Posts Tagged ‘Mohannad Sabry’
Little has Egypt to celebrate this January 25, 2014
CAIRO — As Egypt’s interim president and ministers of defense and interior celebrated the third anniversary of the January 25 Revolution, countless authors and TV show hosts continued to smear the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship.
On this day in 2011, Egyptians took to the streets and called for an end to decades of torture, killings and injustice, but now these authors and TV hosts accuse the revolution’s youthful participants of disloyalty, espionage and call for crushing those who dare criticize the police.
A woman mourns during the funeral of 5 Egyptian policemen who were killed when masked gunmen on motorbikes opened fire on a checkpoint, Beni Suef, Jan. 23, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Al Youm Al Saabi Newspaper)
“This terrorist attack is an attempt against the harmony and unity shown through the constitutional referendum, but it will only make us more persistent in our fight against terrorism,” said the official.
His comment was followed by random calls from listeners pledging to join the Jan. 25 celebrations in Tahrir Square and in every major square across the country. They called for celebrations in all Egypt’s squares — the squares that are remembered for being the sites of bloody confrontations over three years of unrest.
“Celebrating a constitution that never satisfied the wishes of the dead youth and was boycotted by those who are still alive,” said the cab driver. “What a pity!”
I looked at the driver, a grim man likely in his late 50s, and said, “If the radio audience heard us say that, we would be accused of disloyalty and supporting a terrorist organization.”
“That’s why I keep my mouth shut. I wouldn’t have hissed if I hadn’t seen that smirk on your face,” said the driver without looking at me.
I don’t know if the driver took me for a Muslim Brotherhood member because of the smirk, but it didn’t really matter. Members of the April 6 Movement, secular activists, high school students and even foreign correspondents are in Egyptian jails along with hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood officers and members.
The conflict between the government official’s comment on “harmony and unity” and the taxi driver’s confession to keeping his “mouth shut,” summed up the collective analysis of 3 Egyptians that I interviewed over the past three years.
I saw Egypt’s developments through their experiences, along with dozens of other activists and apolitical people.
The first was Mai Raafat, a woman in her early 30s who organized a campaign for securing medical treatment for the victims of the January 25 Revolution. Rafaat connected me with several victims, one of whom I featured in an article I wrote on the first anniversary of the revolution.
Back then, Rafaat’s campaign assisted dozens who were injured during the violent confrontations of January 2011, and provided aid for the families of dead protesters. Some of the volunteers running the campaign alongside Rafaat were themselves injured victims of the revolution.
Speaking to Rafaat by phone on Jan. 22, she wasn’t the enthusiastic and optimistic person I met in 2012. Instead, she was pessimistic and resentful as the revolution’s anniversary approached.
“Some of the victims continue to receive aid from nongovernmental organizations. Some lost hope in finding a job due to their disabilities and others prefer to live on minimal aid than take the few jobs offered by the government or outsourced by the organizations,” said Rafaat.
“We tried to resurrect the campaign in recent months but were shocked to see people refusing to donate blood because the victim we were trying to help was injured in the dispersal of the pro-[Mohammed] Morsi sit-in last August,” she said.
Rafaat’s words reminded me of Gaber Sayyed, a January 2011 victim whose surgery was canceled because pro-Mubarak nurses refused to treat him.
“They were humiliating me for being an [anti-Mubarak] protester,” he told me in a January 2012 interview at his house, where he was bedridden in a thigh-high cast autographed by his friends. One note read: “The police are thugs.”
As for Rafaat, she was in a position similar to the taxi driver’s: “Isolated, because if I defend an injured member of the Muslim Brotherhood, or am sympathetic to them, I would be accused of disloyalty and being a member of [a] terrorist organization.”
The second was Fouad Mokhtar, a private company employee who paid $600 to print a massive poster emblazoned with the names and photos of slain protesters. His poster was hung on the facade of a Tahrir Square building during the 18 days of the uprising, then pulled down and spread in the middle of the square before it disappeared.
Mokhtar, a 32-year-old who joined the protesters in Tahrir Square in January 2011, decided to boycott the constitutional referendum held less than two weeks ago. “I believe the referendum was a despicable show that I would have never taken part of,” said Mokhtar.
He recalled a story of a non-voter who was attacked by several supporters of the constitution in front of a polling station in Cairo’s southern district of Maadi.
“He was physically attacked by other citizens as the military and police personnel securing the polling station watched, just because he revealed his intention to vote against the constitution because it allowed military trials of civilians,” said Mokhtar. He said that Jan. 25, 2014 “will be a continuation, not a celebration.”
“This is a continuation of January 2011, not an anniversary,” he stressed.
The last of the three people I interviewed — who were all fierce critics of Mubarak, Morsi and the current interim, military-backed regime — is a Bedouin tribesman and Sinai activist who refused to have his name mentioned.
The revered tribesman, who took part in organizing the anti-Mubarak protests in North Sinai during the 18 days of protests, fled North Sinai after his house was shelled in the wide-scale military operation that kicked off in the aftermath of Morsi’s ouster on July 3, 2013.
This man who I met with countless times, spending several nights at his house in a remote North Sinai village — before it was destroyed along with dozens of Bedouin homes in September 2013 — spoke with me via the Internet and refused to reveal his location.
“There is no place for moderate speakers now. The stage is reserved for fanatics and propagandists of the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. The remnants of Mubarak’s regime are waging war on any form of change since 2011.”
He said, “Every drop of blood worsens the situation and further divides the country. Neither the constitution nor the anniversary and celebrations will absorb the anger of anyone who suffered injustice and remains without compensation, if not further violated.”
The last time we spoke was a few days after his house was destroyed last September. Back then, he told me that his house “is not the main issue. I could rebuild the house again, but what seems impossible is refilling the widening gaps between different sectors of the Egyptian people, and other gaps between the people and the state.”
Two days ago, he said he is “afraid Egypt is pacing toward another phase of civil strife, not nationwide celebrations.”
No to Sunni version of Wilayat Fakeeh in Egypt
Mohammad Morsi has been deposed by a military and mass protest that lasted more than a week. He had fled from prison two years ago as Mubarak was sacked.
Cartoon showing Morsi sleeping by Mubarak, and Mubarak telling him “Close your eyes and do as I did”
The extremist Supreme Guide murshid of the Moslem Brotherhood, Mohammad Badi3, is detained, along with 300 its cadres.
All the religious TV channels are temporary suspended.
Within a year, the elected president Morsi acted as if the executive branch for the Supreme Guide in all the critical political decisions.
Morsi quickly wrote a constitution to the Brotherhood dictates, alienated the Constitutional Supreme Court, dismissed the Prosecutor General, and broke diplomatic relation with Syria at the instigation of Mohammad Badi3.
During an entire year, Morsi demonstrated to the Egyptian that Egypt has substituted its political system to an Iranian Wilayat Fakeeh, the Sunni version and ruled by the imams and clerics of the Moslem Brotherhood.
It is to be noted that Iran took advantage of 8 years of protracted war with Iraq of Saddam Hussein to manage a transition to a Wilayat Fakeeh orientation.
Morsi wanted this transition to be done within a year, and with no war to back this emergency situation.
As millions of protesters converged on the streets of Egypt on June 30 to peacefully and boisterously demand the downfall of Egypt’s first elected president Mohammed Morsi, deadly clashes broke out in several spots across the volatile nation. Around midnight, the Muslim Brotherhood’s international headquarters, located in Cairo’s upscale Moqattam district, was in flames.
As massive clouds of smoke blew out of the iconic Guidance Bureau of the worldwide organization, the movement’s disciplined, listen-and-obey youth continued to fire live ammunition at the assaulters. No more Brotherhood reinforcements arrived at the burning headquarters, and armored vehicles of the Interior Ministry stood watching from a distance, a clear message that the police would no longer protect the ruling clique.
Eight anti-Morsi protesters were killed by live bullets, mostly to the head and neck, and more than 35 were wounded by live rounds and birdshot.
Calls for blood donations to the battle-neighboring hospital continued to circulate social media websites for hours. How the Muslim Brotherhood fighters evacuated their positions remains unknown, but one of them was caught by protesters trying to escape and was brutally stripped naked and stabbed before reaching the police station in critical condition.
Certain that the office-turned-barracks had been abandoned after hours of deadly fighting, opposition attackers and random angry passersby raided the building, and looted everything they came across. Stacks of confidential Muslim Brotherhood documents were photographed and set free to virally circulate the Internet. One document listed millions of dollars of financial gifts and grants made by Qatar’s Prime Minster, Emir Hamad Bin Jassim Al-Thani, to top Brotherhood and Morsi administration officers.
The authenticity of the document was never confirmed but the incident was definitely reminiscent of raiding the clandestine fortress of Hosni Mubarak’s State Security in March 2011; the freshly obtained Muslim Brotherhood leaks will virally spread for weeks.
Surprisingly, thousands of devoted Brotherhood members holding their sit-in a few miles away didn’t mobilize to protect their sabotaged minaret. Top officials like Khairat El-Shater, the organization’s most influential financier and deputy chairman, did not order their subservient youth to march in defense of either Islamic Sharia or political legitimacy, as they once did in December 2012 when they attacked an opposition sit-in at the east Cairo presidential palace, leaving a dozen protesters dead.
“They are in a state of shock, serious and unprecedented shock,” a sacked Muslim Brotherhood official who worked with both Morsi and El-Shater told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.
“They underestimated June 30, but it turned out to be a surprising blow that paralyzed their plans,” said the source who insisted on hiding his identity fearing Brotherhood retaliation amid the ongoing instability. “After months of undermining the opposition and people, no one could imagine the numbers and momentum of protests, and accordingly no one had a backup plan.”
The former Brotherhood official says the movement fears a disastrous post-Morsi future. “They will be hunted down and sent back to prison, by law for crimes committed during Morsi’s year in power, or in a state of lawlessness that the country will turn a blind eye on because of widespread and apparent hatred. They are coming to realize that they will reap what they sowed.”
“The developments were too fast, so that they didn’t have a chance to flee the country, like Mubarak’s officials who jumped ship early in January 2011,” the source said. “The military and police apparently locked Egypt up and Islamists are now on a turf that definitely doesn’t belong to them anymore, despite Morsi, who is now in a palace that doesn’t obey him, more of a temporary lock-up.”
Such anti-Morsi developments are not only limited to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The powerfully strategized, multibillion-dollar organization with its deep-rooted divisions in almost every country in the Arab and Islamic world and its worldwide businesses, either official or clandestine, is not fighting for Egypt’s presidential seat: It is fighting for an 8-decade global legacy that will imminently suffer the aftershocks of the popular quake jolting its murshid’s [supreme guide’s] historical fortress in Cairo.
“This is a major element in the Brotherhood’s calculation and this is their greater battle,” retired Col. Khaled Okasha, a security analyst and former head of North Sinai’s Civil Defense Department of the Interior Ministry, told Al-Monitor.
“The Egypt command, which is the only global command, has always been the source of power to all sub-divisions in other countries,” added Okasha. “If the Supreme Guide and his Cairo bureau are hit hard by Morsi’s downfall and all of the current situation’s political and social consequences, they will become nothing but a counselor to the international divisions that will then start working independently according to their pure domestic circumstances.”
“Egypt’s presidency, the biggest win in the Brotherhood’s history and the recently yet internationally recognized political umbrella for the Brotherhood worldwide, will be gone with Morsi leaving office.”
Okasha disputed that Morsi and his Islamist cronies will suffer exceptional oppressive measures after their much anticipated ouster. “Such exceptional oppression requires a decades-strong dictatorship like Mubarak’s, which you cannot build in a few weeks. That dictatorship was brought down in January 2011.”
“This orchestrated fear is mostly Morsi’s last card to maintain his supporters’ morale. The Brotherhood is leading a smear campaign against every scenario involving Morsi’s downfall.”
Okasha believes that, legally, the Muslim Brotherhood officers including Morsi, in case of his resignation, will stand dozens of trials that could extend for years, a scene very similar to Hosni Mubarak, his sons and regime members.
Over the past week, unconfirmed reports of Egypt’s Islamist figures on travel ban lists and Qatar demanding the departure of Youssef Al-Qaradawi, the influential Muslim Brotherhood cleric, have shed some light on repercussions that might possibly hunt the Muslim Brotherhood wherever they are.
The Gaza Strip’s Hamas Movement, the closest of the Middle East offshoots to the command in Egypt, stands first in the line after Morsi and the Guidance Bureau, and is desperately trying to avoid the looming domino effect.
“Hamas’s popularity in Gaza and Egypt continues to sink because of their shameless interference in defense of the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi and creating animosities with almost every non-Islamist power in Egypt. In addition to politics, the relations between the peoples of Egypt and Gaza were negatively impacted,” said Ahmed Ban, a researcher of Islamist movements who heads the Political and Social Movements Unit at the independent Nile Center for Strategic Studies.
“Hamas should hastily apologize to the Egyptian people and attempt fixing what it broke by interference in Egypt, if that’s possible, and if the situation worsens, it could be a start to the gradual end of Hamas’ rule over Gaza,” Ban told Al-Monitor.
“Moreover, the 80-year cartel imposed by Egyptians on the global Supreme Guidance in Cairo and the Guidance Council will be ended, possibly moved to another country, and accordingly limiting the majority of direct supply, political endorsement and the post-January 2011 refuge for Hamas.”
Signs of Hamas’ worsening situation have also surfaced in the past week.
On June 30, Egypt’s military deployed tanks at the Gaza border; the first appearance of Egyptian tank divisions in Sinai’s military-free Zone C since the Israeli withdrawal in 1982.
The exceptional deployment was ordered by the military shutting down the underground Rafah tunnels feeding Hamas’ armed militias with weapons and other logistics, and it coincided with the arrest of three different groups of Hamas armed members in different locations around Cairo on the same day, one the detained groups occupied an apartment close to the destroyed Brotherhood Cairo headquarters.
“They are in the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood’s battle to defend what remains of their temple, a battle viewed by Hamas as their own,” said Okasha, the retired colonel. “Morsi and the Brotherhood’s rule was a special, unprecedented win for Hamas, I don’t think they will rethink their position and withdraw from the scene at such a critical moment.”
As soon as the Egyptian military stepped in and declared a 48-hour ultimatum for Morsi to satisfy national demands, the sacked Muslim Brotherhood member reached out to Al-Monitor.
“The military just opened a less disastrous exit for Morsi, but he won’t take it,” the source said. “The Muslim Brotherhood is too blind to realize how weak its cards have become.”
Hours later, a presidential statement rebuffed the military’s clear warning.
Mohannad Sabry is an Egyptian journalist based in Cairo. He has written for McClatchy Newspapers and The Washington Times, served as managing editor of Global Post’s reporting fellowship Covering the Revolution, in Cairo, and contributed to its special reports “Tahrir Square” and “Egypt: The Military, the People.” On Twitter: @mmsabry
Stay tuned on the Egyptians: Perpetual successful revolutions
Since 2011, I declared that the revolution in Egypt will become the trademark of the successful upheavals in this century. And the Egyptians are back at it, one year after the election of Muhammad Morsi. https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/morsi-of-egypt-has-to-deliver-on-his-promise-if-the-people-gather-in-tahrir-square-as-during-the-intifada-on-mubarak-i-will-certainly-step-down/
June 30 proved to be very different from January 2011: This current mass uprising is dwarfing the previous huge and steady uprising. making it look like a minor protest in comparison. Tens of thousands of protesters spent the night in the epicenter of Egypt’s uprising, Tahrir Square. By noon, the square couldn’t take any more protesters, as dozens of marches kicked off from almost every neighborhood in Cairo. Until nightfall, masses continued to march to the presidential palace, everyone demanded President Mohammed Morsi’s downfall.
Mohannad Sabry posted for Al-Monitor this June 30, 2013: “Millions of Egyptians Demand Morsi’s Downfall”
Protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi wave Egyptian flags and shout slogans against him and members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, June 30, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
Chants condemning, mocking and harshly insulting Morsi and his organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, echoed across every major street in Cairo as the city was paralyzed by the marching masses.
The thunderous mantra, “The people demand the regime’s downfall,” was the only scene reminiscent of the 18-day January 2011 uprising that toppled Egypt’s three-decade dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.
In January 2011, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians held their ground in Tahrir Square until Mubarak resigned, but on June 30, significantly bigger crowds continued to occupy the square and hundreds of thousands occupied the streets surrounding the eastern Cairo presidential palace, a much anticipated scenario that forced Morsi to attend to his duties from the al-Quba Presidential Palace, a few miles away from where he usually appears.
Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s 2005 joint Nobel Peace Prize winner and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, along with Munir Abdel Nour, the prominent Wafd Party figure and former minister of tourism, and Ahmed Said, head of the popular Free Egyptians Party, led tens of thousands of protesters who gathered and marched from Giza’s Mohandessin district to Tahrir Square.
“Morsi is gone, long gone in the hearts, minds and lives of Egyptians; he is nothing but a nightmare that we just awakened from,” said Mohamed Abdelhakim, a 36-year-old engineer who pledged to remain on the streets until Morsi’s downfall.
“Soon, he will be kicked out of our presidential palace; he will live and die in disgrace,” said Abdelhakim as thousands chanted, “Leave, leave.”
The massive crowd was joined by thousands who marched from Giza’s Boulaq district, a few minutes before meeting tens of thousands heading to Tahrir Square from Giza Square. None of the three marches arrived at their target destination, Cairo’s famous Qasr al-Nil Bridge that witnessed deadly confrontations between Mubarak’s riot police and protesters on Jan. 28, 2011, which today was blocked by crowds that extended for hundreds of yards into the square.
Passing by police stations and security checkpoints, protesters shook the hands of officers and soldiers who waved victory signs at the marching crowds.
“Everyone hates him, even his own police who are known for corruption and brutality; everyone wants him to resign,” said Emad George, a 29-year-old accountant. He continued, “The Muslim Brotherhood accused us of being remnants of Mubarak’s dictatorship; we showed them that we are Egyptians, Muslims, Copts, atheists, even Islamists who are ashamed of Morsi, and how he divided the country and stood watching as people killed each other.”
In Cairo, it wasn’t only Tahrir Square — every major square hosted thousands of protesters. Other cities including the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria, the Nile Delta’s Mansoura, Mehalla and Tanta; Suez Canal’s Port Said, Suez and Ismailia; and Upper Egypt’s Assuit, Sohag and Menya witnessed unprecedented numbers marching in locations that have become known as revolutionary grounds since January 2011.
Violence was reported in Upper Egypt’s mainly Coptic city Beni Suef, where several Morsi supporters led by a Salafist cleric attacked an opposition march using firearms. One death and several gunshot wounds were reported among opposition protesters.
Dozens of angry protesters attacked the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo’s Moqattam district; they hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at the well-barricaded building. Unconfirmed reports alleged that Brotherhood members fired live ammunition at the attackers, no injuries or deaths were reported.
Ministry of Interior spokesman Maj. Mohamed al-Tonoubi told the local ONTV cable channel, “Police forces continue to secure the streets surrounding the Brotherhood office and curb any further violence.” He added, “Several men in possession of live ammunition, guns and Molotov cocktails were arrested earlier in a neighboring building.”
Meanwhile, a press conference held at al-Quba Palace, where Morsi was forced to relocate on June 29, triggered more anger among protesters and the opposition leaders.
“President Morsi recently called for national dialogue; we fully welcome all initiatives applied through the constitution and law,” said Ehab Fahmi, Egypt’s presidential spokesman.
“Dialogue is the only language to reach common understanding,” he added. He further threatened, “The state will not tolerate any form of violence or breaking the law.”
Fahmi denied rumors of sacking Prime Minister Hisham Qandil and his cabinet or appointing Defense Minister Abdul Fattah al-Sisi as a successor.
He added, “The military is responsible for securing the borders, and the presidency does not need their mediation with political parties.”
As Fahmi read the presidency’s lax message, military helicopters continued to fly at low levels all around the capital, especially above Tahrir Square and the eastern Cairo palace, where hundreds of thousands had gathered.
Several opposition parties and movements including the Wafd Party, April 6 Revolutionary Youth and Tamarod [Rebelion] Initiative, replied to the presidential statement by announcing their open-ended sit-ins until Morsi’s resignations.
“In the name of the Egyptian people, the National Salvation Front endorses the will of the masses that demand the downfall of Mohammed Morsi’s regime and his Muslim Brotherhood movement,” said a statement by the National Salvation Front, the opposition umbrella, in reply to the presidential remarks.
“The Egyptian people will continue to pursue its revolution and impose its will that was clearly shown in liberation squares across Egypt.”
Hamdeen Sabahi, the Nasserite presidential candidate who competed with Morsi in the first phase of the 2012 presidential elections, sent a short, loud and clear message from Tahrir Square. “Morsi should willingly resign, or he will be forced to.”
Mohannad Sabry is an Egyptian journalist based in Cairo. He has written for McClatchy Newspapers and The Washington Times, served as managing editor of Global Post‘s reporting fellowship Covering the Revolution, in Cairo, and contributed to its special reports “Tahrir Square” and “Egypt: The Military, the People.” On Twitter: @mmsabry
Adonis Diaries 