The day after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak declared a curfew and proposed to appease protesters by building a new government, Al Jazeera reports that there are more people on the streets than ever before. Live pictures show protesters moving peacefully around the city, directing traffic—from civilian cars to civilian tanks—and marching en masse to strategic targets, including the state television station, government torture sites, and the ministry of the interior. Protesters are making a concerted effort to win the support of the soldiers in tanks and armored cars who are now sharing the streets with them.
There is also fighting. The police have opened fire on protesters at the ministry of the interior, and there have been reports that the army is siding with the people. I’ve seen reports of shooting around the Bank of Egypt offices, also in Cairo.
Al Jazeera asked an Egyptian correspondent how people are coordinating the continued uprising even after the government has turned off the internet and telecommunications networks. She explained that they are using longstanding, person-to-person trade union and activist networks—a reminder that this revolution didn’t just begin this week, but has been decades in the making.
Religious leaders—including Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the sheikh of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University and the leading cleric in Sunni Islam—have spoken out in support of the uprising, and in the hope that the protests will proceed nonviolently. In an interview with the Egyptian daily Al-Shorouq, another leading sheikh, Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, said the following, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute:
Al-Qaradhawi decreed that it is forbidden to fire on demonstrators, and called on police to refuse any order to do so from their commanders: “I say to any man who claims that he is the slave of the one who gives him orders: You are the slave of Allah, and it is forbidden to kill.” Likewise, Al-Qaradhawi banned demonstrators from attacking police: “They are [part of] us, and we are [part of] them, and therefore their blood is forbidden… It may be that if they get the chance they will join the masses [of demonstrators].” He also banned damaging public and private property.
As I write, Al Jazeera is reporting that Al-Qaradhawi is also calling on protesters not to destroy state institutions.
And just in on Twitter, from Sharif Kouddous, senior producer at Democracy Now!: “People are praying in Tahrir square.”
This is a perceptive summary of events, in that it focuses on the question that may determine the fate of this civilian-based challenge to the Egyptian regime: Will the Army fire on nonviolent demonstrators? If not, and if episodic violence doesn’t increase, then protests will continue and probably grow, and then it’s likely that some form of exit for Mubarak will be arranged — because the issue is his personal tenure as the country’s leader, which no one in the world believes that his people wish to tolerate any longer.
On the basis of this summary and other news coverage today, it appears that the great preference of the Army is not to be placed in the position of having to use violence against peaceful civilians. On the other hand, the Army won’t hesitate to follow orders to prevent physical attacks on government property or organized violence, and have done so already today. If angry people on the streets who don’t understand the importance of remaining nonviolent continue to torch police stations and attack other government buildings, that may well hand the government the perfect excuse to ratchet up repression, and the Army will have less reason to hesitate to use force to clear the streets entirely.
Last night Mubarak laid down his marker about this: that he will defend the safety of every last Egyptian. In past successful nonviolent revolutions, free rider violence was condemned by groups participating in nonviolent action, and in some cases, protesters voluntarily stood down until such violence was quelled. Gandhi called off entire protest campaigns that became even slightly violent, civil rights leaders in the American South rigorously trained protesters in how to avoid violent confrontation, and opponents of Pinochet in Chile in the last period of that ruler’s reign dissociated themselves from insurgent violence. They knew that the governments they opposed would use any violence to legitimize the use of wider repression, and that no popular, civilian-based movement is likely to remain mobilized in a violent atmosphere.
Yesterday another president laid down another marker, which may have a critical but less visible impact. The White House announced that the U.S. would re-evaluate U.S. aid to Egypt, depending on how events unfolded in the days ahead, and Obama said that “all governments must maintain power through consent, not coercion — that is the single standard by which the people of Egypt will achieve the future they deserve.” In other words, if the Egyptian military is ordered to use violent force against unarmed protesters, Obama will be required, to maintain his own credibility, to do more than talk about Egyptians’ right of peaceful assembly. If the U.S. suspended aid to the Egyptian government, it would be such a shock to the Egyptian elite that the clamor for Mubarak to resign would probably not just be on the streets.
No one can confidently predict just what the sequence of events will be in the coming days. But it is likely that the people of Egypt, who have set these events in motion, have become the catalyst for historic change.
Thanks so much for this synthesis, Jack! As I was assembling the notes above, I was having so much trouble just keeping track of all the Twitter feeds and Al Jazeera interviews that it was tough to do the kind of “so what” thinking that you’ve just given.
What you’re saying about maintaining nonviolent discipline certainly raises questions of authority and command-and-control among the protesters that appear to remain unanswered. Even ElBaradei, when he arrived yesterday, didn’t seem to command the same kind of respect or authority that Gandhi did. I wonder how much sway, at this point, these sheikhs I cite above actually have. Yet there does appear to be quite a lot of organization to what is happening over there, probably both spontaneous and premeditated.
In any case, these sort of things remind us of the importance of disseminating the principles of nonviolent action widely among people during quiet times, so that when things ignite like this, they know that they don’t have to torch police stations—indeed, they shouldn’t—if they want a victory worth fighting for.
Thank you Nathan and Jack for this reporting and insight.
I wanted to add that, from what I can gather, the violence we have seen by the protestors thus far has been directed at very specific sites. The ruling party headquarters and police stations have been the nerve center of Mubarak’s repressive regime. So while advocates of nonviolence such as ourselves worry that the protestors might lose the moral high ground and end up playing into the hands of the regime with this property destruction, from what I can tell the Egyptian public views these buildings as symbols of the worst of Mubarak’s own violence — torture, secret arrests and so on. I don’t say this to justify what they’re doing, but only to suggest reasons why this perhaps has not ignited more violence. This is most apparent in the contrasting attitude of the people to the army and to government buildings more generally. There is clearly a very strong sense of restraint — and more than that, even a reaching out to — every other aspect of government authority.
Also, interesting to me in terms of organizing tactics is the way in which nonviolent methods are mixed with graffiti artist culture in some of the literature that has been circulated. It does not strictly adhere to nonviolent principles because it recommends ways to disable vehicles and use spray paint in engaging with police. However, it also recommends carrying a rose to signal peaceful intentions. And indeed, we’ve seen stunning examples of protestors directly reaching out to engage peacefully and sympathetically even with security forces.
All of this is to say that we’re seeing the protestors and the organizers walk a very, very fine line here. It’s also just another great example of how nonviolent methods are always contingent and adaptable.
Nathan, speaking of long standing organizing, I wonder how much those involved with this group have been responsible for laying the groundwork for what we have see in recent days (and how desperately this wiki needs to be updated!):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefaya
The Atlantic Monthly has the organizing literature I’m referring to here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/01/egyptian-activists-action-plan-translated/70388/