The 25 January Revolution has largely died down in Sohag, Egypt's poorest southern governorate, with the priority now being for people to try to feed themselves and regain their lost sense of security, reports Khaled Dawoud The long train ride to Sohag in southern Egypt, known as the Saeed, is no longer as popular as it was. With the repeated protests that have become a common feature of life in Egypt since the forced removal of former president Hosni Mubarak a year ago, the usually seven-hour train ride along the River Nile Valley to Sohag, 470km south of Cairo, could now take up to two or three times as long. Whether they are protesting over shortages of bread, petrol or gas cylinders, or are fighting among themselves to settle personal disputes, the first action protesters in the south have taken over the past year has been to block the railway from Cairo until their demands are met. As a result, a region known among Egyptians as Al-Saeed Al-Mansi, or "the ignored Saeed", due to decades of being overlooked in development plans put together by the government in Cairo, now feels even more isolated and ignored. Like many other parts of the country whether in the Nile Delta or the Sinai, the capital is not referred to among the people of Sohag by its Arabic name, Al-Qahera, but instead as "Misr", or Egypt, as the rest of the country is clearly something else to them. "We do of course follow the clashes taking place in Tahrir, and the debates that are taking place in Cairo over the next president and the new constitution," said Saeed Ramadan, 55, a civil servant at the governorate in Sohag. "But we feel we have no say in all of that. What we know is that there was an already miserable situation in this region and that this has now become much worse." Figures released by the government in 2010 not only indicate that Sohag's nearly five million people were among Egypt's poorest in terms of per capita income and the lowest in literacy rates, but also that the largely rural governorate has the highest immigration rates to the capital Cairo and the oil-rich Arab Gulf states. "The dream of nearly every young man here is to leave Sohag, as there is no money here," Ramadan said. Sohag was among many other Egyptian cities that witnessed large protests demanding an end to Mubarak's 30-year rule on 25 January 2011. However, 13 months later, "the majority of people here now hate the revolution," said Mahmoud Asaker, a member of Sohag's Revolutionary Youth Coalition. Like elsewhere in Egypt, Asaker said that ordinary citizens in Sohag had gradually shifted against the 25 January Revolution after they saw no improvement in their lives, particularly on the economic level. "When the roads are blocked, people blame the revolution; when there are shortages of gas cylinders or petrol, people blame the revolution; when workers and civil servants hold demonstrations to demand an increase in their salaries, they also blame the revolution. We feel we have no say in all this, and we are suffering from the same problems as everybody else because of the failures of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces [SCAF]. In people's minds, this is all because of the revolution." The shortage of cooking gas cylinders is particularly acute in Sohag and other southern governorates, and people may queue for hours to get a cylinder from government-run outlets at a cheap price. Otherwise, they have to resort to the black market, where the gas cylinder that the government sells for LE7 can cost up to LE35 to LE50. Asaker and his colleagues at the Revolutionary Youth Coalition restored some confidence after nearly 5,000 people took part in a demonstration they organised to mark the first anniversary of the 25 January Revolution a month ago in Abdel-Moneim Riad Square in Sohag. Millions of Egyptians had turned out on that day to demand an end to the SCAF's rule and the handover of power to an elected president. The large demonstrations all over Egypt defied warnings by the SCAF and Islamist groups before the anniversary that the country could witness widescale violence and arson attacks by unidentified groups on the occasion of the anniversary. "We confronted the Muslim Brotherhood on that day, and we forced them to shut down the loudspeakers that were broadcasting songs to celebrate their victory in parliament and not the anniversary of the revolution. What are you celebrating, we asked them. The failure of the SCAF to provide security, or its failure to achieve social justice, which was one of our main demands during the revolution?" Asaker told the Weekly. However, that energy has proven to be short-lived, and a widely criticised call for a general strike and civil disobedience by the same revolutionary youth groups a few weeks later on the anniversary of Mubarak's forced removal on 11 February, 2011, was disregarded by the people of Sohag. "It was not a well-organised movement, and we were not ready for such widescale protest. The people believed the SCAF's propaganda that a general strike would destroy the country and make things worse than they already are," said Malak Radi, a young journalism graduate from Sohag University. "Hardly 10 people showed up to take part in our demonstration on 11 February, and we were chased and beaten by government employees when we tried to demonstrate in front of the governorate's headquarters," she added bitterly. Sohag has historically been known for its political Islamic groups, not just the Muslim Brotherhood, but also more radical organisations such as the Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, the Islamist group that claimed responsibility for the assassination of late president Anwar El-Sadat, as well as the attacks against police, foreign tourists and Christians during the early 1990s. The governorate has a large Christian minority who seek to confirm their identity by dressing in Western clothes, compared to the rest of the majority Muslim population whose women put on the Islamic veil. "It is almost impossible now to find a Muslim woman in Sohag who is not veiled. People would immediately think she's a Christian and not a Muslim," said Madiha Abdu, a university student. In the recent parliamentary elections, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Nour Party achieved a landslide victory, dividing nearly evenly the 30 seats allocated to the Sohag governorate in the People's Assembly, which was higher than the average 70 per cent majority won by the two parties across the rest of Egypt. Following that victory, the gap has widened between the Islamist groups and liberal and leftist groups that claim they sparked the 25 January Revolution against Mubarak. Anti-Brotherhood groups have charged that the country's largest political Islamic party has reached an undeclared deal with the SCAF to ensure that it controls the parliament, and possibly forms the next government, in return for giving the military the same privileges in the country's new constitution as it has enjoyed since the revolution against the monarchy in 1952. Besides the influence of political Islamic groups, the now-dissolved former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) had also enjoyed support in Sohag, mainly through figures belonging to the major families in the region. A few former NDP members competed fiercely in the last elections against the Brotherhood and Nour candidates, but they lost with narrow margins. "We suffer from many pressures here, from the Brotherhood, from the former NDP and from the conservative family traditions that largely tilt towards stability and order rather than radicalism and revolution," said Menna Fathi, a doctor who recently graduated from the nearby University of Qena. Menna is similar in her attitudes to the majority of Sohag's youth, and her main hope is to be able to move out of Sohag to Cairo in order to practise medicine. When asked what would happen to her city if all the young and ambitious people left, she said, "nothing. We will leave Sohag to our parents, who want to keep it the way it has been for centuries." Adding to the dissatisfaction among Sohag's population has been the lack of security, like elsewhere in the country. According to many residents, it has become dangerous to drive on roads linking Sohag to nearby villages and towns, as the number of car thefts has increased, as have conflicts among families over largely trivial issues that can now turn violent due to the lack of any police presence. "We do not understand why we don't have any police or security around," said Mohamed Abdel-Moeti, a school teacher. "Even during the demonstrations against Mubarak a year ago, there were no attacks against police stations or prisons like what happened in the rest of the country. So, why are the police refusing to work?" A few armoured vehicles belonging to the army could be spotted around the main government buildings in Sohag, but they do not take part in providing security to the residents of the city, according to Abdel-Moeti. On the way to Sohag airport, opened by Mubarak barely a year before his removal, the split in views among the city's population over the 25 January Revolution could clearly be seen on the road signs. The airport had been named after Mubarak, like many other public facilities across the country, but whereas some signs still called the airport by its old name, others had been defaced or painted over. "We don't care about Mubarak. He's gone. We care about the future. We want jobs, and we want to live in dignity," said Said Taha, a taxi driver.
