Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Eyewitness from cairo
Carol Malouf

A war of attrition is taking place on the streets of Cairo between the people and the regime. So far, both are holding their lines well, but it is only a matter of time before one finds holes in the other’s armor.
The people’s main theater for voicing their grievances in Cairo is the central Tahrir Square. The meaning of Tahrir in Arabic is liberation. Such terms were used in the past to refer to those parts of Egypt occupied by Israel. Today, it is about liberation from the regime itself.

One of those young demonstrators I met was Ahmad Bahgat. He told me his friend Karim Wehba, 25, was shot dead by security forces loyal to the Egyptian Interior Ministry while protesting last Friday. He and his friends said they will remain in the streets until President [Hosni] Mubarak leaves. Many feel the same way.

Ahmad believes the army tanks, helicopters and fighter jets are tools of a psychological war that the regime is waging against the people. Standing next to the army tanks in Tahrir Square, he told me “what the regime doesn’t realize is that the people love the army. Unlike the security forces, we are confident that the army will never fire at us. We will avenge our friend’s death by toppling the regime.” A deep sense of animosity against the internal security forces is strongly felt among the people. For them, they were the tools of everyday oppression for over 30 years. Beside economic and political reforms, the protesters are also calling for a more humane and lenient treatment by the police. They believe this will not happen unless the regime is changed.

But the changes announced by Mubarak didn’t seem to satisfy those I met. For them, it is he who should go, responsible for 30 years of corruption, oppression and draconian emergency rule.

The symbols of Mubarak’s authority were the police, the intelligence and the dreaded Central Security Forces. It was no surprise that several police stations were attacked and burnt Friday, the day known as a “Day of Anger.” Security personnel took off their uniforms in fear that they would be attacked by the angry protestors. Since then, they haven’t been seen on the streets.

Demonstrators by day, vigilantes by night, young people took security matters into their own hands. Armed with anything they can get their hands on – from their mothers’ kitchen knives to baseball bats and other improvised homemade weapons – they did their best to keep looters and outlaws from the nearby shanty towns from breaking in and entering their properties. On the surface, they seemed like gangs, but in reality they were friendly and helpful.

However, fears of renewed clashes between the people and the police were voiced in the event of police being redeployed on the streets, as reports suggested Monday, when army barricades and tanks blocked the previously crowded Corniche al-Nile Road that leads to Tahrir Square, while an army helicopter kept a close watch on the area.

Their mission is to protect the ministries of information and foreign affairs after protesters tried to break in Friday. Across the street lies the burned out headquarters of the ruling party, barricades being placed by the soldiers, their boss – the caretaker defense minister – appeared on the scene with a filming crew for a quick photo-op with the soldiers. The footage was later used on state television as a sign that the regime and its main backer, the army, are still in charge. However, the mood on the street is very different. The protestors embrace the army as their own. “They will never attack us, the army and the people are one,” one protestor told me in Tahrir Square.

The feeling seemed mutual. When I asked a young soldier if he would use force against the protesters, he looked at me smilingly and said: “Those are our people, our brothers, our sisters. We will never fire at them.” “Acts of intimidation by the regime will not scare us, we will not go anywhere,” one of the protesters told me while military fighter jets encircled central Cairo skies for over 20 minutes. When one tank was about to move positions, tens of demonstrators sat in front of it in defiance. Images of China’s Tiananmen Square massacre came to mind.

Minutes earlier, Safwat Hijazi, a popular Islamic preacher, climbed atop a tank nearby, and shouted: “The people and the army are together.” It is a rallying cry heard often now. Hijazi was among many Islamic political and judicial figures, who joined the ranks of the demonstrators and was greeted warmly by the mainly young crowd. Asked if a young person should join the demonstrations against his parents’ wishes, he responded saying, “We are resisting oppression and this is the duty of everybody to raise their voices against tyrants.”