutal killing has "achieved nothing even distantly resembling the triumph the Egyptian people have secured" through 18 days of "strategic nonviolence."
Chinese and Russian leaders?
"I don't think this is confined to the Middle East," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on "Face the Nation." The yearning for democracy is "universal." Vladimir Putin and his "KGB cronies" ought to be feeling "a little less cocky." The same goes for China's Hu Jintao and the "few men who govern and decide the fate of 1.3 billion people."


UJUMBE HUMU:


'Kifo' cha uongozi wa kibabe na kifisadi wa Hosni Mubarak wawewesesha maswahiba kibao waliokua wanaufyonza uchumi wa nchi hiyo kama kupe afanyavyo kwa ng'ombe tegemeo wa maiwa kwa kijiji kiima.


Hata hivyo akina kbwela ambao kwa miaka mingi sana maishani hawakuwahi kujua faida ya kuwa na serikali katika nchi yaleta maana gani hasa katika maisha yao, hivi sasa wamefurahika visivyo kawaida shauri tu ya KUONA KWA MARA YA KWANZA MAISHANI hivi sasa serikali ya kijeshi imejiwekea utaratibu wa kuwashirikisha hata yule asiyekitu katika maamuzi yanayomhusu katika ngazi fulani.


Sasa neema kuanza kumiminika kule Misri kwa wana wa Mfalme Herode ... jamani raha japo baada ya gharama!!!
 
Winners and Losers

Post-Mubarak Egypt: Winners and losers

Egypt rejoiced after the ouster of its 30-year strongman, but his departure also l
eaves a void. Who benefits now that Mubarak is gone?

posted on February 14, 2011, at 10:25 AM



Egyptian demonstrators successfully deposed President Hosni Mubarak -- proving the "power of peaceful protest." Photo: Corbis SEE ALL 34 PHOTOS

Egypt's longtime ruler, President Hosni Mubarak, stepped down Friday after 30 years in power and 18 days of largely peaceful protests.

The military took control and declared martial law, suspending the constitution and dissolving parliament in what it called the first step toward transitioning Egypt to democracy.

Here's a look at who came out on top in the new Egypt, and who is understandably nervous about what comes next. (Watch The Week's Sunday Talk Show Briefing about Egypt's future).

WINNERS

The protesters

The Egyptians who bravely used the "power of peaceful protest" to depose Mubarak deserve their big party, says The Baltimore Sun in an editorial.

The world hasn't seen such an "outpouring of hope... since the fall of communism 20 years ago," and this triumph will reverberate among "all those around the world who believe in democracy."

Their fight isn't over, but the protesters' demands can no longer be ignored.

Egypt's military

Democracy could eventually blossom in Egypt, but for now, Egypt's military has solidified its new power "by neutralizing the political institutions of Egypt," says Ed Morrissey in Hot Air.

The suspension of the widely despised parliament and constitution actually "won praise from protesters," says NPR. But the army has good reason to placate them - as long as Egyptians see progress, the military gets to keep profiting from its "enormous stake in the national economy."

Al Jazeera

"Many are calling this al Jazeera's moment," says The Daily Beast. Its English-language coverage of the protests convinced many Americans that the Arab network is fair and balanced, not "Terror Television."

Al Jazeera also busted Egypt's "government monopoly on information," says Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times, which made it "the most critical technology" in the uprising.

In fact, Al Jazeera has "played a greater role in promoting democracy in the Arab world than anything the United States did."

Muslim Brotherhood

If "Egypt holds elections that allow an ardent Islamic populace to vote their preferences," the big winner will be the Muslim Brotherhood, says Lawrence Solomon in National Post.

At least three-fourths of Egyptians favor imposing Sharia law, stoning adulterers, and embracing Islamic fundamentalism. Unless the Brotherhood is banned, the Islamic group stands to gain in an open election.

Obama

The president has been criticized for sending mixed messages and reacting slowly to events in Egypt, says John Dickerson in Slate.

But "whether by design or dithering, U.S. policy makers didn't get in the way of events in Cairo. That strategy appears to have been successful."

Yes, there was a "long wishy-washy phase," agrees Kristof in The New York Times, but "Obama got it pitch-perfect on Friday," backing the people and their right to determine their future.

LOSERS

Mubarak and his cronies

The Egyptian ruler was not only deposed, but Swiss, U.S., and British authorities are now racing to freeze the billions of dollars in "allegedly ill-gotten gains" thought to have been amassed by Mubarak and "several cronies," say Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein in the New York Post.

Other Arab autocrats

Mubarak's fall has sent "a shockwave of both unease and hope throughout the Islamic world," says Bruce Riedel in The Daily Beast.

Already facing protests of their own, the "autocrats in Algiers, Manama, Sana, Riyadh, and Tripoli will be wondering if they are next."

Iran's leaders and their "clients in Syria and Lebanon" have particular reason to worry, says Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post. This uprising "will spell the final doom of the Arab governing model of autocratic nationalism."

Israel

"The damage to Israel" from Egypt's revolution "may well be existential," says Henry Siegman in The Huffington Post. Israel was allowed to pursue its "confiscations of Palestinian territories" because U.S. influence kept Mubarak looking the other way.

Now, "no surviving Arab regime will dare challenge the popular anger that exists in every Arab country toward Israel" for its humiliating, "never-ending occupation" of Palestinian lands.

Al Qaeda

Mubarak's ouster leaves Al Qaeda "closer to the brink of annihilation than ever before," says Adam Serwer in The American Prospect.

Osama bin Laden promised that "the only way to topple the oppressive dictators of the Muslim world was through violence and terrorism." Well, "Egyptians proved the extremists wrong."

Al Qaeda's decades of brutal killing has "achieved nothing even distantly resembling the triumph the Egyptian people have secured" through 18 days of "strategic nonviolence."

Chinese and Russian leaders?

"I don't think this is confined to the Middle East," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on "Face the Nation." The yearning for democracy is "universal." Vladimir Putin and his "KGB cronies" ought to be feeling "a little less cocky."

The same goes for China's Hu Jintao and the "few men who govern and decide the fate of 1.3 billion people."

UJUMBE HUMU:

'Kifo' cha uongozi wa kibabe na kifisadi wa Hosni Mubarak wawewesesha maswahiba kibao waliokua wanaufyonza uchumi wa nchi hiyo kama kupe afanyavyo kwa ng'ombe tegemeo wa maiwa kwa kijiji kiima.

Hata hivyo akina kbwela ambao kwa miaka mingi sana maishani hawakuwahi kujua faida ya kuwa na serikali katika nchi yaleta maana gani hasa katika maisha yao, hivi sasa wamefurahika visivyo kawaida shauri tu ya KUONA KWA MARA YA KWANZA MAISHANI hivi sasa serikali ya kijeshi imejiwekea utaratibu wa kuwashirikisha hata yule asiyekitu katika maamuzi yanayomhusu katika ngazi fulani.

Sasa neema kuanza kumiminika kule Misri kwa wana wa Mfalme Herode ... jamani raha japo baada ya gharama!!!
 
Egypt's revolution has just begun
The transition to civilian rule will not be easy - if the military are capable of delivering on their promises.

Adrian Crewe Last Modified: 14 Feb 2011 09:49 GMT

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Egyptian soldiers form a barricade to stop pedestrians in Tahrir Square as 'normal life' resumes.
But will the military also block the path to a civilian-led democracy? [GALLO/GETTY]

"Whatever happens, nothing will ever be the same again" – Tahrir Square demonstrator.
Mubarak has fallen. February 11, 2011, has inscribed itself on the page of world history. Now the struggle for the 'heart and soul' of the revolution begins. It's a testing time, and all will be tested.

Test 1: Procedural and institutional change – the establishment of legality

At what point will the uprising be sufficiently secure from counter-revolution to begin construction of a truly transformed democratic polity?

What are the minimum security requirements for its immediate defence and subsequent extension? What structural changes will have to be demanded - and fought through to a successful conclusion – in order to neutralise and dis-articulate the still formidable powers of the Mubarak state and its - temporarily silenced - backers?

Test 2: The shape and boundaries of revolutionary democracy – the contours of freedom and the struggles surrounding inclusive or exclusive participation

How will the emergent revolution realise itself, consecrate itself? What shall be its core tasks, boundaries and limits? Who is to be included, who excluded? And on what basis, what grounds?

That is to say, how much scope will there turn out to be for accommodation of the previous regime's constitutive 'outsiders' or 'others' – the youth - and women, and organised workers - who have so decisively driven the process to its tipping point;

but then, additionally, all those other 'subaltern' sectors and social-confessional groupings that the old regime of power more or less successfully froze as differentiated, isolated, mutually separated and antagonistic identities: Coptic Christians, ethnic minorities, peasant producers, 'tribal' communities, labour immigrants and,

finally, those hitherto 'unmentionable deviants' – gays and lesbians – for which Cairo, at least, has always been famous.

The provisional shape that the revolution takes on in the coming months will be determined by emerging struggles and acute antagonisms reflecting the demands of a plurality of political forces and constituencies all seeking a place in the sun in the new democratic Egypt.

While the 'naturalisation' of oppressively fixed differences evaporates in the moment of revolution, those tumultuous, heady moments of equal belonging and joyous mutual recognition do not, unfortunately, last forever.

When the dust finally settles and Egyptians survey the new landscape of their own making, where will the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion have been drawn?

Let's begin by looking at the issues that define the likely outcomes of Test 1. First, the immediate struggle for survival – of the revolution on the one hand; of the 'Mubarak bloc' on the other.

This is critical for obvious reasons: if that bloc cannot be swiftly and decisively defeated – politically isolated, ideologically disarticulated and institutionally broken – then the revolution remains in mortal danger.

As things stand, on February 12, 2011, only the head of the regime was cut off. The tentacles remain. So any under-estimation of the capacity for recuperation of power remaining in that wounded octopus could yet prove fatal to the revolution.

Transition - and reconfiguration of the State

With everything now to play for, the transitional role of the army has to be situated in the context of an exhausted model of repression and exploitation fighting for its survival. Let us quickly look at these two dimensions of the transition in turn.

The army

Its role as democratic guarantor and 'neutral' public identity has probably already peaked.

With the political burden for shaping the transition now firmly on its shoulders, strategic decisions will very soon have to be taken; and these will quickly reveal the extent to which the most senior officers in the Supreme Military Council have understood the dimensions of the earthquake they are facing.

The omens are not good. Military Communique No.1 tersely promised that "all the people's demands will be met". Communique No.2 back-tracked, supporting Mubarak's surprise refusal to step down.

Communique No.3 lamented his passing from the stage and praised his heroic contributions to the Egyptian nation.

In short, the current stance of the senior officer cadre reveals an anxious - but still defiantly 'Mubarakite' - resistance to the changes it is meant to be overseeing.

The 30-year-old state of emergency remains in place. The generals appear to believe that it is still possible to subject Egypt's democratic masses to paternalist homilies enjoining them to 'leave everything to us'.

Given the impossibility of a violent crackdown - in the short term at least, they will no doubt give maximum tactical priority to the search for 'safe' interlocutors between the power elite and the democratic forces that now confront it head on.

But within what longer term strategy of containment will the military leadership continue to act? Something will have to give, and give soon, because the time for a first reckoning up of accounts is just around the corner.

Popular aspirations will likely crystallise around a number of key initial demands:

• An immediate lifting of the state of emergency;

• The establishment of a civilian-dominated Transitional Council and Constituent Assembly – to draw up a new constitution - with full participation of representatives put forward by the popular democratic forces;

• All political parties to be legalised, all political prisoners released, labour unions fully recognised and labour legislation revised;
• Mubarak to stand trial;

• The state prosecution service to be purged and reorganised under uncompromising professional leadership;

• The state's thugs – and, more importantly, those who organised their actions and let loose criminal elements from Cairo's jails – to be arrested, charged and convicted;

• The Interior Ministry police force to be disbanded;

• The regular police force to be purged at its most senior levels and reconfigured as a force for citizen protection, rather than repression;

• The structure and operational practises of the intelligence services to be brought into the light of public scrutiny, the records of murder and torture to be revealed and those responsible arrested, charged and prosecuted;

• State corruption and embezzlement to be subjected to immediate judicial investigation and followed by prosecutions;

• Restructuring of the economic sphere and reorientation of economic policy towards at least some minimal variant of democratic developmentalism.

How many of these demands will the current army leadership – and the still unreconstructed wider state apparatus behind it - be able to accommodate?

How many of them will it be able to sidestep, postpone or deflect? At what point will the temptation to fall back on all-out coercive force present itself as the only way of retaining an order that protects the compromised from popular justice?

The reconfiguration of state and 'people'

Merely to set out the potential scope of popular demands is to bring into full focus the revolutionary dimensions of the process that is already, inescapably, under way.

The old structures, it is quite clear, can no longer contain the democratic energies that have been released from below. At the same time, those energies have already been shaped and disciplined by ordinary citizens' experience of having to organise defence mechanisms to combat the thugs and looters illegally unleashed by the old regime.

It is perfectly well understood that these very forces – and those that stand behind them – will be out for massive revenge if the democratic people meekly surrender the squares, streets and neighbourhoods so heroically protected for 18 days in the name of restoration of 'order and normality'.

In this context, the root-and-branch restructuring of the repressive apparatus is already inescapably on the agenda; a non-negotiable necessity for the protection of life and limb.

If it is refused, it may well be the case that citizen militia will have to occupy the protective role that the state continues to deny to the people.

In which case, Egypt will be entering the terrain of dual power, and the army will come under unbearable pressure, allowing for only two possible outcomes: unleash mass bloodshed – or split.

Only then will the wider and deeper dynamic of the revolution begin to be released - and the questions of inclusion and exclusion presented earlier begin to be settled.

Finally: given Egypt's pivotal position in the geopolitical dynamic of the Middle East – with Iran and Israel-Palestine at its core, and a wider imperial 'arc of disaster' stretching from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Tunisia - it is not to be expected that the Egyptians will be allowed to settle their own future without massive external interference, subversion, and covert – or even open - intervention.

The sustainability of an entire historic system is at stake; and no country is likely to be able to avoid the spill-overs from this Middle Eastern drama.

All those who consider themselves progressive will be called upon to find concrete, practical ways of supporting their Egyptian brothers and sisters – not just through expressions of solidarity, but by calling their own states fully to account when Washington and its allies attempt to enforce the next 'coalition of the willing'.

Adrian Crewe is the national director of Public Policy Partnership, based in Cape Town, South Africa.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

UJUMBE HUMU:

Baada ya kumng'oa Dikteta Hosni Mubarak sasa Wa-Misri waanza kutazama mbeele kwa matumaini mapya.

Ni ukweli usiopingiga ya kwamba licha ya 'Jamii Forums' za Misri kutumia uwezo mkubwa ya mawasiliano kimtandao kuongoza wananchi waliowengi sana nchini humo kwa maana ya VIJANA kuunda jeshi lisilokua na silaha mkononi (Nguvu ya Umma) kufanya mapinduzi ya kihistoria duniani, Wa-Misri hawakuwahi kuwa na kiongozi mwingine yeyote wa kisiasa ndani au nje ya nchi; ambao hata siku moja wasingewaza kuota kuleta ukombozi wowote kwa kumwogopa sana sana ukatili wake Mubarak.

Huu ndio ukweli unaowafanya baadhi ya akina kabwela wa Misri waliofanikisha mapinduzi nchini humo kuendelea kuandamana Tahrir Square na kwingineko nchini humo kwa kutoamini mtu au taasisi yoyote (hata jeshi lao) kuwa ni ya kutumainiwa kweli kuwaongoza wapendavyo wao wenyewe.

Ajabu ni kwamba minyanyaso na uhalimu wa Mubarak yaonekana kuwaingia vichwani zaidi ya bangi na kuwafanya WACHUKIE NA KUTOKUAMINI KARIBU KILA KITU.

Wakati jeshi likiendelea kufanya kazi ya ziada kuwabembeleza masalio hayo ya waandamanaji kurejea majumbani na kwamba matakwa yao yote sasa ndio imepewa kipaumbele na serikali ya mpito ya kijeshi; sasa ndio wananchi waonekana KUTAFAKARI KIUNDANI kuhusu maswala mazito ya msingi kuhusu maswali kama vile BAADA YA MAPINDUZI YA MUBARAK SASA WANAFIKIRIA KUYAFANYIA NINI HAYO MAFAO YA MAPINDUZI ILI IKAWANUFAISHE. Ni mtihani kweli kweli hadi hapo!!!

Katika kutafakari huko mitihani hiyo yote Wa-Misri sasa walazimika kuyatafutia majibu magumu kwa maswali magumu kama vile:

(1) kitu gani kifanyika kuhakikisha kwamba kunakwepo utengamano na UIMARISHWAJI ZAIDI WA KITAASISI KUJISIMAMIA YENYEWE TU KUFANYA KAZI bila ya kuendekeza mfumo wa UTAWALA NA UMASHUHURI WA MTU BINAFSI KAMA ALIVYOKUA MUBARAK kiasi cha kulazimisha watu kumlamba miguu na kuonekana Mungu-Mtu katika jamii yao.

Hivyo pia, wananchi hao sasa waonekana KUKODOLEA MACHO ZAIDI (2) kutathmini kwa kina kujionea kwamba ni akina nani kweli wajewashikishwe kwenye utawala wa serikali ijayo; kwa historia ipi huku nyuma na faida gani huko waendako, (3) serikali ya mpito ifanye nini tangu sasa hadi mwezi wa nane kunakotarajiwa kufanyika Uchaguzi Mkuu wa wananchi (badala Uchakachuaji Mkuu wa Mubarak) jinsi ambavyo wananchi wenyewe wangependa kuona ikitendeka.

Vile vile, Wa-Misri wanaendelea kutafakari (4) ushirikishwaji wa sauti za kiraia katika kipindi hicho hicho ya serikali ya mpito wa kijeshi, (5) utayarishwaji wa taifa kuwa mahala pazuri kuruhusu DEMOKRASIA YA KWELI kuchipuka na kushamiri kwa kuondoa sheria za hali ya hatari na vikwazo vingine vya aina hi vilivyodumu nchini humo kwa zaidi ya miaka 30 sasa, na vile vile (6) wananchi wanatarajiwa kutumia uhuru wao katika kipindi hicho cha miezi 6 (February hadi Agosti) kujitayarisha kisiasa katika kuanzisha vyama vyao kwa mara ya kwanza nchini humo.

Hakika Misri haitokaa irudi tena katika ile sura ya kiimla ya tangu miaka ya 50 huko kwa kuwa UDHATI WA MOYO WA NGUVU YA UMMA kwa kweli wamedhamiria kuandaa ardhi nzuri yenye rutuba na kisha kupanda MBEGU YA KUDUMU YA DEMOKRASIA itakayowatunza wao wa vizazi vijavyo.

Wa-Tanzania wenzangu, ama kweli 'AMANI NA UTULIVU TU BILA HAKI' ni kama kitoweo kilichoungwa vizuri sana cha samaki wa maji baridi kule Ziwa Viktoria - Mwanza lakini bila chumvi; tutafakari vizuri!!!
 
Egyptian Christians urged to work for equal rights in post-Mubarak government

By Alan Holdren

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Protestors celebrate in Tahrir Square. Credit: Maggie Osama

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Rome, Italy, Feb 14, 2011 / 02:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Christians need to cooperate in creating Egypt's new government to ensure that all of the nation's citizens are treated as equals, according to Jesuit Fr. Samir Khalil Samir.

Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president for nearly 30 years, stepped down on Feb. 11 due to pressure from demonstrators that had occupied Cairo's central Tahrir Square for 18 days.

Fr. Samir, an Egyptian expert in Islam and adviser to the Church on Muslim-Christian relations, noted the resignation of the president was the will of the people but said that it is the next step that really counts.

Mubarak's government catered to the wealthy classes for three decades, "what we need now is something to help people to live a little more humanly," Fr. Samir told CNA over the phone after the announcement.

"Maybe after this, after having passed through an authoritarian regime, people will really try to do something more democratic," he said.

He was encouraged by the fact that the protests sprang from the people. He marveled that they were "moderate" and included all ranks and religions in society.

"Christians and Muslims were together. We didn't have any extreme appeal to Islam. Also, we didn't have any aggression against Israel or the U.S., any flag burned," he said with apparent surprise.

The result is "a new hope for Egypt," he said. What is most important now, he explained, is that the reformed constitution brings with it equality for all people, Christians and Muslims.

He pointed to recent signs of hope that show that winds of change were already in place for this in society. A local magazine released a new 22-point project written up by moderate Islamic intellectuals on Jan. 24. It includes a provision that calls for a distinction to be made between state and religion.

In his New Year's Day address, ex-President Mubarak referred twice to development towards a "civil society" –the Egyptian pseudonym for a separation of church and state.

That's not to say that people don't expect an "Islamic trend" in the new government, said Fr. Samir. It would be a "normal" occurrence in Egypt, where 90 percent of the population is Muslim.

A "secular" government like that in Lebanon is preferable to one that is completely "one-sided," he said. He is not expecting religion to be absent from the debate in a country where all people, Muslims and Christians, are very religious.

He expects the Muslim Brotherhood to attempt to exert its influence on society as they often have, but he said that their influence has been widely overestimated.

"Usually they ‘Islamize' more external aspects, like the veil and what you can see," said Fr. Samir. "It could happen, we are used to it."

They will work to convince people that men and women should not work together, should dress in a certain style and that some jobs are not appropriate for women. "But, they cannot put a law (in place) for that," he said.

Egyptian society, he said, "has made an evolution to distinguish between morality and law." And, he mentioned, the moderation of the group in recent years in Egypt shows signs "that the Muslim Brotherhood is also going this way."

The Brotherhood represents a similar threat to Egypt as "aggressive atheists" do to the West, he said.

The key, he added, is not to fear Muslims. Christians have to work together to convince them that "the true religion is something in your heart and not in your appearance - in your clothes and in your dress," he said.

"You can be a very good Muslim and not have the appearance of a Muslim, and you can be a very good Muslim having a Western culture." "All of us Christians, but also open-minded Muslims, have to spread this approach to religion," he said.

Nevertheless, the "threat of Islamization ... exists always" in the Egypt where there is such a large-percentage Muslim population, said Fr. Samir.

The major concern for Christians at this point is ensuring equality, especially in three major areas, according to the Jesuit priest. The first is equality in the job market, "that there will not be a preference for a Muslim over a Christian."

In addition, Christians should be allowed to obtain building permits for churches as easily as their fellow citizens do for mosques. A law from the late 1800s has made it very difficult for Christians to build until now.

The third point was that of the liberty of conscience. Egyptians should be free to convert from Christianity to Islam and vice versa with no threat of harm against the person who converted, he said.

Those may be mostly "symbolic" points in nature - as there are not many people who seek to convert -but "at least it means we recognize the rights of conscience which is over the tradition or over the religion.

"The main point is this: that we are all under the same rule," he said. Egyptians had made the "small step" of being able to speak more freely about equality in recent years, he said, "and if, on the occasion of this small revolution, we obtain something more, it's good."

Christians, he said, must be "careful" to act in the process of cultural development and politics, to make themselves present in society rather than holing themselves up in "ghettos."

"Christians must be very much involved in the society, in the political and social and economic world of the nation," said Fr. Samir.

They have a role in society and sometimes they do not take it up because of fear of Islam, he explained.

It is essential to respond with honesty and truth, said Fr. Samir. "I have to say what I have to say, and if something, someone is saying something wrong against Christianity, I have to correct it. And if I'm saying something wrong I have to agree that the other side corrects me."

In the previous government, Christian officials were appointed by the president because in popular elections they did not stand a chance. The key, he said, is that all are given the same chance and that the best people are placed in the positions they deserve.

UJUMBE HUMU:

Wakati wa kupigania ukombozi wa taifa la Misri hivi majuzi wananchi wengi sana waliungana pamoja dhidi ya adui wao wa pamoja, Hosni Mubarak na utawala wake. Dini zote ziliungana mkono kwa pamoja bila kubagwana hata kidogo.

Ajabu ni kwamba pamoja n a uchache wa Wakristo nchini Misri (10 %) bado ndugu zao Waislamu ambao ndio wengi zaidi (90 %) nchini humo waliweza kuwatengea SIKU MAALUM KWENYE MAANDAMANO PALE TAHRIR SQUARE kwa ajili yao kuongoza kwa sala na kuzungumza kero zao pale kama Wa-Misri wengine waliowengi.

Hili lilitokea kuwa ni jambo lenye mvuto mkubwa sana kutokea nchini humo jinsi ambavyo walio wengi walionelea vema na kumpendeza Mungu kutetea haki za hata VIKUNDI VIDOGO VIDOGO nchini humo na kuwapa nafasi ya ushiriki katika maswala ya nchi yao.

Naamini kwamba hata baada ya kupatikana mafanikio makubwa walioyapata kamwe hawataanza kubaguana jinsi ambavyo Dikteta Mubarak aliwhi kuwafanya waamini na kuona kwamba ni watu ambao si kitu kimoja kwa jina la taifa lao.
 
A jubilant Egypt

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Egyptian anti-government protesters celebrate in Cairo after president Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11, 2011. Mubarak was forced to cede power to a junta of senior military commanders after more than a million furious demonstrators took to the streets. AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED ABED

... baada ya dhiki kubwa ya utawala wa kimabavu zaidi ya miaka 30 Misri, sasa ni faraja tele wananchi wanavyojifungulia mlango wa MATUMAINI MAPYA KWA MUSTAKABALI WA MAISHA YAO NA TAIFA.
 
[SIZE=+1]15 FEBRUARY 2011[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+2]EGYPT DAZZLES THE WORLD AS ARAB WALL OF FEAR CRUMBLES.[/SIZE]​

In 18 days, the 80 million of Egyptians, with 7,000 years of culture, broke down the massive wall of fear. Their proud country and the neighbouring Arab world will never be the same again.

The most emotional, defining moment came on 11 February when a General of the Armed Forces speaking collectively on behalf of his colleagues raised his hand in a military tribute to the "martyrs" who died and stressed that an interim handling of Mubarak's departure was not an alternative to the rightful demand for democratic reform.

A day before, there was overwhelming disappointment at the delusional speech of President Mubarak and a frustrated sense that more will have to be done.

While outside observers were evaluating the staying power of the demonstrators, there were obvious questions on the potential role of the army in dealing with a former commander of the Air Force who became President and was determined to stay, even at the risk of civil war.

One reason for a delayed decision was that some senior officers were hoping for other options while younger officers were ready for action. Both factions would have kept in mind a 1952 experience when Colonel Nasser led a coup, placing a figurehead General Naguib to overtake compliant senior officers.

A key figure in the current unanimous position wind is the discreet Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Samir Enan who, together with General Tantawi, had just returned from a regular visit to Washington.

While some senior army officers were inclined to grant a former comrade in arms some breathing space, an overwhelming majority of younger officers shared with the demonstrators an angry rejection of the presidential ambitions of Gamal Hosni Mubarak, particularly that he had never served his national duty.

It was indicative that some officers around the Square made a point of cuddling children of protesters and allowing tired activists to doze on their tanks' wheels.

That raises the other variable: the U.S. position seemed to waver. Despite a clear statement by President Obama that "today meant yesterday," there were grey interpretations, surprisingly by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (perhaps not so surprising given the financially profitable links between former President Bill Clinton and Sheikhs in the United Arab Emirates, who were very nervous about the impact of Mubarak to whom they sent their "kid" of a Foreign Minister to express support on the eve of his delusional statement).

Another cloud of suspicion on U.S. attitude were views expressed by U.S. Special Envoy Frank Wisner who it turned out had a conflict of interest -- being paid by a legal firm with close ties to influential firms in Egypt. They may have aimed at underwriting U.S.

President Obama as much as seeking rewards from certain sources in the Middle East. But President Obama eventually regained his voice and openly sided with the Egyptian people. That, for a change, was an excellent U.S. foreign policy decision.

Particularly when Mubarak tried to pull a Netanyahu protest against the U.S. President, the answer came firm and quick.

By then, Cairo's Midan Al-Tahrir earned its name in political history: "LIBERATION SQUARE." Where else in the world would you find two Nobel Prize winners (one in Peace, another in Chemistry) sharing street pavement with prominent medical doctors, successful architects, internet executives, artists, poets, writers, university students, unemployed youth, men and women with less than $5 a day income, poorest of the poor who have nowhere to sleep but in cemetries and others who have nowhere to go but those streets.

Where else would hundreds of thousands form a human shield to protect their heritage at the National Museum? That square was always at the throbbing heart of an extensively spread capital.

Hurried cars, rushing pedestrians, cramped riders hanging to the edge of buses, policemen trying desperately to direct uncontrollable traffic, curious visitors keen on finding out what it is all about, an almost constant hum that kept everyone on the move.

The valuable Egyptian Museum is in the corner, a central governmental building combining almost all ministries, Al-Mugammea, is on the other side.

Main streets pour into it from every direction, one leads to the main railway station, another to radio and TV, a third to a shopping haven, where famous social meeting cafe, Groppy, still stands.

Most established hotels are nearby: Hilton, Semiransi's (International), and Shepards; others are just across the Nile river. A nearby bridge, actually two bridges, connect cars and pedestrians with the greener part of Cairo.

There is usually an intimidating atmosphere about Midan Al-Tahrir. It's so vast, swift and crowded that you somehow feel alone and overwhelmed.

A wide gaze as far as your eyes can see -- no hills or mountains -- may give the feeling that you are perhaps unsheltered by nature; unprotected. You will need someone else next to you, with you, to feel at ease; The more, the stronger.

When young crowds, particularly women, starting joining together at the square, they still felt vulnerable. One of them was tortured to death, another was kidnapped and only returned two weeks later after an international outcry.

With Google, Facebook, Twitter, laptops, cell phone messaging and locally devised loudspeakers, more started pouring in. A BBC Aerial photo showed how considerate and civil was the young rebellious group.

Food stalls, water points and toilets on the North side, clinics, newspaper wall and artwork on the East side, campsite, kindergarten on West side and an Internet center in the middle.

It was not just the Internet revolution that brought attention; it was the MESSAGE that addressed issues close to the popular nerve. It was the intelligent and gracious response of young men and women that made the difference.

It was the dedicated and unassuming collaboration of people who may have never met before, but discovered how close they were.

An editor wearing gloves to collect garbage in order to keep the square clean; a doctor leaving a lucrative clinic to help treat the overstressed and injured; volunteers to search and be searched to prevent "Baltagiah" from sneaking and spoiling the cause; Christians making a protective bodily cordon around praying Moslems and Moslems affectionately surrounding Christians holding a mass under a large sign of the Cross; everyone standing together when goons riding camels and horses charged in to disrupt and intimidate peaceful decent citizens.

Actually, it was a sense of belonging together and to that great country, Egypt, that strengthened their will to stay and resist until their demands were met. Whole families joined others.

When a sense of victory seemed imminent, they were pointing to one another, shouting: "Misr...Ahuh, Ahuh" (This is Egypt. This is Egypt). It was a uniquely peaceful yet most powerful emergence of popular anger and national pride, a visible display of the most effective power of human dignity.

In the final analysis, Egypt is Egypt. It is the most crucial country in the Arab world, whose real role was lost over the last three decades.

Its Asian, African, Mediterranean, regional and international credentials are overwhelmingly indicative of potential developments: It all depends on what happens there next.

Youth groups who found themselves at the mainstream of attention insisted that they were coordinating but not leading the increasingly popular movement. With the thrust of their immediate demands visibly accomplished, they remain vigilant in preparing for the next phase.

To ensure effective monitoring, they formed the Coalition of the Youth of the Egyptian Revolution and, in a practical political step joined a newly formed Front for the Protection of the Revolution.

Meanwhile, like their brothers and sisters in Tunis, the Egyptian people proved how worthy they are of their great country. MASR UMMIDDUNIA.

SOURCE: UNITED NATIONS. EGYPT DAZZLES THE WORLD. ARAB WALL OF FEAR CRUMBLES.

UJUMBE HUMU:

Sura nyingi za mafnikio ya Nguvu ya Umma nchini Misri yaainishwa.

Ushirikia no kati ya waadhiri wa chuo kikuu, washindi wa Nobel, Magwiji waandishi wa habari, wanfunzi, wanavijiwe pamoja na wamchinga; usiku kucha n kutwa mzima Tahrir Square mpaka sala zikajipa.

Nafasi iliochukuliwa na teknologia, Wakristo kuweka uzio kuwalinda ndungu za Waislamu wasipigwe na polisi wala genge la kukodi la Husni Mubarak pindi wanaposwali mitaani wanakoandamania.

Mapinduzi ya Kizalendo Misri yaitekenya Umoja wa Mataifa na jukwaa lake jamii kujadiliana.

Hakika kila mafanikio inayo siri yake!!
 
Middle East
Ex-judge to head Egypt reform panel

Military rulers pick head of committee entrusted with suggesting
changes to the country's constitution.

Last Modified: 15 Feb 2011 14:37 GMT

201121571848274797_20.jpg


Normality is returning to Egypt, but many are still concerned over what the future holds [GALLO/GETTY]

 Egypt's new army rulers have appointed Tareq al-Bishry, a retired judge, to head a committee set up to suggest constitutional changes.

Al-Bishry was a strong supporter of an independent judiciary during Hosni Mubarak's rule and is respected in legal circles for his independent views.

"I have been chosen by the Higher Military Council to head the committee for constitutional amendments," al-Bishry said on Tuesday. The Higher Military Council had earlier vowed to rewrite the constitution within 10 days and put it to a referendum within two months.

The existing constitution, which the military council has suspended, had built-in guarantees to keep Mubarak and his allies in power. The amendments added during his rule strengthened the establishment's grip on power.

Officials dismissed

The appointment of al-Bishry comes as the military rulers, in control of the country following the ouster of Mubarak, are attempting to restore normality after weeks of turmoil.

As part of a continuing purge of Mubarak-era officials, Adly Fayed, the director of public security at the interior ministry, and Ismail El Shaer, Cairo's security chief, have been sacked for their involvement in the decision to open fire on pro-democracy demonstrators during the uprising.

Their dismissals are aimed at placating public anger against the much-hated security forces that the Mubarak government apparently used to stifle dissent.

The military rulers have also dissolved the parliament and promised free and fair elections. Egypt, Middle-East's most populous nation, has been in upheaval since January 25, when protests against Mubarak's 30-year rule erupted.

Though Mubarak quit last Friday, protests, sit-ins and strikes at state-owned institutions including the stock exchange, media groups and railways, are disrupting normal life.

The military council on Monday urged Egyptians to return to work. "Noble Egyptians see that these strikes, at this delicate time, lead to negative results," a military spokesman said.

The strikes eased on Tuesday, mainly because an Islamic holiday meant state offices and businesses were closed. Still, smaller protests by hundreds continued in at least seven provinces outside Cairo, including by government workers and police over pay.

Fishermen in the Nile Delta demanded an end to restrictions on where they can fish in a lake north of the capital. Sugar cane growers in the southern city of Luxor demonstrated demanding higher prices for their crops.

Uncertain times

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Cairo, said Egyptians faced uncertain times. "Life is returning to some normality.

However, many people have concerns, there is a great deal of uncertainty and that is why the army has decided that the stock market should remain closed. "But most of the people here respect the military, and the miltary has said that they will come up with the first draft of constitutional reforms within 10 days so that is reassuring for the people.

"Ahmed Shafiq, the prime minister, has told foreign leaders that he is trying to reshuffle his cabinet, taking out some Mubarak appointees and replacing them with others." For its part, the long banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood said on Tuesday it intended to form a political party once democracy was established.

"The Muslim Brotherhood group believes in the freedom of the formation of political parties. They are eager to have a political party," Mohammed Mursi, a spokesman, said in a statement on the group's website.

Essam el-Arian, a senior leader in the Brotherhood, said the movement would not run any candidate for planned presidential elections, acknowledging that such a move would be too controversial.

"We are not going to have a candidate for the upcoming presidential elections. It's time for solidarity, it's time for unity, in my opinion we need a national consensus," he said.

But he confirmed the Brotherhood's leadership had decided on the creation of a party.

'Freeze the assets'

In another development, Egypt has asked the US, Britain and France to freeze the assets of officials close to Mubarak. An EU diplomat said Egypt had made a similar request to the European Union.

However, both Washington and Paris said that Mubarak was not on the list. Activists have called for the cash to be clawed back to help alleviate poverty in Egypt. Switzerland has already said it has frozen assets that may belong to Mubarak.

Al Jazeera's Paul Brennan, reporting from London, said "the request from Egypt comes at an opportune time as the EU finance ministers are meeting anyway".

"The Europeans have been particularly receptive to this request ... George Osborne, British foreign minister, has advocated all 27 EU nations to get together in a pan-European effort to freeze the assets."

A senior EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera that "the request covers the riches accumulated by six or seven close aides of Mubarak and he said that Mubarak's name was not even being discussed or debated."

"There will be investigations and if no evidence of wrongdoing is found then those assets will be returned to the owners," Al Jazeera's Brennan said.

UJUMBE HUMU:

Misri sasa yapiga hatua nyingine zaidi kuleta utawala wa kidemokrasia nchini mwao kwa kuteua Tume ya Kurekebisha sheria kabla ya Uchaguzi Mkuu hapo mwezi wa tisa 2011.

Serikali ya Mpito chini ya Jeshi hapo jana ilimteu Jaji Mstaafu, Tareq al-Bishry, kuongoza kamati ya kupendekeza marekebisho madogo kwenye katika ili iruhusu uchaguzi mkuu ujao kuweza kufanyika kidemokrasia zaidi kuliko hali ilivyokuwa wakati wa Hosni Mubarak madarakani.

Jaji huyu husemekana kuheshimika sana katika medani ya sheria ya nchi hiyo. Madai hayo yanatokana na ukweli kwamba ni mtu aliyependelea zaidi uhuru wa mahakama bila kuingiliwa na ikulu, kuwahi kusimamia maoni kama hayo hata hapo wakati wa dikteta aliyeogopeka, Mubarak.

Kubwa zaidi, Jaji Mstaafu al-Bishry ni mtu ambaye ametokea kuaminiwa sana na sehemu kubwa ya jamii yake kutokana na msimamo thabiti katika mambo ya msingi na kufahamika kwake kwa kauli nyoofu wakati wote.
 
Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History

JP-RECONSRUCT-1-articleLarge.jpg
Holly Pickett for The New York Times
Tunis, Jan. 14 Demonstrators climbed the walls of the Interior Ministry as thousands gathered outside to demand the resignation of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The protests that brought down Mr. Ben Ali that day began on Facebook.

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: February 13, 2011






CAIRO - As protesters in Tahrir Square faced off against pro-government forces, they drew a lesson from their counterparts in Tunisia: "Advice to the youth of Egypt: Put vinegar or onion under your scarf for tear gas."



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Cairo, Feb. 3 After more than a week of unrest, anti-Mubarak protesters clashed with supporters of the president for control of Tahrir Square. When confronting the police, the protesters wore armor made of cardboard and Pepsi bottles.


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The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world - a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it. Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.
They fused their secular expertise in social networks with a discipline culled from religious movements and combined the energy of soccer fans with the sophistication of surgeons. Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they relied on tactics of nonviolent resistance channeled from an American scholar through a Serbian youth brigade - but also on marketing tactics borrowed from Silicon Valley.
As their swelling protests shook the Egyptian state, they were locked in a virtual tug of war with a leader with a very different vision - Gamal Mubarak, the son of President Hosni Mubarak, a wealthy investment banker and ruling-party power broker. Considered the heir apparent to his father until the youth revolt eliminated any thought of dynastic succession, the younger Mubarak pushed his father to hold on to power even after his top generals and the prime minister were urging an exit, according to American officials who tracked Hosni Mubarak's final days.
The defiant tone of the president's speech on Thursday, the officials said, was largely his son's work.
"He was probably more strident than his father was," said one American official, who characterized Gamal's role as "sugarcoating what was for Mubarak a disastrous situation." But the speech backfired, prompting Egypt's military to force the president out and assert control of what they promise will be a transition to civilian government.
Now the young leaders are looking beyond Egypt. "Tunis is the force that pushed Egypt, but what Egypt did will be the force that will push the world," said Walid Rachid, one of the members of the April 6 Youth Movement, which helped organize the Jan. 25 protests that set off the uprising. He spoke at a meeting on Sunday night where the members discussed sharing their experiences with similar youth movements in Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Iran.
"If a small group of people in every Arab country went out and persevered as we did, then that would be the end of all the regimes," he said, joking that the next Arab summit might be "a coming-out party" for all the ascendant youth leaders.
Bloggers Lead the Way
The Egyptian revolt was years in the making. Ahmed Maher, a 30-year-old civil engineer and a leading organizer of the April 6 Youth Movement, first became engaged in a political movement known as Kefaya, or Enough, in about 2005. Mr. Maher and others organized their own brigade, Youth for Change. But they could not muster enough followers; arrests decimated their leadership ranks, and many of those left became mired in the timid, legally recognized opposition parties. "What destroyed the movement was the old parties," said Mr. Maher, who has since been arrested four times.
By 2008, many of the young organizers had retreated to their computer keyboards and turned into bloggers, attempting to raise support for a wave of isolated labor strikes set off by government privatizations and runaway inflation.
After a strike that March in the city of Mahalla, Egypt, Mr. Maher and his friends called for a nationwide general strike for April 6. To promote it, they set up a Facebook group that became the nexus of their movement, which they were determined to keep independent from any of the established political groups. Bad weather turned the strike into a nonevent in most places, but in Mahalla a demonstration by the workers' families led to a violent police crackdown - the first major labor confrontation in years.
Just a few months later, after a strike in Tunisia, a group of young online organizers followed the same model, setting up what became the Progressive Youth of Tunisia. The organizers in both countries began exchanging their experiences over Facebook. The Tunisians faced a more pervasive police state than the Egyptians, with less latitude for blogging or press freedom, but their trade unions were stronger and more independent. "We shared our experience with strikes and blogging," Mr. Maher recalled.
For their part, Mr. Maher and his colleagues began reading about nonviolent struggles. They were especially drawn to a Serbian youth movement called Otpor, which had helped topple the dictator Slobodan Milosevic by drawing on the ideas of an American political thinker, Gene Sharp. The hallmark of Mr. Sharp's work is well-tailored to Mr. Mubark's Egypt: He argues that nonviolence is a singularly effective way to undermine police states that might cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of stability.
The April 6 Youth Movement modeled its logo - a vaguely Soviet looking red and white clenched fist-after Otpor's, and some of its members traveled to Serbia to meet with Otpor activists.
Another influence, several said, was a group of Egyptian expatriates in their 30s who set up an organization in Qatar called the Academy of Change, which promotes ideas drawn in part on Mr. Sharp's work. One of the group's organizers, Hisham Morsy, was arrested during the Cairo protests and remained in detention.



"The Academy of Change is sort of like Karl Marx, and we are like Lenin," said Basem Fathy, another organizer who sometimes works with the April 6 Youth Movement and is also the project director at the Egyptian Democratic Academy, which receives grants from the United States and focuses on human rights and election-monitoring. During the protesters' occupation of Tahrir Square, he said, he used his connections to raise about $5,100 from Egyptian businessmen to buy blankets and tents.
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Moises Saman for The New York Times

Cairo, Feb. 11 Egyptians celebrated the announcement that President Mubarak was stepping down. "Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than a 1,000 people died in this revolution - most of them killed by the police," an organizer said.



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‘This Is Your Country'
Then, about a year ago, the growing Egyptian youth movement acquired a strategic ally, Wael Ghonim, a 31-year-old Google marketing executive. Like many others, he was introduced into the informal network of young organizers by the movement that came together around Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat who returned to Egypt a year ago to try to jump-start its moribund political opposition.
Mr. Ghonim had little experience in politics but an intense dislike for the abusive Egyptian police, the mainstay of the government's power. He offered his business savvy to the cause. "I worked in marketing, and I knew that if you build a brand you can get people to trust the brand," he said.
The result was a Facebook group Mr. Ghonim set up: We Are All Khalid Said, after a young Egyptian who was beaten to death by police. Mr. Ghonim - unknown to the public, but working closely with Mr. Maher of the April 6 Youth Movement and a contact from Mr. ElBaradei's group - said that he used Mr. Said's killing to educate Egyptians about democracy movements.
He filled the site with video clips and newspaper articles about police violence. He repeatedly hammered home a simple message: "This is your country; a government official is your employee who gets his salary from your tax money, and you have your rights." He took special aim at the distortions of the official media, because when the people "distrust the media then you know you are not going to lose them," he said.
He eventually attracted hundreds of thousands of users, building their allegiance through exercises in online democratic participation. When organizers planned a "day of silence" in the Cairo streets, for example, he polled users on what color shirts they should all wear - black or white. (When the revolt exploded, the Mubarak government detained him for 12 days in blindfolded isolation in a belated attempt to stop his work.)
After the Tunisian revolution on Jan. 14, the April 6 Youth Movement saw an opportunity to turn its little-noticed annual protest on Police Day - the Jan. 25 holiday that celebrates a police revolt that was suppressed by the British - into a much bigger event. Mr. Ghonim used the Facebook site to mobilize support. If at least 50,000 people committed to turn out that day, the site suggested, the protest could be held. More than 100,000 signed up.
"I have never seen a revolution that was preannounced before," Mr. Ghonim said.
By then, the April 6 movement had teamed up with Mr. ElBaradei's supporters, some liberal and leftist parties, and the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood to plaster Cairo with eye-catching modernist posters advertising their Tunisia-inspired Police Day protest. But their elders - even members of the Brotherhood who had long been portrayed as extremists by Mr. Mubarak and the West - shied away from taking to the streets.
Explaining that Police Day was supposed to honor the fight against British colonialism, Essem Erian, a Brotherhood leader, said, "On that day we should all be celebrating together.
"All these people are on Facebook, but do we know who they are?" he asked. "We cannot tie our parties and entities to a virtual world."
‘This Was It'
When the 25th came, the coalition of young activists, almost all of them affluent, wanted to tap into the widespread frustration with the country's autocracy, and also with the grinding poverty of Egyptian life. They started their day trying to rally poor people with complaints about pocketbook issues: "They are eating pigeon and chicken, but we eat beans every day."
By the end of the day, when tens of thousands had marched to Tahrir Square, their chants had become more sweeping. "The people want to bring down the regime," they shouted, a slogan that the organizers said they had read in signs and on Facebook pages from Tunisia. Mr. Maher of the April 6 Youth Movement said the organizers even debated storming Parliament and the state television building - classic revolutionary moves.
"When I looked around me and I saw all these unfamiliar faces in the protests, and they were more brave than us - I knew that this was it for the regime," Mr. Maher said.



It was then that they began to rely on advice from Tunisia, Serbia and the Academy of Change, which had sent staff members to Cairo a week before to train the protest organizers. After the police used tear gas to break up the protest that Tuesday, the organizers came back better prepared for their next march on Friday, the 28th, the "Day of Rage."


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This time, they brought lemons, onions and vinegar to sniff for relief from the tear gas, and soda or milk to pour into their eyes. Some had fashioned cardboard or plastic bottles into makeshift armor worn under their clothes to protect against riot police bullets. They brought spray paint to cover the windshields of police cars, and they were ready to stuff the exhaust pipes and jam the wheels to render them useless. By the early afternoon, a few thousand protesters faced off against well over a thousand heavily armed riot police officers on the four-lane Kasr al-Nile Bridge in perhaps the most pivotal battle of the revolution.
"We pulled out all the tricks of the game - the Pepsi, the onion, the vinegar," said Mr. Maher, who wore cardboard and plastic bottles under his sweater, a bike helmet on his head and a barrel-top shield on his arm. "The strategy was the people who were injured would go to the back and other people would replace them," he said. "We just kept rotating." After more than five hours of battle, they had finally won - and burned down the empty headquarters of the ruling party on their way to occupy Tahrir Square.
Pressuring Mubarak
In Washington that day, President Obama turned up, unexpectedly, at a 3:30 p.m. Situation Room meeting of his "principals," the key members of the national security team, where he displaced Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, from his seat at the head of the table.
The White House had been debating the likelihood of a domino effect since youth-driven revolts had toppled President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, even though the American intelligence community and Israel's intelligence services had estimated that the risk to President Mubarak was low - less than 20 percent, some officials said.
According to senior officials who participated in Mr. Obama's policy debates, the president took a different view. He made the point early on, a senior official said, that "this was a trend" that could spread to other authoritarian governments in the region, including in Iran. By the end of the 18-day uprising, by a White House count, there were 38 meetings with the president about Egypt. Mr. Obama said that this was a chance to create an alternative to "the Al Qaeda narrative" of Western interference.
American officials had seen no evidence of overtly anti-American or anti-Western sentiment. "When we saw people bringing their children to Tahrir Square, wanting to see history being made, we knew this was something different," one official said.
On Jan. 28, the debate quickly turned to how to pressure Mr. Mubarak in private and in public - and whether Mr. Obama should appear on television urging change. Mr. Obama decided to call Mr. Mubarak, and several aides listened in on the line. Mr. Obama did not suggest that the 82-year-old leader step aside or transfer power. At this point, "the argument was that he really needed to do the reforms, and do them fast," a senior official said. Mr. Mubarak resisted, saying the protests were about outside interference.
According to the official, Mr. Obama told him, "You have a large portion of your people who are not satisfied, and they won't be until you make concrete political, social and economic reforms."
The next day, the decision was made to send former Ambassador Frank G. Wisner to Cairo as an envoy. Mr. Obama began placing calls to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and other regional leaders.
The most difficult calls, officials said, were with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Mr. Netanyahu, who feared regional instability and urged the United States to stick with Mr. Mubarak. According to American officials, senior members of the government in Saudi Arabia argued that the United States should back Mr. Mubarak even if he used force against the demonstrators. By Feb. 1, when Mr. Mubarak broadcast a speech pledging that he would not run again and that elections would be held in September, Mr. Obama concluded that the Egyptian president still had not gotten the message.
Within an hour, Mr. Obama called Mr. Mubarak again in the toughest, and last, of their conversations. "He said if this transition process drags out for months, the protests will, too," one of Mr. Obama's aides said.
Mr. Mubarak told Mr. Obama that the protests would be over in a few days.
Mr. Obama ended the call, the official said, with these words: "I respect my elders. And you have been in politics for a very long time, Mr. President. But there are moments in history when just because things were the same way in the past doesn't mean they will be that way in the future."
The next day, heedless of Mr. Obama's admonitions, Mr. Mubarak launched another attack against the protesters, many of whom had by then spent five nights camped out in Tahrir Square. By about 2:30 p.m., thousands of burly men loyal to Mr. Mubarak and armed with rocks, clubs and, eventually, improvised explosives had come crashing into the square.
The protesters - trying to stay true to the lessons they had learned from Gandhi, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gene Sharp - tried for a time to avoid retaliating. A row of men stood silent as rocks rained down on them. An older man told a younger one to put down his stick.
But by 3:30 p.m., the battle was joined. A rhythmic din of stones on metal rang out as the protesters beat street lamps and fences to rally their troops.



The Muslim Brotherhood, after sitting out the first day, had reversed itself, issuing an order for all able-bodied men to join the occupation of Tahrir Square. They now took the lead. As a secret, illegal organization, the Brotherhood was accustomed to operating in a disciplined hierarchy. The group's members helped the protesters divide into teams to organize their defense, several organizers said. One team broke the pavement into rocks, while another ferried the rocks to makeshift barricades along their perimeter and the third defended the front.


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"The youth of the Muslim Brotherhood played a really big role," Mr. Maher said. "But actually so did the soccer fans" of Egypt's two leading teams. "These are always used to having confrontations with police at the stadiums," he said.
Soldiers of the Egyptian military, evidently under orders to stay neutral, stood watching from behind the iron gates of the Egyptian Museum as the war of stone missiles and improvised bombs continued for 14 hours until about four in the morning.
Then, unable to break the protesters' discipline or determination, the Mubarak forces resorted to guns, shooting 45 and killing 2, according to witnesses and doctors interviewed early that morning. The soldiers - perhaps following orders to prevent excessive bloodshed, perhaps acting on their own - finally intervened. They fired their machine guns into the ground and into the air, several witnesses said, scattering the Mubarak forces and leaving the protesters in unmolested control of the square, and by extension, the streets.
Once the military demonstrated it was unwilling to fire on its own citizens, the balance of power shifted. American officials urged the army to preserve its bond with the Egyptian people by sending top officers into the square to reassure the protesters, a step that further isolated Mr. Mubarak. But the Obama administration faltered in delivering its own message: Two days after the worst of the violence, Mr. Wisner publicly suggested that Mr. Mubarak had to be at the center of any change, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that any transition would take time. Other American officials suggested Mr. Mubarak might formally stay in office until his term ended next September. Then a four-day-long stalemate ensued, in which Mr. Mubarak refused to budge, and the protesters regained momentum.
On Thursday, Mr. Mubarak's vice president, Omar Suleiman, was on the phone with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at 2 p.m. in Washington, the third time they had spoken in a week. The airwaves were filled with rumors that Mr. Mubarak was stepping down, and Mr. Suleiman told Mr. Biden that he was preparing to assume Mr. Mubarak's powers. But as he spoke to Mr. Biden and other officials, Mr. Suleiman said that "certain powers" would remain with Mr. Mubarak, including the power to dissolve the Parliament and fire the cabinet. "The message from Suleiman was that he would be the de facto president," one person involved in the call said.
But while Mr. Mubarak huddled with his son Gamal, the Obama administration was in the dark about how events would unfold, reduced to watching cable television to see what Mr. Mubarak would decide. What they heard on Thursday night was a drastically rewritten speech, delivered in the unbowed tone of the father of the country, with scarcely any mention of a presumably temporary "delegation" of his power.
It was that rambling, convoluted address that proved the final straw for the Egyptian military, now fairly certain that it would have Washington's backing if it moved against Mr. Mubarak, American officials said. Mr. Mubarak's generals ramped up the pressure that led him at last, without further comment, to relinquish his power.
"Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than 1,000 people died in this revolution - most of them killed by the police," said Mr. Ghonim, the Google executive. "It shows how civilized the Egyptian people are." He added, "Now our nightmare is over. Now it is time to dream."



SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/w...pagewanted=4&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
 
Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History

JP-RECONSRUCT-1-articleLarge.jpg


Holly Pickett for The New York Times

Tunis, Jan. 14 Demonstrators climbed the walls of the Interior Ministry as thousands gathered outside to demand the resignation of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The protests that brought down Mr. Ben Ali that day began on Facebook.

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: February 13, 2011


CAIRO - As protesters in Tahrir Square faced off against pro-government forces, they drew a lesson from their counterparts in Tunisia: "Advice to the youth of Egypt: Put vinegar or onion under your scarf for tear gas."

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Ed Ou for The New York Times

Cairo, Feb. 3 After more than a week of unrest, anti-Mubarak protesters clashed with supporters of the president for control of Tahrir Square. When confronting the police, the protesters wore armor made of cardboard and Pepsi bottles.

The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world - a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it.

Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.

They fused their secular expertise in social networks with a discipline culled from religious movements and combined the energy of soccer fans with the sophistication of surgeons.

Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they relied on tactics of nonviolent resistance channeled from an American scholar through a Serbian youth brigade - but also on marketing tactics borrowed from Silicon Valley.

As their swelling protests shook the Egyptian state, they were locked in a virtual tug of war with a leader with a very different vision - Gamal Mubarak, the son of President Hosni Mubarak, a wealthy investment banker and ruling-party power broker.

Considered the heir apparent to his father until the youth revolt eliminated any thought of dynastic succession, the younger Mubarak pushed his father to hold on to power even after his top generals and the prime minister were urging an exit, according to American officials who tracked Hosni Mubarak's final days.

The defiant tone of the president's speech on Thursday, the officials said, was largely his son's work.

"He was probably more strident than his father was," said one American official, who characterized Gamal's role as "sugarcoating what was for Mubarak a disastrous situation."

But the speech backfired, prompting Egypt's military to force the president out and assert control of what they promise will be a transition to civilian government.

Now the young leaders are looking beyond Egypt. "Tunis is the force that pushed Egypt, but what Egypt did will be the force that will push the world," said Walid Rachid, one of the members of the April 6 Youth Movement, which helped organize the Jan. 25 protests that set off the uprising.

He spoke at a meeting on Sunday night where the members discussed sharing their experiences with similar youth movements in Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Iran.

"If a small group of people in every Arab country went out and persevered as we did, then that would be the end of all the regimes," he said, joking that the next Arab summit might be "a coming-out party" for all the ascendant youth leaders.

Bloggers Lead the Way

The Egyptian revolt was years in the making. Ahmed Maher, a 30-year-old civil engineer and a leading organizer of the April 6 Youth Movement, first became engaged in a political movement known as Kefaya, or Enough, in about 2005.

Mr. Maher and others organized their own brigade, Youth for Change. But they could not muster enough followers; arrests decimated their leadership ranks, and many of those left became mired in the timid, legally recognized opposition parties.

"What destroyed the movement was the old parties," said Mr. Maher, who has since been arrested four times.

By 2008, many of the young organizers had retreated to their computer keyboards and turned into bloggers, attempting to raise support for a wave of isolated labor strikes set off by government privatizations and runaway inflation.

After a strike that March in the city of Mahalla, Egypt, Mr. Maher and his friends called for a nationwide general strike for April 6.

To promote it, they set up a Facebook group that became the nexus of their movement, which they were determined to keep independent from any of the established political groups.

Bad weather turned the strike into a nonevent in most places, but in Mahalla a demonstration by the workers' families led to a violent police crackdown - the first major labor confrontation in years.

Just a few months later, after a strike in Tunisia, a group of young online organizers followed the same model, setting up what became the Progressive Youth of Tunisia.

The organizers in both countries began exchanging their experiences over Facebook. The Tunisians faced a more pervasive police state than the Egyptians, with less latitude for blogging or press freedom, but their trade unions were stronger and more independent.

"We shared our experience with strikes and blogging," Mr. Maher recalled.

For their part, Mr. Maher and his colleagues began reading about nonviolent struggles. They were especially drawn to a Serbian youth movement called Otpor, which had helped topple the dictator Slobodan Milosevic by drawing on the ideas of an American political thinker, Gene Sharp.

The hallmark of Mr. Sharp's work is well-tailored to Mr. Mubark's Egypt: He argues that nonviolence is a singularly effective way to undermine police states that might cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of stability.

The April 6 Youth Movement modeled its logo - a vaguely Soviet looking red and white clenched fist-after Otpor's, and some of its members traveled to Serbia to meet with Otpor activists.

Another influence, several said, was a group of Egyptian expatriates in their 30s who set up an organization in Qatar called the Academy of Change, which promotes ideas drawn in part on Mr. Sharp's work. One of the group's organizers, Hisham Morsy, was arrested during the Cairo protests and remained in detention.

"The Academy of Change is sort of like Karl Marx, and we are like Lenin," said Basem Fathy, another organizer who sometimes works with the April 6 Youth Movement and is also the project director at the Egyptian Democratic Academy, which receives grants from the United States and focuses on human rights and election-monitoring.

During the protesters' occupation of Tahrir Square, he said, he used his connections to raise about $5,100 from Egyptian businessmen to buy blankets and tents.

Cairo, Feb. 11 Egyptians celebrated the announcement that President Mubarak was stepping down. "Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than a 1,000 people died in this revolution - most of them killed by the police," an organizer said.
‘This Is Your Country'

Then, about a year ago, the growing Egyptian youth movement acquired a strategic ally, Wael Ghonim, a 31-year-old Google marketing executive.

Like many others, he was introduced into the informal network of young organizers by the movement that came together around Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat who returned to Egypt a year ago to try to jump-start its moribund political opposition.

Mr. Ghonim had little experience in politics but an intense dislike for the abusive Egyptian police, the mainstay of the government's power. He offered his business savvy to the cause. "I worked in marketing, and I knew that if you build a brand you can get people to trust the brand," he said.

The result was a Facebook group Mr. Ghonim set up: We Are All Khalid Said, after a young Egyptian who was beaten to death by police. Mr. Ghonim - unknown to the public, but working closely with Mr. Maher of the April 6 Youth Movement and a contact from Mr. ElBaradei's group - said that he used Mr. Said's killing to educate Egyptians about democracy movements.

He filled the site with video clips and newspaper articles about police violence. He repeatedly hammered home a simple message: "This is your country; a government official is your employee who gets his salary from your tax money, and you have your rights."

He took special aim at the distortions of the official media, because when the people "distrust the media then you know you are not going to lose them," he said.

He eventually attracted hundreds of thousands of users, building their allegiance through exercises in online democratic participation.

When organizers planned a "day of silence" in the Cairo streets, for example, he polled users on what color shirts they should all wear - black or white. (When the revolt exploded, the Mubarak government detained him for 12 days in blindfolded isolation in a belated attempt to stop his work.)

After the Tunisian revolution on Jan. 14, the April 6 Youth Movement saw an opportunity to turn its little-noticed annual protest on Police Day - the Jan. 25 holiday that celebrates a police revolt that was suppressed by the British - into a much bigger event. Mr. Ghonim used the Facebook site to mobilize support.

If at least 50,000 people committed to turn out that day, the site suggested, the protest could be held. More than 100,000 signed up. "I have never seen a revolution that was preannounced before," Mr. Ghonim said.

By then, the April 6 movement had teamed up with Mr. ElBaradei's supporters, some liberal and leftist parties, and the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood to plaster Cairo with eye-catching modernist posters advertising their Tunisia-inspired Police Day protest.

But their elders - even members of the Brotherhood who had long been portrayed as extremists by Mr. Mubarak and the West - shied away from taking to the streets.

Explaining that Police Day was supposed to honor the fight against British colonialism, Essem Erian, a Brotherhood leader, said, "On that day we should all be celebrating together.

"All these people are on Facebook, but do we know who they are?" he asked. "We cannot tie our parties and entities to a virtual world."

‘This Was It'

When the 25th came, the coalition of young activists, almost all of them affluent, wanted to tap into the widespread frustration with the country's autocracy, and also with the grinding poverty of Egyptian life.

They started their day trying to rally poor people with complaints about pocketbook issues: "They are eating pigeon and chicken, but we eat beans every day."

By the end of the day, when tens of thousands had marched to Tahrir Square, their chants had become more sweeping. "The people want to bring down the regime," they shouted, a slogan that the organizers said they had read in signs and on Facebook pages from Tunisia.

Mr. Maher of the April 6 Youth Movement said the organizers even debated storming Parliament and the state television building - classic revolutionary moves.

"When I looked around me and I saw all these unfamiliar faces in the protests, and they were more brave than us - I knew that this was it for the regime," Mr. Maher said.

It was then that they began to rely on advice from Tunisia, Serbia and the Academy of Change, which had sent staff members to Cairo a week before to train the protest organizers.

After the police used tear gas to break up the protest that Tuesday, the organizers came back better prepared for their next march on Friday, the 28th, the "Day of Rage."

This time, they brought lemons, onions and vinegar to sniff for relief from the tear gas, and soda or milk to pour into their eyes. Some had fashioned cardboard or plastic bottles into makeshift armor worn under their clothes to protect against riot police bullets.

They brought spray paint to cover the windshields of police cars, and they were ready to stuff the exhaust pipes and jam the wheels to render them useless.

By the early afternoon, a few thousand protesters faced off against well over a thousand heavily armed riot police officers on the four-lane Kasr al-Nile Bridge in perhaps the most pivotal battle of the revolution.

"We pulled out all the tricks of the game - the Pepsi, the onion, the vinegar," said Mr. Maher, who wore cardboard and plastic bottles under his sweater, a bike helmet on his head and a barrel-top shield on his arm.

"The strategy was the people who were injured would go to the back and other people would replace them," he said. "We just kept rotating." After more than five hours of battle, they had finally won - and burned down the empty headquarters of the ruling party on their way to occupy Tahrir Square.

Pressuring Mubarak

In Washington that day, President Obama turned up, unexpectedly, at a 3:30 p.m. Situation Room meeting of his "principals," the key members of the national security team, where he displaced Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, from his seat at the head of the table.

The White House had been debating the likelihood of a domino effect since youth-driven revolts had toppled President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, even though the American intelligence community and Israel's intelligence services had estimated that the risk to President Mubarak was low - less than 20 percent, some officials said.

According to senior officials who participated in Mr. Obama's policy debates, the president took a different view. He made the point early on, a senior official said, that "this was a trend" that could spread to other authoritarian governments in the region, including in Iran.

By the end of the 18-day uprising, by a White House count, there were 38 meetings with the president about Egypt. Mr. Obama said that this was a chance to create an alternative to "the Al Qaeda narrative" of Western interference.

American officials had seen no evidence of overtly anti-American or anti-Western sentiment. "When we saw people bringing their children to Tahrir Square, wanting to see history being made, we knew this was something different," one official said.

On Jan. 28, the debate quickly turned to how to pressure Mr. Mubarak in private and in public - and whether Mr. Obama should appear on television urging change.

Mr. Obama decided to call Mr. Mubarak, and several aides listened in on the line. Mr. Obama did not suggest that the 82-year-old leader step aside or transfer power.

At this point, "the argument was that he really needed to do the reforms, and do them fast," a senior official said. Mr. Mubarak resisted, saying the protests were about outside interference.

According to the official, Mr. Obama told him, "You have a large portion of your people who are not satisfied, and they won't be until you make concrete political, social and economic reforms."

The next day, the decision was made to send former Ambassador Frank G. Wisner to Cairo as an envoy. Mr. Obama began placing calls to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and other regional leaders.

The most difficult calls, officials said, were with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Mr. Netanyahu, who feared regional instability and urged the United States to stick with Mr. Mubarak.

According to American officials, senior members of the government in Saudi Arabia argued that the United States should back Mr. Mubarak even if he used force against the demonstrators. By Feb. 1, when Mr. Mubarak broadcast a speech pledging that he would not run again and that elections would be held in September, Mr. Obama concluded that the Egyptian president still had not gotten the message.

Within an hour, Mr. Obama called Mr. Mubarak again in the toughest, and last, of their conversations. "He said if this transition process drags out for months, the protests will, too," one of Mr. Obama's aides said.

Mr. Mubarak told Mr. Obama that the protests would be over in a few days.

Mr. Obama ended the call, the official said, with these words: "I respect my elders. And you have been in politics for a very long time, Mr. President. But there are moments in history when just because things were the same way in the past doesn't mean they will be that way in the future."

The next day, heedless of Mr. Obama's admonitions, Mr. Mubarak launched another attack against the protesters, many of whom had by then spent five nights camped out in Tahrir Square.

By about 2:30 p.m., thousands of burly men loyal to Mr. Mubarak and armed with rocks, clubs and, eventually, improvised explosives had come crashing into the square.

The protesters - trying to stay true to the lessons they had learned from Gandhi, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gene Sharp - tried for a time to avoid retaliating. A row of men stood silent as rocks rained down on them. An older man told a younger one to put down his stick.

But by 3:30 p.m., the battle was joined. A rhythmic din of stones on metal rang out as the protesters beat street lamps and fences to rally their troops.

The Muslim Brotherhood, after sitting out the first day, had reversed itself, issuing an order for all able-bodied men to join the occupation of Tahrir Square.

They now took the lead. As a secret, illegal organization, the Brotherhood was accustomed to operating in a disciplined hierarchy. The group's members helped the protesters divide into teams to organize their defense, several organizers said.

One team broke the pavement into rocks, while another ferried the rocks to makeshift barricades along their perimeter and the third defended the front.

"The youth of the Muslim Brotherhood played a really big role," Mr. Maher said. "But actually so did the soccer fans" of Egypt's two leading teams. "These are always used to having confrontations with police at the stadiums," he said.

Soldiers of the Egyptian military, evidently under orders to stay neutral, stood watching from behind the iron gates of the Egyptian Museum as the war of stone missiles and improvised bombs continued for 14 hours until about four in the morning.

Then, unable to break the protesters' discipline or determination, the Mubarak forces resorted to guns, shooting 45 and killing 2, according to witnesses and doctors interviewed early that morning.

The soldiers - perhaps following orders to prevent excessive bloodshed, perhaps acting on their own - finally intervened. They fired their machine guns into the ground and into the air, several witnesses said, scattering the Mubarak forces and leaving the protesters in unmolested control of the square, and by extension, the streets.

Once the military demonstrated it was unwilling to fire on its own citizens, the balance of power shifted. American officials urged the army to preserve its bond with the Egyptian people by sending top officers into the square to reassure the protesters, a step that further isolated Mr. Mubarak.

But the Obama administration faltered in delivering its own message: Two days after the worst of the violence, Mr. Wisner publicly suggested that Mr. Mubarak had to be at the center of any change, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that any transition would take time.

Other American officials suggested Mr. Mubarak might formally stay in office until his term ended next September. Then a four-day-long stalemate ensued, in which Mr. Mubarak refused to budge, and the protesters regained momentum.

On Thursday, Mr. Mubarak's vice president, Omar Suleiman, was on the phone with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at 2 p.m. in Washington, the third time they had spoken in a week.

The airwaves were filled with rumors that Mr. Mubarak was stepping down, and Mr. Suleiman told Mr. Biden that he was preparing to assume Mr. Mubarak's powers.

But as he spoke to Mr. Biden and other officials, Mr. Suleiman said that "certain powers" would remain with Mr. Mubarak, including the power to dissolve the Parliament and fire the cabinet.

"The message from Suleiman was that he would be the de facto president," one person involved in the call said.

But while Mr. Mubarak huddled with his son Gamal, the Obama administration was in the dark about how events would unfold, reduced to watching cable television to see what Mr. Mubarak would decide.

What they heard on Thursday night was a drastically rewritten speech, delivered in the unbowed tone of the father of the country, with scarcely any mention of a presumably temporary "delegation" of his power.

It was that rambling, convoluted address that proved the final straw for the Egyptian military, now fairly certain that it would have Washington's backing if it moved against Mr. Mubarak, American officials said. Mr. Mubarak's generals ramped up the pressure that led him at last, without further comment, to relinquish his power.

"Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than 1,000 people died in this revolution - most of them killed by the police," said Mr. Ghonim, the Google executive. "It shows how civilized the Egyptian people are." He added, "Now our nightmare is over. Now it is time to dream."

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/w...pagewanted=4&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
 
[SIZE=+2]TO TYRANTS OF THE WORLD

[/SIZE]By Tunisian Poet Abul Qasem El-Chebbi (1909 - 1934)

Hey you, the ruthless tyrants...
You lovers of darkness...
You the enemies of life...
You've made fun of innocent people's wounds; and your palm is covered with their blood
You deforming the value of existence and sowed seeds of sadness in their land
Wait, don't let the spring, the clearness of the sky and the shine of the morning light fool you...
Because the darkness, the thunder rumble and the blowing of the wind are coming toward you from the horizon
Beware because underneath the ash there is fire
Who grows thorns will reap wounds
The river of blood you shed will sweep you away and you will be burned by the fiery storm.
(The Original Version)
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SOURCE: UNITED NATIONS. TO TYRANTS OF THE WORLD.

UJUMBE HUMU:

Ni ajabu na kweli kwamba kumbe yale yote yaliotokea Tunisia kupindua serikali dhalimu ya aliyekua Rais Ben Ali na kisha nguvu za virutubisho vya 'Matunda na Mboga Mboga' Shujaa Machinga Mohamed Bouazizi kuvuka mipaka yote YALISHATABIRIWA MNAMO MWAKA WA 1934 KUTOKEA.

Mtunga mashairi mzaliwa wa nchini Tunisian, Ndg Abul Qasem El-Chebbi (1909 - 1934), aliyaona kwa macho yake udhalimu na ufisadi ukitendeka nchini mwake hata akaamua kuyaweka katika kumbukumbu za kimaandishi kama tulivyoyaona hapo juu.

Baada ya takriban miaka 76 yale maoni yake yakaondoka kwenye karatasi; yakaenda mitaani na kugeuka moto mkubwa usiozimika uliotimulia mbali madikteta 2 hadi sasa na kuendelea kushika kasi!!! Mmachinga Mohamed Bouazizi ndiye silaha ya maangamizi iliokamilisha utabiri mzima!!!

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200 × 200 - Mohammed Bouazizi's (and Tunisia's) agony.




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... Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, whose immolation, December 17, launched the ...
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240 × 196 - In the case of Mohammed Bouazizi, the youth from Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia, ...
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450 × 338 - Mohamed Bouazizi's fruit cart pushes over Ben Ali's throne
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... the Tunisian revolution began in with the suicide of Mohammed Bouazizi ...
rozhlas.cz​
Laiti watawa huwa huchukua japo dakika 30 tu kujisomea kila siku, badala ya kuendelea mfululizo kusikiliza maoni ya wanafiki, naamini wangeweza kuona shairi hili na kuzingatia zaidi onyo kali kwenye mistari ya 7 na ya 10 ili zahama yasiwakute kama ambavyo tunaendelea bado kushudia hivi leo.

Enyi watawala: kuleni kidogo kwa afya njema na wala msizidishe kipimo chenu. Kila mmoja wetu katika jamii ANAYO UMUHIMU WAKE na wala asidharauliwe kitu.
 
Digital media and the Arab spring

Feb 16, 2011 16:46 EST

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egypt | Obama | politics | US politics
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By Philip N. Howard, author of " The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam," and director of the Project on Information Technology and Political Islam at the University of Washington. The opinions expressed are his own.
President Obama identified technology as one of the key variables that enabled and encouraged average Egyptians to protest. Digital media didn't oust Mubarak, but it did provide the medium by which soulful calls for freedom have cascaded across North Africa and the Middle East. It is difficult to know when the Arab Spring will end, but we can already say something about the political casualties, long-term regional consequences and the modern recipe for democratization.
It all started with a desperate Tunisian shopkeeper who set himself on fire, which activated a transnational network of citizens exhausted by authoritarian rule. Within weeks, digitally-enabled protesters in Tunisia tossed out their dictator. It was social media that spread both the discontent and inspiring stories of success from Tunisia across North Africa and into the Middle East.
The protests in Egypt drew the largest crowds in 50 years, and a second dictator fell from power. The discontent spread through networks of family and friends to Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen. Autocrats have had to dismiss their cabinets, sometimes several times, to placate frustrated citizens. Algerians had to lift a 19-year "state of emergency" and are gearing for demonstrations over the weekend. Even Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has had to make concessions to activists brave enough to raise street protests against government housing policy.
But perhaps the most important casualty in terms of global politics is the U.S. preference for stability over democracy in North Africa and the Middle East. This preference, expressed in different foreign policies, seems untenable when groundswells of public opinion mobilize for democracy.
What are the lessons for the West? First, Islamic fundamentalists may terrorize parts of the region, but a larger network of citizens now has political clout, largely because of social media. The Muslim Brotherhood is no longer the only way to organize political opposition. In a digital world, older ideologically recalcitrant political parties may not even be the most effective way to organize effective political opposition.
Second, democratization has become more about social networks than political change driven by elites. The U.S. needs to spot when a dictator's social networks fragment to the point that he is incapable of managing his regime. More urgently, the U.S. needs to take serious note when networks of family and friends align - increasingly through digital media - on a set of grievances that political elites simply cannot or will not address.
So what are the lessons for Tunisia and Egypt's neighbors in the region? In this global, digital media environment, it is going to be increasingly difficult for the strong men of North Africa and the Middle East to rig elections. It will also be increasingly difficult to suspend democratic constitutions and pass power to family members. In the West, we may not think of these things as significant steps. But historically, closing options for authoritarian rule has been an important part of democratization. Giving a dictator less room to maneuver is as much a part of democratization as is running the first successful election.
Finally, what does it all mean for democratization? The Arab Spring has already brought down two dictators. Regardless of whether others will fall in the next few days or weeks, terms and conditions for authoritarian rule in North Africa and the Middle East have changed. With even a modicum of outside support, democracy in these countries can be home grown.
The West has a significant opportunity to help people across these regions enshrine the democratic norms we value and they seek. America should issue the right kinds of rhetorical and practical support, such as working hard to keep the Internet infrastructure open and publicly accessible. Taking advantage of this opportunity means understanding the ingredients for democratization - especially digital media.
Photo: People gather at a Shi'ite village cemetery in Sanabis, west of Bahraini capital Manama, February 15, 2011. Thousands of Shi'ite protesters marched into the capital on Tuesday after a man was killed in clashes between police and mourners at a funeral for a demonstrator shot dead at an earlier anti-government rally. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed


SOURCE: Digital media and the Arab spring | Analysis & Opinion |
 
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