"It ain't over till the fat lady sings" goes the popular colloquialism. Well, the fat lady is yet to sing in Tahrir Square, and the protests go on. Ahram Online tries to identify who's running the show Back to Tahrir, again? “Why on earth do you want to go to Tahrir? It is chaos in the square”, our overworked 50 something Taxi driver told us in a surprised tone. We were driving slowly through typically congested streets of midtown Cairo on our way to write yet one more article about Tahrir square, the hub of the 6 months old Egyptian revolution. Since July 8, tens of thousands of people have been taking part in a massive sit-in in the square against the current government of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and the ruling Supreme Council of the armed forces (SCAF). The protesters, many of whom have been sleeping in the square, accuse both Sharaf and the Generals of not doing enough to achieve the demands of the 25 January revolution. Protesters drew a list of seven demands in the early days of the sit-in which included justice for the families of the martyrs ‘of 25 January uprising and dismissal of all NDP individuals in Sharaf's cabinet among other things. More than 10 days had passed since the new Tahrir sit-in started and, as reporters, we were trying to find out an answer for a question many people probably wonder about: who is actually organizing, feeding and leading this massive numbers of people in the vast confines of one of the world's largest public squares. “What do you mean by ‘Chaos' in Tahrir?” We asked our driver, in an innocent tone. We had already been following the barrage of attacks on the Tahrir sit-in and protesters that fill many daily newspapers and talk shows on a daily basis since the sit-in started but perhaps we asked our driver because we wanted to be tortured by the ‘everyone knows this' argument one more time and by one more person. “Mr., every person in Tahrir has his or her own set of demands and is doing their own thing. Everyone in Tahrir thinks he is a leader. It is chaos. God save us!” the driver said with cocky confidence. Revolutions, Tahrir, chaos and violence Every revolution in the history of the world involved one degree or another of chaos. It could not be any other way since the whole point of a revolution is to shake up systems of social relationships and of power that have been entrenched for decades if not centuries. Turmoil, upheavals, and even a certain level of violence become unavoidable facts of life when millions of humanbeings who have been oppressed by a small minority in society finally try to break chains that have bound them for years and years. In fact, so far, those who spearheaded the Egyptian revolution have used uniquely peaceful and violence-free tactics compared to those revolutionaries who guillotined the landed aristocracy in the French revolution in 1789 or the Bolsheviks who rounded up the Czar's family and shot it during the Russian revolution in 1917. Back in February, some two million Cairenes, joined by several million others across the country, forced the former dictator Hosni Mubarak to step down partly through a highly peaceful, chaos-free, peaceful, and highly organized 18 day occupation of Tahrir square. In those days, thousands of protesters, young and old, administered food, medical and security services to protesters in Tahrir in a smooth fashion that earned the respect and awe of the people on the planet. While strikes and sit-ins have rocked the country since February, workers and protesters have continued to abstain from using violent means in their attempt to continue their revolution. Moreover, people initiated this current round of occupation of Tahrir ten days ago as a reaction to police use of tear gas canisters to disperse a peaceful protest by families of the martyrs of 25 January uprising on the night of 28 June. Despite all that, TV anchors and newspapers' writers are constantly giving the public an impression that revolutionaries are either 1 or 2 inches away from wreaking havoc, shutting bridges, attacking our army and on and on. In two long days and nights that we spent with protesters in Tahrir square, we did encounter several fights that broke out between individual protesters over political and sometimes personal disputes. In one incident we witnessed, a young, livid man chased another with an open fist around the center of the square because he accused him of sexually harassing his fiancée. Cooler heads intervened, tied down the angry fiancée and contained the scuffle by securing an apology from the guilty party. In another incident, two days ago, some young people shut down a rally trade unionists and socialists organized calling for the renationalisation of public sector companies. The young people said they had banned the rally because they were mad at political parties which, they charge, speak outside the square in the name of those sitting in it. The most serious act of violence that marked the 10-day sit-in came not from those occupying the square but from 6 thugs armed with knives and razors who attacked security monitors at one of Tahrir's entrances late last week. As thousands saw in a famous picture someone posted on facebook, some of the monitors and other protesters captured one of the thugs and eventually tied him to a Palm tree in the square for hours. However, Haitham Mohamadain, a lawyer with El-Nadim Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, who intervened to stop the abuse of the "thug" and ater interviewed him, gave Ahram Online a more detailed account of the incident. “The man actually admitted that an officer from a police station near Tahrir actually sent him to scare protesters in Tahrir. However, the protesters did not just tie him down as we saw in the picture. They undeniably left a bunch of cuts and bruises on his head and face,” Mohamadain told us. Despite these incidents, overall, the number of incidents of fights and brawls that take place inside the square remain at a surprisingly low level given how tempting it must be for many individuals who have been battling the unbearable heat and humidity for days to lash out at others in order to let off steam. Obviously, security issues could top the list of questions visitors to Tahrir immediately ask themselves the minute they enter square. However, other questions, perhaps more critical in terms of maintaining the welfare of protesters who have been sleeping in the square for days, also push themselves on one's mind. For example, how do all protesters who have not worked in days find money to buy food or who feeds them? Who transforms the square's pavement, which is littered with paper, empty water bottles and soda cans by midday, into a shining mirror-like sheet before sunrise? Last, but not least, who is making sure that an adequate supply of doctors and nurses are always in the square treating tens of people who pass out because of the heat and other medical problems. Egyptians organize themselves spontaneously, once again Undoubtedly, as in many previous revolutions, ordinary people in Egypt, who had been marginalized and remained quite passive for ages, have begun since 25 January to organize themselves in many creative ways and have taken gigantic social and political initiatives in the process of attempting to rewrite history. In fact, people in Tahrir today are continuing this process of self organization that they started last January. As we roamed through the square, we found hundreds of people who have erected tens of tents to provide all kinds of social and political services to others in the square. On the south side of the square, a group of doctors and nurses at the ‘Kentucky Field Hospital' (next to the famous or infamous American fast food chain that Mubarak's TV claimed was supplying hot chicken meals to revolutionaries) are always busy treating patients. Next to the field hospital, a group of painters who call themselves Revolution Painters Coalition were turning out art work and posters round the clock for protesters to use. In the center circle of the square, we found a Library tent and a Revolutionary Barber tent among tens of other service-oriented and political and social group tents. On the north side, a complex made out of about 20 tents stood somewhat isolated from the rest of the square, across from Muggama, the largest governmental administrative building in Egypt. Though, relatively quiet compared to the center of Tahrir, tent grouping functions more or less as a de facto headquarters of the square. The area has another field hospital tent which also tends to those who need medical care. It has a large tent for the popular committees (or security personnel) where volunteers process suspected thugs and others who break public law in the square and then decide what to do with them. There is also a tent at which individuals injured during the 25 January uprising run a counseling center for other revolutionaries who were also injured in the uprising and are currently taking part in the sit-in. To the right side of the injured veterans' tent, there are 2 tents for TV and Radio workers who have been involved in a campaign to purge state media outlets of corrupt managers who forced them to tow government propaganda for years. Many volunteers we talked to said that some honest business people were helpful in supplying food and medicine to support the services they were providing to protesters. But, we also found that 100% of those providing these much needed services were doing so on a purely voluntary basis. It became clear to us that self-organization and a high level of selflessness permeated all aspects of the work protesters and volunteers were carrying out day in and day out. Who is competing to organize behind the organizers? Meanwhile, most new comers to the sit-in will not immediately be able to identify that any one group or coalition dominates the process of coordinating all the administrative tasks of keeping the sit-in alive or monopolizes the right to decide when the sit-in will end. However, underneath this seemingly amorphous and decentralized character of the sit-in, we found that two main groupings of coalitions are actually operating and competing with one another to lead the sit-in in very different directions politically. On the one hand, a newly formed group that calls itself Independent Revolutionaries Coalition (IRC) is campaigning in the square to push the sit-in in an openly anarchist direction. Members of this new coalition are constantly - and sometimes fiercely - campaigning in the square against all political parties and coalitions that formed before, during, and right after Mubarak fell. Moreover, members of this group stress their opposition to calling off the sit-in unless the government meets ‘all demands' of the revolution at once. On the other hand, there is the relatively more established groups and political forces that played an important role in the Tahrir uprising that toppled Mubarak. These have coalesced 10 days ago in a new formation that they call the Group of 21. Throughout the current sit-in, the Group of 21 has continued to use traditional strategies of individual member organizations in pushing for their demands: mass mobilization as a means of winning concessions from the ruling military council throughout the current sit-in. The 21 includes groups such as the Revolution Youth Coalition, 6 of April Movement, Lotus Revolution coalition, No to Military Trials Campaign, and Support Baradei Campaign. The Independent Revolutionaries Coalition: We say NO to coalitions! The Independent Revolutionaries Coalition set up its headquarters upon a stage across from the Hardees fast food chain on the South East corner of the square. Since the start of the sit-in, day in and day out, tens of young speakers take the microphone to bemoan loss of 25 January martyrs rights and they vehemently denounce Prime Minister Sharaf and the military council. However, most of these angry young people reserve the vast bulk of their wrath to those they describe as ‘fake revolutionaries' who have no right to speak in the name of the ‘real Tahrir' in negotiations with the government. Some members of this coalition take their anti-politicking and anti-political parties campaign quite seriously to the point where they have tried to stifle the right of other groups who are part of the sit-in to express their political opinions. For example, last Sunday night, some of these young anarchists tried to shut down a rally for workers' rights that was taking place on the Revolution Artists Coalition stage in the square because the some of the organizers belonged to a 'political party'. In this case, the ‘party' was none other than the Workers Democratic Party, which also rejects, ironically, the type of politicking that those anarchists-leaning young people abhor. We approached the anti-parties, anti-coalitions stage across from Hardees and asked to speak to organizers. A young man in his early 20s told us that the Independent Revolutionaries have a policy of not talking to anyone in what he described as the ‘lying and corrupt' media. We simply said that we are interested in telling the truth about the sit-in and it seemed that this was all the young man needed to hear. Working the square on the 'down low' The young volunteer led us to a coffee shop in a damp ally behind Hardees to meet some of the coordinators of the sit-in. There, he introduced us to a group of a half a dozen men, mostly middle- aged, who were drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. The men looked so fatigued and some of them seemed either glued to their chairs or have slept in them for at least 3 or 4 nights straight. The men said that they belonged to a newly formed coalition called Independent Revolutionaries Coalition and showed us their picture identification cards. Abdel Fadil, a 50 something slim man and a former journalist at the state owned Al-Mussawar magazine introduced himself to us as the media coordinator for the new coalition. Abdel Nasser, a hulky upper Egyptian small businessman told us that he was a leading member of the Popular Committees responsible for security details in the square. Abdel Fadil said that the coalition has been playing an important role in organizing all security, medical, media and other operations necessary to keep the sit-in going. He told us that his coalition contains revolutionaries who have been active since 25 January and have not really left the square since that day, as he said. Those activists participated in all major protests since Mubarak fell. However, Abdel Fadil said that, in recent weeks, many revolutionaries have became increasingly frustrated with both the government of Sharaf and the military council, on the one hand, as well as coalitions who have become specialists in ‘politicking' and negotiations with the government, on the other hand. He added that he believed that many former revolutionaries have compromised their independent position and are actually betraying the true radical aims of the 25 January revolution by negotiating fruitless compromises with the government. Abdel Fadil singled out the Revolution Youth Coalition, one of the first groups to form out of the 25 January uprising, as an example of what he described as groups who speak in the name of the revolution but actually have very little presence on the ground at this point in Tahrir”. Abdel Fadil said that his group is coordinating with other groups who are ‘still in Tahrir' such as the 6 of April Movement and others in order to run the sit-in as smoothly as possible. These groups have formed an ad hoc coordinating committee that has its least 25 individuals who participate in a democratic decision making process. For example, Abdel Fadil said, on Sunday 10 July, 14 of the 25 voted to shut down Muggama to increase the heat on Sharaf. Two days later, organizers felt that they made their point. At this juncture, and in order to allow citizens who want to attend this year's Hajj to complete paper work, he told us that the group deliberated again and voted 21 to 4 to reopen Mugamma for business. “We decided to reopen the Muggama but we also hung a banner at the front entrance of the building that said Open to business by order of revolutionaries',” Abdel Fadil mused. We asked Abdel Fadil about how these coordinators deal with tensions that rise every now and then between protesters and tens of food and beverage vendors who jam the square every day. In past occupations of the square, protesters have accused some of these vendors of allegedly selling drugs and acting as spies for counter-revolutionary forces. In fact, certain street vendors did attack a previous sit-in back in March after organizers evacuated them from the square for causing problems then. Abdel Fadil told us that he believes that dealing with vendors is indeed a sensitive issue and requires a degree of diplomacy. “We ask them politely to confine their operations to areas where they do not interfere with protesters ability to move around the square. But, we also remove vendors who have criminal records or those we catch selling drugs,” he said. Meanwhile, Abdel Nasser, the popular committee coordinator in the IRC helped us understand how organizers handle general security issues in the sit-in. “The first step is that every morning tens of individual volunteers for security tasks report to a central location. We try to vet them by checking Identification cards and also weed out those we think could be troublemakers,” Abdel Nasser said. “Secondly, we have assigned different coalitions to take responsibility for securing separate entrances of the square,” he told us. “For example, 6 of April are in charge of security at one of the southern entrances to Tahrir. Revolution Youth Union secures another entrance on the north side. Independent Revolutionary coalition is responsible for a third entrance and so on,“ he explained. At this point, Abdel Fadil interjected in the discussion to emphasize that organisers rotate command of security operations in the square among different participating coalitions once every 6 hours in order to maximize people's contributions, and to minimize incidents of security lapses or mistreatment of protesters. “We want security personnel to be vigilant yet respectful. In fact, we suspended some people for two days because they went over the top in vetting potential protesters at one entrance. Granted it is very hot and the security volunteers work under tremendous levels of stress, but we do not tolerate mistreatment of other revolutionaries,” he said. So, who tied that thug to the Palm tree? At this point, out of curiosity, we asked Abdel Fadil to shed some light for us on how some security volunteers or popular committee members ended up tying a thug to a palm tree. Abdel Fadil immediately smiled, pointed his finger at Abdel Nasser and joked: “the perpetrator is sitting right in front of you ladies and gentleman.” Abdel Nasser did not wait for questions to give answers. He proudly told us that he is the one that tied the thug to a Palm tree. “The thug and five accomplices attacked security guards with razors and knives. They defended themselves. His friends cut out but the moron was too slow. Protesters were livid and wanted to teach him a lesson and send a message to others as well,” he summed up. “He is lucky that I tied him to a tree as a punishment. In doing so, I saved him from 100 guys who wanted to cook him for dinner,” he said in a serious way. At this point, a man in his early 20s rushed into the coffee shop and announced to our gathering, which had swelled in number to more than 12 people by that point, that 500 people are on their way to protest at Maspero, the TV and Radio headquarters east of Tahrir, against corruption in the media. Abdel Fadil turned to us and boasted: “Today, we go to Maspero. Tomorrow, we are planning a march on the headquarters of the cabinet at 6 pm.” In fact, at 6 pm, the next day as Abdel Fadil told us, Ahram Online reporters did follow a march by at least 600 or 700 people from Tahrir to the Cabinet on Majlis Ashaab Street. The IRC: not all that shines is gold! At the end of a three-hour conversation with Abdel Fadil and his comrades at the coffee shop, we learned a number of important facts about who is who in the square and who is doing what. However, certain things that these activists said to us raised more questions about why certain political forces in Tahrir chose to say or do things in certain ways and not another. For example, many people who take part in the marches that the IRC seemed to take credit for organizing either did not follow the IRC's political line or belonged to organizations that make up the Group of 21 or were truly independent. Moreover, in some instances, we found a stark contradiction between what IRC speakers announced from its podium across from Hardees and what it was actually doing on the ground in the square. For example, speakers at the Independent Revolutionaries coalition constantly denounce police brutality and the military council's use of military trials against civilians. Yet, members of the IRC group told us that they have legally registered their coalition with the same ministry of Interior that they denounce as brutal and corrupt. Some IRC members even boasted of the fact that they maintain open lines of communications with the commander of the nearby Qasr El-Nil police station and that they send "thugs" they catch for him to investigate, despite the fact that Qasr El-Nil police station had a record of using harsh tactics including torture against protesters during the Mubarak years. Nor did IRC members seem to have a plan to call for an end to the sit-in anytime soon. On the contrary, the IRC seems to insist on an ‘all or nothing', rhetorically confrontational approach in its official position vis a vis the Sharaf government. 25 January revolutionary groups still play central role A closer look at what other political groups were both present and active in the square showed us that the IRC version of reality was lacking, and that its self-proclaimed central role in organizing the day to day operations of the sit-in was exaggerated. IRC members and supporters make up only a fraction of those who have taken part in the sit-in. The majority is made up of members and supporters of the Revolution Youth Coalition 6 April, families of martyrs, hunger strikers, young supporters of Baradei, activists in the No to Military Coalition have been organizing in the square since day 1 of the sit-in. There are also protesters from the Muslim Brotherhood Youths (participating in contravention of the decision of the group's leaderhip), revolutionary socialists, trade unionists from the Workers Democratic Party, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Socialist Popular Alliance party, and groups of those injured in the 25 January uprising in Tahrir. All of the above and many others have been organizing protests and marches, reaching out to new comers, cleaning streets and keeping this sit-in alive. In fact, IRC's allegations that the Revolution Youth Coalition has abandoned Tahrir in favor of negotiations and deals with the authorities were found to be simply unfounded. Sally Toma, a member of the Revolution Youth Coalition as well as of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, told us that the RYC is playing a key role in Tahrir today albeit through a different kind of venue. Back in January, Toma said, the RYC group started out as an umbrella group that spoke on behalf of a united front between a number of political movements and youth groups such as 6 of April, young members of the brotherhood, Baradei supporters and others. In the last few weeks, Toma explained, “we have opted to operate through the Group of 21 because we see that this is a more democratic and effective method of mobilizing.” In fact, we saw for ourselves, the Group of 21, which the RYC is now a member of, maintains a large stage and center of operations on the southern side of Tahrir closer to Qasr El-Nil Bridge. Different organizations in the Group of 21 are involved in different aspects of the work in the sit-in. For example, 6 of April activists and Justice and Freedom Youths are responsible for security at different entrances. Seasoned RYC members such as Zeyad El-Eleimy, still act as media spokespersons to convey the demands of strikers to the public and so on. Toma also told us that representatives of the group of 21 meet every morning at 10am in the square to assess organizational and political developments and to decide on whether to call for the sit-in to continue or not. Toma called on all activists in the square and all their supporters to unite and to reject all ‘divide and conquer' tactics. She added that she believes that a united front of all revolutionaries could win the most important demands of this sit-in. We asked Toma which demands of the sit-in she believed were negotiable and which ones were not. “Winning a clear victory around the rights of the families of the martyrs' will be key for us in making up our minds in the Group,” she responded. Out of Tahrir We left the square with the question of when to call off the sit-in, given that the fasting month of Ramadan was rapidly approaching, lurking in the back of everyone's mind. Hundreds of people were engaged in heated discussions on whether to accept the Prime Minister Sharaf's nominees for the new cabinet. The number of hunger strikers had jumped to 250, after some hunger strikers failed to reach an agreement with representatives of SCAF around the sit-in demands. Street vendors were still selling water bottles, tea and sweet Couscous. The two clusters of coalitions battling it out in the square were still at it in all sorts of quiet and subtle ways, and sometimes in very loud ways. Young people were trying to figure their way through all sorts of political arguments from anarchist leaning to nationalist to socialist. Our Taxi driver who warned us that we would find chaos in Tahrir admitted to us when we were settling the fare that he has never actually taken part in the sit-in or other sit-ins. Instead of finding chaos in the birthplace of the Egyptian revolution, we lived moments with a section of a whole generation struggling to write its future with dogged determination. We found that Egyptian youths and the poor are trying to become actors on the stage of their country in chaotic but also very organized way. Finally, we deduced that our angry driver from the previous day might not have been necessarily a mad counter-revolutionary fanatic but perhaps someone who owns a satellite dish and watches too many talk shows on state and even private television. If we ever run into him again, we will definitely suggest a visit to ‘Çhaos' central.
