Mubarak has been removed and put on trial, but more needs to be done to cleanse the country of his regime, says Ahmad Naguib Roushdy* Now that Egypt has celebrated the first anniversary of the 25 January 2011 Tahrir Square Revolution and the deposition of former president Hosni Mubarak on 11 February 2011, what will happen next? The expectations are not pleasant, and there is evidence that the Revolution is in danger. It is true that young Egyptians planned and carried out the Revolution, which is why the uprising should be called the Youth Revolution. They were able to do what their grandparents and parents had not been able to do when they lived under the authoritarian rule of former presidents Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar al-Sadat. On 25 January, Egyptian youth bravely spoke in Tahrir Square. They made their voices heard across the world. They were ready to spill their blood to be free, and they succeeded in bringing about freedom. On 11 February 2011, they succeeded in removing Hosni Mubarak from the presidency, which was a great achievement. However, this was not enough. Mubarak was simply the head of the octopus: in order for the Revolution to succeed, the rotten body, the authoritarian military regime that has suffocated the country for 60 years, also needs to be removed. It will take time and a lot of work to cleanse the country of one of the world's most corrupt and ruthless regimes. As things stand now, the picture is gloomy. The revolutionaries allowed the military to continue ruling the country without realising the consequences of this decision. As a result, the presently ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was able to hijack the Revolution through a coup d'état against Mubarak in the same way as Abdel-Nasser did in 1952 when he preempted my generation's own youth revolution. The fear of atrocities carried out by the Nasser regime prevented us from rising up again. This was my generation's mistake. Never again. The Revolution caught the Mubarak regime and the world by surprise. Mubarak supporters dismissed the revolutionaries as opportunists. Ismail Sidqi Pasha, prime minister of Egypt during the reign of King Fuad and his son King Farouk, was famous for his depiction of the Egyptian people as shaab tagmaahoo sufara and tofarreqehoo assaya, a people who gather at the blow of a whistle and disperse under the blow of a cane. The Tahrir revolutionaries proved Sidqi and Mubarak's supporters wrong. It never occurred to them that someday the genie would emerge out of the bottle, turning a revolt into a national upheaval. The Egyptians, followed by other Arab peoples, became "visible after a long time of invisibility," in the words of Marwan Bishara, anchor of Aljazeera and author of The Invisible Arab published in 2012. The Revolution also took the Obama administration, Mubarak's ally, by surprise. Although there was enough smoke to realise that something was happening in Egypt, the Obama administration's intelligence apparatus failed to discover or to interpret it correctly. The administration also failed to heed the warnings of one of the US think tanks that has the most weight in the US and abroad. This think tank, the Centre for Preventive Action (CPA), a branch of the US-based Council on Foreign Relations, an independent, non-partisan membership organisation, published an in-depth analysis of the situation in Egypt before the Revolution that contained astonishing findings. In its Contingency Planning Memorandum No 4 of August 2009, the Centre found that Egypt was entering a period of political transition. Former president Mubarak, the memo indicated, was 81 years old, had health problems, and there was no one in sight to succeed him. The memo argued that attempts by Mubarak to groom his son Gamal for the succession could prove difficult, but it didn't surprisingly say why. It was obvious to many observers at that time that lieutenant-general Omar Suleiman, then Chief of the General Intelligence Directorate, was the most visible officer among the army senior command since Mubarak had sacked field-marshal Abu Ghazala in the late 1980s. It was only by chance that Suleiman became a close confidant of Mubarak's after security arrangements carried out by Suleiman saved Mubarak's life in an assassination attempt in Ethiopia in 1995. Mubarak came to rely on Suleiman in foreign policy matters. The army top brass did not endorse the choice of Gamal Mubarak to succeed his farther, mainly because he was not a military man. They were determined to endorse only one of their own for the presidency, someone who would maintain their grip on the government and their vast fringe benefits. Suleiman for his part was also aspiring to succeed Mubarak. He was not reputed to be pro-democractic or a defender of freedom of the press or freedom of expression. He was a loyal official to Mubarak and was trusted by the Americans to succeed him. However, as the CPA memo indicated different factions within and outside the regime were maneuvering to boost their own prospects after Mubarak left the scene. The memo indicated that whoever succeeded Mubarak should be strong enough to exercise power wisely and to respond to the political, economic and social problems that were driving Egypt into a downward spiral. Amazingly, the memo entertained the idea that the ministry of the interior should use its security forces to seize control of the country in order to prevent further instability. Although this assumption revealed how much power Habib al-Adly, the then minister of the interior, enjoyed, it was a far-fetched expectation. It missed the fact that al-Adly was loyal to Mubarak and to his wife Suzanne, who, rumour had it, was behind many of her husband's decisions in domestic affairs and was pushing to install her son as president when her husband left office or died. If an uprising were to break out, al-Adly would use his forces to kill the protestors, as was in fact later the case, but he would not try to take over the presidency. He was not reckless or stupid enough not to realise that if he tried to take over the government, this move would have been crushed by the military, which would not accept the police ruling the country. The most important aspect of the CPA memo was that it predicted that thousands of Egyptians would go onto the streets in protest against the regime, demanding its end once and for all. How long would it be before that happened? The memo gave Egypt from six to 18 months from its date of drafting in August 2011. The 18 months were almost complete when the torches of the Egyptian Revolution illuminated Tahrir Square on 25 January 2011. However, the memo also predicted that if the ministry of the interior was incapable of dealing with the situation, the military would step in or there would be a palace coup in order to guarantee continuing military dominance. This actually happened when Mubarak was forced to resign by the military high command under pressure from the revolutionaries. It appears that the military high command, though loyal to Mubarak, decided to take over the country when its members realised that he had became a liability and would not be able to maintain the military system that had served their economic interests so well for 60 years. What we see today is a remarkable Revolution that has united all Egyptians, young and old, students and professionals from all fields, women and men from all religious persuasions and from all colours and races, from Nubia, Aswan and Luxor in the south, to Alexandria in the northwest, to Suez and the Sinai in the northeast. It was also a Revolution that followed in the footsteps of earlier revolts. In the bread riots of 1977 that took place after al-Sadat, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, eliminated the subsidies on basic goods like bread, cooking oil, and sugar, he was forced to rescind the decision after protests by millions in Cairo and other cities, and mainly in front of the ministry of economy in Lazoghghly Square that threatened the minister's life. Similar bread riots occurred during Mubarak's rule. The latter's policy of maintaining stability in the country at all costs made him order military and ministry of the interior bakeries to increase production to make bread available to the people at affordable prices. He also banned government bakeries from selling their allocations to privately owned ones for higher prices, something that had contributed to the bread shortage. The Mubarak-era bread riots came hard on the heels of nearly a decade of protests by thousands of workers, women before men, at the government-owned Al-Mahalla Al-Kubra Spinning and Weaving Company, the biggest in the Middle East and North Africa. These workers went on strike in 1998 and continued their industrial action sporadically until late 2011, demanding fair pay and profit-sharing. They suffered from atrocities carried out by the government and were subject to police brutality and arrest. Although the Egyptian Revolution was inspired by the previous Tunisian uprising, the protests by the Al-Mahallah Al-Kubra workers were the direct instigators of the Revolution. Because of Egypt's leading role in the Middle East, the Egyptian Revolution inspired similar uprisings in other Arab countries, setting off what the western media has described as the Arab Spring. This led to revolts against dictators in Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco and Jordan. The Egyptian Revolution also inspired the Wall Street occupiers in the US, who demonstrated against the big banks and companies in New York City in 2011, holding them responsible for the present recession in America and the worst world financial crisis since the Great Depression in 1929. These protests also spread to Europe, notably to London and to Spain, Poland, and Portugal. For Bishara, in the book mentioned above, if the Egyptian Revolution failed to achieve its aspirations it would have a great negative effect on all other Arab countries. Actually, Bishara said, it would be a disaster if it failed to realise its aspirations. However, more than one year after the Revolution took place, the Egyptian revolutionaries have not been able to achieve their aspirations. Why? The answer is that the Revolution is in danger. There have been hardly any significant changes since Mubarak's departure. He is still ruling through the top military brass represented by his alter ego, field-marshal Muhammad Tantawi, and it is the military that is continuing Mubarak's authoritarian regime. The SCAF has been playing with the revolutionaries by giving them empty promises through window dressing and not actual deeds. Unfortunately, it seems that the revolutionaries believed that the SCAF would help them to alter the trajectory of Egyptian society, ending the military monopoly that has been suffocating the country for 60 years. However, history tells us that once the military rule a country, they are not able to yield their authority to a civilian government or to take orders from a civilian president or a civilian minister of defence. The military are trained in the art of war, which requires obedience, and their job is to defend the country against foreign enemies, not to govern the civilian population. What the military have been doing over the last 60 years has been ruling, not governing, Egypt. This was explained in an earlier article in the Weekly in August 2011. The SCAF was very slow to fulfill its promises or to put Mubarak and his ministers and cronies on trial, people who were responsible for the killing and injuring of the revolutionaries and the plundering of the country's property. Security is now lacking in the country too. In the early days of the Revolution, the domestic and international media reported that armed thugs recruited by Mubarak's ruling party, the National Democratic Party (NDP), riding camels and horses, had attacked the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square in a battle dubbed the Battle of the Camel. The thugs attacked police stations and prisons, released prisoners detained there, and stole weapons and ammunition from the prisons. They later started to attack homes, steal property, occupy empty houses and apartments, kidnap children for ransom, and steal cars and then smuggle them through the Sinai tunnel to Gaza under the eyes of the Egyptian border guards where they sold them. Tourism was hit hard, and foreign investment reached rock bottom. Consumer prices skyrocketed. Life became hard even for the middle class. The armed forces turned their heads the other way when Mubarak's security forces killed 800 people and injured thousands in Tahrir Square. Why didn't the army do anything to maintain security and protect people? There is only one answer to this: the military wanted to continue ruling the country by keeping it in a state of chaos. The Tahrir Square revolutionaries realised that the SCAF was not really protecting their Revolution when they were repressed by military police who beat many demonstrators, men and women, with clubs and dragged them through the streets in the way former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein used to do with members of that country's opposition. Women were molested, and one of them was stripped naked before the cameras. Other demonstrators were arrested and tortured, or put on military trial. It was disappointing to read that Tantawi has stated that the video showing the military stripping a woman revolutionary is a fabrication. The military police further helped to discredit the SCAF by firing live ammunition at the demonstrators, which killed more than ten of them and injured more than 400, some of them losing their sight. These numbers increased late last year and earlier in this, causing world wide uproar and making the US government, an ally of the Egyptian military since Mubarak's days, express its concerns about the situation. The US has urged Egypt's military rulers to end the violence against civilians, the international media has reported. Now the revolutionaries have demanded the prosecution of those responsible for killing and injuring their peers and the resignation of Tantawi and all the members of the SCAF. Fingers have been pointed at foreign elements allegedly giving money to Egyptian organisations to cause chaos in Egypt and abort the country's historic march to freedom. It was surprising to read in Al-Ahram on 13 February this year that Faiza Abul-Naga, long minister for international cooperation, who kept her post after the deposition of Mubarak, confirmed this in her testimony to the investigation conducted by justices Sameh Abu-Zeid and Ashraf al-Ashmawi. Abul-Naga pointed to United States involvement in financing organisations in Egypt (there was no reference to their names) attempting to destroy the Revolution. Did she mean the same Revolution that her military bosses were trying to abort? Abul-Naga was quoted in the Al-Ahram report as saying that the US, by its financing of those organisations from 2005 to 2010, had aimed to put pressure on the Mubarak regime but not to topple it in order to get his obedience. However, after the Revolution, she was reported as saying, the US continued its financing of these same organisations in order to destroy the Revolution. This statement should raise eyebrows. Abul-Naga is well aware that Egypt has been an ally of the United States for decades, and that the latter gives it a large amount of military aid and considers Egypt's stability to be a matter of great importance for its interests in the region. Abul-Naga would not have made such hostile statements about the United States unless she had got the green light from the SCAF after consulting with the foreign minister. It is well known that the United States was slow in recognising what was happening in Egypt after 25 January 2011. It was only concerned about Egypt's stability, says Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, in his book The Struggle for Egypt: from Nasser to Tahrir Square (2012). President Obama, who was taken by surprise when the Revolution erupted, was careful not to attack the Revolution in its early days, but he did not show enthusiasm for it either. As Cook explains, events in Egypt "were likely to unfold as they did no matter what he (Obama) said once the revolutionary bandwagon took off." Hilary Clinton, the US secretary of state, was reported last year to have said that the US would cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood if the latter group supported democracy in Egypt, the slogan used by the US to explain its interference in other countries' affairs. Clinton mentioned this Muslim organisation at a time when her government was claiming that Islam taught Muslims that non-Muslims are apostates who should be killed. Did she mean that her government would not cooperate with other Muslim groups, such as the Salafis who have the same ultra-conservative beliefs as the Salafi Wahhabi sect that dominates Saudi Arabia, America most important ally in the Gulf? It is no secret that the United States has had a good relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood since Nasser arrested, imprisoned and executed many of the Brotherhood's members, including their supreme guide, Maamoon al-Hudaiby, and outlawed their organisation. Abul-Naga might be right in pointing to the US as one of several countries, including some of the Gulf States, that have been working against the Revolution. Does that mean the United States is indirectly helping the SCAF to stay in power? If this is so, would the Muslim Brotherhood trust the US to cooperate with it were the group to form a new government in Egypt? Tantawi, in an apparent move to preempt further protests or action by the new People's Assembly and to take credit for responding to the revolutionaries' demands, declared on television on the eve of the first anniversary of the Revolution that the SCAF would repeal the emergency law and that no one would henceforth be tried before military tribunals except proven thugs. He did not provide a definition of a "thug," which could lead to the supposition that some actions by the revolutionaries will be described as having been committed by thugs. As a result, the emergency law was partially repealed, and the People's Assembly was given the option of referring all crimes committed by civilians, whether or not they are thugs, to civil and not military courts. Tantawi also announced the release of around 2,000 prisoners. Were these prisoners detained by Mubarak, or were they detained under the present regime? Are these the same prisoners that the media has been reporting number 20,000? What are the intentions of the SCAF, now that the new People's Assembly has replaced its legislative authority? It is hard to say. Will the military yield power to a civilian government next June, or two months earlier, as the media have reported? Former US president Jimmy Carter was in Egypt before the anniversary of the Revolution to meet with Tantawi and others. It was reported that after his return to the US, Carter said that he believed the SCAF would not yield its power to a civilian government. Reading the billboards in Tahrir Square and the comments on Facebook, as well as listening to the opinions of those interviewed by the international television networks, it seems that the revolutionaries are determined to force the SCAF to resign. If the SCAF refuses to do so, notably out of fear of being held responsible for the killing of revolutionaries and other wrongs, then violent clashes are inevitable. This could mean civil war and the slaughter of thousands of patriotic Egyptians, something like what is happening in Syria and what previously happened in Libya. I do not think that the SCAF is reckless enough to allow this to happen. If the members of the SCAF really are keen to ensure their country's safety and welfare, the alternative is for them to fulfill their promises to the revolutionaries and to resign their posts. They will enjoy civilian life and will enjoy their retirement without sleeping pills, nervous breakdowns, or alcohol or drug addiction, as has been the lot of other dictators. They will enjoy sweet dreams with no guns under their pillows. The revolutionaries will be the first to appreciate such a move by the SCAF, feeling that the blood of their fellow revolutionaries has not been spilled in vain. * The author is an international lawyer.
