By William Fisher
The Egyptian military today faces the most formidable mission in its history. And how it acquits itself in carrying out this mission could well determine the success of the pro-democracy movement.
The stakes are enormous.
On the morning after President Hosni Mubarak’s confusing, often incoherent speech last night to hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators, the Egyptian military finds itself serving two masters. On the one side, Messrs. Mubarak, Suleiman, et al – i.e. The Regime. On the other, the Egyptian people – mobilized in their millions to demand real change they can believe in.
In the short term, the military will probably be prepared to support whatever reasonable actions Messrs. Mubarak and Suleiman think are needed to, at worst, maintain the status quo; at best, move the country toward creating the fertile soil in which democracy can flower.
Also in the short-term, I think we might now be reasonably assured that the military is not going to fire live ammunition into the Tahrir crowds, not going on a citywide sweep to arrest and detain – and torture -- human rights activists, and not hauling in the families of pro-democracy prisoners to threaten them with rape or worse.
But we should keep in mind that the military has already displayed its share of brutality against peaceful demonstrators in the current situation.
The Guardian reported that the Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the newspaper,
The Guardian says, “The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart. But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.”
The Guardian says it has spoken to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation. Human rights groups have documented the use of electric shocks on some of those held by the army.
But, we would all like to think that this is a new day, and that military brutality is not going to happen again.
Reigning in the dreaded police working for the incredibly cruel and unbelievably corrupt Ministry of Interior is another dangerous aspect of the Military’s mission. For the moment, we have to take it on faith that the Military has reached or will soon reach some agreement with the police that will result in the temping down of their more barbarian instincts.
So the Military is not going to fire into the demonstrators, nor are they going to arrest, detain and torture them. The Military will also see that the police change their modus operandi and show some respect for the protestors.
The Military will join Vice President Suleiman in exhorting the pro-democracy forces to go home, go back to work, etc. The demonstrators, smelling the blood of success, will quite likely ignore this advice, and instead expand their peaceful demonstrations to other venues beyond Tahrir, the Ministry of Information and the Presidential Palace.
Vice President Suleiman, meanwhile, may continue his meetings with component groups within the opposition, Constitutional committees, and other bodies yet to be created to figure out how to rescind the dreaded 30-year Emergency Laws and make arrangements for full and fair elections in September or later. (Or to give the appearance of being hard at work while actually accomplishing nothing.)
That remains to be seen. Another of the great unknowns is the sincerity and enthusiasm with which Suleiman takes on this job. Clearly, the language Suleiman has used toward the pro-democracy forces thus far does not inspire confidence. He told them to go home. He told them Egypt is not ready for democracy.
In the tiny sliver of this work he has tried to do thus far, he has left behind a bitter taste among his fellow conferees. He met with a delegation of pro-democracy forces last week, and immediately announced the group had reached a consensus about what had to be done. The group almost as immediately denied that any such consensus had been reached about anything.
And they noted that Sulieman always arranges to meet with elements of the opposition but never with the opposition in its entirety. Divide and conquer, perhaps, Mr. Sulieman?
The fact is that, to the millions who are protesting, Mubarak and Suleiman are Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. After both had spoken last night, one demonstrator told a TV report: “It’s as if Mubarak took Egypt from his right hand and gave it to his left. These two guys are one.”
And, indeed, that would be substantially correct.
While Suleiman’s prospective leadership during a “transition” government was widely applauded by Western and Middle East governments, including our own, there appears to be nothing in his background that suggests he knows anything about democracy or its introduction to Egypt.
First and foremost, Suleiman is a soldier. He was head of Air Force intelligence, and is a longtime friend and confidante of Mubarak and a close ally of Washington. At a time when the nation was battling Islamic extremists, in 1993, he took over as head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service. He is 74 years old and, like Mr. Mubarak, fought in two wars with Israel.
Sulieman has a deep suspicion about Iran. He supports Egypt’s current arrangements with Israel. He has been and wants to continue to be tough on the Muslim Brotherhood. He has dealt with Hamas, Hezbollah and Sudan.
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker writes, “Suleiman is a well-known quantity in Washington. “Suave, sophisticated, and fluent in English, he has served for years as the main conduit between the United States and Mubarak,” she writes.
“While he has a reputation for loyalty and effectiveness, he also carries some controversial baggage from the standpoint of those looking for a clean slate on human rights. As I described in my book ‘The Dark Side,’ since 1993 Suleiman has headed the feared Egyptian general intelligence service. In that capacity, he was the C.I.A.’s point man in Egypt for renditions -- the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances,” Mayer writes.
Mayer goes on to note that “Every rendition was greenlighted at the highest levels of both the U.S. and Egyptian intelligence agencies. Edward S. Walker, Jr., a former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, said that Sulieman was cognizant that there was a downside to ‘some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on’. But he was not squeamish, by the way."
Technically, Mayer writes, U.S. law required the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn’t face torture. But under Suleiman’s reign at the intelligence service, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. officer who helped set up the practice of rendition, later testified before Congress, even if such “assurances” were written in indelible ink, “they weren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”
In Ron Suskind’s book, “The One Percent Doctrine.” Katherine Hawkins, a sharp-eyed human-rights lawyer who did legal research for Mayer’s book, points out that, according to Suskind, Suleiman was the C.I.A.’s liaison for the rendition of an Al Qaeda suspect known as Ibn Sheikh al-Libi.
The Libi case is particularly controversial, in large part because it played a role in the building of the case for the American invasion of Iraq. It is generally considered a model of the proposition that torture is a very effective interrogation technique if falsehoods are the desired outcome.
Stephen Soldz, a Boston-based psychoanalysis and psychologist, notes that Suleiman's role was also highlighted in a Wikileaks cable, which said:
“In the context of the close and sustained cooperation between the USG and GOE on counterterrorism, Post believes that the written GOE assurances regarding the return of three Egyptians detained at Guantanamo represent the firm commitment of the GOE to adhere to the requested principles. These assurances were passed directly from Egyptian General Intelligence Service (EGIS) Chief [Sulieman] through liaison channels -- the most effective communication path on this issue. General [Sulieman’s] word is the GOE's guarantee, and the GOE's track record of cooperation on CT issues lends further support to this assessment.”
Meanwhile, the language used by Suleiman does not inspire confidence among the pro-democracy demonstrators. He has said he thinks Egypt is not ready for democracy. He has told the demonstrators to go home.
His detractors point to such language as indicators that he is not the man who can lead Egypt toward the future the demonstrators yearn for.
And, if this proves to be the case, Egypt would be left with one option: The Military would take control of the government and all the levers of power. They would vow to stay in power only until free and fair elections are held.
Given the blatant corruption and inhumane cruelty of the current regime, that would far from the worst outcome imaginable.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Monday, February 07, 2011
Why Israel Fears a Post-Mubarak Egypt
By William Fisher
One of my readers in the Netherlands posed a question about how a new post-Mubarak Egypt might impact Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. He wrote:
“I am again appalled by the lack of relation in the comments between the US position on Israel and Egypt, Mubarak. Why is everybody so afraid of that lobby you think?”
The lobby he was referring to is AIPAC, the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Council, which advocates for Israeli positions in the United States. AIPAC is the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., and is highly influential at many levels of U.S. Government, from Congress to the White House.
Why are the Israelis and AIPAC worried about the implications of the dramatic struggle currently pitting pro-Democracy Egyptians against those who support the government of President Hosni Mubarak.
The Israelis’ worst nightmare: A new regime comes to power in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood occupies a major position in a governing coalition. Egypt trashes its 32-year peace treaty with Israel, allows arms to be shipped from Egypt to Hamas in Gaza, and ends its role in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Is there any factual basis for Israeli fears? Research carried out in Egypt by the Pew Global Attitudes Project on “Egypt, Democracy and Islam,” may provide some answers.
Last Spring, Richard Auxier of the Pew Research Center examined the views of Egyptians and six other Muslim publics about politics and the role Islam should play in it.
They found that, while a 59%-majority of Muslims in Egypt believed that democracy was preferable to any other kind of government, 59 percent also said they back Islamists, and 95% of them said they would welcome Islamic influence over their politics.
Pew also found that 50 per cent of Egyptians support Hamas, 30 per cent support Hizbullah and 20 per cent support al Qaeda.
Eighty-two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves, and 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion, the Pew survey found.
The Pew researchers concluded that “The Islam [the Egyptians] support is “the al Qaeda Salafist version.”
They found that support for democracy was much lower among Egyptians than it is elsewhere in the Middle East. In Lebanon, 81% preferred it to any other kind of government. “In Turkey, 76% of Muslims supported it. Roughly two-thirds of Muslims also preferred democracy to any other kind of government in Jordan (69%), Nigeria (66%) and Indonesia (65%),” the research revealed.
Among the Muslim publics surveyed, only in Pakistan (42%) did fewer Muslims say democracy was preferable to any other kind of government than in Egypt.
Pew’s Auxier also found that, by wide margins, Muslims believed that Islam's influence in politics was positive rather than negative. In Egypt, Islam's role in politics was seen favorably by an overwhelming 85%-to-2% margin among Muslims, he wrote.
He also concluded:
Islam was seen as a positive rather than negative influence in politics by equally impressive margins in Indonesia (91% to 6%), Nigeria (82% to 10%), Jordan (76% to 14%) and Pakistan (69% to 6%).
Concerns about Islamic extremism -- both in their country and around the world -- were widespread in Egypt. About six-in-ten Egyptians were very (20%) or somewhat (41%) concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in their country.
By comparison, at least three-quarters in Lebanon (80%) and Nigeria (76%) were concerned about Islamic extremism in their nation, while less than half expressed such concern in Jordan (44%) and Turkey (43%).
Asked about extremism around the world, 30% of Egyptians were very concerned about Islamic extremism and 40% were somewhat concerned.
Large majorities in five of the other Muslim publics surveyed also expressed concern about Islamic extremism around the world. Only in Turkey did a majority not express concern.
Egyptians were split on how big a role Islam played in the political life of their country. Among Muslims in Egypt, 48% said Islam played a large role in their nation's political life while a nearly equal 49% said it played only a small role.
Divisions about the perception of Islam's role in politics were also seen in Lebanon and Pakistan.
In contrast, Muslims in Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey overwhelmingly agreed that Islam played a large role in their politics.
In Lebanon and Turkey, close to a third said that Islam had a negative influence in politics, but in both nations more believed Islam's influence was positive than said it was negative.
Respondents who had a positive view of Islam's influence included both those who said Islam was playing a large role in their country's political life and saw this as a good thing and those who said Islam was playing a small role and saw this as a bad thing. The reverse was true for those respondents who had a negative view of Islam's influence.
Asked whether there is a struggle in their nations between those who want to modernize their country and Islamic fundamentalists, a 61%-majority of Muslims in Egypt said they did not see a struggle. Just 31% of Egyptian Muslims saw a struggle between modernizers and fundamentalists in their country. Among the seven Muslim publics surveyed in 2010, only in Jordan (20%) did fewer say they saw such a struggle.
Among Egyptian Muslims who did see a struggle, a 59%-majority sided with the fundamentalists. Just 27% of those who saw such struggle sided with the modernizers.
This stands in sharp contrast with four other Muslim publics surveyed. Many more Muslims in Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia than in Egypt said they saw a struggle between modernizers and fundamentalists in their country.
In each of these nations, though, a majority of those seeing a conflict sided with the modernizers. Nigeria was the only other country surveyed in which a majority of Muslims who saw such a conflict identified with the fundamentalists.
Concerns about Islamic extremism -- both in their country and around the world -- were widespread in Egypt. About six-in-ten Egyptians said they were very (20%) or somewhat (41%) concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in their country.
By comparison, at least three-quarters in Lebanon (80%) and Nigeria (76%) said they were concerned about Islamic extremism in their nation, while less than half expressed such concern in Jordan (44%) and Turkey (43%).
Asked about extremism around the world, 30% of Egyptians said they were very concerned about Islamic extremism and 40% were somewhat concerned.
Large majorities in five of the other Muslim publics surveyed also expressed concern about Islamic extremism around the world. Only in Turkey did a majority not express concern, Auxier’s research found.
So are the worries of the Israelis and their U.S. spokesman justified?
Many observers believe that the Islamist component of the pro-democracy movement in Egypt does not bode well for Israel. They acknowledge that the Muslim Brotherhood appears to have moderated its strategy and tactics over the years. But they believe that the face the Brotherhood is currently showing to the world is simply a device to exploit the pro-democracy movement to their advantage. They do not trust the sincerity of the Brotherhood’s current leaders and deny that the Brotherhood now belongs in the mainstream of Egyptian politics.
They also believe that for every Egyptian who is a member of the Brotherhood, a majority of Egyptians are not members but agree with the organization’s objectives. They say that, outside Egypt, the Brotherhood’s main objective is to empower the Palestinians to defeat the Israelis.
This is the view that appears to have been adopted by those at the more conservative end of the U.S. political spectrum.
At the other end, many more liberal analysts contend that fears of the Muslim Brotherhood have been exaggerated and are being used as a scare tactic to turn international public opinion against President Mubarak’s immediate resignation.
The Brotherhood is officially illegal in Egypt. But it is tolerated and its members run for Parliament as “independents.”
These observers point out that, in elections in Egypt, the Brotherhood has never been able to garner more than 20 per cent of the vote. They also believe that, for the near-term future, a post-Mubarak Egypt would probably be headed by a coalition government of national unity. The diverse composition of that governing coalition, they say, would reign in any radical objectives the Muslim Brotherhood might want to achieve.
At this stage in the pro-democracy movement, no one can say with any certainty that he/she knows which way Egypt will turn. The only thing we know for certain is that Egypt will never be the same again.
One of my readers in the Netherlands posed a question about how a new post-Mubarak Egypt might impact Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. He wrote:
“I am again appalled by the lack of relation in the comments between the US position on Israel and Egypt, Mubarak. Why is everybody so afraid of that lobby you think?”
The lobby he was referring to is AIPAC, the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Council, which advocates for Israeli positions in the United States. AIPAC is the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., and is highly influential at many levels of U.S. Government, from Congress to the White House.
Why are the Israelis and AIPAC worried about the implications of the dramatic struggle currently pitting pro-Democracy Egyptians against those who support the government of President Hosni Mubarak.
The Israelis’ worst nightmare: A new regime comes to power in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood occupies a major position in a governing coalition. Egypt trashes its 32-year peace treaty with Israel, allows arms to be shipped from Egypt to Hamas in Gaza, and ends its role in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Is there any factual basis for Israeli fears? Research carried out in Egypt by the Pew Global Attitudes Project on “Egypt, Democracy and Islam,” may provide some answers.
Last Spring, Richard Auxier of the Pew Research Center examined the views of Egyptians and six other Muslim publics about politics and the role Islam should play in it.
They found that, while a 59%-majority of Muslims in Egypt believed that democracy was preferable to any other kind of government, 59 percent also said they back Islamists, and 95% of them said they would welcome Islamic influence over their politics.
Pew also found that 50 per cent of Egyptians support Hamas, 30 per cent support Hizbullah and 20 per cent support al Qaeda.
Eighty-two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves, and 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion, the Pew survey found.
The Pew researchers concluded that “The Islam [the Egyptians] support is “the al Qaeda Salafist version.”
They found that support for democracy was much lower among Egyptians than it is elsewhere in the Middle East. In Lebanon, 81% preferred it to any other kind of government. “In Turkey, 76% of Muslims supported it. Roughly two-thirds of Muslims also preferred democracy to any other kind of government in Jordan (69%), Nigeria (66%) and Indonesia (65%),” the research revealed.
Among the Muslim publics surveyed, only in Pakistan (42%) did fewer Muslims say democracy was preferable to any other kind of government than in Egypt.
Pew’s Auxier also found that, by wide margins, Muslims believed that Islam's influence in politics was positive rather than negative. In Egypt, Islam's role in politics was seen favorably by an overwhelming 85%-to-2% margin among Muslims, he wrote.
He also concluded:
Islam was seen as a positive rather than negative influence in politics by equally impressive margins in Indonesia (91% to 6%), Nigeria (82% to 10%), Jordan (76% to 14%) and Pakistan (69% to 6%).
Concerns about Islamic extremism -- both in their country and around the world -- were widespread in Egypt. About six-in-ten Egyptians were very (20%) or somewhat (41%) concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in their country.
By comparison, at least three-quarters in Lebanon (80%) and Nigeria (76%) were concerned about Islamic extremism in their nation, while less than half expressed such concern in Jordan (44%) and Turkey (43%).
Asked about extremism around the world, 30% of Egyptians were very concerned about Islamic extremism and 40% were somewhat concerned.
Large majorities in five of the other Muslim publics surveyed also expressed concern about Islamic extremism around the world. Only in Turkey did a majority not express concern.
Egyptians were split on how big a role Islam played in the political life of their country. Among Muslims in Egypt, 48% said Islam played a large role in their nation's political life while a nearly equal 49% said it played only a small role.
Divisions about the perception of Islam's role in politics were also seen in Lebanon and Pakistan.
In contrast, Muslims in Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey overwhelmingly agreed that Islam played a large role in their politics.
In Lebanon and Turkey, close to a third said that Islam had a negative influence in politics, but in both nations more believed Islam's influence was positive than said it was negative.
Respondents who had a positive view of Islam's influence included both those who said Islam was playing a large role in their country's political life and saw this as a good thing and those who said Islam was playing a small role and saw this as a bad thing. The reverse was true for those respondents who had a negative view of Islam's influence.
Asked whether there is a struggle in their nations between those who want to modernize their country and Islamic fundamentalists, a 61%-majority of Muslims in Egypt said they did not see a struggle. Just 31% of Egyptian Muslims saw a struggle between modernizers and fundamentalists in their country. Among the seven Muslim publics surveyed in 2010, only in Jordan (20%) did fewer say they saw such a struggle.
Among Egyptian Muslims who did see a struggle, a 59%-majority sided with the fundamentalists. Just 27% of those who saw such struggle sided with the modernizers.
This stands in sharp contrast with four other Muslim publics surveyed. Many more Muslims in Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia than in Egypt said they saw a struggle between modernizers and fundamentalists in their country.
In each of these nations, though, a majority of those seeing a conflict sided with the modernizers. Nigeria was the only other country surveyed in which a majority of Muslims who saw such a conflict identified with the fundamentalists.
Concerns about Islamic extremism -- both in their country and around the world -- were widespread in Egypt. About six-in-ten Egyptians said they were very (20%) or somewhat (41%) concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in their country.
By comparison, at least three-quarters in Lebanon (80%) and Nigeria (76%) said they were concerned about Islamic extremism in their nation, while less than half expressed such concern in Jordan (44%) and Turkey (43%).
Asked about extremism around the world, 30% of Egyptians said they were very concerned about Islamic extremism and 40% were somewhat concerned.
Large majorities in five of the other Muslim publics surveyed also expressed concern about Islamic extremism around the world. Only in Turkey did a majority not express concern, Auxier’s research found.
So are the worries of the Israelis and their U.S. spokesman justified?
Many observers believe that the Islamist component of the pro-democracy movement in Egypt does not bode well for Israel. They acknowledge that the Muslim Brotherhood appears to have moderated its strategy and tactics over the years. But they believe that the face the Brotherhood is currently showing to the world is simply a device to exploit the pro-democracy movement to their advantage. They do not trust the sincerity of the Brotherhood’s current leaders and deny that the Brotherhood now belongs in the mainstream of Egyptian politics.
They also believe that for every Egyptian who is a member of the Brotherhood, a majority of Egyptians are not members but agree with the organization’s objectives. They say that, outside Egypt, the Brotherhood’s main objective is to empower the Palestinians to defeat the Israelis.
This is the view that appears to have been adopted by those at the more conservative end of the U.S. political spectrum.
At the other end, many more liberal analysts contend that fears of the Muslim Brotherhood have been exaggerated and are being used as a scare tactic to turn international public opinion against President Mubarak’s immediate resignation.
The Brotherhood is officially illegal in Egypt. But it is tolerated and its members run for Parliament as “independents.”
These observers point out that, in elections in Egypt, the Brotherhood has never been able to garner more than 20 per cent of the vote. They also believe that, for the near-term future, a post-Mubarak Egypt would probably be headed by a coalition government of national unity. The diverse composition of that governing coalition, they say, would reign in any radical objectives the Muslim Brotherhood might want to achieve.
At this stage in the pro-democracy movement, no one can say with any certainty that he/she knows which way Egypt will turn. The only thing we know for certain is that Egypt will never be the same again.
Rule of Law, Iraqi Style
By William Fisher
Egypt’s pro-democracy uprising has pushed almost all other news – with the possible exception of the Superbowl -- off front pages and TV screens.
But while that dramatic collision plays out, news is being made elsewhere as well. And some of it is critical.
For example, a few days ago Human Rights Watch revealed that elite security forces controlled by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki are operating a secret detention site in Baghdad, and torturing detainees with impunity at another Baghdad facility.
Here’s what HRW reported:
Beginning on November 23, 2010, and continuing over the next three to four days, Iraqi authorities transferred more than 280 detainees to a secret site within Camp Justice, a sprawling military base in northwest Baghdad, interviews and classified government documents obtained by Human Rights Watch reveal. The Army's 56th Brigade, also known as the Baghdad Brigade, and the Counter-Terrorism Service, both under the authority of the prime minister's office, control this secret site.
The hurried transfers took place just days before an international inspection team was to examine conditions at the detainees' previous location at Camp Honor in the Green Zone. Human Rights Watch has also obtained a list of more than 300 detainees held at Camp Honor just before the transfer to Camp Justice. Almost all were accused of terrorism.
"Revelations of secret jails in the heart of Baghdad completely undermine the Iraqi government's promises to respect the rule of law," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The government needs to close these places or move them under control of the justice system, improve conditions for detainees, and make sure that anyone responsible for torture is punished."
The Iraqi government should immediately close the facilities or regularize their position and make them open for inspections and visits, Human Rights Watch said.
Detainee torture and abuse is nothing new in Iraq. Cables recently released by Wikileaks reveal that the deaths of Iraqi civilians caused by both Iraqis and the American military are more numerous than the numbers released during the Bush administration.
The New York Times reported: “While the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Americans, particularly at the Abu Ghraib prison, shocked the American public and much of the world, the documents paint an even more lurid picture of abuse by America’s Iraqi allies — a brutality from which the Americans at times averted their eyes.”
Human Rights Watch reported that approximately 80 of the 280 detainees are being held by the 56th Brigade at the secret site at Camp Justice and have had no access to lawyers or family members. Prison inspectors are not permitted to conduct visits to the section of the facility controlled by the 56th brigade, prompting fresh concerns that the brigade may be torturing detainees.
According to government sources, the Counter-Terrorism Service is holding the 200 remaining transferred detainees, although the 56th Brigade maintains primary responsibility for security at the site in Baghdad's Kadhmiya neighborhood.
In one of the 18 documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, a letter from the prosecutor's office of the Higher Judicial Council asks the Office of the Prime Minister to instruct officials at the Camp Justice site to stop preventing prison inspectors and relatives from visiting detainees. The letter, dated December 6, 2010, says such a refusal "meets neither legal nor humanitarian standards, unless [the refusal is] specifically ordered by a judge at a specialized court."
A second letter, dated January 13, 2011, from the justice minister to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, through which the prime minister controls Iraqi security forces, stated that a 56th Brigade officer prevented prison inspectors from the Human Rights Ministry from visiting the site.
The secret detention site is located within a legitimate Justice Ministry detention facility at Camp Justice, known as Justice 2 (Sijn al-Adaleh 2), which holds just over 1,000 other detainees. Camp Justice is the site of the former "Fifth Department" (al-Sha'ba al-Khamsa) intelligence office notorious during the rule of Saddam Hussein for torture and disappearances. The former dictator was executed there in 2006.
Camp Honor, from which the detainees were transferred, became the subject of media scrutiny on January 23, after the Los Angeles Times uncovered abuse there and described the conditions as "miserable." The article said detainees were held in cramped windowless cells that reeked of human excrement.
Recent interviews by Human Rights Watch of more than a dozen former detainees from Camp Honor had documented how detainees are held incommunicado and in inhumane conditions, often for months at a time. Detainees described in detail the wide ranging abuses they endured during interrogation sessions at the facility, usually to extract false confessions. They said interrogators beat them, hung them upside down for hours at a time, administered electric shocks to various body parts, including the genitals, and asphyxiated them repeatedly with plastic bags put over their heads until they passed out.
In interviews with Human Rights Watch in December, former detainees described the abuse at Camp Honor:
•One detainee said on December 26 that: "The cell was so crowded that we had to take turns standing and lying down, and would try to let someone lie down if they were an old man, or especially if they had just been brought back from interrogation. Then we usually could not stand."
•Another said on December 18 that: "I was blindfolded and put on the floor, face-down with my hands tied tightly behind my back. The interrogator stepped on my arms, and put more and more weight down on them until I was screaming."
•A third detainee, who had been held in Camp Honor the summer of 2010, said in a December 27 interview: "My hands were tied over my head and my feet were put in water, then they shocked me in my head and my neck and my chest. The interrogators beat me repeatedly and told me that they would go to my house and rape my sister if I did not sign a confession, so I did. I did not even know what I was confessing to."
In response to the Los Angeles Times article, which said Camp Honor is run by the 56th Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Service, Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim, told Agence France-Presse on January 24 that his ministry alone controlled the site.
"It is my responsibility, and I deny all these accusations - they are all lies," he said. "Families can visit their sons or husbands, lawyers can visit them regularly. It's like any other prison run by the Justice Ministry."
He reiterated, "It is not true that it follows Maliki's orders - it is run by the Justice Ministry."
However, HRW claims that documents they have obtained refute government claims that Camp Honor is controlled by the Justice Ministry. In one classified document dated August 2, 2010, the former justice minister, Dara Nour al-Din, requested that his staff obtain approval from the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to transfer detainees from Camp Honor, demonstrating the ministry's subordinate role at the facility.
In the note to his staff, the justice minister asks them to write a letter to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces "requesting permission for custody of the prisoners to be turned over" to the ministry so they can be transferred elsewhere. The document indicates that the issue arose after Deputy Justice Minister Ibrahim acknowledged that his ministry could not transfer detainees due to external interference, particularly from military interrogators.
Another document, from October 2010, signed by Ibrahim himself, says the ministry "has no objection to allowing lawyers and families to visit detainees" at Camp Honor but that, "it is only the tough security measures implemented by the Defense Ministry/56th Brigade section [of the prison] and the Counter-Terrorism administration section, and also the location of the prison in the Green Zone, that has prevented this."
In response to the Los Angeles Times article, Ibrahim also said that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had visited the Camp Honor prison. But when contacted by Human Rights Watch, the ICRC spokesperson, Graziella Leite Piccolo, said that ICRC had not been able to visit Camp Honor because the government had not met the organization's criteria for such site visits, including access to the entire facility and its detainees.
"It is important to note that, even if we had been able to visit, a visit alone is not a certificate of validation, but part of a process," she said. Government sources told Human Rights Watch that authorities have prevented the Human Rights Ministry from conducting any prison inspections at Camp Honor for more than a year.
Several government sources said that although the 56th Brigade, and its sibling, the 54th Brigade, technically fall under Defense Ministry administration, the brigades' chain of command bypass the ministry. They do not report to the defense minister or army chief of staff, but instead to Maliki through the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Through this office, the prime minister also controls the Counter-Terrorism Service, which falls under no ministry and is not governed by any legislation. The Counter-Terrorism Service works closely with US Special Forces.
Military officers and officials from both the Defense and Interior ministries told Human Rights Watch that the 56th Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Service routinely conduct operations, including mass arrests and detentions, without notifying the security ministries. A high-level Interior Ministry officer told Human Rights Watch on December 18 that these units "create confusion and a dangerous atmosphere where special units who have a separate authority storm in and take people." The official said that regular security forces were afraid of these elite forces.
Another official, from the Defense Ministry, told Human Rights Watch on January 23 that contrary to the usual practice, in which security forces process detainees through the main prison system, the 56th and 54th Brigades often refuse to give up their prisoners.
"Their families and lawyers cannot visit them," he said, "and sometimes cannot even find out if they are dead or alive."
Defense Ministry officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch said there is close cooperation between the 56th and 54th Brigades, commonly referred to by military and police as "Maliki's forces." Prisoners arrested and initially held in the prison run by one brigade are often transferred to the prison run by the other.
An Interior Ministry official told Human Rights Watch on January 13 that "people come to police stations or prisons looking for their family members who have been arrested. If we find out they were taken by Maliki's forces, we don't get any information about them or have jurisdiction to do anything."
Last year, the Human Rights Ministry uncovered a secret prison run by the 54th Brigade, with the assistance of the 56th Brigade, in the old Muthanna airport in Western Baghdad. In April, Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 detainees who had been tortured at this facility over a period of months. The secret prison held about 430 detainees who had no access to their families or lawyers.
The prisoners said security forces personnel kicked, whipped, and beat them, asphyxiated them, gave them electric shocks, burned them with cigarettes, and pulled out their fingernails and teeth. They said that interrogators sodomized some detainees with sticks and pistol barrels. Some young men said they had been forced to perform oral sex on interrogators and guards, and that interrogators forced detainees to molest one another sexually.
A US Embassy cable viewed by the Los Angeles Times stated that 56th Brigade interrogators had been sent to Muthanna from Camp Honor. A separate cable said the brigade "reports directly to the prime minister's office."
At the time, Maliki described the prison at Muthanna as a transit site under the control of the Defense Ministry.
However, a high-ranking Defense Ministry official distanced his ministry from the allegations of torture at Muthanna. In a classified letter to the Human Rights Ministry dated May 3, 2010, and seen by Human Rights Watch, Saleh Sarhan, general secretary to the defense minister, wrote: "Our ministry has no relationship with those military investigation committees nor to the Sur Ninewa [Muthanna] Detention Center, because both are attached to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces."
If this information were about any other country in the Middle East, we would say, “Well, that’s the way it is in that part of the world. The Arabs just torture people they have in their custody.”
But this is not just any Middle East power. This is Iraq – a country the U.S. invaded to end a brutal tyranny and allow Democracy to flower.
If the information published by Human Rights Watch is correct, the task will take a lot more Miracle-Gro.
Egypt’s pro-democracy uprising has pushed almost all other news – with the possible exception of the Superbowl -- off front pages and TV screens.
But while that dramatic collision plays out, news is being made elsewhere as well. And some of it is critical.
For example, a few days ago Human Rights Watch revealed that elite security forces controlled by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki are operating a secret detention site in Baghdad, and torturing detainees with impunity at another Baghdad facility.
Here’s what HRW reported:
Beginning on November 23, 2010, and continuing over the next three to four days, Iraqi authorities transferred more than 280 detainees to a secret site within Camp Justice, a sprawling military base in northwest Baghdad, interviews and classified government documents obtained by Human Rights Watch reveal. The Army's 56th Brigade, also known as the Baghdad Brigade, and the Counter-Terrorism Service, both under the authority of the prime minister's office, control this secret site.
The hurried transfers took place just days before an international inspection team was to examine conditions at the detainees' previous location at Camp Honor in the Green Zone. Human Rights Watch has also obtained a list of more than 300 detainees held at Camp Honor just before the transfer to Camp Justice. Almost all were accused of terrorism.
"Revelations of secret jails in the heart of Baghdad completely undermine the Iraqi government's promises to respect the rule of law," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The government needs to close these places or move them under control of the justice system, improve conditions for detainees, and make sure that anyone responsible for torture is punished."
The Iraqi government should immediately close the facilities or regularize their position and make them open for inspections and visits, Human Rights Watch said.
Detainee torture and abuse is nothing new in Iraq. Cables recently released by Wikileaks reveal that the deaths of Iraqi civilians caused by both Iraqis and the American military are more numerous than the numbers released during the Bush administration.
The New York Times reported: “While the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Americans, particularly at the Abu Ghraib prison, shocked the American public and much of the world, the documents paint an even more lurid picture of abuse by America’s Iraqi allies — a brutality from which the Americans at times averted their eyes.”
Human Rights Watch reported that approximately 80 of the 280 detainees are being held by the 56th Brigade at the secret site at Camp Justice and have had no access to lawyers or family members. Prison inspectors are not permitted to conduct visits to the section of the facility controlled by the 56th brigade, prompting fresh concerns that the brigade may be torturing detainees.
According to government sources, the Counter-Terrorism Service is holding the 200 remaining transferred detainees, although the 56th Brigade maintains primary responsibility for security at the site in Baghdad's Kadhmiya neighborhood.
In one of the 18 documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, a letter from the prosecutor's office of the Higher Judicial Council asks the Office of the Prime Minister to instruct officials at the Camp Justice site to stop preventing prison inspectors and relatives from visiting detainees. The letter, dated December 6, 2010, says such a refusal "meets neither legal nor humanitarian standards, unless [the refusal is] specifically ordered by a judge at a specialized court."
A second letter, dated January 13, 2011, from the justice minister to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, through which the prime minister controls Iraqi security forces, stated that a 56th Brigade officer prevented prison inspectors from the Human Rights Ministry from visiting the site.
The secret detention site is located within a legitimate Justice Ministry detention facility at Camp Justice, known as Justice 2 (Sijn al-Adaleh 2), which holds just over 1,000 other detainees. Camp Justice is the site of the former "Fifth Department" (al-Sha'ba al-Khamsa) intelligence office notorious during the rule of Saddam Hussein for torture and disappearances. The former dictator was executed there in 2006.
Camp Honor, from which the detainees were transferred, became the subject of media scrutiny on January 23, after the Los Angeles Times uncovered abuse there and described the conditions as "miserable." The article said detainees were held in cramped windowless cells that reeked of human excrement.
Recent interviews by Human Rights Watch of more than a dozen former detainees from Camp Honor had documented how detainees are held incommunicado and in inhumane conditions, often for months at a time. Detainees described in detail the wide ranging abuses they endured during interrogation sessions at the facility, usually to extract false confessions. They said interrogators beat them, hung them upside down for hours at a time, administered electric shocks to various body parts, including the genitals, and asphyxiated them repeatedly with plastic bags put over their heads until they passed out.
In interviews with Human Rights Watch in December, former detainees described the abuse at Camp Honor:
•One detainee said on December 26 that: "The cell was so crowded that we had to take turns standing and lying down, and would try to let someone lie down if they were an old man, or especially if they had just been brought back from interrogation. Then we usually could not stand."
•Another said on December 18 that: "I was blindfolded and put on the floor, face-down with my hands tied tightly behind my back. The interrogator stepped on my arms, and put more and more weight down on them until I was screaming."
•A third detainee, who had been held in Camp Honor the summer of 2010, said in a December 27 interview: "My hands were tied over my head and my feet were put in water, then they shocked me in my head and my neck and my chest. The interrogators beat me repeatedly and told me that they would go to my house and rape my sister if I did not sign a confession, so I did. I did not even know what I was confessing to."
In response to the Los Angeles Times article, which said Camp Honor is run by the 56th Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Service, Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim, told Agence France-Presse on January 24 that his ministry alone controlled the site.
"It is my responsibility, and I deny all these accusations - they are all lies," he said. "Families can visit their sons or husbands, lawyers can visit them regularly. It's like any other prison run by the Justice Ministry."
He reiterated, "It is not true that it follows Maliki's orders - it is run by the Justice Ministry."
However, HRW claims that documents they have obtained refute government claims that Camp Honor is controlled by the Justice Ministry. In one classified document dated August 2, 2010, the former justice minister, Dara Nour al-Din, requested that his staff obtain approval from the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to transfer detainees from Camp Honor, demonstrating the ministry's subordinate role at the facility.
In the note to his staff, the justice minister asks them to write a letter to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces "requesting permission for custody of the prisoners to be turned over" to the ministry so they can be transferred elsewhere. The document indicates that the issue arose after Deputy Justice Minister Ibrahim acknowledged that his ministry could not transfer detainees due to external interference, particularly from military interrogators.
Another document, from October 2010, signed by Ibrahim himself, says the ministry "has no objection to allowing lawyers and families to visit detainees" at Camp Honor but that, "it is only the tough security measures implemented by the Defense Ministry/56th Brigade section [of the prison] and the Counter-Terrorism administration section, and also the location of the prison in the Green Zone, that has prevented this."
In response to the Los Angeles Times article, Ibrahim also said that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had visited the Camp Honor prison. But when contacted by Human Rights Watch, the ICRC spokesperson, Graziella Leite Piccolo, said that ICRC had not been able to visit Camp Honor because the government had not met the organization's criteria for such site visits, including access to the entire facility and its detainees.
"It is important to note that, even if we had been able to visit, a visit alone is not a certificate of validation, but part of a process," she said. Government sources told Human Rights Watch that authorities have prevented the Human Rights Ministry from conducting any prison inspections at Camp Honor for more than a year.
Several government sources said that although the 56th Brigade, and its sibling, the 54th Brigade, technically fall under Defense Ministry administration, the brigades' chain of command bypass the ministry. They do not report to the defense minister or army chief of staff, but instead to Maliki through the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Through this office, the prime minister also controls the Counter-Terrorism Service, which falls under no ministry and is not governed by any legislation. The Counter-Terrorism Service works closely with US Special Forces.
Military officers and officials from both the Defense and Interior ministries told Human Rights Watch that the 56th Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Service routinely conduct operations, including mass arrests and detentions, without notifying the security ministries. A high-level Interior Ministry officer told Human Rights Watch on December 18 that these units "create confusion and a dangerous atmosphere where special units who have a separate authority storm in and take people." The official said that regular security forces were afraid of these elite forces.
Another official, from the Defense Ministry, told Human Rights Watch on January 23 that contrary to the usual practice, in which security forces process detainees through the main prison system, the 56th and 54th Brigades often refuse to give up their prisoners.
"Their families and lawyers cannot visit them," he said, "and sometimes cannot even find out if they are dead or alive."
Defense Ministry officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch said there is close cooperation between the 56th and 54th Brigades, commonly referred to by military and police as "Maliki's forces." Prisoners arrested and initially held in the prison run by one brigade are often transferred to the prison run by the other.
An Interior Ministry official told Human Rights Watch on January 13 that "people come to police stations or prisons looking for their family members who have been arrested. If we find out they were taken by Maliki's forces, we don't get any information about them or have jurisdiction to do anything."
Last year, the Human Rights Ministry uncovered a secret prison run by the 54th Brigade, with the assistance of the 56th Brigade, in the old Muthanna airport in Western Baghdad. In April, Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 detainees who had been tortured at this facility over a period of months. The secret prison held about 430 detainees who had no access to their families or lawyers.
The prisoners said security forces personnel kicked, whipped, and beat them, asphyxiated them, gave them electric shocks, burned them with cigarettes, and pulled out their fingernails and teeth. They said that interrogators sodomized some detainees with sticks and pistol barrels. Some young men said they had been forced to perform oral sex on interrogators and guards, and that interrogators forced detainees to molest one another sexually.
A US Embassy cable viewed by the Los Angeles Times stated that 56th Brigade interrogators had been sent to Muthanna from Camp Honor. A separate cable said the brigade "reports directly to the prime minister's office."
At the time, Maliki described the prison at Muthanna as a transit site under the control of the Defense Ministry.
However, a high-ranking Defense Ministry official distanced his ministry from the allegations of torture at Muthanna. In a classified letter to the Human Rights Ministry dated May 3, 2010, and seen by Human Rights Watch, Saleh Sarhan, general secretary to the defense minister, wrote: "Our ministry has no relationship with those military investigation committees nor to the Sur Ninewa [Muthanna] Detention Center, because both are attached to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces."
If this information were about any other country in the Middle East, we would say, “Well, that’s the way it is in that part of the world. The Arabs just torture people they have in their custody.”
But this is not just any Middle East power. This is Iraq – a country the U.S. invaded to end a brutal tyranny and allow Democracy to flower.
If the information published by Human Rights Watch is correct, the task will take a lot more Miracle-Gro.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Egypt Through the Rear-View Mirror
By William Fisher
One of the rituals associated with being a staffer for the President of the United States or a Cabinet officer is briefing your boss to be prepared to answer any question the press is likely to be asking.
Lots of smart people participate in these briefings. And if some upstart reporter asks a question no one anticipated, staffers have egg on their faces, big-time.
That’s what occurred to me as I listened to our top government officials, from the President on down, delivering their shaky, unconvincing and intentionally neutral responses to the most powerful calls for political change in Egypt’s history.
It was as if the notion of change had been invented yesterday and came as a complete surprise to the White House.
This in itself is pretty weird in a government that expends endless energy developing contingency plans for every eventuality imaginable to thinking people.
But evidently there was no “Plan B” for the Democracy Contingency. Judging by the Administration’s anemic responses, the possibility that demands for freedom of speech and assembly, a free press, and economic opportunity would ever develop to a point where they would have to be seriously addressed never occurred to our leaders.
I find this astonishing. It is not as if the dictatorial and cruel policies and practices of Hosni Mubarak’s security apparatus were new or unknown to official Washington. They have been a big part of the Egyptian political landscape for thirty years!
Occasionally, our government has even been obliged to respond publicly to some particularly egregious transgression of somebody’s human rights in the Land of the Pharaohs.
So it was in 2007, when Mubarak’s justice system sentenced a 22-year-old blogger to four years in prison. The blogger was a former college student, Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman.
Suleiman had been expelled from Al-Azhar University, Egypt's most powerful theological institution. His crime? Writing about the university's curriculum, Egypt's discrimination against minority religions, and religious extremism. He was charged with "spreading information disruptive of public order," with "incitement to hate Muslims" and "insulting the president."
The widely respected Reporters Without Borders called the sentence “a disgrace” and noted that it had come “almost three years ago to the day, [when] President Mubarak promised to abolish prison sentences for press offenses.”
That’s when I wrote the article below for Truthout. That article concluded:
“And where is George W. Bush on this issue? Just gullible, and allowing
himself to be snookered by the empty promises of one of the Middle East's
least-moderate autocrats? Or making it obvious to all that the Bush
administration values Egypt far more as an ally in its Global War on Terror than as a partner in its Global War for Democracy.”
Today, four years later, the initial reaction of the Obama Administration was like déjà vu all over again. Except that a lot more bloggers have been imprisoned since then.
This is what I wrote in 2007:
William Fisher | Let's Hear It for the Moderates
By William Fisher
Thursday 01 March 2007
The Bush administration is fond of labeling Middle East governments with
which it has friendly relations as "moderate Arab states." Egypt is perhaps the most prominent of these "moderates" - so moderate that it is, after Israel, the second-largest recipient of US development assistance and vast amounts of military accoutrements.
But can anyone find anything "moderate" about throwing a blogger in jail for four years?
The blogger is a former college student, Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, 22,
who was expelled from Al-Azhar University - Egypt's most powerful theological institution - last spring. His crimes? He spoke out about the university's curriculum, Egypt's discrimination against minority religions, and religious extremism.
He was charged with "spreading information disruptive of public order," with "incitement to hate Muslims" and "insulting the president." He has not had consistent access to lawyers or to his family.
The widely respected Reporters Without Borders correctly pointed out, "This sentence is a disgrace. Almost three years ago to the day, President Mubarak promised to abolish prison sentences for press offenses. Suleiman's conviction and sentence is a message of intimidation to the rest of the Egyptian blogosphere, which had emerged in recent years as an effective bulwark against the regime's authoritarian excesses."
Only a couple of years ago, President Mubarak convinced George W. Bush that Egypt would be a strong ally in Bush's messianic mission of spreading democracy throughout the world. To people who know anything at all about world politics, Bush's judgment was about as reliable as his look into Vladimir Putin's heart, immediately followed by his assessment of the Russian president as a good man America could work with.
Because Egypt potentially plays a large role in furthering an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, the Bush administration has turned a blind eye to the rapid backward course Mubarak has pursued ever since he vowed to be Bush's buddy in spreading democracy in the Middle East.
True, Secretary of State Condi Rice did a lot of tut-tutting when Mubarak jailed the leader of his main opposition party, and she even postponed a visit to Cairo.
But, since then, it's been business as usual, with the Bush administration
continuing to describe this wonderful country, and its aging authoritarian
leader, as "moderate."
So what has happened to all the promises Mubarak made to our president? The aging autocrat took his first "significant" step toward democracy by introducing an amendment to the country's constitution. That measure, hailed by the Bush administration, purported to allow multiple candidates to run against him for the presidency for the first time.
Then came the fine print. The amendment placed severe restrictions on, for example, political parties that would be recognized as "legal" by the government. That eliminated a lot of the opposition.
Then the government proceeded with what almost everyone agrees were trumped-up charges against Ayman Nour, head of the leading opposition party. Mr. Nour is now in jail for forging signatures on his party's registration documents, even though his principal accuser has recanted this claim, which he now says was obtained under police duress.
Then came Egypt's parliamentary election, which Washington characterized as another important step on the road to democracy. That election was marked by widespread violence and voter disenfranchisement. Many people were killed and many more injured during the month-long election, and police cordoned off many polling stations to prevent people from voting.
Just to remind you, the violence flared after Egypt's Islamic movement, the
Muslim Brotherhood, won 88 seats, compared to the 15 it had held in the outgoing 454-member parliament. This happened despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is banned from participating in elections, and its candidates are obliged to run as "independents."
Egyptian authorities say the security measures were taken to enable Egyptians to vote in an orderly manner. Right! The police brutality had nothing to do with trying to prevent the Brotherhood from making even larger gains.
"The elections, with their negative and positive aspects, will be a matter
of intensive study by all parties to derive lessons to develop future party and
democratic actions," Mubarak's spokesman, Suleiman Awwad, quoted the president as telling the lawmakers.
"Negative aspects should be answered strongly so that they will not be repeated."
Study by whom? Mubarak's National Democratic Party? The state-controlled media? Not likely. The United States? The United Nations? When pigs fly!
As always, the deconstruction of this election fell to local and international NGOs who monitor bad governance and abuses of human rights. Lamentably, their reports attracted little press attention anywhere.
And those in Egypt who wrote reports did so at great risk. The reason is
that NGOs there are strangled by a law severely restricting their activities,
and by the "extra-legal role" of the country's Security Services. As noted in a
report by Human Rights Watch, "Civil society groups in Egypt face severe
restrictions under the law governing nongovernmental organizations. In addition, the country's security services scrutinize and harass civil society activists even though the law does not accord them any such powers."
The HRW report documents numerous cases where the security services rejected NGO registrations, decided who could serve on NGO boards of directors, harassed NGO activists, and interfered with donations reaching the groups.
In today's Egypt, the Security Services make their own laws. For more than
20 years, the country has been kept under a "state of emergency," with draconian laws giving sweeping powers to Mubarak's security apparatus. More recently, their activities have been trumpeted as a key part of the "global war on terror."
I am all too familiar with the unbridled power of Egypt's security services.
I was living in Cairo during the multiple trials of Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an
Egyptian democracy activist. Dr. Ibrahim, then a professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, headed a research and advocacy institute in Cairo that monitored elections, conducted voter education projects, and at times criticized the Egyptian government.
In the summer of 2000, he and 27 of his colleagues were arrested and tried.
All 28 defendants were found guilty and several were sent to jail. Ibrahim was sentenced to a seven-year term.
To America's great credit, the Clinton administration put extreme pressure
on the Egyptian authorities - even threatening to reduce US aid. Ibrahim's
conviction was finally overturned by the Egyptian Supreme Court, and he was ultimately acquitted of all charges in a second trial and released in 2003.
As forcefully underlined by Raja M. Kamal and Tom G. Palmer in a Washington Post op-ed article, "Egypt is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the 'freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media' ... The posting of opinions on a student's personal blog hardly qualifies as a threat to national security, to the reputation of the president or to public order."
And where is George W. Bush on this issue? Just gullible, and allowing himself to be snookered by the empty promises of one of the Middle East's least-moderate autocrats? Or making it obvious to all that the Bush administration values Egypt far more as an ally in its Global War on Terror than as a partner in its Global War for Democracy.
One of the rituals associated with being a staffer for the President of the United States or a Cabinet officer is briefing your boss to be prepared to answer any question the press is likely to be asking.
Lots of smart people participate in these briefings. And if some upstart reporter asks a question no one anticipated, staffers have egg on their faces, big-time.
That’s what occurred to me as I listened to our top government officials, from the President on down, delivering their shaky, unconvincing and intentionally neutral responses to the most powerful calls for political change in Egypt’s history.
It was as if the notion of change had been invented yesterday and came as a complete surprise to the White House.
This in itself is pretty weird in a government that expends endless energy developing contingency plans for every eventuality imaginable to thinking people.
But evidently there was no “Plan B” for the Democracy Contingency. Judging by the Administration’s anemic responses, the possibility that demands for freedom of speech and assembly, a free press, and economic opportunity would ever develop to a point where they would have to be seriously addressed never occurred to our leaders.
I find this astonishing. It is not as if the dictatorial and cruel policies and practices of Hosni Mubarak’s security apparatus were new or unknown to official Washington. They have been a big part of the Egyptian political landscape for thirty years!
Occasionally, our government has even been obliged to respond publicly to some particularly egregious transgression of somebody’s human rights in the Land of the Pharaohs.
So it was in 2007, when Mubarak’s justice system sentenced a 22-year-old blogger to four years in prison. The blogger was a former college student, Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman.
Suleiman had been expelled from Al-Azhar University, Egypt's most powerful theological institution. His crime? Writing about the university's curriculum, Egypt's discrimination against minority religions, and religious extremism. He was charged with "spreading information disruptive of public order," with "incitement to hate Muslims" and "insulting the president."
The widely respected Reporters Without Borders called the sentence “a disgrace” and noted that it had come “almost three years ago to the day, [when] President Mubarak promised to abolish prison sentences for press offenses.”
That’s when I wrote the article below for Truthout. That article concluded:
“And where is George W. Bush on this issue? Just gullible, and allowing
himself to be snookered by the empty promises of one of the Middle East's
least-moderate autocrats? Or making it obvious to all that the Bush
administration values Egypt far more as an ally in its Global War on Terror than as a partner in its Global War for Democracy.”
Today, four years later, the initial reaction of the Obama Administration was like déjà vu all over again. Except that a lot more bloggers have been imprisoned since then.
This is what I wrote in 2007:
William Fisher | Let's Hear It for the Moderates
By William Fisher
Thursday 01 March 2007
The Bush administration is fond of labeling Middle East governments with
which it has friendly relations as "moderate Arab states." Egypt is perhaps the most prominent of these "moderates" - so moderate that it is, after Israel, the second-largest recipient of US development assistance and vast amounts of military accoutrements.
But can anyone find anything "moderate" about throwing a blogger in jail for four years?
The blogger is a former college student, Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, 22,
who was expelled from Al-Azhar University - Egypt's most powerful theological institution - last spring. His crimes? He spoke out about the university's curriculum, Egypt's discrimination against minority religions, and religious extremism.
He was charged with "spreading information disruptive of public order," with "incitement to hate Muslims" and "insulting the president." He has not had consistent access to lawyers or to his family.
The widely respected Reporters Without Borders correctly pointed out, "This sentence is a disgrace. Almost three years ago to the day, President Mubarak promised to abolish prison sentences for press offenses. Suleiman's conviction and sentence is a message of intimidation to the rest of the Egyptian blogosphere, which had emerged in recent years as an effective bulwark against the regime's authoritarian excesses."
Only a couple of years ago, President Mubarak convinced George W. Bush that Egypt would be a strong ally in Bush's messianic mission of spreading democracy throughout the world. To people who know anything at all about world politics, Bush's judgment was about as reliable as his look into Vladimir Putin's heart, immediately followed by his assessment of the Russian president as a good man America could work with.
Because Egypt potentially plays a large role in furthering an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, the Bush administration has turned a blind eye to the rapid backward course Mubarak has pursued ever since he vowed to be Bush's buddy in spreading democracy in the Middle East.
True, Secretary of State Condi Rice did a lot of tut-tutting when Mubarak jailed the leader of his main opposition party, and she even postponed a visit to Cairo.
But, since then, it's been business as usual, with the Bush administration
continuing to describe this wonderful country, and its aging authoritarian
leader, as "moderate."
So what has happened to all the promises Mubarak made to our president? The aging autocrat took his first "significant" step toward democracy by introducing an amendment to the country's constitution. That measure, hailed by the Bush administration, purported to allow multiple candidates to run against him for the presidency for the first time.
Then came the fine print. The amendment placed severe restrictions on, for example, political parties that would be recognized as "legal" by the government. That eliminated a lot of the opposition.
Then the government proceeded with what almost everyone agrees were trumped-up charges against Ayman Nour, head of the leading opposition party. Mr. Nour is now in jail for forging signatures on his party's registration documents, even though his principal accuser has recanted this claim, which he now says was obtained under police duress.
Then came Egypt's parliamentary election, which Washington characterized as another important step on the road to democracy. That election was marked by widespread violence and voter disenfranchisement. Many people were killed and many more injured during the month-long election, and police cordoned off many polling stations to prevent people from voting.
Just to remind you, the violence flared after Egypt's Islamic movement, the
Muslim Brotherhood, won 88 seats, compared to the 15 it had held in the outgoing 454-member parliament. This happened despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is banned from participating in elections, and its candidates are obliged to run as "independents."
Egyptian authorities say the security measures were taken to enable Egyptians to vote in an orderly manner. Right! The police brutality had nothing to do with trying to prevent the Brotherhood from making even larger gains.
"The elections, with their negative and positive aspects, will be a matter
of intensive study by all parties to derive lessons to develop future party and
democratic actions," Mubarak's spokesman, Suleiman Awwad, quoted the president as telling the lawmakers.
"Negative aspects should be answered strongly so that they will not be repeated."
Study by whom? Mubarak's National Democratic Party? The state-controlled media? Not likely. The United States? The United Nations? When pigs fly!
As always, the deconstruction of this election fell to local and international NGOs who monitor bad governance and abuses of human rights. Lamentably, their reports attracted little press attention anywhere.
And those in Egypt who wrote reports did so at great risk. The reason is
that NGOs there are strangled by a law severely restricting their activities,
and by the "extra-legal role" of the country's Security Services. As noted in a
report by Human Rights Watch, "Civil society groups in Egypt face severe
restrictions under the law governing nongovernmental organizations. In addition, the country's security services scrutinize and harass civil society activists even though the law does not accord them any such powers."
The HRW report documents numerous cases where the security services rejected NGO registrations, decided who could serve on NGO boards of directors, harassed NGO activists, and interfered with donations reaching the groups.
In today's Egypt, the Security Services make their own laws. For more than
20 years, the country has been kept under a "state of emergency," with draconian laws giving sweeping powers to Mubarak's security apparatus. More recently, their activities have been trumpeted as a key part of the "global war on terror."
I am all too familiar with the unbridled power of Egypt's security services.
I was living in Cairo during the multiple trials of Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an
Egyptian democracy activist. Dr. Ibrahim, then a professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, headed a research and advocacy institute in Cairo that monitored elections, conducted voter education projects, and at times criticized the Egyptian government.
In the summer of 2000, he and 27 of his colleagues were arrested and tried.
All 28 defendants were found guilty and several were sent to jail. Ibrahim was sentenced to a seven-year term.
To America's great credit, the Clinton administration put extreme pressure
on the Egyptian authorities - even threatening to reduce US aid. Ibrahim's
conviction was finally overturned by the Egyptian Supreme Court, and he was ultimately acquitted of all charges in a second trial and released in 2003.
As forcefully underlined by Raja M. Kamal and Tom G. Palmer in a Washington Post op-ed article, "Egypt is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the 'freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media' ... The posting of opinions on a student's personal blog hardly qualifies as a threat to national security, to the reputation of the president or to public order."
And where is George W. Bush on this issue? Just gullible, and allowing himself to be snookered by the empty promises of one of the Middle East's least-moderate autocrats? Or making it obvious to all that the Bush administration values Egypt far more as an ally in its Global War on Terror than as a partner in its Global War for Democracy.
Experts: Too Late for Mubarak Reforms
By William Fisher
Two of the nation’s most respected Middle East experts have a message for President Obama: The Mubarak Reform Train has left the station.
Or, in the words of one expert, Dr. Michele Dunne, editor of The Arab Bulletin at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Pulling punches now will only continue past policy errors and escalate the costs to U.S. interests.”
Dr. Dunne, a former specialist on Middle East affairs for the U.S. Department of State, the White House, and the National Security Council, believes the time for a Mubarak-led “reform” is past. And she is urging the Obama Administration to recognize that that train has left the station.
She says, “One of the most striking features of recent U.S. policy toward the Middle East has been that it often appeared out of touch with current realities to the point of being anachronistic -- almost quaint.
“The dogged push for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, for example, flew in the face of truths including the facts that Prime Minister Netanyahu had no interest in reaching an agreement and Palestinian President Abbas was so weakened by the Fatah-Hamas rift that he would be unable to reach an agreement even if a good offer were put on the table.
“The most recent example of this unreality is U.S. calls for ‘reform’ and ‘national dialogue’ in Egypt in response to the escalating uprising,” she says.
“Reform?” she asks, then answers:
“Sorry, the time to call for that was a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago. Egyptians no longer want President Mubarak to reform; they simply want no more Mubaraks. Top-down political reform is now over in Egypt. In its place we are seeing bottom-up change, with all its many risks.”
Dr. Dunne asks how Egyptians went from demanding gradual, peaceful, political reform to wanting to overthrow their leader by whatever means possible?
“It did not happen overnight. Rather, over the last five years the idea of reform became discredited as Mubarak and his inner circle cynically manipulated the concept to enable their own particular brand of crony capitalism while staving off improvements in civil liberties or a real expansion of political contestation,” she says.
Mubarak allowed some breathing room in the 2005 parliamentary elections, only to follow them with a harsh crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and on Ayman Nour, who dared to run a real campaign against him, Dunne says, adding:
“Mubarak delivered on his 2005 pledge to sponsor constitutional reforms in an extremely damaging manner in 2007, actually managing to push through amendments that significantly impaired the political and human rights of his citizens even further.”
In fact, she says, “Mubarak succeeded in discrediting not only the idea of reform but also that of formal political processes altogether. He managed to damage not only the long-co-opted legal opposition parties but also to diminish the relevance of oppressed movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood.”
In the last few years, she continues, “it has been clear that young Egyptians were no longer putting their faith in such opposition groups but rather forming broader, more amorphous movements that had no intention of participating in corrupt formal politics.”
Dr. Dunne says the “final straw” was perhaps “the rigged parliamentary elections in November 2010, when the ruling National Democratic Party used every form of corruption and political manipulation to shutout nearly all opposition candidates and then added insult to injury by crowing about how the party’s successful policies had won the support of the voters.”
By the beginning of December 2010, the tinder for a conflagration had become very dry indeed; and then a young man in far off Tunisia lit a match, she says.
“And what was the United States doing all this time when it could have been trying more sincerely to persuade Mubarak to carry out reforms—or at least to show the Egyptian public that it was on the side of their legitimate demands?” she asks.
For a brief time, she says, from 2002 to 2005, “the administration of President George W. Bush rather persistently raised with Mubarak the need for democratic reform and implied that the U.S.-Egyptian relationship would stay close only if Mubarak heeded calls from Egyptian civil society and opposition groups for greater political freedoms and respect for human rights, as well as economic reforms needed to increase prosperity.”
The Bush administration, she recalls, “went as far as to impose some penalties on Mubarak, withdrawing a pledge of over $130 million in supplemental assistance in 2003 and then cutting off free trade talks in early 2006 in reaction to repressive measures Mubarak took against peaceful dissidents.”
But in early 2006, she recalls, “the Bush administration backed off pressing Mubarak, having seen few fruits from its efforts and facing escalating crises in Palestine and Iraq. Over the next two years, Bush annoyed Mubarak repeatedly by speaking up for democracy and human rights and his administration increased its spending on democracy programs in Egypt, but the wind had clearly gone out of the sails of the Freedom Agenda.”
The result was that “Mubarak carried out repressive measures and excluded opposition from local elections with no real consequences in his relations with the United States,” she says.
The Obama administration, she says, “further rolled back U.S. support for democracy in Egypt in an ill-advised attempt to restore the sweetness to relations with Mubarak in early 2009 by dropping all references to human rights or democracy in statements on Egypt and revising democracy assistance policies to appease him.”
The Obama administration “gradually went from 0 to 30 miles per hour in developing its rhetoric on how human rights and democracy fit in foreign policy over the next two years. Officials, including Obama, began to raise with Mubarak the need to take certain steps, such as lifting the state of emergency under which Egypt has been governed since 1981 and allowing domestic monitors and international observers access to elections. But Mubarak stiffed Obama completely and the U.S. administration, still wanting to keep a positive and polite relationship, issued some mildly critical public statements and wrung its hands in private about how to handle the issues. But clearly the United States was far behind the curve of what was happening in Egypt.”
And now? Dr. Dunne queries. “U.S. officials are having to dance pretty fast to come up with rhetoric and policies to show that they supported the legitimate demands of Egyptian citizens all along and are fully on the side of democratization in Egypt. It will not be easy, because the bad news is that Egyptians followed U.S. policy on these questions closely all along and are well aware of how inconsistent, ineffective, and unserious the United States was about promoting real reform—back in the days when it was still possible.”
For Dr. Dunne, the bottom line is: “If the Obama administration wants to show that it is serious about respecting political freedom and human rights, it should shift gears on Egypt quickly. It should press ahead with the current U.S. call for an orderly transition to democratic presidential and parliamentary elections, but it stop implying that it envisions Mubarak (or his unpopular new vice president) remaining in office.”
“The United States should privately encourage the Egyptian government to begin negotiations immediately with the opposition committee headed by Mohamed ElBaradei. And it should say privately and publicly that it will suspend all U.S. assistance should the Egyptian government fail to negotiate a transition or resort to violence against the protestors. Pulling punches now will only continue past policy errors and escalate the costs to U.S. interests.”
Among other human rights advocates now speaking out against effort to salvage a Mubarak government, is Neil Hicks, International Policy Advisor at Human Rights First, a prominent advocacy organization.
Hicks is brutally frank in his message to President Obama. “The Obama administration must signal that it has turned the page from the old policy of toleration of oppression by its Egyptian ally in the name of stability. As well as being contrary to principles of universal human rights and democracy which the administration has pledged to uphold everywhere, recent events in Tunisia and now in Egypt have shown that repression does not bring stability.”
He adds, “Events have escalated in Egypt to the point that the government has imposed a nationwide curfew and called the army on to the streets. In response, the Obama Administration has settled on a somewhat simple message in its statements about the mounting crisis – a set of talking points that Human Rights First believes should be strengthened to specifically condemn this excessive use of force by the Egyptian security forces and make clear that it views such tactics as counterproductive.”
Hicks says, “The State Department and White House have urged the Egyptian government to respect the basic rights to freedom of expression and assembly of the protesters, to turn on the Internet and restore access to social networking sites. President Obama and other officials have also called for restraint and non-violence from government forces and protesters, but that does not go far enough.”
But, he adds, “The situation in Egypt is serious and it demands a serious response – one that makes clear that the United States will not tolerate government use of force and unwarranted censorship to silence dissidents.”
According to Human Rights First, the Obama Administration must recognize that “almost all of the violence occurring in Egypt is coming from the side of the government. Riot police have repeatedly used tear gas, rubber bullets, batons and water cannon against peaceful demonstrators throughout the week. Moreover, uniformed riot police are supplemented by plain clothed thugs armed with truncheons and iron bars who randomly assault protesters. Journalists have been among the victims of police violence.”
Hicks noted that the lack of democracy in Egypt, exemplified by the brazenly rigged parliamentary elections held at the end of 2010, “is one of the root causes of the unrest in Egypt.”
In response, Hicks says that the U.S. government “should now call on the Egyptian authorities to commit to implementing reforms necessary to permit free and fair elections well in advance of presidential elections scheduled for the fall of this year, and to holding new parliamentary elections in an atmosphere of transparency and basic fairness that was absent from last year’s vote.”
He added that these include: granting access to independent international election monitors; allowing independent Egyptian election monitors to carry out their activities free from obstruction and interference; restoring the role of the Egyptian judiciary in supervising the elections and amending the law to remove restrictions on opposition candidates standing as candidates.
Hicks concluded, “The Obama administration must signal that it has turned the page from the old policy of toleration of oppression by its Egyptian ally in the name of stability. As well as being contrary to principles of universal human rights and democracy which the administration has pledged to uphold everywhere, recent events in Tunisia and now in Egypt have shown that repression does not bring stability.”
Two of the nation’s most respected Middle East experts have a message for President Obama: The Mubarak Reform Train has left the station.
Or, in the words of one expert, Dr. Michele Dunne, editor of The Arab Bulletin at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Pulling punches now will only continue past policy errors and escalate the costs to U.S. interests.”
Dr. Dunne, a former specialist on Middle East affairs for the U.S. Department of State, the White House, and the National Security Council, believes the time for a Mubarak-led “reform” is past. And she is urging the Obama Administration to recognize that that train has left the station.
She says, “One of the most striking features of recent U.S. policy toward the Middle East has been that it often appeared out of touch with current realities to the point of being anachronistic -- almost quaint.
“The dogged push for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, for example, flew in the face of truths including the facts that Prime Minister Netanyahu had no interest in reaching an agreement and Palestinian President Abbas was so weakened by the Fatah-Hamas rift that he would be unable to reach an agreement even if a good offer were put on the table.
“The most recent example of this unreality is U.S. calls for ‘reform’ and ‘national dialogue’ in Egypt in response to the escalating uprising,” she says.
“Reform?” she asks, then answers:
“Sorry, the time to call for that was a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago. Egyptians no longer want President Mubarak to reform; they simply want no more Mubaraks. Top-down political reform is now over in Egypt. In its place we are seeing bottom-up change, with all its many risks.”
Dr. Dunne asks how Egyptians went from demanding gradual, peaceful, political reform to wanting to overthrow their leader by whatever means possible?
“It did not happen overnight. Rather, over the last five years the idea of reform became discredited as Mubarak and his inner circle cynically manipulated the concept to enable their own particular brand of crony capitalism while staving off improvements in civil liberties or a real expansion of political contestation,” she says.
Mubarak allowed some breathing room in the 2005 parliamentary elections, only to follow them with a harsh crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and on Ayman Nour, who dared to run a real campaign against him, Dunne says, adding:
“Mubarak delivered on his 2005 pledge to sponsor constitutional reforms in an extremely damaging manner in 2007, actually managing to push through amendments that significantly impaired the political and human rights of his citizens even further.”
In fact, she says, “Mubarak succeeded in discrediting not only the idea of reform but also that of formal political processes altogether. He managed to damage not only the long-co-opted legal opposition parties but also to diminish the relevance of oppressed movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood.”
In the last few years, she continues, “it has been clear that young Egyptians were no longer putting their faith in such opposition groups but rather forming broader, more amorphous movements that had no intention of participating in corrupt formal politics.”
Dr. Dunne says the “final straw” was perhaps “the rigged parliamentary elections in November 2010, when the ruling National Democratic Party used every form of corruption and political manipulation to shutout nearly all opposition candidates and then added insult to injury by crowing about how the party’s successful policies had won the support of the voters.”
By the beginning of December 2010, the tinder for a conflagration had become very dry indeed; and then a young man in far off Tunisia lit a match, she says.
“And what was the United States doing all this time when it could have been trying more sincerely to persuade Mubarak to carry out reforms—or at least to show the Egyptian public that it was on the side of their legitimate demands?” she asks.
For a brief time, she says, from 2002 to 2005, “the administration of President George W. Bush rather persistently raised with Mubarak the need for democratic reform and implied that the U.S.-Egyptian relationship would stay close only if Mubarak heeded calls from Egyptian civil society and opposition groups for greater political freedoms and respect for human rights, as well as economic reforms needed to increase prosperity.”
The Bush administration, she recalls, “went as far as to impose some penalties on Mubarak, withdrawing a pledge of over $130 million in supplemental assistance in 2003 and then cutting off free trade talks in early 2006 in reaction to repressive measures Mubarak took against peaceful dissidents.”
But in early 2006, she recalls, “the Bush administration backed off pressing Mubarak, having seen few fruits from its efforts and facing escalating crises in Palestine and Iraq. Over the next two years, Bush annoyed Mubarak repeatedly by speaking up for democracy and human rights and his administration increased its spending on democracy programs in Egypt, but the wind had clearly gone out of the sails of the Freedom Agenda.”
The result was that “Mubarak carried out repressive measures and excluded opposition from local elections with no real consequences in his relations with the United States,” she says.
The Obama administration, she says, “further rolled back U.S. support for democracy in Egypt in an ill-advised attempt to restore the sweetness to relations with Mubarak in early 2009 by dropping all references to human rights or democracy in statements on Egypt and revising democracy assistance policies to appease him.”
The Obama administration “gradually went from 0 to 30 miles per hour in developing its rhetoric on how human rights and democracy fit in foreign policy over the next two years. Officials, including Obama, began to raise with Mubarak the need to take certain steps, such as lifting the state of emergency under which Egypt has been governed since 1981 and allowing domestic monitors and international observers access to elections. But Mubarak stiffed Obama completely and the U.S. administration, still wanting to keep a positive and polite relationship, issued some mildly critical public statements and wrung its hands in private about how to handle the issues. But clearly the United States was far behind the curve of what was happening in Egypt.”
And now? Dr. Dunne queries. “U.S. officials are having to dance pretty fast to come up with rhetoric and policies to show that they supported the legitimate demands of Egyptian citizens all along and are fully on the side of democratization in Egypt. It will not be easy, because the bad news is that Egyptians followed U.S. policy on these questions closely all along and are well aware of how inconsistent, ineffective, and unserious the United States was about promoting real reform—back in the days when it was still possible.”
For Dr. Dunne, the bottom line is: “If the Obama administration wants to show that it is serious about respecting political freedom and human rights, it should shift gears on Egypt quickly. It should press ahead with the current U.S. call for an orderly transition to democratic presidential and parliamentary elections, but it stop implying that it envisions Mubarak (or his unpopular new vice president) remaining in office.”
“The United States should privately encourage the Egyptian government to begin negotiations immediately with the opposition committee headed by Mohamed ElBaradei. And it should say privately and publicly that it will suspend all U.S. assistance should the Egyptian government fail to negotiate a transition or resort to violence against the protestors. Pulling punches now will only continue past policy errors and escalate the costs to U.S. interests.”
Among other human rights advocates now speaking out against effort to salvage a Mubarak government, is Neil Hicks, International Policy Advisor at Human Rights First, a prominent advocacy organization.
Hicks is brutally frank in his message to President Obama. “The Obama administration must signal that it has turned the page from the old policy of toleration of oppression by its Egyptian ally in the name of stability. As well as being contrary to principles of universal human rights and democracy which the administration has pledged to uphold everywhere, recent events in Tunisia and now in Egypt have shown that repression does not bring stability.”
He adds, “Events have escalated in Egypt to the point that the government has imposed a nationwide curfew and called the army on to the streets. In response, the Obama Administration has settled on a somewhat simple message in its statements about the mounting crisis – a set of talking points that Human Rights First believes should be strengthened to specifically condemn this excessive use of force by the Egyptian security forces and make clear that it views such tactics as counterproductive.”
Hicks says, “The State Department and White House have urged the Egyptian government to respect the basic rights to freedom of expression and assembly of the protesters, to turn on the Internet and restore access to social networking sites. President Obama and other officials have also called for restraint and non-violence from government forces and protesters, but that does not go far enough.”
But, he adds, “The situation in Egypt is serious and it demands a serious response – one that makes clear that the United States will not tolerate government use of force and unwarranted censorship to silence dissidents.”
According to Human Rights First, the Obama Administration must recognize that “almost all of the violence occurring in Egypt is coming from the side of the government. Riot police have repeatedly used tear gas, rubber bullets, batons and water cannon against peaceful demonstrators throughout the week. Moreover, uniformed riot police are supplemented by plain clothed thugs armed with truncheons and iron bars who randomly assault protesters. Journalists have been among the victims of police violence.”
Hicks noted that the lack of democracy in Egypt, exemplified by the brazenly rigged parliamentary elections held at the end of 2010, “is one of the root causes of the unrest in Egypt.”
In response, Hicks says that the U.S. government “should now call on the Egyptian authorities to commit to implementing reforms necessary to permit free and fair elections well in advance of presidential elections scheduled for the fall of this year, and to holding new parliamentary elections in an atmosphere of transparency and basic fairness that was absent from last year’s vote.”
He added that these include: granting access to independent international election monitors; allowing independent Egyptian election monitors to carry out their activities free from obstruction and interference; restoring the role of the Egyptian judiciary in supervising the elections and amending the law to remove restrictions on opposition candidates standing as candidates.
Hicks concluded, “The Obama administration must signal that it has turned the page from the old policy of toleration of oppression by its Egyptian ally in the name of stability. As well as being contrary to principles of universal human rights and democracy which the administration has pledged to uphold everywhere, recent events in Tunisia and now in Egypt have shown that repression does not bring stability.”
Rights Group’s Message to Mubarak (and Successor)
By William Fisher
In a new report on torture, started considerably before Egypt’s current paroxysms, Human Rights Watch excoriates the Mubarak regime and demands fundamental changes that a transition government would do well to embrace.
The report -- "’Work on Him Until He Confesses': Impunity for Torture in
Egypt," -- documents how President Hosni Mubarak's government “implicitly condones police abuse by failing to ensure that law enforcement officials accused of torture are investigated and criminally prosecuted, leaving victims without a remedy.”
In a message directed both to the tottering regime of 30-year President Hosni Mubarak and whatever transition or national unity government takes over if Mubarak resigns, the message of Human Rights Watch (HRW) is:
"Egyptians deserve a clean break from the incredibly entrenched practice of
torture," said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa
Division at HRW.
"The Egyptian government's foul record on this issue is a huge part of what is still bringing crowds onto the streets today," he said.
The grisly 95-page report opens with a look-back to June 2010. During a demonstration in Alexandria, protesters held pictures of 28-year-old Khaled Said, who was dragged out of a public Internet café by two undercover police officers, who beat him to death on the streets of Alexandria.
The event dominated headlines and set off demonstrations across the country. The local prosecutor initially closed an investigation and ordered Said's burial, but escalating public protests prompted the Public Prosecutor to reopen the investigation and refer it to court.
While the incident is but one of many similar abuses, the Said killing was so egregious – and so broadly publicized -- that many observers see it and what it led to as some of the definitive catalysts for the current demonstrations.
News of Said’s killing was carried not only by newspapers, but perhaps more significantly, via Twitter and Facebook messages linking potential demonstrators with one another.
"We Are All Khaled Said" is the name of the Facebook group that helped initiate the mass demonstrations on January 25, 2011.
Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Division – who has been live blogging from Cairo since the demonstrations began – said, “Egyptians deserve a clean break from the incredibly entrenched practice of torture. The Egyptian government's foul record on this issue is a huge part of what is still bringing crowds onto the streets today.”
The report says, “Torture is an endemic problem in Egypt and ending police abuse has been a driving element behind the massive popular demonstrations that swept Egypt over the past week.”
“Prosecuting torture and ending the emergency laws that enable a culture of impunity for the security forces should be a priority for the Egyptian government,” the report said.
It urges officials to undertake immediate legal, structural, and political reforms to ensure that the judicial system holds perpetrators of torture accountable and deters future abuse. It examines dozens of cases of torture and death in custody for which victims or their families instituted legal proceedings by filing a complaint.
The vast majority of torture complaints never reach court because of police
intimidation of victims and witnesses who file complaints, an inadequate legal framework, and delays in referring victims for medical examination,
the report said, adding:
“Another factor is that police from the same unit as the alleged torturer are responsible for gathering evidence and summoning witnesses.”
HRW says, “Said's case was an exception, one of very few in which media coverage and public outrage prompted senior members of the Public Prosecutor's office to become involved, which ensures a speedy and full investigation.”
The report notes that in November 2009, the government published statistics showing that between 2006 and 2009, Egyptian courts had sentenced only six police officers for torture and inhumane treatment, despite hundreds of complaints about torture and deaths in custody.”
In July 2010 an Alexandria appeals court confirmed a five-year sentence against a seventh officer, the report says.
HRW’s Stork adds, "In a country where torture remains a serious and systemic problem, the conviction of a mere seven police officers over four years reflects a huge disconnect from reality and leaves hundreds of victims and families without justice."
The report found that “law enforcement officers routinely and deliberately use torture and ill-treatment -- in ordinary criminal cases as well as with political dissidents and security detainees -- to coerce confessions, extract other information, or simply to punish detainees.”
The report presents numerous verified case histories. Here is one of them:
Ahmad Abd al-Mo'ez Basha, a 22-year-old driver in Imbaba, Cairo, told HRW how officers arrested him at his home in July 2010:
“They took me to Imbaba police station and put me in a room by myself. Two officers came in and told me to confess. I asked, ‘What to?’ They answered, ‘Confess to the theft.’ The head of the Criminal Investigations unit said, ‘Work on him until he confesses.’
“They handcuffed my hands in front of me and hung me from the door for more than two hours. They had whips and hit me on the legs, on the bottom of my feet, and on my back. When they took me down, they brought a black electric device and applied electro-shocks four or five times to my arms until they started smoking. All of this time they kept saying, ‘You have to confess’.
“The next morning they beat me again and whipped me with the cable on my back and on my shoulders. I fainted after three hours of the beating.”
“Impunity for torture is especially acute with State Security Investigations
(SSI), the Interior Ministry department responsible for monitoring political
dissents, HRW said. The SSI routinely engages in enforced disappearances, detaining suspects in its facilities for extended periods, concealing the fact that it is holding them or refusing to provide their whereabouts and denying detainees contact with lawyers, family, or doctors,” the report charges.
It notes that SSI facilities are not lawful places of detention: “Egyptian law prohibits detention in facilities other than recognized prisons and police stations.” The government denies that the SSI detains suspects at its sites - where suspects often face torture - despite considerable testimony to the contrary.
No SSI officer has ever been convicted for torture, although in at least three
cases officers have appeared before a court. One former SSI detainee and Muslim Brotherhood member, Nasr al-Sayed Hassan Nasr, told Human Rights Watch of his 60-day detention by SSI in 2010, during which he says he was blindfolded the entire time:
“They beat me with a shoe across the face. They kicked me in the testicles so that I'd fall to the ground. Once on the floor they used electro-shocks to make me stand up and then would kick me again in the testicles. At one point the officer tried to strangle me. The officer would call the guards and say, ‘By four o'clock I want you to bring Nasr's wife and daughters here and strip them in front of him’.”
“They took photographs of me while I was naked and being tortured and threatened to publish them. Victims and families of victims who had made complaints of torture consistently told Human Rights Watch that police officials tried to intimidate them to withdraw their complaint or to settle out of court,” the report says.
Egypt's legal framework fails to criminalize torture fully in line with
international law, another factor contributing to impunity, Human Rights Watch said.
The group called on the European Union and United States to speak out publicly against torture in Egypt, as well as about the government's failure to suppress these practices and punish those responsible.
"Police abuse becomes commonplace when there is effective impunity for law enforcement officers and their superiors," HRW’s Stork said. "That's one reason why so many people took to the streets this past week demanding an end to police abuses. Egypt needs to seriously confront the crime of torture, starting with the faulty investigation process, to send a strong signal that torturers will be held accountable."
As a result of incidents such as these – led by the beating death of Khaled Said -- throughout June and July 2010 hundreds of Egyptians took to the streets in a rare wave of protests to voice their anger at the police, whom witnesses accused of publicly murdering Said.
Some of these protests were loud and angry, with demonstrators demanding a full investigation into Said's death on June 6, and the prosecution of all those they held responsible, including the interior minister. In one particular event, hundreds of mourners dressed in black lined the Alexandrian coast in Said's memory, staring silently out to sea.
The Khaled Said case-including gruesome pictures of Said's battered body that soon appeared on social networking websites-shook and outraged many in Egypt, where an emergency law grants wide powers to police and security force.
Some citizens could identify with Said as victims of police brutality, while many young people could understand the experience of being randomly accosted by police in an internet café – public internet cafés are subject to surveillance and require a national ID to enter.
An initial attempt by authorities to cover up police culpability only fueled
public anger. According to Egyptian lawyers and domestic and international human rights groups, which have extensively documented the practice of torture in Egypt, law enforcement officials have used torture and ill-treatment on a widespread, deliberate, and systematic basis over the past two decades to glean confessions and information, or to punish detainees.
The report finds that the government is failing miserably to provide victims of torture and ill-treatment effective remedy, or to deter such abuses from
occurring in the future. Impunity prevails with regard to torture and
ill-treatment, since those guilty of such abuses having little expectation or
reason to fear they will be held to account.
The result is an epidemic of habitual, widespread, and deliberate torture perpetrated on a regular basis by security forces against political dissidents, Islamists allegedly engaged in terrorist activity, and ordinary citizens suspected of links to criminal activity or who simply look suspicious.
HRW urged the government of Egypt – and whoever heads it – to adopt a series of recommendations. For example:
The Ministry of Interior should immediately end the illegal practice of enforced disappearance and detention in SSI offices, and allow prosecutors to conduct unannounced visits to such sites to verify compliance. The Ministry should also announce it will cooperate fully with prosecutors in investigating and prosecuting those allegedly responsible for torture and ill-treatment.
The government should also amend the penal code to bring the definition of torture in line with international law, and make penalties for torture and ill-treatment commensurate with the seriousness of the crime.
The Office of the Public Prosecutor should order all prosecutors to
investigate credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment, even in the
absence of a formal complaint.
Prosecutors should conduct these investigations promptly, impartially, and thoroughly, ensuring that all those allegedly responsible, including superiors, are investigated. Forensic medical examinations should occur as soon as possible.
The government should also amend the Code of Criminal Procedure to allow victims of police abuse to file criminal suits against those responsible. It is vital that an independent body be established to accept, investigate, and pursue complaints of abuse by law enforcement officers.
Reinstating the Office of the Investigative Judge with a mandate to investigate abuse complaints would give the system greater independence, as would establishing a judicial police force to gather relevant material evidence and work with police.
Alleged abusers should not gather evidence, or interact with complainants and witnesses. Taking meaningful steps to investigate, prosecute and punish torturers would demonstrate the government's political will to end the practice and thus comply with its obligations under Egyptian and international law.
The European Union (EU) and United States, which have publicly declared their commitment to upholding human rights in their foreign relations, should speak out publicly against torture in Egypt, as well as the government's failure to prohibit and suppress these practices and punish those responsible.
The report reiterates that governments are strictly obligated by law not to return anyone to countries where there is a risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. It also calls upon governments “to make clear to the Egyptian government that torture decreases Egypt's value as a partner in counterterrorism because the information it obtains through torture is both unreliable and inadmissible in a court of law.”
There are a number of reasons why most torture cases do not reach court. These include Egypt's inadequate legal framework, which does not properly criminalize torture or provide sufficiently strong penalties; prosecutorial discretion to close investigations; intimidation of victims and witnesses; delays and poor quality of forensic medical examination; conflicts of interest in relying on the police for evidence; drawn out investigations; failure to conduct impartial investigations; and impunity for state security officers.
In a new report on torture, started considerably before Egypt’s current paroxysms, Human Rights Watch excoriates the Mubarak regime and demands fundamental changes that a transition government would do well to embrace.
The report -- "’Work on Him Until He Confesses': Impunity for Torture in
Egypt," -- documents how President Hosni Mubarak's government “implicitly condones police abuse by failing to ensure that law enforcement officials accused of torture are investigated and criminally prosecuted, leaving victims without a remedy.”
In a message directed both to the tottering regime of 30-year President Hosni Mubarak and whatever transition or national unity government takes over if Mubarak resigns, the message of Human Rights Watch (HRW) is:
"Egyptians deserve a clean break from the incredibly entrenched practice of
torture," said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa
Division at HRW.
"The Egyptian government's foul record on this issue is a huge part of what is still bringing crowds onto the streets today," he said.
The grisly 95-page report opens with a look-back to June 2010. During a demonstration in Alexandria, protesters held pictures of 28-year-old Khaled Said, who was dragged out of a public Internet café by two undercover police officers, who beat him to death on the streets of Alexandria.
The event dominated headlines and set off demonstrations across the country. The local prosecutor initially closed an investigation and ordered Said's burial, but escalating public protests prompted the Public Prosecutor to reopen the investigation and refer it to court.
While the incident is but one of many similar abuses, the Said killing was so egregious – and so broadly publicized -- that many observers see it and what it led to as some of the definitive catalysts for the current demonstrations.
News of Said’s killing was carried not only by newspapers, but perhaps more significantly, via Twitter and Facebook messages linking potential demonstrators with one another.
"We Are All Khaled Said" is the name of the Facebook group that helped initiate the mass demonstrations on January 25, 2011.
Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Division – who has been live blogging from Cairo since the demonstrations began – said, “Egyptians deserve a clean break from the incredibly entrenched practice of torture. The Egyptian government's foul record on this issue is a huge part of what is still bringing crowds onto the streets today.”
The report says, “Torture is an endemic problem in Egypt and ending police abuse has been a driving element behind the massive popular demonstrations that swept Egypt over the past week.”
“Prosecuting torture and ending the emergency laws that enable a culture of impunity for the security forces should be a priority for the Egyptian government,” the report said.
It urges officials to undertake immediate legal, structural, and political reforms to ensure that the judicial system holds perpetrators of torture accountable and deters future abuse. It examines dozens of cases of torture and death in custody for which victims or their families instituted legal proceedings by filing a complaint.
The vast majority of torture complaints never reach court because of police
intimidation of victims and witnesses who file complaints, an inadequate legal framework, and delays in referring victims for medical examination,
the report said, adding:
“Another factor is that police from the same unit as the alleged torturer are responsible for gathering evidence and summoning witnesses.”
HRW says, “Said's case was an exception, one of very few in which media coverage and public outrage prompted senior members of the Public Prosecutor's office to become involved, which ensures a speedy and full investigation.”
The report notes that in November 2009, the government published statistics showing that between 2006 and 2009, Egyptian courts had sentenced only six police officers for torture and inhumane treatment, despite hundreds of complaints about torture and deaths in custody.”
In July 2010 an Alexandria appeals court confirmed a five-year sentence against a seventh officer, the report says.
HRW’s Stork adds, "In a country where torture remains a serious and systemic problem, the conviction of a mere seven police officers over four years reflects a huge disconnect from reality and leaves hundreds of victims and families without justice."
The report found that “law enforcement officers routinely and deliberately use torture and ill-treatment -- in ordinary criminal cases as well as with political dissidents and security detainees -- to coerce confessions, extract other information, or simply to punish detainees.”
The report presents numerous verified case histories. Here is one of them:
Ahmad Abd al-Mo'ez Basha, a 22-year-old driver in Imbaba, Cairo, told HRW how officers arrested him at his home in July 2010:
“They took me to Imbaba police station and put me in a room by myself. Two officers came in and told me to confess. I asked, ‘What to?’ They answered, ‘Confess to the theft.’ The head of the Criminal Investigations unit said, ‘Work on him until he confesses.’
“They handcuffed my hands in front of me and hung me from the door for more than two hours. They had whips and hit me on the legs, on the bottom of my feet, and on my back. When they took me down, they brought a black electric device and applied electro-shocks four or five times to my arms until they started smoking. All of this time they kept saying, ‘You have to confess’.
“The next morning they beat me again and whipped me with the cable on my back and on my shoulders. I fainted after three hours of the beating.”
“Impunity for torture is especially acute with State Security Investigations
(SSI), the Interior Ministry department responsible for monitoring political
dissents, HRW said. The SSI routinely engages in enforced disappearances, detaining suspects in its facilities for extended periods, concealing the fact that it is holding them or refusing to provide their whereabouts and denying detainees contact with lawyers, family, or doctors,” the report charges.
It notes that SSI facilities are not lawful places of detention: “Egyptian law prohibits detention in facilities other than recognized prisons and police stations.” The government denies that the SSI detains suspects at its sites - where suspects often face torture - despite considerable testimony to the contrary.
No SSI officer has ever been convicted for torture, although in at least three
cases officers have appeared before a court. One former SSI detainee and Muslim Brotherhood member, Nasr al-Sayed Hassan Nasr, told Human Rights Watch of his 60-day detention by SSI in 2010, during which he says he was blindfolded the entire time:
“They beat me with a shoe across the face. They kicked me in the testicles so that I'd fall to the ground. Once on the floor they used electro-shocks to make me stand up and then would kick me again in the testicles. At one point the officer tried to strangle me. The officer would call the guards and say, ‘By four o'clock I want you to bring Nasr's wife and daughters here and strip them in front of him’.”
“They took photographs of me while I was naked and being tortured and threatened to publish them. Victims and families of victims who had made complaints of torture consistently told Human Rights Watch that police officials tried to intimidate them to withdraw their complaint or to settle out of court,” the report says.
Egypt's legal framework fails to criminalize torture fully in line with
international law, another factor contributing to impunity, Human Rights Watch said.
The group called on the European Union and United States to speak out publicly against torture in Egypt, as well as about the government's failure to suppress these practices and punish those responsible.
"Police abuse becomes commonplace when there is effective impunity for law enforcement officers and their superiors," HRW’s Stork said. "That's one reason why so many people took to the streets this past week demanding an end to police abuses. Egypt needs to seriously confront the crime of torture, starting with the faulty investigation process, to send a strong signal that torturers will be held accountable."
As a result of incidents such as these – led by the beating death of Khaled Said -- throughout June and July 2010 hundreds of Egyptians took to the streets in a rare wave of protests to voice their anger at the police, whom witnesses accused of publicly murdering Said.
Some of these protests were loud and angry, with demonstrators demanding a full investigation into Said's death on June 6, and the prosecution of all those they held responsible, including the interior minister. In one particular event, hundreds of mourners dressed in black lined the Alexandrian coast in Said's memory, staring silently out to sea.
The Khaled Said case-including gruesome pictures of Said's battered body that soon appeared on social networking websites-shook and outraged many in Egypt, where an emergency law grants wide powers to police and security force.
Some citizens could identify with Said as victims of police brutality, while many young people could understand the experience of being randomly accosted by police in an internet café – public internet cafés are subject to surveillance and require a national ID to enter.
An initial attempt by authorities to cover up police culpability only fueled
public anger. According to Egyptian lawyers and domestic and international human rights groups, which have extensively documented the practice of torture in Egypt, law enforcement officials have used torture and ill-treatment on a widespread, deliberate, and systematic basis over the past two decades to glean confessions and information, or to punish detainees.
The report finds that the government is failing miserably to provide victims of torture and ill-treatment effective remedy, or to deter such abuses from
occurring in the future. Impunity prevails with regard to torture and
ill-treatment, since those guilty of such abuses having little expectation or
reason to fear they will be held to account.
The result is an epidemic of habitual, widespread, and deliberate torture perpetrated on a regular basis by security forces against political dissidents, Islamists allegedly engaged in terrorist activity, and ordinary citizens suspected of links to criminal activity or who simply look suspicious.
HRW urged the government of Egypt – and whoever heads it – to adopt a series of recommendations. For example:
The Ministry of Interior should immediately end the illegal practice of enforced disappearance and detention in SSI offices, and allow prosecutors to conduct unannounced visits to such sites to verify compliance. The Ministry should also announce it will cooperate fully with prosecutors in investigating and prosecuting those allegedly responsible for torture and ill-treatment.
The government should also amend the penal code to bring the definition of torture in line with international law, and make penalties for torture and ill-treatment commensurate with the seriousness of the crime.
The Office of the Public Prosecutor should order all prosecutors to
investigate credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment, even in the
absence of a formal complaint.
Prosecutors should conduct these investigations promptly, impartially, and thoroughly, ensuring that all those allegedly responsible, including superiors, are investigated. Forensic medical examinations should occur as soon as possible.
The government should also amend the Code of Criminal Procedure to allow victims of police abuse to file criminal suits against those responsible. It is vital that an independent body be established to accept, investigate, and pursue complaints of abuse by law enforcement officers.
Reinstating the Office of the Investigative Judge with a mandate to investigate abuse complaints would give the system greater independence, as would establishing a judicial police force to gather relevant material evidence and work with police.
Alleged abusers should not gather evidence, or interact with complainants and witnesses. Taking meaningful steps to investigate, prosecute and punish torturers would demonstrate the government's political will to end the practice and thus comply with its obligations under Egyptian and international law.
The European Union (EU) and United States, which have publicly declared their commitment to upholding human rights in their foreign relations, should speak out publicly against torture in Egypt, as well as the government's failure to prohibit and suppress these practices and punish those responsible.
The report reiterates that governments are strictly obligated by law not to return anyone to countries where there is a risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. It also calls upon governments “to make clear to the Egyptian government that torture decreases Egypt's value as a partner in counterterrorism because the information it obtains through torture is both unreliable and inadmissible in a court of law.”
There are a number of reasons why most torture cases do not reach court. These include Egypt's inadequate legal framework, which does not properly criminalize torture or provide sufficiently strong penalties; prosecutorial discretion to close investigations; intimidation of victims and witnesses; delays and poor quality of forensic medical examination; conflicts of interest in relying on the police for evidence; drawn out investigations; failure to conduct impartial investigations; and impunity for state security officers.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
The Headless Horsemen of Tahrir Square
By William Fisher
As hundreds of thousands of Egyptians thronged into the streets of the country’s major cities demanding an end to the 30-year rule of their aging, repressive, authoritarian President Hosni Murarak, the world’s commentariat was earning a living wrestling with questions like: “How did this thing start?” and “Who’s in charge?”
Was the world watching an Iranian plot to permanently derail the faltering peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority? Or a CIA coup? Or was it a spontaneous outpouring of voice from the voiceless? Was it a merely an important “second step” in the movement started in Tunisia? Was it engineered by such anemic political opposition as exists in Egypt? By the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps covertly, thus explaining that group’s conspicuous absence from the early days of the demonstrations.
Or did the wall to wall coverage of the Tunisian uprising by trusted media such as Al Jazeera embolden downtrodden Egyptians – as well as Yemenites and Jordanians -- to risk life, limb and property in the streets? And how important was the role played by the so-called “social media” – Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, etc. – as an accelerant in the David and Goliath struggle?
Journalists trying to report the dynamic situation in Egypt were obliged by fast-breaking developments to add updates, virtually by the minute.
Here’s where the situation stands as of Sunday afternoon (ET) January 30:
Over the weekend, the demonstrations appeared to gather strength as thousands again took to the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Luxor and other large cities in peaceful protests.
President Mubarak moved Egyptian troops into the center of Cairo to protect government property and historic sites from a wave of looting. The looting was widely attributed, not to the demonstrators, but to what one demonstrator called “thugs” – poor people and common criminals.
Some media outlets reported that the criminals were released from jails and police stations by the police themselves in an effort to discredit the demonstrators.
One TV outlet reported that 10,000 prisoners had broken out – or had been let out – of a large prison just North of Cairo.
In the suburbs of Cairo, residents formed “vigilante groups” of family, friends and neighbors to protect their property from vandalism and theft.
Meanwhile, in the United States – Egypt’s longtime benefactor and financier -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton went on the television talk shows on Sunday and called for “an orderly transition to meet the democratic and economic needs of the people” in Egypt.
She did not, however, say President Mubarak should resign. But she may have been preparing the ground. Some media in Egypt were reporting over the weekend that the president’s wife and family are already in London and that the president had arranged for the transfer there of large sums of money. These reports remain unconfirmed.
In her TV appearances, Mrs. Clinton said the Egyptian people would determine Mubarak’s future. She added that the US was prepared to help a transition that will address the political and economic freedoms sought by the demonstrators.
Secretary Clinton referred to Mubarak’s hurried appointment of a Vice President – the first in 30 years. It was Omar Suleiman, currently head of Egyptian central intelligence and before that head of intelligence for the air force. Mubarak also ordered his government to resign and appointed a new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq.
CNN’s veteran Egypt correspondent, Ben Wederman, reported that the new vice president and prime minister “are as Mubarak as Mubarak. Egyptians are in no mood for more of the same.”
According to “The Dark Side,” a prize-winning book by New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer, Suleiman has been Egypt’s coordinator of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. Extraordinary rendition involves the transfer or kidnapping of a “war on terror” detainee or suspect procedure in which and then transfering them illegally to a countryknown for its use torture during interrogation.
Suleiman ‘s appointment is prompting some analysts and protesters to question the sincerity of the Mubarak’s commitment to democratic change.
The Obama administration’s party line was also echoed on Sunday by the new White House Chief of Staff, William Daley. He called on Egyptian President Mubarak to "support basic human rights." But he added that this issue could be taken up by only the people of Egypt.
In other weekend developments:
A curfew is still in force but protesters are largely ignoring it. It was reported that some protesters set fires and tried to enter government buildings.
Self-styled “opposition leader” Mohamed El Baradei , former head of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) arrived from his home in Vienna, and was reportedly initially placed under house arrest in his hotel. Later, as he attempted to join demonstrators in the street, he was doused by a water cannon.
El Baradei returned to his native Egypt several months ago and immediately began a campaign to persuade Egyptian voters that he deserved their support as leader of the opposition. Since then, he has been in and out of Egypt, was not present at the start of the current demonstrations, and is generally not seen as the person likely to be selected to lead this leaderless revolution.
In this reporter’s view, some of the best reporting of events on the ground came from Joe Stork and his team in Egypt with Human Rights Watch. Stork wrote:
“Thousands of protesters in Cairo and Alexandria defied a heavy deployment of riot police and other security forces and government warnings not to participate in demonstrations on January 28, 2011. The government shut down access to the Internet and most mobile phone networks and ordered the army onto the streets of Cairo ahead of a curfew.
“Witnesses described dozens of demonstrators being injured by the police. Reports say security forces are restricting the movements of the opposition leader Mohamed el-Baradei and have arrested several leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Police briefly detained several journalists covering the protests.
“The Egyptian people are on the streets demanding reform and a government whose police no longer attack them. After decades of torture and brutality, the Egyptian government is all too comfortable beating and shooting at its own citizens. But the government and its security forces should heed the message that the people have had enough.
“Protesters in Cairo tried to force their way towards Tahrir Square, the scheduled meeting point for the January 28 protest. Human Rights Watch researchers observed demonstrators as they made their way across Qasr al-Nil Bridge toward the central square, only to be turned back, at first with water cannons and teargas fired at close range, and then with rubber bullets fired by riot police. Protesters also attempted to cross the 6 October Bridge, but riot police there also fired teargas into crowd.
“At approximately 3:15 p.m., riot police at Qasr al-Nil Bridge started shooting rubber bullets into the crowd and beating them with batons, eventually leading to the retreat of demonstrators back across the bridge. Eyewitnesses said that dozens were injured. Human Rights Watch researchers near the bridge counted nine bloodied victims as other demonstrators carried them out. One appeared to be unconscious, another had what appeared to be a dozen bullet wounds, and a 67-year-old man had a bullet wound to his neck.
“An eyewitness, an elderly female demonstrator who said she was at the front lines of the demonstrators on the bridge, said that the police fired both the teargas and the rubber bullets at extremely close range. Another demonstrator, a 62-year-old retired army officer who said he was a veteran of the 1973 war with Israel, said police beat him with batons.
“Meanwhile in the northern port of Alexandria, Egypt’s second largest city, a Human Rights Watch researcher witnessed security forces shooting teargas canisters and rubber bullets at about 600 peaceful protesters after the Friday noon prayer at the Sidi Beshr mosque. The protesters left the mosque with banners and started marching, shouting, “We are peaceful, we are peaceful.” After an hour of sporadic clashes a large column of protesters came from the other direction and blocked in police, holding up their hands and repeating, “We are peaceful.” Police later withdrew from the area and thousands of protesters marched down the Alexandria seafront. Later in the day Human Rights Watch saw police cars and trucks burning on the city streets.
“Human Rights Watch urged the government to reverse its decision to shut down most communications in Egypt, saying the blackout poses a major threat to human rights. The shutdown of the internet came in apparent response to the demonstrations, which began as protests against police torture and quickly escalated into calls for an end to President Mubarak’s three decades of rule.
“Egypt’s information blackout is an extreme step designed to disrupt planned marches, to block images of police brutality, and to silence dissent once and for all,” said Stork. “Attacks on journalists are also intended to censor reporting. The government should order police to let reporters work freely.
“According to media reports, on January 28 police yesterday at least four journalists, beat a BBC reporters, and seized a camera from a CNN crew. Starting January 25, they briefly detained at least 10 other reporters.
“Human Rights Watch said that the internet and mobile communications are essential tools for rights of expression, to information, and of assembly and association. The United States, the European Union, and influential regional governments should take immediate steps to press Egypt to end the nationwide telecommunications blackout. Companies and internet service providers in and outside of Egypt should act responsibly to uphold freedom of expression and privacy by pressing Egypt to stop censoring their products and services.
“A state-directed shutdown of all internet access is deeply chilling,” said Stork. “The international community should respond swiftly to put an end to Egypt’s information blackout and human rights abuses.”
Also over the weekend, the Egyptian Air Force flew low-flying fighter jets and helicopters over thousands of protesters in Cairo’s central square. The show of force was seen as a message from Mubarak that he still controls the most important levers of state power.
But the relationship between the protesters and the Egyptian military remained enigmatic. The military was ordered into the melee to replace the universally-hated police, which fled to their headquarters at the Interior Ministry in Cairo, retreating in the face of an advancing army of citizens.
Police brutality, deaths in detention, torture at police stations, and unbridled corruption – this described the reputation of the police held by virtually all Egyptians, except those with the means to buy themselves out of trouble.
The Army commands great respect from the people of Egypt – after all, it fought three wars on their behalf (and, according to Egyptian propaganda, was victorious in all three).
So when the tanks rolled into Cairo over the weekend and parked on The Corniche, the wide-sidewalked road running long the Nile in one of the city’s upscale business districts, their crews were treated with shouts of welcome and handshakes. Indeed, some news reports said some of the soldiers were transparently in favor of the protesters.
When if ever the Army will receive orders to use force, and what form that force may take, the unanswered question is whether the troops are ready to carry out such orders.
Also over the weekend, the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera said on Sunday that Egyptian authorities ordered its Cairo news bureau shuttered. The popular channel condemned the move as an attempt to "stifle and repress" open reporting.
The U.S. Embassy in Cairo asked Americans in Egypt to consider leaving the country as soon as possible. This suggestion was for Embassy personnel as well as tourists.
Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu urged restraint. He told his Cabinet on Sunday that he is "anxiously following" the crisis in Egypt. In his first public comment on the situation, he said that one of the key factors was Israel's 30-year-old peace agreement with Egypt.
Unrest in Egypt begin creating gas shortages and interrupting the smuggling of gasoline to the Gaza Strip. This triggered panic buying by drivers afraid of the complete depletion of the local supply.
Egyptian protesters again defied the government-imposed curfew, as police effectively disappeared and military units made no obvious attempt to enforce it.
All of which leaves the reader or the viewer with many unanswered questions, beginning with: How did this all start?
There were many factors at work. One contribution came from the ubiquitous WikiLeaks organization, which released a number of diplomatic cables published in The Guardian/UK .
One US embassy cable predicted Mubarak, if still alive in 2011, would run
again for presidency 'and, inevitably, win'
Other Secret US embassy cables sent from Cairo in the past two years reveal that the Obama administration wanted to maintain a close political and military relationship with Mubarak.
One cable said, "The Egyptians want the visit to demonstrate that Egypt remains America's 'indispensable Arab ally', and that bilateral tensions have abated. President Mubarak is the proud leader of a proud nation ... Mubarak is 81 years old and in reasonably good health; his most notable problem is a hearing deficit in his left ear. He responds well to respect for Egypt and for his position, but is not swayed by personal flattery," the cable said.
It predicted that if Mubarak were still alive for Egypt's next presidential
election in 2011, "it is likely he will run again and, inevitably, win". The
most likely contender to succeed him was his son Gamal, the cable suggested.
Another cable, from March 2009, shows the US's astonishingly intimate military relationship with Egypt. Washington provides Cairo $1.3bn annually in foreign military finance (FMF) to purchase US weapons and defense equipment, and the cable said. "President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the $1.3bn in annual FMF as 'untouchable compensation' for making and maintaining peace with Israel.
"The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at
peace with Israel, and the US military enjoys priority access to the Suez canal and Egyptian airspace."
Many other parts of the question about the origins of the current situation are as yet unclear. But we know this much: In no way were these demonstrations a spontaneous or first-time event. Egypt has seen demonstrations before and, in fact, many Middle East scholars believe that those earlier demonstrations provided a direct route to the current protest.
The closest to rational answers to these questions, in this reporter’s view, came from an interview with Mohammed Ezzeldin, a graduate of political science at Cairo University, who is currently completing his master's degree in history at Georgetown, and Paul Jay, Senior Editor of the Real News Network. The Public Record has done some minor editing.
“So how did this moment arrive? How did we get here?” Jay asked.
Ezzelden’s response: “We have to understand this moment in terms of accumulation. This not just--didn't come out of the blue. This moment was the manifestation, this moment unfolded after a manifestation of different opposition movement, basically three …rounds of opposition to Mubarak regime, beginning from 2004, 2005, when (the) Kefaya movement (rose) up the famous slogan, ‘Enough,’ [and called for] no for continuation for continuation for Mubarak, no to inheritance of power to his son Gamal Mubarak. And then this movement took a momentum in 2005 and people made renewed the hope for a real change. After 2005 we have witnessed a huge wave of strikes--included workers, bureaucrats, included people working in the state apparatus and business. For example, in Mahalla, industrial city in Delta, witnessed three successive and successful strikes in 2006, 2007, and 2008.”
“El-Mahalla is a City and factories. Like, it's industrial city, based on huge [inaudible] factories of textile industry. And it's--like, you can find, like, almost 30,000 workers working together. So imagine when [inaudible] 30,000 people are striking and supported by the residents in El-Mahalla. So three times they made successful [2006, 2007, and April 2008].
JAY: “And were they met with police repression?”
EZZELDIN: In 2008, April 6, 2008, they met with huge and brutal repression by the police, and it was like a street war. So this was -- this moment actually made a new hope, that first it delivered a new culture, a new experience for ordinary people about the strike. So it was followed by estimated, almost estimated 800 strikes in two years, which [is] unprecedented in Egyptian history.”
“In 2008, 2009…So we had first a political movement 2005, social movement, spread all over Egypt, in 2008 manifested by Mahalla strike and the tax [textile?] workers strike, who called for independent trade union. And both experiences [inaudible] many of Egyptian workers and people who are protesting against the regime and the -- it paid a lot of attention to what these people can do and how powerful they are. Okay?”
“It was followed later, last year, in 2010, by a youth movement. This youth movement [inaudible] after the brutal death of Khaled Saeed. Khaled Saeed was a young man, a university graduate in Alexandria, and he was tortured in the street and he was killed by the police inspectors. And after -- like, who was ordered by the police to kill this man, and he was killed.”
“And after the murder of Khaled Saeed in June 2010, there was a huge and massive opposition between the youth [inaudible] the people who are vulnerable to unemployment, people who are facing the police in daily interactions, and people who feel that this country is theirs, this country is ours, but it has been hijacked, it has been captured by this repressive regime and the political and economic figures who are supporting this regime and who are depriving them from a new future.”
“So we have three moments manifested in what happened. And, of course, this wouldn't happen, I would say, this wouldn't happen, at least unless we have kept watching the great and glorious revolution of the Tunisian people, which actually broke any barrier of fear [inaudible] just fearing to go to demonstration and continuing and insisting on the demands. So Tunisia, of course, played a huge role in what--to make what happened [inaudible].”
JAY: How important was social media? We're--you know, from the Western coverage there's kind of this sense that Egyptians were doing nothing, Tunisia happens, social media, and now you get this. So now what -- you can understand there's years of development. But that being said, did social media play an important role?
EZZELDIN: Yes, it played an important role. But we have to understand there's a sort of difference between Egypt and Tunisia. The Egyptian regime, the dictatorship in Egypt, is supported, basically, by the American aid and supported by American regime…American administration, and of course supported by Israel. The geographic and strategic status of Egypt in the region made the Egyptian regime quite different from other regimes in the region, okay, w hat made the mission and the task of the Egyptian opposition is really hard. So this is number one. Number two--.
JAY: But just to add, because there's so much at stake for Western interests, Egypt is like the pillar of this US policy for this region.
EZZELDIN: Sure. Sure. Sure. This first. And this not--by any means, this--I don't mean to reduce anything of what happened or to underestimate what happened in Tunisia, which is beyond imagination, beyond recognition, something really incredible, something great. But I would say, first, Egypt is quite different in terms of population, in terms of strategic importance to United States.
And second, regarding the media, the media played important role, because, first, the government and the state media lost its legitimacy since 2005. Al Jazeera and all independent bloggers and websites, Facebook, all this new social media played a significant role in networking and in, like, calling for strikes.
For example, in April 6, 2008, it played a magnificent role. So social media played very important role. And people now, like, we--I expected that what happened in Tunisia is going to influence people in Egypt, but I didn't expect that it's going to influence--me and many people didn't expect it will take this short an--it was with this--in this quick way, this very fast way. So media, basically, the coverage of events in Tunisia last month, played a major role in bringing the potential for change in Egypt to a moment, a momentum.
JAY: So do you get a sense now that -- both in terms of the workers movement and the unions and the student movement, that this is going to give rise to new forms or more developed forms of organization? 'Cause right now it looks very spontaneous.
EZZELDIN: Yeah. It's completely spontaneous. The opposition movement, the legitimate, legally, opposition movement can't claim anything of what's going on now in Cairo streets. And Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday, they denounced what happened. They said, we didn't participate; we are going--. They said they are going to participate, but they didn't participate actively in what happened Tuesday. Okay? So this actually is really inspiring. First, those people are having spontaneous motivations. They were going after an--because of unemployment [inaudible] economic and political social grievance, because of dictatorship, because the suppression, the oppression of the police, okay, they are just--they are done. They are done.
They [The Muslim Brotherhood] have nothing to lose [inaudible] People are going to change. Okay? So this is number one. There's--they are not consolidated by foreign influence or foreign support. In terms of money, in terms of organization, like what happened in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, for example, it's quite different. People are not supported in Tunisia and Egypt; they are not supported from outside. And all the stereotypes in Western media about the potential threat of Islamist and all this stuff and they are going to take over the power [inaudible] only potential or only alternative to the recent regime in the region. Now it's -- it doesn't has-- it lost all of its credibility, because people are going and challenging the regime.
As Ezzeldin says, the role of social media such as Facebook and Twitter should not be underestimated. Many observers are referring to the current demonstrations are “The Twitter Revolution.” But others think that overplays its significance.
To Mohammed Ezzeldin, the real contribution of social media is to shrink the length of time required from having an idea of staging a demonstration and actual implementation of that idea. Many Egyptians were exchanging messages about the Mubarak regime and what could be done, literally for years. And demonstrations for social and economic justice took place regularly, sometimes with deadly consequences for the participants.
Because of social networks, many more people knew of these developments. This was the cadre of young, mostly college-educated Egyptians who were initially catalyzed by the “miracle of Tunisia.” The almost unbelievable ouster of the long-time president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, had the effect of catalyzing the young Egyptians who began their country’s latest street demonstrations.
The social networks were also key to the media coverage. Twitter Tweets weere used by journalists to gather information as well as by demonstrators to coorindate with one another.
As this riveting Middle East Melodrama plays out – and it is impossible to forecast how it will all end – we all wonder if we will be sitting here ten years from now bemoaning what might have been – and wasn’t? Or looking proudly at what ordinary people were able to accomplish against odds so long they would drive as Las Vegas bookie into rehab.
Mubarak had an extraordinary opportunity to govern fairly and effectively. In the opinion of most observers, he has done neither. In 1979, he agreed to a peace treaty with Israel – an idea originated with Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who traveled to Jerusalem to speak to the Knesset and whowas later assassinated by an Islamist extremist. He has enjoyed a high degree of acceptance by the international community and, thanks to America’s largesse, he has been able to fund a first class military machine.
Since that historic treaty-signing, Mubarak has sold himself in Washington and elsewhere as critical to the success of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Signing the treaty with the Israelis got him billions each year in military aid and economic assistance. It is known that he has a close relationship with Iasrael’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He saw himself as the indispensable player in the Arab-Israeli arena, and he persuaded many others – inside and outside Egypt – of the credibility of that mantra.
And it is also true that, more recently, the Mubarak Government has served Israel’s interest by cutting off some of the smuggling between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
These actions may give Mubarak a better reputation abroad than he enjoys at home, where he has been incredibly unpopular among most of his people for many years. He has kept the country under emergency law for 30 years, despite strong suggestions from the US, the EU and the UN to repeal them. These laws give the security services virtually unbridled authority to arrest and detain and, according to our own State Department’s annual report on Human Rights, Mubarak’s goons have used their authority to torture, to disappear prisoners, and to treat deaths in detention with impunity.
But the shortcomings of the Mubarak presidency are not limited to human rights. The economy is a basket case. Unemployment is virtually impossible to calculate with any degree of certainly, but the World Bank currently put it at 9.1 percent in March
2010, down from 9.2 percent a year ago.
But numbers don’t begin to tell the story. More to the point, the Constitution offers every Egyptian the opportunity to qualify for a university education. As a result, the country has a large population of men and women with degrees who have never had a job. Those who can afford to travel go overseas to seek employment. Those without resources take any job they can get. Many drive taxies. Others work as office cleaners. One suspects that their feelings of frustration would have led many of them to participate in the current demonstrations.
Those without resources include the 40 per cent of Egyptians who live below the poverty line, many in the most grinding poverty to be seen anywhere.
The Mubarak Government has made periodic noises about how much it’s done to improve Education, but today Egypt is ranked 123 in the Human Development Index (HDI), and seventh in the lowest 10 HDI countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa, in
2009.
Then there is the issue of corruption – public and private. Corruption seems to be as indigenous to the Middle East as sand. In Egypt, it is pervasive. It is known as bakshish. If you are too short to get into the Police Academy; if you want your taxi to take you to an out-of-the-way place; if your phone doesn’t work; if something you ordered is being held up in customs; if you’d rather not have the traffic ticket the cop is writing for speeding (you weren’t) – in all these situations and many on a much grander scale, a few Egyptian pounds will solve your problem. The American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt estimates that corruption in business adds at least 30 per cent to the price of Egyptian goods.
By most measures of development, modern Egypt fails. Washington is no doubt today questioning the cost-benefit implications of its massive investments in the Mubarak regime.
And wondering, with the rest of the world, who will emerge as a natural leader if Mubarak goes – and whether that leader will be able to maintain stability, while responding to the legitimate and long-delayed yearnings of the Egyptian people.
William Fisher, a regular contributor to The Public Record, has managed economic development programs for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere for the past 25 years. He has supervised major multi-year projects for AID in Egypt, where he lived and worked for three years. He returned later with his team to design Egypt’s agricultural strategy. Fisher served in the administration of President John F. Kennedy. He reports on a wide-range of issues for numerous domestic and international newspapers and online journals. He blogs at The World According to Bill Fisher.
As hundreds of thousands of Egyptians thronged into the streets of the country’s major cities demanding an end to the 30-year rule of their aging, repressive, authoritarian President Hosni Murarak, the world’s commentariat was earning a living wrestling with questions like: “How did this thing start?” and “Who’s in charge?”
Was the world watching an Iranian plot to permanently derail the faltering peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority? Or a CIA coup? Or was it a spontaneous outpouring of voice from the voiceless? Was it a merely an important “second step” in the movement started in Tunisia? Was it engineered by such anemic political opposition as exists in Egypt? By the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps covertly, thus explaining that group’s conspicuous absence from the early days of the demonstrations.
Or did the wall to wall coverage of the Tunisian uprising by trusted media such as Al Jazeera embolden downtrodden Egyptians – as well as Yemenites and Jordanians -- to risk life, limb and property in the streets? And how important was the role played by the so-called “social media” – Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, etc. – as an accelerant in the David and Goliath struggle?
Journalists trying to report the dynamic situation in Egypt were obliged by fast-breaking developments to add updates, virtually by the minute.
Here’s where the situation stands as of Sunday afternoon (ET) January 30:
Over the weekend, the demonstrations appeared to gather strength as thousands again took to the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Luxor and other large cities in peaceful protests.
President Mubarak moved Egyptian troops into the center of Cairo to protect government property and historic sites from a wave of looting. The looting was widely attributed, not to the demonstrators, but to what one demonstrator called “thugs” – poor people and common criminals.
Some media outlets reported that the criminals were released from jails and police stations by the police themselves in an effort to discredit the demonstrators.
One TV outlet reported that 10,000 prisoners had broken out – or had been let out – of a large prison just North of Cairo.
In the suburbs of Cairo, residents formed “vigilante groups” of family, friends and neighbors to protect their property from vandalism and theft.
Meanwhile, in the United States – Egypt’s longtime benefactor and financier -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton went on the television talk shows on Sunday and called for “an orderly transition to meet the democratic and economic needs of the people” in Egypt.
She did not, however, say President Mubarak should resign. But she may have been preparing the ground. Some media in Egypt were reporting over the weekend that the president’s wife and family are already in London and that the president had arranged for the transfer there of large sums of money. These reports remain unconfirmed.
In her TV appearances, Mrs. Clinton said the Egyptian people would determine Mubarak’s future. She added that the US was prepared to help a transition that will address the political and economic freedoms sought by the demonstrators.
Secretary Clinton referred to Mubarak’s hurried appointment of a Vice President – the first in 30 years. It was Omar Suleiman, currently head of Egyptian central intelligence and before that head of intelligence for the air force. Mubarak also ordered his government to resign and appointed a new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq.
CNN’s veteran Egypt correspondent, Ben Wederman, reported that the new vice president and prime minister “are as Mubarak as Mubarak. Egyptians are in no mood for more of the same.”
According to “The Dark Side,” a prize-winning book by New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer, Suleiman has been Egypt’s coordinator of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. Extraordinary rendition involves the transfer or kidnapping of a “war on terror” detainee or suspect procedure in which and then transfering them illegally to a countryknown for its use torture during interrogation.
Suleiman ‘s appointment is prompting some analysts and protesters to question the sincerity of the Mubarak’s commitment to democratic change.
The Obama administration’s party line was also echoed on Sunday by the new White House Chief of Staff, William Daley. He called on Egyptian President Mubarak to "support basic human rights." But he added that this issue could be taken up by only the people of Egypt.
In other weekend developments:
A curfew is still in force but protesters are largely ignoring it. It was reported that some protesters set fires and tried to enter government buildings.
Self-styled “opposition leader” Mohamed El Baradei , former head of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) arrived from his home in Vienna, and was reportedly initially placed under house arrest in his hotel. Later, as he attempted to join demonstrators in the street, he was doused by a water cannon.
El Baradei returned to his native Egypt several months ago and immediately began a campaign to persuade Egyptian voters that he deserved their support as leader of the opposition. Since then, he has been in and out of Egypt, was not present at the start of the current demonstrations, and is generally not seen as the person likely to be selected to lead this leaderless revolution.
In this reporter’s view, some of the best reporting of events on the ground came from Joe Stork and his team in Egypt with Human Rights Watch. Stork wrote:
“Thousands of protesters in Cairo and Alexandria defied a heavy deployment of riot police and other security forces and government warnings not to participate in demonstrations on January 28, 2011. The government shut down access to the Internet and most mobile phone networks and ordered the army onto the streets of Cairo ahead of a curfew.
“Witnesses described dozens of demonstrators being injured by the police. Reports say security forces are restricting the movements of the opposition leader Mohamed el-Baradei and have arrested several leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Police briefly detained several journalists covering the protests.
“The Egyptian people are on the streets demanding reform and a government whose police no longer attack them. After decades of torture and brutality, the Egyptian government is all too comfortable beating and shooting at its own citizens. But the government and its security forces should heed the message that the people have had enough.
“Protesters in Cairo tried to force their way towards Tahrir Square, the scheduled meeting point for the January 28 protest. Human Rights Watch researchers observed demonstrators as they made their way across Qasr al-Nil Bridge toward the central square, only to be turned back, at first with water cannons and teargas fired at close range, and then with rubber bullets fired by riot police. Protesters also attempted to cross the 6 October Bridge, but riot police there also fired teargas into crowd.
“At approximately 3:15 p.m., riot police at Qasr al-Nil Bridge started shooting rubber bullets into the crowd and beating them with batons, eventually leading to the retreat of demonstrators back across the bridge. Eyewitnesses said that dozens were injured. Human Rights Watch researchers near the bridge counted nine bloodied victims as other demonstrators carried them out. One appeared to be unconscious, another had what appeared to be a dozen bullet wounds, and a 67-year-old man had a bullet wound to his neck.
“An eyewitness, an elderly female demonstrator who said she was at the front lines of the demonstrators on the bridge, said that the police fired both the teargas and the rubber bullets at extremely close range. Another demonstrator, a 62-year-old retired army officer who said he was a veteran of the 1973 war with Israel, said police beat him with batons.
“Meanwhile in the northern port of Alexandria, Egypt’s second largest city, a Human Rights Watch researcher witnessed security forces shooting teargas canisters and rubber bullets at about 600 peaceful protesters after the Friday noon prayer at the Sidi Beshr mosque. The protesters left the mosque with banners and started marching, shouting, “We are peaceful, we are peaceful.” After an hour of sporadic clashes a large column of protesters came from the other direction and blocked in police, holding up their hands and repeating, “We are peaceful.” Police later withdrew from the area and thousands of protesters marched down the Alexandria seafront. Later in the day Human Rights Watch saw police cars and trucks burning on the city streets.
“Human Rights Watch urged the government to reverse its decision to shut down most communications in Egypt, saying the blackout poses a major threat to human rights. The shutdown of the internet came in apparent response to the demonstrations, which began as protests against police torture and quickly escalated into calls for an end to President Mubarak’s three decades of rule.
“Egypt’s information blackout is an extreme step designed to disrupt planned marches, to block images of police brutality, and to silence dissent once and for all,” said Stork. “Attacks on journalists are also intended to censor reporting. The government should order police to let reporters work freely.
“According to media reports, on January 28 police yesterday at least four journalists, beat a BBC reporters, and seized a camera from a CNN crew. Starting January 25, they briefly detained at least 10 other reporters.
“Human Rights Watch said that the internet and mobile communications are essential tools for rights of expression, to information, and of assembly and association. The United States, the European Union, and influential regional governments should take immediate steps to press Egypt to end the nationwide telecommunications blackout. Companies and internet service providers in and outside of Egypt should act responsibly to uphold freedom of expression and privacy by pressing Egypt to stop censoring their products and services.
“A state-directed shutdown of all internet access is deeply chilling,” said Stork. “The international community should respond swiftly to put an end to Egypt’s information blackout and human rights abuses.”
Also over the weekend, the Egyptian Air Force flew low-flying fighter jets and helicopters over thousands of protesters in Cairo’s central square. The show of force was seen as a message from Mubarak that he still controls the most important levers of state power.
But the relationship between the protesters and the Egyptian military remained enigmatic. The military was ordered into the melee to replace the universally-hated police, which fled to their headquarters at the Interior Ministry in Cairo, retreating in the face of an advancing army of citizens.
Police brutality, deaths in detention, torture at police stations, and unbridled corruption – this described the reputation of the police held by virtually all Egyptians, except those with the means to buy themselves out of trouble.
The Army commands great respect from the people of Egypt – after all, it fought three wars on their behalf (and, according to Egyptian propaganda, was victorious in all three).
So when the tanks rolled into Cairo over the weekend and parked on The Corniche, the wide-sidewalked road running long the Nile in one of the city’s upscale business districts, their crews were treated with shouts of welcome and handshakes. Indeed, some news reports said some of the soldiers were transparently in favor of the protesters.
When if ever the Army will receive orders to use force, and what form that force may take, the unanswered question is whether the troops are ready to carry out such orders.
Also over the weekend, the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera said on Sunday that Egyptian authorities ordered its Cairo news bureau shuttered. The popular channel condemned the move as an attempt to "stifle and repress" open reporting.
The U.S. Embassy in Cairo asked Americans in Egypt to consider leaving the country as soon as possible. This suggestion was for Embassy personnel as well as tourists.
Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu urged restraint. He told his Cabinet on Sunday that he is "anxiously following" the crisis in Egypt. In his first public comment on the situation, he said that one of the key factors was Israel's 30-year-old peace agreement with Egypt.
Unrest in Egypt begin creating gas shortages and interrupting the smuggling of gasoline to the Gaza Strip. This triggered panic buying by drivers afraid of the complete depletion of the local supply.
Egyptian protesters again defied the government-imposed curfew, as police effectively disappeared and military units made no obvious attempt to enforce it.
All of which leaves the reader or the viewer with many unanswered questions, beginning with: How did this all start?
There were many factors at work. One contribution came from the ubiquitous WikiLeaks organization, which released a number of diplomatic cables published in The Guardian/UK .
One US embassy cable predicted Mubarak, if still alive in 2011, would run
again for presidency 'and, inevitably, win'
Other Secret US embassy cables sent from Cairo in the past two years reveal that the Obama administration wanted to maintain a close political and military relationship with Mubarak.
One cable said, "The Egyptians want the visit to demonstrate that Egypt remains America's 'indispensable Arab ally', and that bilateral tensions have abated. President Mubarak is the proud leader of a proud nation ... Mubarak is 81 years old and in reasonably good health; his most notable problem is a hearing deficit in his left ear. He responds well to respect for Egypt and for his position, but is not swayed by personal flattery," the cable said.
It predicted that if Mubarak were still alive for Egypt's next presidential
election in 2011, "it is likely he will run again and, inevitably, win". The
most likely contender to succeed him was his son Gamal, the cable suggested.
Another cable, from March 2009, shows the US's astonishingly intimate military relationship with Egypt. Washington provides Cairo $1.3bn annually in foreign military finance (FMF) to purchase US weapons and defense equipment, and the cable said. "President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the $1.3bn in annual FMF as 'untouchable compensation' for making and maintaining peace with Israel.
"The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at
peace with Israel, and the US military enjoys priority access to the Suez canal and Egyptian airspace."
Many other parts of the question about the origins of the current situation are as yet unclear. But we know this much: In no way were these demonstrations a spontaneous or first-time event. Egypt has seen demonstrations before and, in fact, many Middle East scholars believe that those earlier demonstrations provided a direct route to the current protest.
The closest to rational answers to these questions, in this reporter’s view, came from an interview with Mohammed Ezzeldin, a graduate of political science at Cairo University, who is currently completing his master's degree in history at Georgetown, and Paul Jay, Senior Editor of the Real News Network. The Public Record has done some minor editing.
“So how did this moment arrive? How did we get here?” Jay asked.
Ezzelden’s response: “We have to understand this moment in terms of accumulation. This not just--didn't come out of the blue. This moment was the manifestation, this moment unfolded after a manifestation of different opposition movement, basically three …rounds of opposition to Mubarak regime, beginning from 2004, 2005, when (the) Kefaya movement (rose) up the famous slogan, ‘Enough,’ [and called for] no for continuation for continuation for Mubarak, no to inheritance of power to his son Gamal Mubarak. And then this movement took a momentum in 2005 and people made renewed the hope for a real change. After 2005 we have witnessed a huge wave of strikes--included workers, bureaucrats, included people working in the state apparatus and business. For example, in Mahalla, industrial city in Delta, witnessed three successive and successful strikes in 2006, 2007, and 2008.”
“El-Mahalla is a City and factories. Like, it's industrial city, based on huge [inaudible] factories of textile industry. And it's--like, you can find, like, almost 30,000 workers working together. So imagine when [inaudible] 30,000 people are striking and supported by the residents in El-Mahalla. So three times they made successful [2006, 2007, and April 2008].
JAY: “And were they met with police repression?”
EZZELDIN: In 2008, April 6, 2008, they met with huge and brutal repression by the police, and it was like a street war. So this was -- this moment actually made a new hope, that first it delivered a new culture, a new experience for ordinary people about the strike. So it was followed by estimated, almost estimated 800 strikes in two years, which [is] unprecedented in Egyptian history.”
“In 2008, 2009…So we had first a political movement 2005, social movement, spread all over Egypt, in 2008 manifested by Mahalla strike and the tax [textile?] workers strike, who called for independent trade union. And both experiences [inaudible] many of Egyptian workers and people who are protesting against the regime and the -- it paid a lot of attention to what these people can do and how powerful they are. Okay?”
“It was followed later, last year, in 2010, by a youth movement. This youth movement [inaudible] after the brutal death of Khaled Saeed. Khaled Saeed was a young man, a university graduate in Alexandria, and he was tortured in the street and he was killed by the police inspectors. And after -- like, who was ordered by the police to kill this man, and he was killed.”
“And after the murder of Khaled Saeed in June 2010, there was a huge and massive opposition between the youth [inaudible] the people who are vulnerable to unemployment, people who are facing the police in daily interactions, and people who feel that this country is theirs, this country is ours, but it has been hijacked, it has been captured by this repressive regime and the political and economic figures who are supporting this regime and who are depriving them from a new future.”
“So we have three moments manifested in what happened. And, of course, this wouldn't happen, I would say, this wouldn't happen, at least unless we have kept watching the great and glorious revolution of the Tunisian people, which actually broke any barrier of fear [inaudible] just fearing to go to demonstration and continuing and insisting on the demands. So Tunisia, of course, played a huge role in what--to make what happened [inaudible].”
JAY: How important was social media? We're--you know, from the Western coverage there's kind of this sense that Egyptians were doing nothing, Tunisia happens, social media, and now you get this. So now what -- you can understand there's years of development. But that being said, did social media play an important role?
EZZELDIN: Yes, it played an important role. But we have to understand there's a sort of difference between Egypt and Tunisia. The Egyptian regime, the dictatorship in Egypt, is supported, basically, by the American aid and supported by American regime…American administration, and of course supported by Israel. The geographic and strategic status of Egypt in the region made the Egyptian regime quite different from other regimes in the region, okay, w hat made the mission and the task of the Egyptian opposition is really hard. So this is number one. Number two--.
JAY: But just to add, because there's so much at stake for Western interests, Egypt is like the pillar of this US policy for this region.
EZZELDIN: Sure. Sure. Sure. This first. And this not--by any means, this--I don't mean to reduce anything of what happened or to underestimate what happened in Tunisia, which is beyond imagination, beyond recognition, something really incredible, something great. But I would say, first, Egypt is quite different in terms of population, in terms of strategic importance to United States.
And second, regarding the media, the media played important role, because, first, the government and the state media lost its legitimacy since 2005. Al Jazeera and all independent bloggers and websites, Facebook, all this new social media played a significant role in networking and in, like, calling for strikes.
For example, in April 6, 2008, it played a magnificent role. So social media played very important role. And people now, like, we--I expected that what happened in Tunisia is going to influence people in Egypt, but I didn't expect that it's going to influence--me and many people didn't expect it will take this short an--it was with this--in this quick way, this very fast way. So media, basically, the coverage of events in Tunisia last month, played a major role in bringing the potential for change in Egypt to a moment, a momentum.
JAY: So do you get a sense now that -- both in terms of the workers movement and the unions and the student movement, that this is going to give rise to new forms or more developed forms of organization? 'Cause right now it looks very spontaneous.
EZZELDIN: Yeah. It's completely spontaneous. The opposition movement, the legitimate, legally, opposition movement can't claim anything of what's going on now in Cairo streets. And Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday, they denounced what happened. They said, we didn't participate; we are going--. They said they are going to participate, but they didn't participate actively in what happened Tuesday. Okay? So this actually is really inspiring. First, those people are having spontaneous motivations. They were going after an--because of unemployment [inaudible] economic and political social grievance, because of dictatorship, because the suppression, the oppression of the police, okay, they are just--they are done. They are done.
They [The Muslim Brotherhood] have nothing to lose [inaudible] People are going to change. Okay? So this is number one. There's--they are not consolidated by foreign influence or foreign support. In terms of money, in terms of organization, like what happened in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, for example, it's quite different. People are not supported in Tunisia and Egypt; they are not supported from outside. And all the stereotypes in Western media about the potential threat of Islamist and all this stuff and they are going to take over the power [inaudible] only potential or only alternative to the recent regime in the region. Now it's -- it doesn't has-- it lost all of its credibility, because people are going and challenging the regime.
As Ezzeldin says, the role of social media such as Facebook and Twitter should not be underestimated. Many observers are referring to the current demonstrations are “The Twitter Revolution.” But others think that overplays its significance.
To Mohammed Ezzeldin, the real contribution of social media is to shrink the length of time required from having an idea of staging a demonstration and actual implementation of that idea. Many Egyptians were exchanging messages about the Mubarak regime and what could be done, literally for years. And demonstrations for social and economic justice took place regularly, sometimes with deadly consequences for the participants.
Because of social networks, many more people knew of these developments. This was the cadre of young, mostly college-educated Egyptians who were initially catalyzed by the “miracle of Tunisia.” The almost unbelievable ouster of the long-time president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, had the effect of catalyzing the young Egyptians who began their country’s latest street demonstrations.
The social networks were also key to the media coverage. Twitter Tweets weere used by journalists to gather information as well as by demonstrators to coorindate with one another.
As this riveting Middle East Melodrama plays out – and it is impossible to forecast how it will all end – we all wonder if we will be sitting here ten years from now bemoaning what might have been – and wasn’t? Or looking proudly at what ordinary people were able to accomplish against odds so long they would drive as Las Vegas bookie into rehab.
Mubarak had an extraordinary opportunity to govern fairly and effectively. In the opinion of most observers, he has done neither. In 1979, he agreed to a peace treaty with Israel – an idea originated with Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who traveled to Jerusalem to speak to the Knesset and whowas later assassinated by an Islamist extremist. He has enjoyed a high degree of acceptance by the international community and, thanks to America’s largesse, he has been able to fund a first class military machine.
Since that historic treaty-signing, Mubarak has sold himself in Washington and elsewhere as critical to the success of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Signing the treaty with the Israelis got him billions each year in military aid and economic assistance. It is known that he has a close relationship with Iasrael’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He saw himself as the indispensable player in the Arab-Israeli arena, and he persuaded many others – inside and outside Egypt – of the credibility of that mantra.
And it is also true that, more recently, the Mubarak Government has served Israel’s interest by cutting off some of the smuggling between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
These actions may give Mubarak a better reputation abroad than he enjoys at home, where he has been incredibly unpopular among most of his people for many years. He has kept the country under emergency law for 30 years, despite strong suggestions from the US, the EU and the UN to repeal them. These laws give the security services virtually unbridled authority to arrest and detain and, according to our own State Department’s annual report on Human Rights, Mubarak’s goons have used their authority to torture, to disappear prisoners, and to treat deaths in detention with impunity.
But the shortcomings of the Mubarak presidency are not limited to human rights. The economy is a basket case. Unemployment is virtually impossible to calculate with any degree of certainly, but the World Bank currently put it at 9.1 percent in March
2010, down from 9.2 percent a year ago.
But numbers don’t begin to tell the story. More to the point, the Constitution offers every Egyptian the opportunity to qualify for a university education. As a result, the country has a large population of men and women with degrees who have never had a job. Those who can afford to travel go overseas to seek employment. Those without resources take any job they can get. Many drive taxies. Others work as office cleaners. One suspects that their feelings of frustration would have led many of them to participate in the current demonstrations.
Those without resources include the 40 per cent of Egyptians who live below the poverty line, many in the most grinding poverty to be seen anywhere.
The Mubarak Government has made periodic noises about how much it’s done to improve Education, but today Egypt is ranked 123 in the Human Development Index (HDI), and seventh in the lowest 10 HDI countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa, in
2009.
Then there is the issue of corruption – public and private. Corruption seems to be as indigenous to the Middle East as sand. In Egypt, it is pervasive. It is known as bakshish. If you are too short to get into the Police Academy; if you want your taxi to take you to an out-of-the-way place; if your phone doesn’t work; if something you ordered is being held up in customs; if you’d rather not have the traffic ticket the cop is writing for speeding (you weren’t) – in all these situations and many on a much grander scale, a few Egyptian pounds will solve your problem. The American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt estimates that corruption in business adds at least 30 per cent to the price of Egyptian goods.
By most measures of development, modern Egypt fails. Washington is no doubt today questioning the cost-benefit implications of its massive investments in the Mubarak regime.
And wondering, with the rest of the world, who will emerge as a natural leader if Mubarak goes – and whether that leader will be able to maintain stability, while responding to the legitimate and long-delayed yearnings of the Egyptian people.
William Fisher, a regular contributor to The Public Record, has managed economic development programs for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere for the past 25 years. He has supervised major multi-year projects for AID in Egypt, where he lived and worked for three years. He returned later with his team to design Egypt’s agricultural strategy. Fisher served in the administration of President John F. Kennedy. He reports on a wide-range of issues for numerous domestic and international newspapers and online journals. He blogs at The World According to Bill Fisher.
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