As Egyptians have been hard pressed to sleep over the past few weeks, the army is now doing its best to ensure that security returns to the country, writes Galal Nassar The week that followed Hosni Mubarak stepping down as president ushered in a new Egypt. The country's keen interest in political change was matched only by the concern among ordinary people for their livelihoods. No one has been able to sleep in Egypt, albeit for different reasons: the euphoric protesters are celebrating the success of the revolution; the corrupt are anxious they are going to face endless trials; and the Higher Council of the Armed Forces (HCAF) has been assigned the difficult task of running the country. "Egyptians have not been able to sleep since the young people's revolution broke out on 25 January," commented Hasaballah El-Kafrawi, former minister of housing and a staunch critic of corruption, recently. Echoing his view, Mahfouz Bishoi, a house painter, said that what had happened in Tahrir Square and other parts of Egypt had deprived the population of their sleep. According to Bishoi, millions of day labourers in Egypt have been hit hard by the lack of jobs over the past few weeks, and people in various parts of the country have been anxious because of the lack of security and stability. While the political activists have left square and are now back in front of their computer screens, the demonstrations are far from over. A new batch of protests is now coming to the fore, mostly for job-related motives, in scenes resembling those that took place during the recent political rallies. In many places, protesters have blocked roads, attacked bosses and demanded better pay. The protests are legitimate, but they are also ill-timed, the HCAF said in a statement earlier this week. "For the first time, we have been able to sit down with Egyptian officials who listen more than they talk," said 25 January activists after their representatives had met with the leaders of the HCAF. The military officials had been strikingly free of the patronising tone officials sometimes use to talk to young people, they said. Youth activists Wael Ghoneim, Asmaa Mahfouz, Abdel-Rahman Samir, Ahmed Maher, Khaled El-Sayed, Amr Salama and Mahmoud Sami met with members of the HCAF, who had promised to hand over power to a civilian government in six months and encouraged the young people to form political parties, Mahfouz said. The HCAF has formed a constitutional committee led by counsellor Tarek El-Beshri to amend the constitution within 10 days, after which a referendum will be held in which citizens will be able to vote using only their ID cards, Mahfouz said. On Tuesday Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, chairman of the HCAF, reconfirmed that he had requested the constitutional committee to present the required amendments within 10 days. The council also intends to support the initiative of activist Wael Ghoneim, who wants to collect $100 billion in order to reconstruct Egypt, he said. A military source later confirmed the reports to Al-Ahram Weekly. On the Kollena Khaled Said (We're All Khaled Said) Facebook page, activists Ghoneim and Amr Salama recounted the details of a meeting held last Sunday with the army commanders, explaining that the army was not interested in ruling the country and considered that a civilian state was the only way forward. The Egyptian army had acted honourably, refusing to fire at demonstrators despite the pressures to do so during the revolution, the activists wrote. According to the activists, voting in the presidential elections and the referendum will take place using regular IDs, whereas voting cards will be required to vote in the elections for the People's Assembly, the lower house of Egypt's parliament. The activists said that polling stations would be organised using technology that allows voters to use IDs. The current caretaker government would be reshuffled by the army within days, they added. The HCAF also intends to put corrupt officials from the former regime on trial, irrespective of their past or current posts, the activists said. The army was willing to meet groups of Egyptian young people who took part in the 25 January Revolution on a regular basis, they said. The army commanders had also promised the activists that searches would be instituted for demonstrators who had gone missing during the 25 January Revolution, and a list of names would be provided to the army by the activists. The army told the activists that it would act as a guarantor of the democratisation process and would not interfere in the political process. Those responsible for firing on demonstrators during the revolution would be punished, the army said. Some 77 people have thus far been arrested for suspected involvement in the horse-and- camel onslaught on Tahrir Square in the early days of the revolution, the activists said. Meanwhile, the country's political parties have issued statements on the communiqués issued by the army and on its decision to dissolve the People's Assembly and the Shura Council. New political parties are in the offing, and 250,000 people had joined the 25 January Youth Party Facebook page by last Monday. The Muslim Brotherhood has also said that it wants to form a political party once restrictions on the formation of parties are removed. Various political forces have said that they trust the army in its current efforts. According to General Ismail Etman, Armed Forces director of morale, the military "does not seek power and will hand over power to a civilian president and a civilian government that is elected in free and transparent elections monitored by observers." The mission of the Armed Forces was to protect the constitution and the state, as well as citizens, public and private institutions and national security and the country's borders. Commenting on the current situation, Al-Ahram political analyst Wahid Abdel-Meguid said that "the trust between the army and the people is strong, which is why I am not concerned about the period in which the army is to assume power. I am all for a new constitution, because we had no real constitution before. What we had instead was a group of regime loyalists who did as they pleased." "It is not a waste of time to spend time on dialogue and on forming new political parties, clearing all traces of the old regime. We need a new constitution and new parties, and we need to go after corrupt individuals and investigate the attacks on the demonstrators and the security vacuum that took place during the revolution. The military will help implement these demands." Over the past few weeks, Egypt has seen the emergence of a new security and economic situation, starting on the night of 28 January when the country's police withdrew from their posts. Nearly 90 per cent of police stations were burned down, and 27,000 prisoners escaped. Thousands of guns, including automatic rifles, were stolen and subsequently used in robberies and looting. "We are still out in the streets, guarding our homes. We have closed our shops because of the absence of security and the lack of customers," said Boutros Ayoub, a jeweller. He and other jewellers had closed their shops on the night of 28 January, he said, when the looting began. Ayoub said that the Gammaliya Police Station in Cairo, which is close to his shop, had been burned down. Hamed Hassouna, a manager in a foreign bank, spent many nights guarding his house in Shorouq City east of Cairo after he heard news of looting in the nearby communities of Rehab and Al-Qahera Al-Gadida. "We organised ourselves in shifts to deal with any attacks. My neighbours are lawyers, engineers and businessmen. None of us has training in security matters. But we improvised." Nevertheless, despite such examples of public- spiritedness many observers worry that there is a thin line between bringing down the regime and undermining the state apparatus. While the regime is now gone, because of the intransigence of former president Hosni Mubarak the standoff lasted for 18 days, during which time the economy was losing some $320 million per day. Retired Major General Hossam Sweilam is wary of the current situation, explaining that while "I salute the young people of Egypt on their achievement, we have to be aware that there are people out there who want to harm Egypt." "There are foreign hands that want to benefit from the fragile security situation and from the fragility that Egyptian institutions may suffer from if the current professional protests that have broken out following the return of the protesters to their homes and businesses continue." "In northern Sinai, masked men have attacked institutions asserting the presence of the Egyptian state in the area, raising the possibility that foreign intelligence is trying to weaken the presence of the state, the aim being to annex the area to the Gaza Strip and thus to resolve the population explosion there," he said. Sweilam said that rocket-propelled grenades had been used in some of the attacks in northern Sinai. "A large section of the Egyptian army, together with armoured personnel vehicles and special troops, is deployed in the streets of Cairo and other governorates of Egypt. The fact that it has thus been prevented from dealing with the Sinai attacks could pose a direct threat to the national security of Egypt," he said. The army's fifth communiqué has warned that protests in banks, factories, hospitals, newspapers, and even the police could jeopardise the economy. Speaking at a news conference on Sunday, Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik said that "the closure of roads and the irregular functioning of the railways are not conducive to regular life." The country had lost considerable amounts of agricultural land over the last two weeks, due to encroachment by illegal construction, he said. "Our position is serious, not because of what happened in Tahrir Square, but because of those who are riding on the wave of protests," the prime minister said.
