Chapter 3: 18-Day Revolution
Factory worker demonstrator in Tahrir Square, July 2011
I believe I’m here to help show the truth that’s hidden, to help make a better future for the next generations. Deep inside me I believe that I’m here to help make some people’s lives better by making them believe in themselves. All these rising stars, the icons that we hear about in television influence me that I can achieve my dreams. The Internet showed me many people who are fighting to achieve their goals and to create a better tomorrow; it’s so inspiring!
Akram, 16, m, Egypt
My generation might be hasty, might be a bit impatient and headlong, but I believe (based on the fact that my generation waged the revolution in Egypt) that my generation is very brave and creative (despite all the bad influences from schools, parents and the regime) and we were able to use technology in creating a revolution and changing Egypt! Not just Egypt, but the whole Arab world (which is hopefully changing soon too). My generation is very ambitious and stubborn to get all its wishes and dreams to be fulfilled even if that means his/her death!
Ahmed, 17, m, Egypt
I’d change the ‘friend-enemy’ mindset people have. I hate the idea that people think of those who contravene their ideals as enemies. They are not enemies; we are just different. Yara, 17, f, Egypt
It was all youth who did it, because youth are rebels, active, think differently, have hopes and different goals, and can use the Internet.
Ahmed, Mustafa, and Abdel, university students I interviewed in Tahrir Square
Tunis is the force that pushed Egypt, but what Egypt did will be the force that will push the world. Walid Rachid, a member of the April 6 Youth Movement.[1]
Come on, let’s show them our strength as youth. A post from the We Are All Khaled Said page encouraging participation in the January 25, 2011 protest
The people woke up; they’ll never sleep again. Young demonstrator in Tahrir.
We want Morsi and his gang to step down and hold new elections just with the youth, not the old guys. Demonstrator’s voice played on BBC News, June 30, 2014.
Contents: Interviews with Demonstrators in Tahrir Square, The Groundwork, The Role of Social Media, The Invitational 18-Day Revolution, Who Led the Revolution and Why?, After Mubarak Stepped Down, Tamarod Petition to Oust Morsi in 2013, General el-Sisi in Power
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Written off as apathetic, how was the “Miracle Generation” able to topple dictator Hosni Mubarak in 18 days after he held power for almost 30 years with an emergency law that allowed his security forces free reign? Youth lacked hope and were fearful until the Tunisians ousted their dictator in a month and they realized “Yes we can.” Over half the population is under age 24. When I asked young activists in Tahrir Square about who led the revolution, they all said they had no leaders expect Tunisia. They told me they were responsible for the revolution because they’re rebels by nature, in a country where half the population is under age 25. It was all youth who did it, they said, because youth are rebels, active, think differently, have hopes and different goals, and can use the Internet. Masef Bayat defined a youth movement as a shared consciousness about working together as youth, which Egyptians demonstrated. Tunisia’s success galvanized them, making them determined to get their rights. The ingredients for revolution discussed previously were present–many disaffected, unemployed, educated youth with the ability to communicate electronically. They use the slang “El-Face” because Facebook is so widely used in Egypt, the country with the most Internet users in Africa. Youth emphasized that the Arab Spring had foundations in “years-long struggles by people and popular movements,” as stated in a letter of support to Occupy Wall Street activists. As one-third of the population, they are conscious of themselves as a distinct youth generation who fought for “bread, freedom, and social justice.” They opposed growing economic inequality caused by neoliberalization and increasingly violent security forces, some of whom were trained by the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia.[2] Background and recent history are on the book webpage.[3]
Interviews with Demonstrators in Tahrir Square
In July 2011, after having my passport and bag checked by a woman in black niqab with only her eyes showing (men were checked by men), I went in search of English-speaking protesters in Tahrir Square. We sat on the carpeted ground with tents all around in the middle of the square as seen in our YouTube video “Democracy Activists in Cairo.”[4] They were suspicious of journalists other than Al Jazeera because they think they’re controlled by the old regime, as when the press portrayed young women demonstrators as having dubious morals. As an academic, I was OK. University students Ahmed, Mustafa, and Abdel agreed to me videotaping them. One studied petroleum engineering, another business although he’s a socialist, and the other majored in communications. In the middle of our talk, a young man came up and said to me, “They say you’re a spy.” “For whom?” I asked. (I was also asked this question in Istanbul in 2016.) Another man came up to check my passport again and asked to see my university card. Knife-wielding thugs have come into the square and attacked protesters so they are understandably cautious about strangers.
The three students said they’re demonstrating five months after Mubarak left because the same faces are still in power with The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and Ahmed Shafik, the same prime minister who served under Mubarak. Abdul explained that Mubarak wanted people to relate to him as a father and the symbol of Egypt, but the young people didn’t want a father, they wanted a democratically elected president. The students reported that before revolution Egyptians remained fearfully silent because if you discussed politics, the State Security forces came to your home to take you to prison and torture you. If you weren’t home, they would take another family member instead. By 2010 Mubarak doubled the size of security forces to be nearly three times the numbers of the army.[5] Reflecting this history of fear, a young man in Aswan asked me not to mention even his first name when I wrote about his support of the revolution.
Ahmed took the spring semester off to demonstrate, while Mustafa and Abdel went back and forth from the university to the square, sometimes sleeping in the tents or on rugs on the ground. Friends and strangers brought food and water to stock the supply tent seen on the right in my video and photos on the book Facebook website.[6] Police violence continued, as when they beat the mother and brother of a martyr, calling him a thug. One of the posters in the square showed a young man in a red shirt who was sentenced to prison for 25 years for demonstrating. Other signs said, “The people who made the revolution ask the Council for freedom.”
The students told me Egyptians were born in misery, growing up in a corrupt system. Their parents’ generation gave up and took the easy way out, simply focusing on daily life, acquiring food (that takes up about half of the average household’s expenditures[7]), getting married, and keeping silent. While I was in Tahrir Square, demonstrators who were part of a national strike had shut down a government building on the square, then reopened it with a large banner stating, “The complex is open by order of the revolution.” Demonstrators lined the path to the building clapping and waving a flag proclaiming in Arabic, “January 25 Freedom Revolution,” as seen in my video. “Youth were able to do what we were not able to do for ourselves,” said elders shown on an HBO documentary titled In Tahrir Square.[8]
The young activists told me their goals are to create a democratic secular constitution with equality between women and men and between various religions. Secondly, they want to guarantee a minimum monthly wage to workers of 1,000 to 1,200 Egyptian pounds. They advocate removing all members of the old administration, including university deans, the judiciary, media, and police. They want punishment for police and soldiers who killed protesters and for the corrupt politicians from Mubarak’s regime. However, in 2012 the military courts let police off with a suspended sentence and declared Mubarak and his sons not guilty of corruption. The only punishment was life imprisonment for Mubarak and his ex-security chief, which generated large protests in Tahrir Square, but the sentences were rescinded in 2015 under President and former General el-Sisi. He was Mubarak’s chief of military intelligence. A year after the revolution, the military had charged over 12,000 civilians in military courts.
The students said the education system needs improvement because government schools are terrible, some teachers don’t even go to class as I heard in other emerging nations like India, and students don’t learn English. The three young men all went to private schools that cost about 90,000 pounds a year. High school student Mohamed, 18, emailed from Alexandria, “In the public schools there are more than 100 students in every class, the teachers don’t work in the class, and the education curriculum are very stupid,” but 80% of Egyptians can’t afford private schools. Everyone I talked with in Egypt, except for a public school teacher, told me that public schools are appalling. Students who can afford it study with private tutors in order to do well on the all-important entrance exams for university because teachers hold back information so they can make money tutoring after school. Students select the exam subjects; for example, a high school senior in Cairo, Akram emailed he chose English and Arabic since he wants to study journalism. We “met” on Facebook through a mutual “friend.”
The students said people just want a job, food and health care, rather than aiming for a big car and house. It’s so expensive to set up a household for a new couple that men have to wait until they’re 40 or so to marry, a problem in a Muslim society that frowns on premarital sex. To get a good job an Egyptian young person has to have a VIP in the family or pay a bribe, similar to other MENA countries. I saw many apartment buildings with uncompleted floors with rebar exposed waiting for the owner to save up money to complete the floor when their sons marry and need an apartment.
I asked a feminist young man, Omar Ahmed, 21, secretary for the Egyptian Women’s Union, about the origin of the demonstrators’ focus on peace (Selam). He wasn’t sure but had heard Gandhi’s tactics mentioned. When I asked if his generation was more committed to peace, he pointed out that in May, on the anniversary of Israeli independence, one million Egyptians called for war against Israel, so the issue is multi-faceted. Some demonstrators did chant, “The people want to hang the criminal” Mubarak. Despite the power of fundamentalists, Omar is optimistic about the future of Egypt as he looks around the Middle East and sees dictators falling, “Syria is going down, Hamas is going down, and freedom is asserting itself.”
Not having visible leaders is an asset in their struggle since the police can’t target a few key leaders. Omar agreed with the three university students that there was no single movement or leadership; the ones who were featured in the media were not the real leaders. When former Vice-President Omar Suleiman asked to meet with rebel spokespersons, he faced over 100 people. None of them claimed to be in charge; “That’s the beauty of it,” said Omar.
High school student Akram was in Tahrir with his mother and sister for 11 of the 18 days of protest. When I asked how youth were able to make a revolution so quickly, he said there’s no logical answer, except that almost 8 million people (or 15 million[9]) protested in 18 cities and he felt labor strikes made a difference as well (from February 8 to 11 around 20,000 workers went on strike and from 2004 to 2011 workers organized over 3,000 strikes[10]). During the protests, unions formed a new umbrella trade union. Scholar Amy Austin Holmes viewed the neighborhood organizing and fearlessness in the face of state violence as an important resource, pointing out the activists didn’t have support from the elite, military officers or external support.
Akram confirmed that there were no leaders and that ideas just emerged in small circles in Tahrir Square that shared ideas. Someone would get an idea like blocking off the important government building on the square or protecting the entrances to the square, but people didn’t know what was happening on the other side of Tahrir when thousands occupied it. The media pointed to groups like the Coalition of the Revolution as the organizers, but youth told me it doesn’t in fact represent the revolutionaries as they use a new style of organizing without a central command.
I asked two young women camped out in Tahrir, a high school student and nurse, about leadership and how policy is determined (more from them and women’s role in the revolution in Brave: The Global Girls’ Revolution. Their photos are on the book album.[11]) The explained each tent or area picks a representative to serve on a leadership group, but it’s very fluid and changes in size from around 20 to 100 representatives. They reported women were a very small percent of the leaders, maybe 5 to 10 percent. When a group of demonstrators met with Mubarak while he was still in office, only two were women. A man listening to our conversation agreed. Women whom the Western journalists quote as leaders, such as Sally Moore, aren’t living with them in the square. Most demonstrators haven’t heard of these so-called leaders, although they know everyone in Midan, the central section of the square with the tents (the same word is used in Ukraine’s central square in Kiev).
The Groundwork
Egypt has a long history of being controlled by other nations and then by autocrats, with no real experience of democracy. Part of the Ottoman Empire, the Egyptian Pasha family governors paid taxes to the Sultan. Britain wanted to control the Suez Canal, so it dominated Egypt even when it was part of the Ottoman Empire. Anti-colonial riots in 1919 included women, led by feminist Huda Sha’rawi, but the British suppressed the riots. By the time World War 1 began, the Ottoman Empire lost its power and the British set up a puppet king when he was 16. A popular revolution led by Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1952 replaced King Farouk. Nasser and India led the non-alignment movement and he refused to pick sides in the cold war between the USSR and the US. His policies led to the Six Day War with Israel. His Arab Socialism developed state industries, including nationalizing the Suez Canal in 1956. He also instituted state feminism, giving women the vote and outlawing gender discrimination.
Anwar Sadat took over when Nasser died in 1970, continuing his strongman rule. He accepted the US as an ally and abandoned socialism for an “open door” policy encouraging private investments that benefited the wealthy. Bread riots occurred in 1977 when the government rescinded food subsidies. Sadat privatized some of the state’s industries and allowed more freedom for the Muslim Brotherhood (the MB was formed in 1928). He called for state-run TV to interrupt programs with the call to prayer five times a day, heard wherever you go in in Muslim countries from loud mosque loudspeakers–including dawn and on buses. His wife, Jehan Sadat, advocated women’s rights in state feminism, rejected after the January 25 revolution because of its association with dictators’ wives. When Muslim extremists assassinated Sadat in 1981, Vice President Hosni Mubarak was sitting next to him and took over the reins of power. He followed IMF dictates signing an agreement with them in 1991, received US aid, and declared a 25-year state of emergency granting him control.
By the turn of the century, Mubarak felt so confident in his power that he no longer tried to keep the people quiet by providing affordable housing, subsidized food, and health care. Bread riots occurred in 2008 and food prices rose again before the 2011 revolution, as they did in Tunisia, Yemen and Lebanon before uprisings. Services like trash collection were privatized and taxes raised on the masses while corporate taxes were cut in half. The regime hired thugs (baltagayya) to intimidate the populace into submission, similar to Iran’s motorcycle basiji. With hundreds of thousands of members or more, the MB provided social services to the poor including hospitals, food banks, and schools. It influenced their votes with gifts of food until the MB was outlawed by the military regime in September 2013, their assets seized, and their leaders jailed.
A blogger who wrote “Torture in Egypt,” Noha Atef (age 26) reported about work conditions.[12]
In Egypt, we work all day and night seven days a week. If we ever have a half-day off we spend it sleeping. You often have three jobs at the same time. You have your main job, then you go home and work from home. And then at night you go to your third job. Most Egyptians are doing this. They are doing all this and they still cannot meet their needs. My vision is to see people living in a humane way [with a weekend] break.
Decades of struggle for worker rights and the movement against police brutality established the groundwork for the “youth revolution.” Lobna Darwish grew up in a Marxist family in Cairo and describes herself as a revolutionary filmmaker. Speaking at the Global Uprisings conference in Amsterdam in 2013, she said her parents told her about their participation in huge protests in 1977 against President Sadat’s plan to cancel food and fuel subsidies, although there was no mention of the riots in her history books. Angry crowds organized by workers and university students burned down police and tax offices for two days until the army took over the streets. Sadat listened to the millions of protesters and kept the subsidies in place although he and this predecessor kept the poor subdued with a police state with frequent use of torture and expanding number of prisons. Darwish said about one-quarter or the current prisoners are debtors like women who used bad checks to buy household goods. She reported austerity measures hit middle-class neighborhoods after neoliberal austerity programs were put in place in Mubarak’s “love story” with the IMF and World Bank that peaked in 2000. She said socialists focused on the expansion of labor unions as the foundation for the revolution, while liberals emphasized the Kefaya movement discussed below. The new coalition of the middle and lower classes succeeded in regime change.
The precursors of the 2011 uprising included demonstrations in 2000 to support the second Palestinian intifada, with both high school and university students holding sit-ins,[13] and a protest movement in 2004 called Kefaya, “Enough.” This slogan referred to Mubarak running for a fifth term as president and grooming his son Gamal as heir. It was also a protest against the US invasion of Iraq. Kefaya was called the Egyptian Movement for Change and many of its members were students and intellectuals. It was the first group to openly oppose Mubarak, although the MB was critical of the regime as well. Kefaya organized demonstrations in support of labor, civil rights, Palestine, and opposition to the Iraq war, working with other groups like the Revolutionary Socialists. Strikes involving thousands of workers had occurred over the previous two years.
Kefaya activists helped form the April 6 Youth Movement in 2008, a loose coalition of many small groups in support of a government-owned textile factory worker strike in the city of Mahalla. According to Ahmed Salah, they made April 6 a brand; “We were successful in making it the icon of change” led by youth. He said after the revolution of January 25, “We had tried before, but nothing was like this.” The young people in Cairo started a Facebook page to organize strikes on April 6 in support of the mill workers, but without details of how to demonstrate. The April 6 Movement had over 63,000 Facebook “likes” in 2012, with Arabic and English pages. With a flat leadership structure in universities across Egypt, it was difficult for authorities to control. In response to these online protest groups, the security forces set up a division to track and police the Internet, which had spread rapidly to more than 13.6 million users by this time. The Cairo University group was made up of mainly working-class and lower middle-class students.[14]
The general strike in 2008 was led by cyber activist youth bloggers and unions and publicized on Facebook. One of the leaders of the strike was Esraa Abdel Fattah, known as “Facebook Girl” (born in 1978) who started the call for a strike in 2008. Her Facebook page attracted 74,000 supporters. As punishment, she was jailed for 18 days during which time the April 6 group got the country talking online about her imprisonment. By 2009, thousands of bloggers were active, an estimated 35,000 to 160,000 of them.[15] Youth culture valued blogging about current issues, including young women. Since they were writing anonymously, bloggers felt free to explore sensitive issues like religious beliefs and relationships.
April 6 Youth Movement leaders, like Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Ahmed Maher (age 29, see him on video[16]), called for economic and political reforms including higher wages and the end of government corruption and police torture. Maher and friends organized a Youth for Change brigade and Facebook pages that grew to over 500,000 followers. They could only sustain a strike for one day because security forces arrested April 6 activists, including Maher who was beaten by police. After his release he posted online photos of his torture scars. He spray-painted graffiti on Cairo walls such as “Mubarak is over,” similar to a logo used by the Serbian rebels. Maher was charged with starting an illegal organization to overthrow the government, but he said, “Our power is that we are not a political party. We do what we want anytime we want. We don’t have a headquarters” that security forces can target. Only two of the 26 political parties had youth wings so young people had to form their own organizations.
Maher was arrested for participating in a protest against the Morsi government involving waving women’s underwear outside the Interior Minister’s home and chanting that Minister Mohamed Ibrahim was prostituting the ministry.[17] When he was asked about Egypt’s biggest challenge, he pointed to the generation gap and the more traditional older generation. He joked, “We’ll just have to outlive them.”
Socialist activist Ola Shahba explained a year after JAN25 that the revolution was built on ten years of organizing.[18] They occupied Tahrir Square in 2003 to protest the Iraq war and for first time chanted anti-Mubarak slogans, but were driven out by police violence. Kefaya, formed in 2004, used horizontal and online organizing on its webpage “Egyptian Awareness.” Youth organized during the 2005 election, when bloggers as young as 15 and 16 documented election fraud with their cameras. Activists continued in a movement for judicial independence and against police torture with roots in the April 6 Youth Movement since 2006. A Facebook post in 2008 by Israa Abdel Fatah went viral in support of a strike by textile workers eventually joined by 76,000 friends.[19] They documented police violence and other problems on YouTube starting in 2006 and then on Twitter. Youth activists were inspired by the active role of the Workers’ Union in the Tunisian revolution and had communicated with activists in the Progressive Youth of Tunisia since 2008.
Ola Shahba was active with Youth for Justice and Freedom, which she views as the main youth group behind the revolution, as well as a workers’ movement called Tadamon and the Revolutionary Socialist Organization. They opposed neoliberal policies that had speeded up for the previous five years under the influence of Mubarak’s son Gamal and his links with the World Bank. The Bank selected Mubarak as the world’s “top reformer” in 2008.[20] However, older members of the regime thought privatization was going too fast, concerned about the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Shahba said their global movement has a common goal against neoliberalism and needs to coordinate their movements; “We need to say another world, another reality is possible,” a global theme especially since capitalism can’t survive without extracting resources from developing countries.
International Training in Non-Violence
Although a university student explained youth won because “We didn’t understand politics, didn’t have a dirty agenda,” some leaders were trained in political tactics.[21] Global influences fed the Egyptian uprising that was able to mobilize millions of protesters around Egypt with its population of 81 million and in turn to inspire revolutionaries in other countries. Occupying a central square or park became the modus operandi of youth uprisings after Egypt, rather than just demonstrating for a few days as in the Battle of Seattle in 1999 against the World Trade Organization conference.
Realizing they needed more training in how to organize on the streets, April 6 member Mohamed Abdel, a 20-year-old blogger and activist, went to Belgrade, Serbia in 2009 to study with Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS.) It grew out of Otpor, the Serbian youth group that ousted President Slobodan Milošević in 2000 (discussed in Chapter 6). The training emphasized the need for discipline and strategic planning. Abdel continued email contact with his teachers after his return to Egypt.
Serbian youth leader Srdja Popovic learned about Gene Sharp’s writings in 2000 from American Robert Helvey, a retired colonel sent by the International Republican Institute (IRI) to teach Otpor (“resistance”) students. The IRI is funded by the US State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, which later funded efforts to overthrow Morsi.[22] Like Gandhi, Sharp taught that dictators rule with the tacit consent of the people and can be unseated if the people unite using psychological, social, political and economic weapons rather than guns. In the documentary film How to Start a Revolution, Sharp commented, “As soon as you choose to fight with violence you’re choosing to fight against your opponents’ best weapons and you have to be smarter than that. Psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons [are] ultimately more powerful against oppression, tyranny and violence.”[23] This effort to brand a struggle is a spinoff of pervasive media advertising. During the Egyptian Revolution, Gandhi and Sharp were quoted, rather than Marx, Mao, Castro, or Chavez.
Following Sharp, CANVAS emphasizes undermining pillars of support for dictators and reducing people’s fear and tacit consent for their rulers, having a specific plan, and using media to brand the movement as with a color like orange with a vivid slogan like “Enough!” A Frontline video shows Adel learning these strategies from Popovic.[24] The April 6 logo was like Otpor’s black fist.[25] Abdel organized CANVAS-style workshops to teach what he had learned from the Serbs and the information was put into a pamphlet. Soon after January 25, 2011 (hereafter Jan25 to use author Wael Ghonim’s abbreviation) demonstration, an anonymous pamphlet began to circulate, called “How to Protest Intelligently.”[26] People speculated that the April 6 group wrote it. Copies of Sharp’s list of 198 non-violent tactics for change were translated into Arabic and handed out in Tahrir Square by the MB and other groups, passed around in paper copies and online. Sharp was surprised by the overthrow of Mubarak and said the Egyptian revolution may be “the most powerful example of ‘people power’… in world history.”[27] Popovic credited Egyptian youth for their open minds, ability to communicate over the Internet, and belief that change can occur.
Ahmed Maher, a co-founder of April 6 Movement, believed that trying to work with opposition parties destroyed the pre-Jan 25 youth movement. He studied nonviolent uprisings in Poland, Chile, and Serbia, and read Gene Sharp’s book From Dictatorship to Democracy. Others traveled to study nonviolent changemaking in the US, such as workshops organized by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. Some activists were trained by the Academy of Change, created by a group of Egyptians in their 30s, living in Qatar, drawing from Gene Sharp’s writings. They talked with the April 6 youth, sending advisors a week before January 25 to train organizers. Other activists studied at the Egyptian Democracy Academy, partly funded by the US. Several weeks before the 2011 demonstration in Tahrir Square, a group traveled to Tunisia to learn their strategies and they continued to support each other’s rebellions.
Samir Amin is an Egyptian Marxist economist in his 80s. He observed that the young bloggers were Americanized, writing in English, “participants in the chain of counterrevolutions, orchestrated by Washington, disguised as ‘democratic revolutions’ on the model of the East European ‘color revolutions.’”[28]
He doesn’t think that the CIA caused the popular uprising, but that it works to “distance its activists from their aim of progressive social transformation and to shunt them onto different tracks.” He believes that the US doesn’t want a truly democratic Egypt.
The Role of Social Media
A young activist named Sayed said, “They poisoned Nasser, they assassinated Sadat, and Facebook killed Mubarak.”[29] By Jan25 close to 200,000 people pledged their participation in the event on Facebook. High school student Omar emailed that Jan25 was “an event made on the We are all Khalid Said Facebook page,” which Egyptians called the martyr page. Educated unemployed youth who communicated on Facebook gained new hope in their ability to be changemakers. They used casual language forms on social media that breeds informality, not following the norms of public speech, gaining a comfort with violating tradition that carried over to the revolution against government authority. A spokesperson for the rebels, Wael Ghonim (born in 1980) told CNN, “The revolution has begun online. This revolution began in Facebook.” Ghonim explained his part in starting a revolution in his 2012 book Revolution 2.0, although he said the revolution was leaderless as he explained in a TED talk.[30] He said, “There isn’t one of us here that is on some high horse leading the masses. This revolution belonged to the Internet youth…” A Google executive who spent a lot of time online, he previously created a successful website called IslamWay.com, but he wasn’t politically active. The fear of the regime kept people like him afraid, silent, and passive. Young Egyptians frequently commented, “There’s no hope.”
To counter this problem of hopelessness, in 2010 Ghonim set up a Facebook page for Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who was accused of being a tool of the West as a member of the International Crisis Group.[31] Ghonim met young activists such as Ahmed Maher of the April 6 Movement through this campaign, as many young people hoped ElBaradei would run for President against Mubarak. The co-administrator of the page was a 24-year-old journalism graduate, AbdelRahman Mansour, founder of WikiLeaks Arabic, and a political blogger. Their page asked for signatures in support of seven demands for change, supported by the MB. Within three months the page had over 100,000 followers. Google trained Ghonim in marketing, so he knew “if you build a brand, you can get people to trust the brand.”[32] His message to readers was you have rights, your taxes pay government officials, and mistrust the official media.
Anthropologist Linda Herrera spent 17 years in Egypt; she reported that Google and the US State Department backed Ghonim’s activism.[33] She explained that after the unpopular US attack on Iraq in 2003, the State Department realized that in a region with a population composed of about three-quarters young people, it needed to reach out to them directly through ICT. Former CIA and Foreign Service agent Graham Fuller wrote a report about “The Youth Factor” suggesting the use of “soft power” to create more pro-American and pro-free-market youth. The “Freedom Agenda” of President George W. Bush aimed to encourage voter education, youth leadership and cyber journalism training, and media monitoring. Herrera reported that Ghonim’s message was designed to fit the State Department’s Alliance of Youth Movement’s (AYM) “soft power” tactics and goals: avoid politics, praise leaderlessness (although Ghonim was the co-administrator of the Khaled Said Facebook page), and most importantly don’t challenge capitalism and the free market economy. The AYA page is https://Movements.org that states it “opens closed societies” and “crowdsources human rights.”
AYM was designed by the State Department’s Jared Cohen to fight youth extremism and support US corporations and consumerism using the “corporate model of marketing youth lifestyles,” as Otpor did.[34] The AYM summit in New York, April 2008, was sponsored by the State Department and corporations including Google and Facebook. MTV livestreamed the conference hosted by actress Whoopi Goldberg. With State Department funding, Howcast Media produced videos on how to do cyberactivism, narrated by young Arab actors in fashionable clothes. Some youth activists met with US Embassy staff in Cairo, as revealed by WikiLeaks. James Glassman, State Department Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, said in a press conference that his department’s role in the “war of ideas” was to work behind the scenes to train youth cyber activist groups in the Middle East. AYM drew on Otpor and CANVAS trainings that received US government funding, although most Otpor member didn’t know about the funding source until after they ousted President Milosevic. Glassman said other models of cyberactivsm were the April 6 Youth Movement and the Columbian “No More FARC” campaign led by Oscar Morales.
In 2010 Ghonim came across a Facebook photo of Khaled Said or Saed, a 28-year-old man beaten to death by police in Alexandra. His mother and sister spoke up about his murder and participated in anti-torture protests, helping to ignite the revolution. Said studied computer programming and composed music. Always on the Internet, said his mother, Said publicized a video of police dealing drugs in their office. Those corrupt police tracked him down at an Internet café through paid informants, and bashed his head against a wall in the building next door in front of witnesses. Khaled’s family was able to bribe a policeman to get the photo of Khaled’s body, a rare instance when corruption worked for the people. Outrage about the photo of his mangled face and broken skull, taken by his uncle’s cellphone in the morgue, catalyzed the anger against President Mubarak’s security forces. They were free to detain, torture and disappear citizens as they pleased under the emergency law in place since 1981. An airbrushed photo of Said alive was used to portray him in a sophisticated marketing campaign as a typical middle-class young man.[35] (The two policemen were sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2014 for torture and in 2015 a court rejected their second appeal.) The Facebook site publicized Said’s funeral in June, which was attended by about a thousand people.
Ghonim created a page called Kullena [we are all] Khaled Said in June 2010. It showed police publically beating Said to death in Alexandria and became a popular mouthpiece for the youth movement.[36] On its first day, 36,000 people joined Ghonim’s page, mostly under age 30. The Khaled Said page quickly became the largest online activist group, gaining over 200,000 followers in a few weeks. Although someone else had already created a similar page, Ghonim felt its tone was too aggressive. Like other rebels, he was inspired by the movie V for Vendetta in which an anonymous rebel tries to stir up revolt against an unjust government and included a clip of the film on his Khaled page. Gandhi’s non-violent resistance inspired him so he included quotes from him on the webpage. Videos of student protests in Chile gave him ideas as well, illustrating the transnational fertilization of youth-led uprisings.
Ghonim posted other examples of the regime’s brutality, including photos and videos of torture victims. Recognizing that marketing images have more impact than words, he posted photos of the Khaled Said group members publically holding a sign with the webpage name and also posted their poetry and designs. He asked members to call TV talk shows and demand prosecution of the police who murdered Khaled. Ghonim started organizing on the streets, asking friends of the Facebook site to stand silently on certain Fridays in Cairo and Alexandra, wearing black with their backs to the street, holding the Koran or the Bible. He called these protests the “Silent Stand” and publicized them as an “event” on Facebook and with press releases. (A silent standing man also occurred in the Turkish uprisings of 2013.) Thousands participated in June and July, along with the presence of security forces, in “The Revolution of Silence.” He involved readers by asking them to vote on topics such as what color shirts to wear during a “day of silence” on Cairo streets. He said in a TED talk in March 2011 that these events connected the virtual world to the real world. There were no leaders, he said, because people suggested ideas, voted on them, contributed photos and videos. However, he decided what suggestions to implement.
He is what Paolo Gerbaudo in Tweets and the Streets (2012) calls a choreographer or “soft leader” of social change who manipulated social media to mobilize demonstrators to come to the street. Part of the branding of the revolution, the April 6 group only had a few dozen members in early 2011 but it became a brand name; Ahmed Salah said, “We were successful in making it the icon of change.”[37] Trying to overcome passivity, Ghonim quoted Obama on the page, “Yes, we can.”
However, the activists were critical of the lack of support from the US, feeling President Obama valued stability over democracy. The Coalition of the Revolution refused to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because of US support for Mubarak, demanding her formal apology to the Egyptian people. Reuters quoted President Obama on January 25 proclaiming, “The Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.” Rebels felt like President Obama waited to see who was in charge without any concern for justice or the Egyptian people. His administration later supported the military coup under human rights violator General el-Sisi by refusing to name it a coup so $1.3 billion in US military aid could continue. During the revolution, Obama never called on Mubarak to step down but he did speak to him several times on the phone telling him he’d better implement reforms soon. The Saudis wanted the US to support Mubarak to insure stability in the region and over a billion dollars in US aid continues under el-Sisi. When Donald Trump met Sisi in New York in September 2016 he said he was a “fantastic guy” with whom he enjoyed “good feeling between us,” similar to his praise for Vladamir Putin. Trump praised Sisi for “really taking control” of Egypt.[38]
An Egyptian poster shows a photo of Obama with an x over his face and a green check over the US flag next to it.[39] Yara, 17, explained to me that, “For us, it indicates that America is fine; that we don’t hate America or Americans. It’s sending a message that despite the fact that we’re strongly angry and disappointed by Obama, we, by no means, are angry at Americans.” Rebels aimed to curb US influence in their efforts to implement democracy. Mohamed Soltan, age 25, spent 21 months in prison because police were looking for his MB father but since he wasn’t home, they took Mohamed instead. He reported growing anti-American feelings across Egypt in 2015, with his fellow inmates all hated the US, whether MB, liberal, ISIS, or activist students.[40]
Fearful of the State Security who used torture as one of their main ways of collecting information, Ghonim kept his identity secret as administrator of the Facebook site. He used a proxy program called Tor, which constantly changed his IP address. He again asked AbdelRahman Mansour to be his co-administrator. He was seven years younger than Ghonim and more connected to rebel youth culture. Mansour contributed to the feminist blog We are All Laila, co-founded WikiLeaks Arabic in 2010, and took activism classes at the Academy of Change.
In the November 2010 elections Ghonim campaigned for people to write in a vote for “Khaled Said, the symbol of Egyptian youth,” to boycott corrupt election practices. However, two-thirds of young people weren’t registered to vote because they distrusted party politics, and didn’t do volunteer work either.[41] Even organized groups of youth like the “Ultras” soccer fans weren’t politically active until the 2011 evolution. Social media enabled youth to get politically active. At the end of 2010, April 6 leaders decided to take ironic advantage of the January 25 national holiday called Police Day for another demonstration. Ghonim believes his partner AbdelRahman suggested the idea. By January 2011 their page had 390,000 friends, over 40% women and 70% under age 24, and received nine million hits a day![42] The other Khaled Said Facebook page, the April 6 Movement page (80,000 members), and the ElBaradei campaign helped publicize the event without much coordination. They plastered the streets of Cairo with posters about the Police Day protests.
A post from a Facebook fan feared that, “No one will do anything and you’ll see. All we do is post on Facebook. We are the Facebook generation. Period.” His viewpoint was illustrated in a popular Egyptian film titled Leisure Time (2006) about the aimlessness and boredom of three men in their early 20s. Facebook members were asked to distribute mass text messages and paper flyers to publicize Jan25. Photographers were encouraged to photograph the action to protest police torture, poverty, corruption, and unemployment.
Because of social media, “young Egyptians can’t be brainwashed anymore by the government; they’ve woken up,” observed Jessica Elsayed, 17, a reporter in Alexandria. Media like AL Jazeera and CNN broadcasted young citizen journalists including bloggers Gigi Ibrahim, Shamseddine Abidia, and Tarek Shalaby. Akram, the Cairo high school student, emailed me in 2012 saying, “Now it’s all about Twitter; the ideas start there, then they make events on Facebook.” The most prominent tweeter was Wael Ghonim. Esraa Abdel Fattah tweeted and blogged from Tahrir Square and started a group to train women to become political leaders. Thousands of bloggers continue to discuss politics on the Net, and Mosireen media collective posts video footage from citizen cell phones and cameras, so ITC continues to be a powerful tool.
Because only 5% of Egyptians were Facebook members when the revolution began, Arab journalist Emad Mekay reported that the main communication throughout the Arab Spring wasn’t social media but paper flyers, Al Jazeera TV, and word of mouth. Much of the information exchange took place at noon on Fridays when men gather at local mosques, as most people didn’t have Internet access.[43] The rates of Internet penetration are 35% in Tunisia, 26% in Egypt, and 6% in Libya. Many Egyptians kept informed by watching TV cable talk shows and listening to the radio, as well as using ubiquitous cell phones. By 2010, despite high poverty rates, around 72% had access to cell phones used to create recorded voice messages of skits and stories and some poked fun at pious religious figures.[44]
Asmaa Mahfouz, one of the April 6 founders, made a videotaped message on January 18 for people to show up on Jan25, which was put on the Khaled page.”[45] A 25-year-old MBA graduate from Cairo University, she said, “I, a girl, am going down to Tahrir Square, and I will stand alone. And I’ll hold up a banner. Perhaps people will show some honor.” She urged, “If you think yourself a man,” “don’t be afraid of the government.” She appealed to men’s honor to come to Tahrir Square to protect her and other women from harassment, to demand human rights and the end of government corruption.[46] The video went viral, getting over 80,000 hits the first week. She was one of the activists who distributed leaflets in Cairo slums on January 24. Youth utilized their media skills to their advantage, portraying vivid stories of police violence or showing a close up of Mahfouz who helped break what activists called “fear barrier.” Ghonim came from Dubai to Cairo in order to participate in the protests until he was detained and blindfolded for 12 days on Jan 27.
Later in the year, on August 15, a military prosecutor charged Mahfouz with inciting violence against the military and insulting the armed forces on her blog. On bail, she faced a military court because she accused the military of allowing thugs to attack protesters. She posted on Facebook, “If the judiciary doesn’t give us our rights, nobody should be surprised if militant groups appear and conduct a series of assassinations because there is no law and there is no judiciary.”[47] Most charges were dropped but on March 2012 she was sentenced to a fine and a year in jail for supposedly beating up a man she had never seen.
Activists survived the government shutting down the Internet for five days and cellphones for a day from January 28 to February 2, an act that called more global attention to Mubarak’s dictatorial tactics and anger from Egyptians. When they couldn’t see what was happening on their screens, more people went to the streets. In response, engineers from Twitter and Google developed a “Speak-to-Tweet” service to send voice messages by Twitter on phones. The young activists also used Facebook to fool secret police about the location of demonstrations. True locations of meeting points were only discussed in person and then shared via a phone network of protesters. A member of the April 6 Youth Movement, single mother Amal Sharaf (age 36) coordinated the protests from the movement’s small office, another example of the importance of women in organizing the revolution. Social media and face-to-face organizing synergistically created the revolution. Some scholars dismissed the importance of social media, saying youth are always at the forefront of revolution, like Alain Badiou in France, while other scholars emphasized the new role of the Internet, like Manuel Castells, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.
The Invitational 18-Day Revolution
Activists refer to their revolution, so I’ll honor their term because regime change did occur, even if the military still rules Egypt. It was the first revolution announced 12 days before the event, although activists didn’t anticipate overthrowing the government. Young activists joked about what was the dress code and was there an after-revolution party planned? Eventually around 20% of Egyptians demonstrated during the 18 days until Mubarak resigned, about 15 million people.
Encouraged by the January 14 ousting of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, the April 6 group set up an “operation room” to oust Mubarak. A Frontline video shows the young male and female leaders.[48] Ahmed Maher established the “operations room” about 15 days before Jan25 where organizers met daily. An Al Jazeera video shows the male and female organizers in action in their Cairo office, planning publicity, organizing demonstration routes, recruiting in poor neighborhoods, and supplying food and medical care.[49] They discussed bogus marches on their cellphones to fool the police and started demonstrating in the slums rather than downtown Cairo, chanting about high food prices and police violence. Activist Philip Rizk pointed out at the Global Uprising conference that the first protests were organized in Suez on January 23 in solidarity with the Tunisians, producing the first martyr of the struggle. He said Egyptians lost honor when such as small country started the Arab Spring rather than his country.
Two days before Jan25, the April 6 group organized cells of 30 to 50 activists, going to poor neighborhoods chanting, “They are eating pigeon and chicken and we are eating beans all the time. Oh my, 10 pounds can only buy us cucumbers now, what a shame, what a shame.” They mobilized thousands of demonstrators, a new phenomenon under the repressive regime that before never exceeded a few hundred protesters. Dispersed demonstrations made it more difficult for security forces to crack down on them. Once they built up a crowd, they would move to a bigger street, finally assembling in Tahrir. The Facebook page said that if 50,000 people signed up to demonstrate they would hold the protest; More than 100,000 signed up.[50] Posters were put up by members of the April 6 movement, ElBaradei supporters, some leftist parties, and the youth wing of the MB. The older Brotherhood members didn’t support the protest until later; one of them said they didn’t want to be tied “to a virtual world.” Street protests included a variety of classes and ages, including non-union “precarious workers.”
The young rebels waited until midnight of January 24 to post assembly locations so as to not give security forces much time to mobilize. Only the leader of the group would know the exact location to avoid the police. Tweets were used during Jan25 to further direct marchers: Ghonim had over 30,000 Twitter followers. The protesters chanted, “The people want to topple the regime,” repeating the Tunisian slogan seen on Facebook. Demonstrators were asked to carry the Egyptian flag but nothing featuring political or religious affiliations. The revolution was not fought in the name of Islam, but democracy. The main call was for “bread, freedom, and social justice.” A Frontline video that followed young MB leader Muhammed Abas shows him asking a demonstrator not to show his pocket Koran to the public and no Islamic banners were visible.
Jan25 began at noon in squares around Cairo, with around 30,000 to 50,000 demonstrators chanting “Bread, Freedom, Human Dignity.” On Jan25, when Ahmed Maher looked around the square and saw all the unfamiliar faces, “and they were more brave than us, I knew that this was it for the regime.” A 21-year old female student said, “We’re not afraid of them. What are they going to do, arrest millions of us?” She echoed the teachings of Gene Sharp who pointed out, “If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble.” A powerful resource is large numbers of people who are no longer afraid of the regime. The surprised security forces retreated. The Central Security Forces then hired thugs called baltagiya–axe-wielders, to attack protesters, and the regime released convicts from the jails to loot and scare people. Despite all this force, the protesters chanted, “We’re not leaving, he’s leaving.” As Wael Ghonim said, the power of the people is much stronger than the people in power because they were willing to stand up for their dreams of dignity for all, without playing the dirty game of politics.
Activist Mina Fayek said, “We used to joke it was easier to stand in front of tanks and bullets than to convince your parents to let you go to Tahrir Square to protest.”[51] During the occupation of the square a media tent was set up where people could share their amateur videos and document government violence. Eyewitness accounts can be seen in the video Uprising (2013) and Yasmin Elayat’s 18 Days in Egypt thatgathered more than a 1,000 stories from participants.[52]The Oscar-nominated The Square (2013) traces the revolution from 2011 to 2013.[53] The video makers interviewed youth activists who “manifest a recognizable global style—cosmopolitan and culturally savvy, open-minded and informal—of youth disaffection.” Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim believes the revolution “changed the consciousness of a country and an entire region.” (Her previous film, Egypt: We Are Watching You, is about three women who fight for social change.) While filming The Square, many of the crew were beaten and arrested along with the cast. Noujaim points out that it took a long time to achieve civil rights in the US or end apartheid in South Africa, so she’s hopeful democracy will eventually prevail.
Women demonstrators were an impetus for men to turn out to prove their courage, “If a girl can do it, I can too.” One of those young women, Yara (17) told me in a Skype conversation that she took an exam in her high school then went to Tahrir Square to hold protest signs. She was connected with the Khaled Said Facebook group where she learned about Jan25 and she knew about the April 6 Movement. Yara went to meetings but a lot of people she knew got involved through Facebook. Her group thought that a maximum of 200 people would show up on Jan25, middle-class university and high school students like themselves who weren’t affiliated with a party or group but wanted political change. They felt empowered by the Tunisian revolution which gave revolutionaries confidence that the people had the power. She knew more about politics than most of her peers because her father is a reporter and discusses political issues with his first-born child. In contrast, Yara said many of her noninvolved peers accepted Mubarak as ruler because they were familiar with him.
The young demonstrators were shocked when around 3:00 PM they heard voices and felt the ground shaking as around 80,000 people converged on Tahrir Square. One organizer told BBC, “To be honest, we thought we’d last about five minutes. We thought we’d get arrested straight away.” The crowd marched towards the offices of the ruling National Democratic Party (ND). The first wave of police violence began that afternoon in Tahrir where they fired tear gas and water cannons, but they were chased back by the huge crowds throwing rocks. “Leave Now” and “Farewell you thief,” the crowds shouted to Mubarak, as they held up their shoes to show disrespect. Protests also broke out in Suez, Ismailia, Mansusra, Tanta, Aswan and Assiut. The government blamed the MB for the uprising, which it accurately denied. Youth were joined by workers’ unions, Coptic Christians, and later the MB.
On January 27 Mohamed ElBaradei arrived in Egypt ready to “lead the transition” if asked (he wasn’t). On the 30th he addressed the protesters, saying, “What we started can never be pushed back.” He told an NPR reporter, “It’s the greatest day of my life. I couldn’t have imagined that I would live long enough to see Egypt emancipated from decades of repression.” President Jimmy Carter referred to the uprising as an “earth-shaking event.” ElBaradei reported, “It was the young people who took the initiative and set the date and decided to go.”[54] He added that “young people are impatient” and know how to use the media and the US pushed Egypt and the Arab World into “radicalization with this inept policy of supporting repression” by dictators like Mubarak. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the onset of Jan25 that the Mubarak government was “looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”
On January 26 and 27 security forces cracked down on the illegal demonstrations, arresting about 1,000 demonstrators, beating people with metal sticks, shooting rubber and real bullets aiming for the head or chest, and firing tear gas canisters made in the US. On January 27 the Internet and cell phone services were cut off, but only around 5% of Egyptians were Facebook users and less than 1% used Twitter at that time.[55] The government also cut off transportation into Cairo, blocked streets and in the city, released more than 17,000 prisoners onto the streets and withdrew police, and put Suez in lockdown. Neighborhoods organized their own watch groups. These actions lead to the Day of Anger/Rage on January 28. Journalist Lina Attalah was dragged on the ground by four policemen who beat her with batons and shouted verbal abuse. Women demonstrators are usually called whores. People who saw TV coverage of police violence were motivated to join the demonstrators the next day. Interior Minister Habib al-Adly dismissed the rebels as “a bunch of incognizant, ineffective young people,” but because of these young people he was later put on trial for ordering his soldiers to shoot the non-violent protesters—more than 800 protesters were martyred during 18-day revolution.
At least 4.5 million Egyptians protested in the squares during the 18 days, undermining the regime’s authority. People brought their children so they could see history in the making. Middle-class educated young people started Jan25, but activist Jawad Nabulsi reported, “Walking around Tahrir Square, we saw most people were not like us. There were not educated or informed, and a lot of them tried to disrupt things,” but the organizers made sure the protest was peaceful.[56] Women and children were also present: “Without women, this protest would not have been possible.” Nabulsi saw women shot with tear gas and rubber bullets who kept marching. He predicted if a renaissance occurs, women will lead it. He got shot in the eye by a policeman who pointed his gun directly at his face on January 28, the bloodiest day, and became well known for his eye patch and for his philanthropy.[57] He bled for five hours, going from hospital to hospital before he found someone who would treat his wound. Strike threats influenced the military to side with the protesters for fear the country would be immobilized; the military controls much of the economy, owning many factories and companies staffed by soldiers as well as prime real estate, exempt from paying taxes.
The Khaled Said page called for a national “Day of Rage: A March Against Torture, Corruption, Poverty and Unemployment.” It took place on Friday, January 28 as tens of thousands left their mosques and went to Tahrir Square, including many “ultras” soccer fans. The clubs were well-organized and connected on social media including the “We are all Khaled Said” page, committed to volunteerism and inspired by the film V for Vendetta. The event was also supported by the April 6 Movement, the National Association for Change, the Popular Democratic Movement for Change, the Justice and Freedom Youth Movement, the Revolutionary Socialists, and the Muslim Brotherhood Youth.[58] About 80,000 protesters occupied Tahrir, chanting, “The people seek the fall of the regime,” and “Freedom.”
Activists said this was the day when fear died in Egypt. Protesters came prepared with lemons, onions and vinegar to counteract tear gas and soda or milk to bath their eyes and other tools learned from the Tunisians. Some protesters wore armor made of cardboard or plastic bottles, wore bike helmets, and brought spray paint to paint police car windows black, and rags to stuff into police vehicle exhaust pipes. Some say this day was the most important battle, where a few thousand protesters fought over a thousand riot police on the Kasr al-Nile Bridge. In the fight Maher wore a cardboard and plastic shield, a bike helmet, and a shield on his arm. (These defenses were also used in the 2014 Ukrainian uprising). For five hours protesters rotated going to the front, getting injured, and going to the back until police retreated. Rebels burned down Mubarak’s party headquarters on their way to Tahrir Square. A member of the MB said he knew it was a lasting revolution when he saw “there was a new generation who could break the fear barrier. At midnight, when the violent clearing of the square happened and the protesters didn’t run away and go home, I knew it was a revolution.”[59]
More people turned out on the next day even though police fired into the air to try to disperse them. The MB ordered able-bodied men to join the protests, organizing teams with different tasks such as breaking the pavement into rocks, building barricades with rocks, and defending the front. Ultra soccer fans helped. The battle lasted until 4:00 am, while soldiers watched from behind the gates of the Egyptian Museum that borders Tahrir. Frustrated riot police started shooting real bullets, injuring 45 and killing two protesters. To protect the demonstrators, soldiers fired into the air and ground to disperse the riot police, leaving the rebels in charge of the square.
The government called in soldiers to reinforce the security police, in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria, but they refused to fire bullets at the demonstrators, as all young men are drafted in the military. The demonstrations had spread to Alexandria and Suez where demonstrators ignored the curfew imposed by the military. On January 31 the army said it wouldn’t use force as it recognized the “legitimate rights of the people.” Soldiers hugged the protesters. It wasn’t clear if soldiers acted on their own or were following orders to prevent bloodshed. By February 1, activists called for a “march of a million,” and hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Tahrir and thousands more in other cities.
The protests continued for 18 days, including entertainment by singers and comedians, just as other young activists around the world incorporate fun and street theater. Noor Ayman Nour, founder of the metal band Bliss, reported: “This was a very artistic revolution,” typical of Occupy Movements globally. The single most popular YouTube video of the revolution was a music video uploaded on January 27 by Ramy Essam called “Leave.”[60]
Ghonim missed 12 days of action when he was captured and kept blindfolded in a cell by the security forces, January 27 to February 7. Nadine Wahab, an Egyptian-American media expert in the US, took over management of the online news while Ghonim was in captivity. Activist Esraa Abdel Fattah announced on Al Jazeera TV that no negotiations would start until Ghonim was free, as he was one of the people who represented youth. Ghonim gained more fame as a spokesperson after his arrest, enhanced by his emotional sobbing on February 7 on a popular TV show in reaction to being shown photographs of murdered demonstrators for the first time.[61] Unable to carry on, he left the studio mid-broadcast. He said, “All I did was use a keyboard,” as the real heroes were on the ground. The TV interview galvanized more protesters. In a video posted in March, Ghonim said there were no heroes because everyone contributed something, using electronic media to share their dreams and overcome fears of challenging the regime.[62] He wrote on Facebook that they won because they believed in their dream of freedom.
Ghonim reported, “Our protests were peaceful and our motto was ‘Do not break.’”[63] They valued non-violence symbolized by chanting “peaceful,” although they did throw stones and broken pavement to protect themselves, and burned hundreds of police stations and thousands of police cars, as well as Mubarak’s party offices. They didn’t “fetishize nonviolence.” Ola Shaba explained they discussed throwing Molotov cocktails to protect themselves, but not throwing them to injure soldiers. She said over 1,000 demonstrators lost at least one eye in the struggles, and that the security forces’ use of live ammunition was new.
Blogger Noha Atef pointed out when “the protesters are chanting “peaceful, peaceful, we are peaceful” and you use live ammunition against them, it means that you are weak. And after just two days of protesting, the police disappeared. We don’t see them on the street.” To protect their neighborhoods, neighborhood watch patrols were quickly organized and some continued after police returned to their jobs. The revolution wasn’t without bloodshed, as over 1,000 protesters were killed according to activists I interviewed (the official figure is 850 deaths), and many more were wounded.
The most violent attacks on protesters used camel drivers and some thugs on horseback who were paid by the regime to cause havoc in Tahrir on February 2 in the “Battle of the Camel.” This occurred after a week-long occupation and a February 1 speech by Mubarak who promised not to run for office when his term was up in seven months. The army called for the protests to end as the people’s message had been heard. Witnesses estimated that at least 70,000 pro-Mubarak NDP and security forces (some of them were paid and/or threatened with job loss) entered the square brought in by buses to oppose about 20,000 demonstrators. When I asked a camel driver about this event through a translator he said their intention was to confuse the demonstrators, not to do violence, and the regime forced them into it. My translator explained they were paid to do it and were also threatened with not being able to continue their work with tourists who pay to ride on the camels. Police snipers were poised on the tops of buildings; they even fired inside a hospital set up in a mosque. Groups of demonstrators climbed up after the snipers knowing the people in front would be shot. Around 1,500 people were injured with at least three deaths.
The battle lasted well into the next day, including police use of live ammunition against stone throwing demonstrators. Eleven people were killed and over 600 injured that day, but demonstrators were willing to risk their lives for the revolution, for dignity. They got hit by gas canisters or threw them back at police who didn’t have gas masks, fainted from the gas, had bullets removed from their bodies, and went back to the streets. They spray painted tank windows black to blind the drivers and were shot by the police from the top of tanks. They got down to pray in front of the tanks.
The Ultras, young male fans of the AL Ahly soccer team, protected demonstrators from the camel drivers (rival soccer fans also united in the Turkish uprisings in 2013). High school student Akram reported:
They weren’t the key leaders, however they played a very powerful and important role. They defended the square in the camel battle; also they took part in all the later protests against SCAF [The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the military council that replaced Mubarak]. They chant against SCAF in the matches as well. They’re joined by the Ultras White Knights who support their competitor team.
Other young people, including some women, formed neighborhood watch People’s Committees to protect their neighbors from looters and baltagiya thugs paid by the police to intimidate the people. Even in the face of violence a student tweeted, “I kid you not. A group of us are practicing baseball with the stones they’re throwing. Bats and all. Fun revolution : ).” After the demonstrators drove away the security forces, they burned Mubarak’s NDP party headquarters and police offices. That evening Mubarak announced he was turning the government over to the vice-president but would stay on as titular president. A few of the Coalition of the Revolution Youth went to meet with the vice-president and told him Mubarak had to go.
On February 7, the government offered a 15% raise in salaries and pensions and released Wael Ghonim from captivity. On February 9, labor union members joint the protesters and massive strikes began around the country. President Mubarak acknowledged youth’s leadership for change and their dreams for a brighter future. In his last speech to the nation on February 10, Mubarak, like other dictators in the region, blamed the foreign media and interfering nations for the unrest, but addressed and praised the “noble youth.” He said, “I speak to the youth of Egypt from the depth of my heart, I deeply cherish you as a symbol, a new Egyptian generation seeking a better future.” He said he spoke to them as a father to his children, not a shrewd approach with young adults. His two sons almost came to blows over that last speech, with Alaa urging him to step down and heir apparent Gamal convincing him at the last moment to rewrite his speech to keep his title as president. His rambling speech convinced the army to oust Mubarak, feeling it had US backing. His reign only lasted one more day. On February 12, people celebrated and cleaned the square. The next day soldiers removed tents and traffic moved through Tahrir for the first time since Jan25.
Almost everyone I talked with while traveling to four cities from Cairo to Dahab to Luxor to Aswan in July 2011 was glad Mubarak was gone, because of the fear of his security forces and the poor living conditions. I was told his government bought tainted wheat from Russia for the people to eat because it was cheap and his wife Suzanne would get a lot of money to open a school that only had students when she came for a yearly visit. The 1% made fortunes on the back of the people. Businessmen I talked with were the exception in support for the revolution, opposing it because of the steep decline in tourism and missing the stability of the old regime. A discussion of what groups actually led the revolution and recent events is on the book website.[64]
Who Led the Revolution?
The April 6 group formed links with Coptic Christians, ElBaradei for president supporters, and young MB members to support four young men accused of beating up police in Alexandria after a New Year’s bombing of a Coptic cathedral. Protesters marched in a Coptic neighborhood in Cairo on January 3, which gave them the idea to organize together for January 25 in Tahrir Square. Each person was responsible for communicating with 10 people in a message tree to let them know what routes to the square they’d use and which of the 20 routes were listed online only to distract police. Meetings were kept secret by saying go to a kiosk to find instructions for where to go next.
Professor Hazem Kandil identified six groups that mobilized the 2011 revolution: Facebook groups “We are all Khaled Said” and the April 6 Youth Movement (70,000 members by 2010); the Youth of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) who challenged the older leadership; youth and middle-aged leftists (some were Communists, most were urban intellectuals); supporters of Mohamed El-Baradei for President and his new group the National Association for Change; and human-rights activists who were working for groups like Amnesty International.[65] The Jan25 demonstrations were endorsed by Kefaya (also known as the National Association for Change), and opposition political parties. Other organizations involved in planning were The Freedom and Justice Movement secular youth organization and the Gabha Party.[66]
Political organizations with the most Internet presence before and after the Revolution were in this order: the youth wing of the MB, Keyafa Movement, Communist Party and the New Wafd Party. They worked together in the Revolutionary Youth Committee. Socialists, workers, and soccer fans got involved in the street protests, as did the MB helping with logistics like security and food. Marxists, liberals, anarchists, and non-ideological youth joined together to overthrow Mubarak.
Socialist Ola Shahba reported that the last days of the occupation of Tahrir, striking workers “tipped the balance of power in our favour.” She emphasized the need to build alliances with the workers’ movement for the revolution to succeed, although it’s painful for her as a revolutionary socialist to admit that the workers movement was not in the vanguard. She said it’s bourgeois to call it a youth revolution, although youth did organize Jan25. They were laughed at because they were joined by kids and street children bringing supplies, old men at the front lines, and women of various ages.
Youth
Youth led a “momentum-driven mass mobilization,” using disruptive power, and civil resistance.[67] Egyptian youth illustrated the story of government repression with skilled use of photos, likened to promoting a concert. They created hope, as with Asmaa Mahfouz’ video telling Egyptians, “If you go down [to the square] and take a stance, then there will be hope.” Breaking what they called the fear barrier, they adopted the motivating Tunisian slogan, “The people demand the fall of the regime.” However, Rabab El-Mahdi believes viewing youth as the guardians of the revolution is an orientalist view that overlooks the classes involved in dissent with “a new imaginary homogenous construct called ‘youth.’”[68]
Sixty percent of Egyptians are under 25 and 25% of youth were unemployed in 2011. The young urban rebels are not representative of the nation because 60% of Egyptians live in villages influenced by conservative Islamists (see my interview with an uneducated rural young woman in Upper Egypt[69]). Over a third of females and 18% of males are illiterate.[70] More than 35% of middle-school students ages 12 to 15 are illiterate due to large class sizes and inadequate teacher education and the percentage of students in primary education dropped to 90% in the 2014 school year. About 20% of the Egyptian population is poor, living on about $2 per day and 44% of the workforce was illiterate in 2011.[71] Ahmad Hasan, age 25, explained from Cairo that the revolution took place because of “lost dignity, poverty, corruption, rigged elections, and the spread of nepotism and cronyism.” Throughout the Arab Spring people called for al Karama, dignity, meaning social justice and constitutional reforms. Polls indicate that youth were particularly motivated by the emotional desire for dignity.[72]
Noting how rarely youth are asked about their experiences with revolution, James Youniss and Brian Barber interviewed youth activists in Cairo and Alexandria in 2011.[73] When asked why they rebelled, young people pointed to the fear of being detained or arrested like Khaled Said, even unable to speak freely in a restaurant for fear of being overheard and interrogated. This fear was expressed in a common saying advising “walking beside the wall” to keep a low profile, but the Tunisian victory inspired them to overcome their fear of the security forces. They trusted that soldiers wouldn’t fire on them as every male serves in the military and has community roots. They also mentioned the corrupt economic system, the need to bribe government officials, the fact that half the population lives in poverty and the high unemployment rate of educated youth. Some blamed Mubarak’s son Gamal for shattering the economy with neoliberal World Bank policies and they were angry about the obvious fraud in November 2010 elections. Their strength was diverse groups, Christians and Muslims, rich and poor, unified as “one hand” in wanting Mubarak to leave, a phrase I heard frequently in Tahrir Square. They built an identity on being Egyptians reclaiming their power and historic glory.
Ahmed Maher implied that he was the main organizer of the event in an interview.[74] I asked Yara, age 17, about his claim as she was in Tahrir daily: “I wouldn’t really take Ahmed Maher’s word. He isn’t much respected in the revolutionaries’ medium.” Civil engineer Maher was active in Kefaya since 2005 and helped organize Youth for Change. In 2008 he helped organize the April 6 Youth Movement. He got interested in the Serbian movement Otpor where he studied Gene Sharp’s writings. He said what kept their movement from succeeding earlier was the “old parties.” Maher predicted, “What happened in Egypt and Tunisia will happen elsewhere: Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and Yemen, all those countries with autocrats, hopefully they will have democracy.”[75] He was briefly arrested in May 2013, after a visit to the US, for “incitement” at a demonstration against police violence. He was imprisoned again in November 2013, along with activists Mohamed Adel and Ahmed Douma. They were sentenced to three years in prison on the charges of unauthorized protests and assaulting police officers. Maher’s letters were smuggled out of prison.[76]
Ghonim thinks youth as a group made the revolution; “The bottom line was that Jan25 was not the work of any political groups. It was a reaction from a generation that had been raised amid fear, failure, and passivity, a reaction mainly inspired by the events in Tunisia.” Call them the “Miracle Generation: These young people have done more in a few weeks than their parents did in 30 years,” observed a Cairo University professor, Hassan Nafaa.[77]
The 25 January Youth Coalition or Revolutionary Youth Coalition was formally established on the first day of the uprising. The coalition had 14 group representatives and a general assembly with a few hundred members. Leaders are listed in the endnote, with only two women,[78] but “No single individual has the right to speak for the revolution, including us,” said April 6 press coordinator Injie Hamdi: “The 25 January Revolution belongs to all of Egypt’s young people.”[79] Akram emailed me, “I heard about The Revolution’s Youth–in Arabic we say E’tlaf Shabbab Aithawra–however they aren’t so effective, not so popular neither in the street or in the revolutionary circles.” The Coalition included previously established democracy organizations like Kefaya and El Ghadlm, the April 6 Youth movement, Justice and Freedom, MB youth, Mohamed ElBaradei’s campaign for the presidency, The Popular Democratic Movement for Change (HASHD), The Democratic Front and Khaled Said Facebook group administrators.[80] The middle class was the main leader of the revolution, but workers, especially in Suez and Mahalla al-Kubra, joined them on the streets.
The Revolutionary Youth Coalition lacked coordination between its groups and disbanded in July 2012 after Morsi was elected president. A member who was also part of the Islamist youth party called the Egyptian Current Party said, “They weren’t able to give up this idea of polarization. They kept saying, “You are from the Islamists, you are from the liberals.”[81] He said, “They should have taken one goal and kept on pursuing it after the revolution. An in my opinion it should have been the judicial system. If we had reached this goal, then the revolution would have succeeded.” The youth party was one of the few youth parties to survive, but also struggled with finances and organization so it merged with the Strong Egypt Party in October 2014. They announced they were starting a new phase because youth leaders of the Jan25 uprising are “scattered” and youth were “disenchanted from political life, either out of asceticism, weariness or despair.”[82] “Our statement today is a message for independent youth who believe in the goals of their glorious revolution and its ability to change for the better,” in opposition to control by the military or the MB. The party is headed by former MB member Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh (born in 1951.)
Egypt lacked strong unions like Tunisia’s UGTT, which called for a decisive general strike on January 14, 2014. The left was fragmented and anarchist anti-statism resulted in lack of political organization. In December 2011 some members discussed applying the lobbying tactics of the US groups MoveOn.org and the Tea Party, with the eventual goal of starting a political party. April 6 supported Morsi for president but by mid-2013 called for his resignation and supported ElBaradei’s Dustour Party. Some members felt constrained by the group and left it to take action on their own. One young woman explained she didn’t feel free, and “you have to quit to be independent.”[83] The April 6 Youth Movement had only a few thousand members and split in April 2012 over a disagreement about leadership, with the formation of a new group called the April 6 Movement Democratic Front.
Soccer fans formed another group, led by cheerleaders, applying their experience fighting with police in stadiums. In retaliation, police in the Port Said incident targeted them in February 2012 when over 1,000 of them were injured and 79 Al Ahly team supporters killed. In contrast, the army and the MB were highly organized and thereby assumed power.
Regarding organization infrastructure, Paolo Gerbaudo named the problems with leaderlessness.[84] He said, what weakened the movement was the lack of strong organizations such a political parties or trade unions that could have provided planning and structure. Youth did succeed in organizing ongoing groups such as the “No to Military Trials” organization, Ma7liat, and Salafyo Costa.[85] Ma7liat aims to reduce corruption on the local level. Salafyo Costa unites Salifs and Christians to work together in charitable activities, with its own TV show on the youth channel.
Although youth believe they led the revolution and they did initiate and plan it, looking at the main supporters of the revolution, it wasn’t youth, according to a small statistical study of participants in the Egyptian (sample size of 98 people) and Tunisian Revolutions (192) by Princeton University researchers.[86] Only 8% of students surveyed by Princeton University researchers were active in demonstrations in Egypt, compared to 35% in Tunisia. Only 13% of the Egyptian demonstrators were aged 18 to 24, (compared to 35% in Tunisia) and 31% were aged 25 to 34 (25% in Tunisia). Using data from the Second Wave Arab Barometer administered in 2011, the Princeton authors concluded that the Tunisian Revolution was led by a younger and more diverse class background than in Egypt. The Princeton authors concluded, “These simple statistics give lie to folk theories that the Arab revolutions were caused primarily by youth frustration.” Keep in mind that the same was small and only 8% of the Egyptian sample reported participating in the demonstrations, compared to 16% in Tunisia.
I asked Akram (now a university student) about the Princeton study and he replied, “Yes, the main supporters aren’t youth, the primary vision for the revolution wasn’t established by the youth either. The revolution was a result of things that were made and set by the older generation!” I asked him to clarify and he said, “The older generation is the generation that showed us what was wrong with the country; initiating and planning the revolution was the work of youth, but the primary concepts and visions were not.”
Tamarod Petition to Oust Morsi in 2013
On Sunday, June 30, 2013, the one-year anniversary of Morsi’s inauguration, teacher Amal participated in the largest demonstrations in Egyptian history (the military claimed as many as 14 million people joined the demonstrations in Cairo, making it the largest protest in history!). Amal corrected this figure, emailing, “I just want to correct the number of the peaceful protesters on June 30, as according to Google the number estimated is 33 million protesters all over Egypt and not just 14 million.” Young men and women demanded that Morsi step down, chanting “Out! Out! Out!” Yara was there on June 30 to speak against the MB’s rule as a blight that extinguished the hope generated by the revolution, observing that sexual harassment was worse than ever. The demonstrations and a petition that got over 22 million signatures was organized by the youth group Tamarod, meaning “Revolution” or “Rebel.” It was founded in April 2013 by members of Kefaya, according to some reports. The name came from a Syrian youth magazine. Yara explained that Tamarod’s purpose was to contradict the Brotherhood’s claim that they controlled the streets with their large numbers, versus just a bunch of kids. People responded because they were so frustrated with the MB and President Morsi; Amal noted Egyptians are not extreme Islamists.
President Morsi was ousted by the military in July, following huge demonstrations against Morsi’s attempt to Islamize Egypt, roll back women’s rights, and his declaration in November 2012 that he could take any measures to protect the revolution. General Sisi said at a press conference announcing deposing Morsi that the army acted after “consultation with national and political powers and youths.” He asked youth leaders like Ahmed Maher to go on a Western tour to announce that the people were behind Sisi, but of course Maher refused. Yara said around 10 to 15 people who had participated in Jan25 got together, not associated with any particular group. Mahmoud Badr reported on a video that five friends got together to organize Tamarod and they had about 50 people at their first meeting.[87] Badr and another founder, Mohamed Abdel Aziz, were later appointed to the post-coup constitutional reform committee. One of the founders is Ahmed al-Masry who is seen in a video about them.[88] Their goal was to call for early elections because, “Our generation will not stand for tyranny and will keep fighting for our beliefs.”
Since youth activists know each other around the country, they phoned their network, expanding to 100 to 200 people, including Yara, who circulated petitions to oust Morsi. Most were students including around 40% young women, Yara reported, but a video of the Tamarod leaders who initiated the protests that unseated Morsi only shows one woman. A member of the executive committee, Ahmed Abdo said they voted to start pressuring the new government by presenting initiatives, as with their ”Write your Constitution” campaign to give citizens feedback on drafts of the new constitution.[89] He said they had direct lines of communication to the new leaders via their spokesperson Mahmoud Badr. They asked MB youth to go home to stop violence and not carry guns to sit-ins. They joined with Mona Seif and her “No to Military Tribunals for Civilians” group aiming for the release of civilians from military prisons.
The Tamarod petition listed problems associated with Morsi: no dignity for the people, lack of security, poverty, economic collapse, order wasn’t restored, the economy was in crisis, and security forces who killed demonstrators weren’t punished. Unemployment was up, to over 13%. The youth knew the petitions themselves wouldn’t do anything because Morsi wasn’t following the constitution, but they had Tahrir Square. Tamarod said they got 22 million signatures, standing in the streets, sometimes blocking traffic and also collecting signatures online. Some trade unions helped collect signatures and encouraged participation in anti-Morsi demonstrations. Independent unions multiplied, leading strikes and advocating for labor rights in the constitution.
Media savvy, Tamarod delivered the signatures along with a black balloon to signal a dark day, a red card meaning no, and a whistle as their only weapon. Ahmed al-Masry, a co-founder, said the people gave up on Morsi because “No one is heard but the president and his tribe.” Graffiti read “Fuck you Morsi” and “Obama supports dictator Morsi.” Some protesters said that by ignoring youth demands, the US contributed to the rise of the MB. One of the demonstrators told The Guardian newspaper, “The 2012 elections were unfair. The MB distributed oil and water to the poor people—they bought their loyalty. The cabinet was all MB and his clan.” Unemployment and food prices were increasing and the economy worsening. Tamarod succeeded in mobilizing such a huge crowd that it led to Morsi’s ouster in a military coup.
However, Tamarod was tainted by funding from the security forces who used them to get rid of Morsi. (The US continues to give over a billion dollars each year for mostly military and some economic aid, second only to aid to Israel.) Interior Minister Muhammad Ibrahim and the generals were behind the Tamarod petition campaign, with their secret police infiltrating the group.[90] A wealthy businessman ally of Mubarak paid for Tamarod TV ads on his TV station and newspaper, and provided office space, although he said they didn’t know he was their benefactor.
How was Tamarod able to mobilize such a huge and successful campaign around Egypt? The spokespersons had no previous visibility: Mohammed Abdelaziz, Mai Wahba, Hassan Shaheen, Eman El-Haghy, and spokesman Mahmoud Badr were not household names. Adel Iskandar asked, “What distinguished a community of activists from slacktivists?” By the time of the first anniversary of the July 3 coup demonstrations, about 40% of Egyptians had access to the Internet, but Tamarod focused on their cell phones and the streets. They publicized phone members of their local members so the public could call and ask questions. They used the successful tactic of an earlier campaign called Askar Kazeboon (Military are Liars) that screened videos of military brutality in thousands of public areas as well as online.
Paper petition drives were not new either; for example, ElBaradei led such a petition campaign in 2009 to 2010. Young people stopped drivers on the street to sign petitions. Signers bravely included their national identification numbers thereby risking retribution. A cartoonist named Andeel said, “What we are witnessing today is a defeat of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and a thunderous triumph for Xerox.” Tamarod also aimed to appear on all the private TV talk shows to discuss the petition drive and inspired songs, poems, graffiti, poster art, street theater and other public art. Islamist groups created an unsuccessful campaign called Tagarod (Emptiness) to gather petitions in support of Morsi. Tens of thousands of people downloaded a new Android game app called Tamarrad where petition signature gathers try to avoid running into sheep (the term used to describe MB supporters); the punishment in the game is a Morsi quote.[91] Tamarod asked demonstrators not to carry any symbols of political affiliation, but in October 2013 Tamarod talking about forming a new political party.
Videographer Karin Muller filmed the protests against Morsi, shown in her film Egypt Beyond Pyramids.[92] She reported thatyoung men took a leading role, although they were only about 15% of protesters. The spontaneous protest used the slogan Game Over. The demonstrations against the Muslim Brotherhood seemed more like a party than a revolution, with face painting for kids, flags, dancing to tambourines, noisemakers, fireworks, balloons, masks, puppets, food and tea. The atmosphere was electrifying, a time of hope. At that time the army was popular so the crowd cheered when helicopters flew overhead.
After three days in Tahrir, Morsi was removed in a military coup. The crowd went wild and the MB was labeled a terrorist group. Muller pointed out that only one-third of the 70,000 university graduates find a job. After five days, the first shot was fired, and the party, children and fireworks disappeared. Rage and frustration prevailed in the square with attacks on women; Dozens were gang raped. Young MB men gathered on roads and bridges to fight as ambulances waited on the side. A few men locked arms to protect women but what Muller called the wilding went on until dawn. When she visited a village along the Nile, someone yelled out that she was a spy and mob attacked her, breaking her back and ribs.
The military has more power than the Interior Ministry’s security forces. It’s the tenth-largest military in the world and has huge undocumented economic holdings estimated to include 20 to 40% of the country’s assets. SCAF took over government led by General el-Sisi. The US national security adviser to President Obama gave his approval for the Egyptian military coup after the June 30 demonstrations.[93] The US refused to call the July 3, 2013, military takeover a coup because the government would have to cut off aid, although over 51 protesters were killed by five days after the coup. On June 8 Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed that Egypt’s military would receive the usual $1.3 billion (mostly for military aid) and the UAE and Saudi Arabia gave $8 billion to the military government. US State Department funds were used to fund Morsi opponents in the “democracy assistance” program.[94] One of the recipients was Esraa Abdel-Fatah, age 34, head of the Egyptian Democracy Academy. She was a member of ElBaradei’s Al-Dostor Party, which called for laying siege to mosques that supported Morsi’s proposed constitution and supported the military takeover.
Under military rule after July 2013, the government prohibited demonstrations and free speech, disbanded parliament, limited protests, defined civil disobedience as terrorism, fired judges who advocated democracy, and jailed MB protesters and liberal youth who protested the ban on protests. Sisi called in Ahmed Maher and other protest leaders to praise them and ask them to stop demonstrating to stand together against enemies, which they rejected. General el-Sisi said he would do all he could “to empower the youth to take part in state institutions and to be key players in the process.”[95] He said the military didn’t want to rule Egypt but was answering the people’s “call for help.” He was also the general who in April 2012 defended virginity tests for young women demonstrators in a nonsensical argument that the tests would “protect the girls from rape.” Both his public and leaked statements make it clear he believes he is a father responsible for directing his morally flawed people. In a leaked statement to other officers he said he was like “the very big father who has a son who is a bit of a failure and does not understand the facts.”[96] He believes the voice he heard in a dream telling him, “We will give you what we have given to no other.”
More than 1,000 MB protesters were killed with live ammunition during a demonstration in August 2013 in Rabaa, leading President Obama to suspend military aid for two years. At least 60 journalists were also silenced, including 20 Al Jazeera journalists imprisoned under the guise of protecting national security from terrorists. A blogger called Zeinobia said it was the “day that changed Egypt forever unfortunately.” Coptic churches were also attacked. By December dissent was effectively outlawed and youth activists were arrested for violating the protest law that required government permission to demonstrate. The official media accused April 6 leaders of working with the MB. Critical academics and human rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Oxfam were also persecuted. An Irish teen who was jailed in 2013 after a mass trial with 493 other prisoners, Ibrahim Halawa described the torture he experienced and witnessed in Egyptian prisons.[97] He and his three sisters joined him in two demonstrations while they were on a visit to Egypt. On August 13 around 1,000 demonstrators were killed and the Halawa siblings were arrested and tortured.
The “Revolution Path Front” was formed in September 2013 to prevent the revolution from being hijacked again, proposing an “Egyptian Bill of Rights.”[98] They called for a redistribution of wealth. At a press conference of “left” activists, they stated that although millions took to the streets in January 2011 and June 2013, “It has been two-and-a-half years since the revolution began and Egyptians have not yet achieved their dream of building a new republic that will provide them with democracy, justice and equality.” They blamed the MB and the military. About 150 founding members belonged to various groups including April 6 movement, The Revolutionary Socialists, Justice and Freedom Youth, and Strong Egypt Party. Yara said she had heard of them, “A lot of people have given up though and just feel like all this isn’t going to work. We are all very frustrated, as you can imagine.”
Outcome of the Revolution
Egypt under el-Sisi is in many ways more oppressive than under Mubarak, silencing journalists and democracy organizations. Judges sentence hundreds of defendants in short mass trials, and ban groups like Human Rights Watch from entering the country to research slaughter of protesters.[99] The 900 students arrested in 2014 remained in jail without trial, along with somewhere between 16,000 and 40,000 political prisoners.[100] Code Pink reported that over 2,500 civilians were killed in protests in the year following the 2013 coup.[101] Egyptian Women Against the Coup criticized beatings and sexual harassment of female prisoners, and not being allowed to use the bathroom for ten hours at night. Some leaders of Jan25 are so unhappy with the outcome they’ve joined ISIS, like Ahmed Darawy who came from a well-educated wealthy family. Photos of him as a jihadi are online.[102] However, teacher Amal said the country is stable.
On a legal technicality, President Mubarak and his sons were acquitted of all crimes in November 2014, including corruption and ordering the killing of around 900 protesters in 2011. The court referred to the uprisings as part of a regional “American-Hebrew plot” designed to destabilize the region in support of Israel.[103] In protest, the Salafis organized the first major anti-government demonstrations in months. Around 2,000 young people protested the court’s verdict near Tahrir Square, which was closed off. The theme was “Muslim Youth Uprising,” and unlike the first Tahrir protests, protesters were asked to hold their Qurans in the air. Security forces squelched the demonstrations, killing at least two people. Many concluded the Jan25 revolution was dead. Two years later Morsi was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the deaths of protesters in 2012. He faced other charges, including organizing a jailbreak during the 2011 revolution. Human rights groups report the military punishment of the MB led to the deaths of over 1,400 people and the arrest of 22,000 others, including around 200 people sentenced to death in unjust mass trials.[104]
The Jan25 revolution became a symbol of failure. A leader of the Lebanese “You Stink!” protests against lack of government provision of basic services, especially garbage disposal, said, “This is not similar to what happened in Egypt or elsewhere where people were manipulated, or without greater political awareness.”[105] In contrast, he described the Lebanese movement as, “a sort of popular revolution, a mix of many movements – some anarchic in the good philosophical sense such as the refusal of the centralized power – it’s really a grassroots movement so I don’t think its going to stop. The movement will grow.” The same could be said for Jan25, so he didn’t identify the problem, the lack of a strategic plan for how to replace Mubarak’s rule.
Young people initiated and organized the revolution, but were supported on the streets by millions of people of all ages, the middle-class and people from poor neighborhoods, and by unions. The military decided that Mubarak and then Morsi should step down and they’ve maintained power ever since. An optimist, Philip Rizk, a Cairo activist, concluded that although fascism is rising around the world, the people have newly found solidarity since the revolution and the police state is shaken to its core. It can’t return to the past. Elaa Abdel Fattah, the well-known activist and blogger who was jailed for inciting violence, predicted, “I don’t think that this revolution is going to end without really completely renegotiating the order of power in Egypt and across the Arab world.”
From the grassroots some neighborhood committees that formed to fill the vacuum of police absence during the revolution continued as neighborhood watches and community development groups, serving as watch dogs against corrupt local officials. The biggest rally in two years denounced President Sisi, with over a thousand people in downtown Cairo, including some MB members, in April 2016. Fifty-one of the protesters were sentenced to two years in prison. Protesters revived the old slogan “The people want the fall of the regime,” motivated by increasing criticism of the president for giving two islands to Saudi Arabia, the poor economy, and mishandling the murder of an Italian student. A spokesman for a coalition of opposition political parties, Khaled Dawoud explained, “It’s about the overall performance of President Sisi, the way he treats us, the unilateral decisions, the arrests of young men and women.”[106] In June of 2016 high school students protested corruption in the inadequate education system, but police quickly dispersed them with tear gas.
Gene Sharp was proven correct that when people no longer fear a dictator and undermine his pillars of support, his power collapses. However, the young revolutionaries weren’t able to follow through with his advice to make careful plans, initially trusting the military because of its support for ousting Mubarak. The revolutionaries weren’t able to unify in a political party to represent their liberal goals, so the long established and well organized MB and then the military general got the most votes. “We didn’t have a vision. We didn’t have an answer for what comes next,” said Walid Shawky, a member of the April 6 leadership. Many of the tens of thousands of young people who joined the movement after the revolution left people in despair, desire for stability, or fear of the Sisi regime.
Interviews with 40 young activists (15 were female) from October 2013 to February 2014, after the Sisi coup, reported that they coped with the trauma of the failure of the revolution by withdrawing from politics and numbing their feelings.[107] Many of them suffered violence at the hands of the regime, including tear gas, torture, and rape of both sexes. Many had friends and family who were also injured or killed or who opposed their politics. Despite their trauma, mental health services were lacking. One of the interviewees explained that things got worse since the revolution and SCAF’s take over, plus the cost of living increased: “so all these people died for nothing and all these people will die for nothing. And this gets me like no hope.” Another young man said, “I don’t think that this country has any hope, has any, any, any hope, unless young people are in power. After the revolution those people were very resistant to the idea of change.” Many gave up despite the fact that many young people criticized their parent generation for being apathetic.
Ahmed Hassan said in the documentary The Square that the biggest victory is that kids play a game call “protest,” with the army fighting the MB. In his book Once Upon a Revolution, Thanassis Cambanisdescribes two male activists–one went into exile and the other ran again for parliament in 2015. He confirms that oppressive forces are back in power. What has changed four years later, despite thousands in jail for demonstrating without a permit, is people are still willing to protest. Before Jan25, “it was unthinkable that even one person would speak out. The genie can’t be put back in the bottle.” Relying on social media, the Al-Dostour Party launched an “Our youth in prisons” campaign in the summer of 2015. The party said the government uses security problems to tighten controls and ignore the constitution.
A rare sight, a protest against the ban on protests briefly shut down Tahrir Square in late 2015 and around 100 students with masters’ degrees demonstrated in March of 2016 to demand jobs. Their slogan was, “Kill hope, kill dreams, our country is against knowledge.”[108] Government austerity cuts in imports increased the cost of living and cut jobs. One student demonstrator’s solution is to look for a job abroad: “If I find one, I’m never coming back,” said Abu Zeid, who was arrested for demonstrating for a government job. An increasing number of teenage boys are migrating to Europe, drawn by friends’ photos of an appealing lifestyle in Italy posted on social media, leaving some villages are without teen boys.
In summary, Egypt’s revolution got rid of Mubarak and Morsi, but the military remained in power, jailing young liberal activists and imposing mass death sentences after short deliberations. A court declared Mubarak was not guilty of permitting the death of over 900 Jan25 demonstrators in March 2017, leading to the declaration the revolution was over. An activist named Mohamed tweeted, “Mubarak on the asphalt, and the youths are in prison.” The response of many educated youth is to want to leave the country. Unemployment and utility and fuel costs remain high. In a televised speech in 2016, El-Sisi warned Egyptians they lived in a broken country surrounded by enemies, just a semblance of a state that requires law and order and strong institutions.[109] But youth influenced global uprisings and believe they eventually will succeed in establishing democracy after older people leave power. Blogger Lina Attalah said that although youth are called losers in their “dazed revolution,” as long as they read and write, they remain the children of “bold adventures and impossible dreams.”[110]
Since they can’t protest in person, they use social media. For example, protests against decaying infrastructure, especially hospitals, take the form of posting photos on Facebook in the “So if he comes, he will not be surprised” campaign. The title refers to Sisi’s surprise at the poor conditions in two Cairo hospitals he visited in June 2015. Despite so many “things that people want to scream about,” Facebook is the only way to be heard by people in power, according to Rasha Abdulla, a professor at the American University in Cairo.[111] She said there are no government checks and balances. One of the pictures showed packed lecture halls and a student affairs staff member going shopping during office hours. President el-Sisi declared 2016 the “year of the youth,” promising financial aid and educational opportunities in a January speech, joking, “You don’t have any excuse now” to protest.
But many reasons to protest include how Generation Protest became Generation Jail. Worse than the Mubarak regime, human rights groups claim that about 60,000 political prisoners are in jail, compared to about one-sixth of that number at the end of Mubarak’s reign.[112] Peaceful teenage demonstrators are sentenced to years in jail, called terrorists and anarchists. In contrast, Mubarak’s police would only jail them for a few days. Human rights groups that try to defend the protesters are squelched by the regime, such as freezing their bank accounts. Ahmed Maher, a leader of the April 6 Youth Movement, was sentenced in 2013 to three years in jail for illegal demonstrating and rioting, placed in solitary confinement, but he somehow smuggled out messages. Out of prison, for three more years, he has to stay at the local police station 12 hours of each day because the regime explained to him, “tweets can lead to demonstrations, and demonstrations can lead to revolution, and that will bring down the regime and create martyrs.” The regime claims to save Egypt from falling apart like Syria and Libya and preserve traditional values by attacking homosexuals, similar to Russia. In 2017 Maher said that he feels anger growing against el-Sisi and support for rebels like him and that the revolution was worth it, because “It created a feeling, a space, even if we don’t have that now.” He quoted Samuel Huntington’s The Third Wave (1991), stating that the waves of revolution are greater than waves of counterrevolution. However, Sisi won re-election in 2018 by not permitting viable opponents like Putin in Russia. Like Putin, he staged media images of him as a strong leader, posing in front of the pyramids and in front of a boat on the Suez Canal.
Wael Ghonim wrote in 2018,
The opposition groups were blinded by the January 25th victory. They didn’t trust each other and lacked empathy. Sometimes I found myself lacking empathy too. We were all practicing one form or another of what we criticized the Mubarak regime of doing. …Heartbroken and devastated, I was depressed. But today, I chose not to give up. I’m not giving up on Egypt because it was naïve to think that 30 years of dictatorship will be toppled in a few days, and its equally naïve to think that one of the biggest events in the modern history of Egypt have failed just after a few of years. I’m not giving up on a world in which the power of the people is greater than the people in power.[113]
To keep current, check online sites such as the Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel, Al Jazeera English, and the Khaled Said Facebook page. Akram reports one can follow all the news on Egyptian Chronicles.[114] The next chapter looks at Sub-Saharan Africa with many countries with youth bulges living in poverty.
Discussion Questions and Activities
- Young Egyptians quoted in the chapter seem to blame the older generations for the failure of the revolution. Agree or disagree?
- Student activists said there were no leaders except the Tunisian example. Agree or disagree?
- What motivated an teenage activist like Yara to risk her life in Tahrir Square?
- When police forces are violent, do you think nonviolent protests should be put aside to retaliate?
- Discuss international influences on the Egyptian youth revolutionaries, including training by US agencies.
- President Morsi was the first democratically elected non-military president. Was the coup necessary? Would you have supported it if you were the US president?
Activities
- Watch my interview with young activists. What themes do you hear?[115]
Compare with a more traditional Nubian young woman who lives on a small island near Aswan.
- Watch a few of the videos about the revolution, looking for how youth were able to topple Mubarak.
Videos about the revolution include ½ Revolution about a group of demonstrators in January who understood that the revolution is incomplete; Tahrir 2011: The Good, the Bad and the Politician, a collection of handheld camera documentaries; Uprising (2013) Fredrik Stanton’s interviews with activists, and The Square (2013).
Endnotes
[1] David Kirkpatrick and David Sanger, “A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History,” New York Times, February 13, 2011.
[2] Linda Herrera. Revolution in the Age of Social Media. Verso, 2014, pp. 2-3.
Steven Swinford, “WikiLeaks: Egyptian ‘Torturers’ Trained by FBI,” The Telegraph, February 9, 2011.
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB9FJhSsHYs
Ahmed Raafat Amin was also interviewed by BBC, accompanied by his photo. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16275176
[5] Linda Herrera., p. 48.
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB9FJhSsHYs
[7] Derek Thompson, “How Families Spend,” The Atlantic, September 28, 2012.
[8] http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/in-tahrir-square-18-days-of-egypts-unfinished-revolution
[9] Sokari Ekine and Firoze Manji, The African Awakening. Pambazuka Press, 2011, p. 279.
[10] Amy Austin Holmes, “There are Weeks When Decades Happen: Structure and Strategy in the Egyptian Revolution,” Mobilization, Vol. 17, No. 4, 2012, pp. 391-410.
http://amyaustinholmes.com/wp-content-aah/uploads/2014/08/Austin-Holmes_Mobilization_final.pdf, p. 407.
[11] https://www.facebook.com/160382763986923/photos/a.297718913586640.81598.160382763986923/297718963586635/?type=3&theater
[12] Noha Atef, “In Egypt the People are Taking Control,” Pulse Wire, February 1, 2011.
http://www.worldpulse.com/magazine/articles/in-egypt-the-people-are-taking-control
[13] Rami el-Amine and Mostafa Henaway, “A People’s History of the Egyptian Revolution, Tadamon, July 26, 2011.
http://www.tadamon.ca/post/9458
[14] Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock. Youth Rising? The Politics of Youth in the Global Economy. Routledge, 2015, p. 101.
[15] Linda Herrera., p. 12.
[16] www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrNz0dZgqN8
In a six-part video Ahmed Maher tells the history of the April 6 Movement from 2005, working with Kefaya and labor organizations to conduct peaceful demonstrations and strikes.
[17] Rogan Motis, “The Space Between Revolution and Resolution,” CIPE Development Blog, July 8, 2013.
http://www.cipe.org/blog/2013/07/08/the-space-between-revolution-and-resolution/#.Vnc7X_HoNQI
[18] Emma Hughes, “Egypt: The Revolution is Alive,” Redpepper.org, February 2013.
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/egypt-the-revolution-is-alive/
A talk given in Germany in January 2012 posted on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TMd05N-enQ
[19] Linda Herrera, p. 22.
[20] Shadi Hamid, “In Egypt, Mubarak’s Regime May Be a Vitim of Its Own Success,” Brookings, July 29, 2010.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2010/07/0804-mubarak-regime-hamid
[21] Hossam Elsayed Shahin, speaking at a Fairleigh Dickinson panel on “Winds of Change: The Role of Arab Youth in the Future of the MENA Region,” November 7, 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRKLQ2hvMZQ
[22] Emad Mekay, “Exclusive: US Bankrolled Anti-Morsi Activists,” Al Jazeera, July 10, 2013.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/07/2013710113522489801.html
[23] Srdja Popovic, “A New Chapter of People Power,” The European, May 3, 2012.
http://theeuropean-magazine.com/571-popovic-srdja/570-global-non-violent-activism
[24] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1843487/
[25] https://www.facebook.com/pages/April-6-Youth-Movement/199378773499996
[26] Alexis Madrigal, “Egyptian Activists’ Action Plan Translated,” The Atlantic, January 27, 2011. Its goals for civil disobedience included take over important government buildings, win over police and army, protect demonstrators, and shout positive slogans with large groups. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/01/egyptian-activists-action-plan-translated/70388/
[27] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2011/02/11/egypts-revolution-vindicates-gene-sharps-theory-of-nonviolent-activism/
[28] Samir Amin, “2011: An Arab Springtime?,” Pambazuka News, June 8, 2011.
http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category.php/features/73902
[29] James Youniss and Brian Barber, Egyptian Youth Make History,” Harvard International Review, March 30, 2013.
http://hir.harvard.edu/archives/3079
[30] Wael Ghonim, “Inside the Egyptian Revolution,” TED Talk, March 2011. http://www.ted.com/talks/wael_ghonim_inside_the_egyptian_revolution?awesm=on.ted.com_9CSI&utm_campaign=wael_ghonim_inside_the_egyptian_revolution&utm_content=ted.com-talkpage&utm_medium=on.ted.com-twitter&utm_source=search.twitter.com
[31] Tony Cartalucci, “US Planned Syrian Civilian Catastrophe Since 2007,” Land Destroyer Report, September 4, 2013. (The accuser was Dr. Webster Tarpley of World Crisis Radio)
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2013/09/us-planned-syrian-civilian-catastrophe.html
[32] David Kirkpatrick and David Sanger
[33] Marilyn Vogt-Downey, “Egypt: Revolution Versus the Counterrevolution in the Age of Social Media,” CounterPunch, December 3, 2014.
Egypt: Revolution Versus the Counterrevolution in the Age of Social Media
[34] Linda Herrera, p. 38.
[35] Herrera, pp. 54, p. 62.
[36] www.facebook.com/pages/Khaled-Said/100792786638349
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=146499585362420&id=133634216675571&ref=mf
[37] Mark Engler and Paul Engler, “Did Nonviolence Fail in Egypt?” Dissent Magazine, February 24, 2014.
Did Nonviolence Fail in Egypt?
[38] Nick Gass, “Egypt’s President,” Politico.com, September 22, 2016.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-praises-egypts-al-sisi-hes-a-fantastic-guy-228560
[39] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25212247
[40] David Kirkpatrick, “US Citizen, Once Held in Egypt’s Crackdown, Becomes Voice for Inmates,” New York Times, August 28, 2015.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/david_d_kirkpatrick/index.html
[41] Asef Bayat. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford University Press, 2013, p. 122.
[42] Linda Herrera, p. 5.
[43] Emad Mekay, “Facebook’s Arab Spring Role was Minimal,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2012.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/13/INKR1MKGSI.DTL
[44] Linda Herrera, p. 11.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzdOLXLoes&feature=related A TV interview
43 Hazem Kandil, “Revolt in Egypt: Interview,” New Left Review, April 2011. Interview, http://newleftreview.org/II/68/hazem-kandil-revolt-in-egypthttp://newleftreview.org/II/68/hazem-kandil-revolt-in-egypt
[46] www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjIgMdsEuk
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/revolution-in-cairo/day-to-day/
[47] Leila Fadel, “Asmaa Mahfouz, Egyptian Youth Activist, is Charged by Military Prosecutor,” The Washington Post, August 14, 2011.
[48] www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/2011/02/egypts-facebook-faceoff-video.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/revolution-in-cairo/?autoplay
[49] www.youtube.com/watch?v=J56oGIznUOQ
[50] David Kirkpatrick and David Sanger
[51] David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh, “In Egypt, A Chasm Grows Between Young and Old,” New York Times, February 16, 2014.
[52] http://beta.18daysinegypt.com/#
[53] http://www.half-revolution.com/about.html
http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2011/tahrir2011thegoodthe
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/23/25-best-arab-spring-photos/
[54] David Kirkpatrick and Michael Slackman, “Egyptian Youths Drive the Revolt Against Mubarak,” New York Times, January 26, 2011.
[55] Amy Austin Holmes, pp. 391-410.
[56] Anya Schifrin and Eamon Kircher-Allen. From Cairo to Wall Street: Voices From the Global Spring. The New Press, 2012.
[57] Bel Trew, “Jawad Nabulsi: Egypt’s Urban Activist,” Middle East Institute, March 18, 2014.
http://www.mei.edu/content/jawad-nabulsi-egypt%E2%80%99s-urban-activist
[58] Susana Galan, “’Today I have seen Angels in Shape of Humans:’ An Emotional History of the Egyptian Revolution through the Narratives of Female Personal Bloggers,” Journal of International Women’s Studies, Vol. 13, No. 5, October 2012, p. 22.
http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=jiws
[59] Mohamed el-Beltagy quoted in Kurt Andersen, “The Protester,” Time magazine, December 14, 2011.
www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,…
[60] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rEKmTBKiBM
[61] http://blogs.wsj.com/dispatch/2011/02/08/the-interview-with-wael-ghonim-that-galvanized-protesters/
[62] “Wael Ghonim: Inside the Egyptian Revolution”
[63] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/02/wael-ghonim-google-egypt-interview-free.html
[65] Hazem Kandil, “Revolt in Egypt: Interview,” New Left Review, April 2011. Interview, http://newleftreview.org/II/68/hazem-kandil-revolt-in-egypthttp://newleftreview.org/II/68/hazem-kandil-revolt-in-egypt
[66] Thanassis Cambanis, “Egypt’s Revolutionary Elite and the Silent Majority,” Middle East Institute, August 1, 2011.
http://www.mei.edu/content/egypts-revolutionary-elite-and-silent-majority
[67] Mark Engler and Paul Engler, “Did Nonviolence Fail in Egypt?,” Waging Nonviolence, February 21, 2014.
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/nonviolence-fail-egypt/
[68] Zina Sawaf, “Youth and the Revolution in Egypt,” Contemporary Arab Affairs, January 9, 2013.
DOI: 10.1080.17550912.2013.746198
[69] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScYBkYa8cA
[70] “Illiteracy Rate Among Egyptian Middle Schoolers Spikes to 35 Percent,” Egyptian Streets, October 19, 2015.
Illiteracy Rate Among Egyptian Middle Schoolers Spikes to 35 Percent
[71] News Desk, “A Region in Upheaval,” Global Post, February 15, 2011.
[72] “The Raison D’etre of the Youth Movements in the Arab Citizen Revolt,” Gallup, 2011.
[73] James Youniss and Brian K Barber, “Egyptian Youth Make History,” Harvard International Review, March 30, 2013.
http://hir.harvard.edu/archives/3079
[74] Essam Fadl, “Asharq Al-Awsat [International Daily] Talks with Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement Founder Ahmed Maher,” October 2, 2011.
http://asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=3&id=24109
[75] Melissa Block, “Founder of Egypt’s April 6 Movement Weights In,” NPR, February 14, 2011.
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133756340?Founder-Of-Egypts….
[76] http://www.scribd.com/doc/205169333/Ahmed-Maher-Letters-From-Prison
[77] Bobby Ghosh, “Rage, Rap and Revolution: Inside the Arab Youth Quake,” TIME Magazine, February 17, 2011.
[78] The group representatives include Ahmed Maher and Mahmoud Samy from the 6 April Youth movement, ElBaradei supporters Ziad Alimy and Abdel Rahman Samir, Islam Lotfy and Mohamed Abbas from the Muslim Brotherhood, Shady Ghazali Harb and Amr Salah from the Democratic Front Party and from the Youth for Justice and Freedom. Additionally, Wael Ghoneim, one of the founders of the Facebook group “Kolona Khaled Said,” as well as independent activists Naser Abdel Hamid, Abdel Rahman Faris and Sally Moore are also members. Notice only two leaders are women.
The youth coalition included political activists such as the Facebook activists Wael Ghonim and Amr Salama; April 6 Youth movement general coordinator Ahmed Maher; Asmaa Mahfouz; media coordinator of the Public Independent Campaign for Supporting ElBaradei, Abdel-Rahman Samir; members of the Justice and Freedom group, and Democratic Front Party members Shady Ghazali Harb and Amr Salah.
Salma Shukrallah, Ahramonline, February 9, 2011
Their Facebook page also lists their goals and spokespersons. http://www.facebook.com/Coalition.Of.Youth.Revolution?sk=info
[79] http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54565
[80] http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/5257/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt-revolution-youth-form-national-coalition.aspxHoping
[81] Nur Laiq. Talking to Arab Youth: Revolution and Counterrevolution in Egypt and Tunisia. International Peace Institute, 2013, p. 8, p. 21.
[82] “Strong Egypt, Egyptian Current Merge Into New Party,” Ahram Online, October 1, 2014.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/112173.aspx
[83] Nur Laiq, p. 58.
[84] Paolo Gerbaudo, “The Impermanent Revolution,” The Free Library, March 22, 2012.
[85] Ahmed Abou Hussein, “The Thawra and Our Duty to invest in Youth,” in Werner Puschra and Sara Burke, eds. The Future We the People Need: Voices from New Social Movements.
Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, February 2013.
Click to access 09610-20130215.pdf
[86] Mark Beissinger, Amaney Jamal, and Kevin Mazur, “Who Participated in the Arab Spring? A Comparison of Egyptian and Tunisian Revolutions,” Princeton University, APSA conference paper, 2012.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2108773
[87] http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=tamarod+egypt&mid=449C5087F92A54E1850D449C5087F92A54E1850D&view=detail&FORM=VIRE6#view=detail&mid=8752D9215110605357AB8752D9215110605357AB
[88] http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=tamarod+egypt&mid=449C5087F92A54E1850D449C5087F92A54E1850D&view=detail&FORM=VIRE6
[89] Manar Ammar, “Egypt’s Tamarod Leaders Step Up,” Occupy.com, August 7, 2013.
http://www.occupy.com/article/egypts-tamarod-leaders-step-protest-movement-pressure-movement
[90] Dilip Hiro, “Clueless in Cairo,” Huffington Post, June 5, 2014.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dilip-hiro/clueless-in-cairo_b_5452036.html
[91] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.upfrontdesign.tamarrad&hl=en
[92] http://www.japanlandonline.com/japanlanddvd.html
[93] Horace Campbell, “Third Phase of the Egyptian Revolution: Is This the Path to War?”, Pambazuka, July 17, 2013.
http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category/features/88195
[94] Emad Mekay, “Exclusive: US Bankrolled Anti-Morsi Activists,” Al Jazeera, July 10, 2013.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/07/2013710113522489801.html
[95] Phyllis Bennis, “The Dangers in the Military Takeover in Egypt,” AlterNet, July 4, 2013.
http://www.alternet.org/dangers-military-takeover-egypt
[96] David Kirkpatrick, “Egypt’s New Strongman, Sisi Knows Best,” New York Times, May 24, 2014.
[97] “Irish Teen Facing Execution Describes ‘Crucifixions,’ Electrocution of Prisoners in Egypt,” Reprieve, November 13, 2015.
[98] “A Revolutionary Front in Egypt,” Socialist Worker, October 10, 2013.
http://socialistworker.org/2013/10/10/a-revolutionary-front-in-egypt
[99] Editorial Board, “Reining in Egypt’s Military Aid,” New York Times, October 4, 2014.
[100] “Protest Campaign—Egypt,” World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, February 6, 2015.
http://www.wan-ifra.org/articles/2015/02/06/protest-campaign-egypt-6-february-2015
[101] Medea Benjamin and Kate Chandley, “Behind the Egyptian Junta’s Iron Curtain,” Cope Pink, April 21, 2014. http://www.codepink.org/behind_the_egyptian_juntas_iron_curtain
[102] http://picturesdotnews.com/tag/ahmed-al-darawy/
[103] Hamza Hendawi, “Egypt’s Top Prosecutor to Appeal Mubarak Verdict,” Associated Press, December 2, 2014.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/egypts-top-prosecutor-appeal-mubarak-verdict-27301043
[104] “Egypt: Rights Body Highlights Violations and Torture,” African News, Aril 7, 2016.
http://www.africanews.com/2016/07/04/egypt-rights-body-highlights-violations-and-torture/
[105] Elsa Buchanan, “Lebanon You Stink Protests: We are not Egypt, Claims Activist Michel Elefteriades,” International Business Times, August 25, 2015.https://uk.news.yahoo.com/lebanon-stink-protests-not-egypt-143013617.html#hVVg7O8
[106] Kareem Fahim, “Egyptians Denounce President Sisi in Biggest Rally in 2 Years,” New York Times, April 15, 2016.
[107] Vivienne Mathies-Boon, “The Political is Personal: Trauma in Post-Revolutionary Egypt,” Working Paper.
[108] Ruth Michaelson, “The Seething Anger of Egypt’s Students Three Years After the Coup,” The Daily Beast, June 26, 2016.
[109] Liam Stack, “A Gloomy Egypt Sees Its International Influence Wither Away,” News Living, August 2, 2016.
http://www.newsliving.com/a-gloomy-egypt-sees-its-international-influence-wither-away/
[110] Lina Attalah, “Prison Flees: Reflections on Alaa, Activism, and Community,” Global Voices, January 9, 2014.
[111] Kareem Fahim and Merna Thomas, “Egyptians Turn to Facebook to Highlight Decrepit Public Services,” New York Times, July 24, 2015.
[112] This paragraph cites Joshua Hammer, “How Egypt’s Activists Became ‘Generation Jail,’” New York Times Magazine, March 14, 2017.
[113] Wael Ghonim, “Egypt’s Revolution, My Life, and My Broken Soul,“ Medium, March 20, 2018.
[114] www.egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com
[115] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScYBkYa8cA
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