CAIRO - “Egypt is a state of institutions.” This phrase has been uttered on zillions of occasions by senior officials in the past few years. However, this claim has been absurdly and horrifyingly exposed since last Friday. There is no clear explanation why police used excessive force against thousands of protesters, who took to the streets to express what they think their country should be like. “Peaceful, peaceful,” chanted thousands of protesters as they emerged from mosques and churches across the nation on what they described as the Friday of Wrath. Almost all senior officials said they back the right of ordinary Egyptians to express their opinions “freely and peacefully”. Protesters did this, only to be targeted by tear gas, rubber bullets and even live bullets. No-one knows for sure who ordered the police to be so violent in dealing with demonstrators. Was it former Minister of the Interior Habib el-Adli, who the previous day had warned of the need to stop “illegal demonstrators” by all means? Or was it another senior official? Whoever was behind this shoot-to-kill order, he must have been conspiring against this country. For one thing, such excessive use of force means that Egypt is portrayed abroad as being a police state. After all, all world conventions strictly ban the use of rubber and live bullets against protesters. This random shooting has claimed many lives, infuriating the surviving protesters and giving a very bad impression about the police. The final death toll is yet to be known, although it's likely to exceed 100 by a long chalk. Likewise, one wonders who ordered the shutdown of the Internet and the blockage of telecommunications, such as short text messages and the use of mobile phones. The officials behind this are very narrow-minded. Again, the message inadvertently sent by these foolish and oppressive moves is that Egypt is a police state, whose government does not believe in the freedom of expression and the right to communicate. In fact, the big shock came at 5pm on Friday. Having brutalised protesters for hours, police suddenly disappeared from the streets of the Egyptian capital, plunging Cairo into chaos. Leaving their posts so suddenly, the security personnel also abandoned their vans, which were immediately target by angry protesters, who set them ablaze. Protesters and the relatives of inmates held in police stations torched many such stations, not only in Cairo but in most areas of Egypt. Other security buildings were damaged or even completely burnt down, while high-security prisons were thrown open wide for inmates to escape and join in the orgy of looting across the country. “Who will benefit from this deliberate chaos?” This question was almost on every mind in Egypt as feelings of fear started to take root. Hordes of looters and outlaws ran amok across the country, plundering whatever they could lay their hands on. Even hospitals and medical centres were not immune to this systematic looting. Had it not been for the human chains formed by thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square in central Cairo, the National Museum, which houses two-thirds of Egypt's irreplaceable antiquities, would have been plundered too. Rumour has it that the security agencies, having been so hated by people, have unleashed hardened criminals from prisons in order to trigger panic among the public. This is still a rumour, while some of the arrested looters are reported to be policemen. “Sadly, there are no policemen to guard the National Museum,” said Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist on TV. “Egypt's refined people were the ones who saved the museum from being looted,” added Hawass, who admitted, however, that some archaeological sites in Sakkara, Giza have been looted. “These attempts [at plundering] remind me of what happened in Iraq following the US-led invasion,” a sad Hawass reflected. There is no good reason why the police should become a source of intimidation and insecurity for the public. Strangely enough, traffic policemen have vanished from Egypt's streets, leaving their task to hundreds of ordinary Egyptians who have volunteered to bring the streets under control in admirable co-operation with the Army. The chaos, which has been gripping Egypt since Friday, raises a host of questions, which have yet to be answered. Who masterminded this chaos and for whose benefit? How can a country like Egypt suddenly become a no-man's land without a government or security agencies? Those behind this devastating lawlessness must be brought to justice and severely punished on charges of high treason. A lot of damage has been wrought across Egypt over the past few days. To me, the biggest, indelible damage is that the public's confidence in authority, especially in the shape of security agencies, has been violently shaken.
