Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Michel Moutot
Agence France Presse

CAIRO: Police were back on the streets of Cairo Monday, smiling at motorists and sticking close to each other, a stone’s throw away from burned-out shells of their police vans.

Their two-day vanishing act remains unexplained, officially. It left the city prey to looters and jail-breakers. Residents formed self-defense groups to protect their neighborhoods.

The authorities announced Sunday that the men in berets and black pullovers would be redeployed. “People are angry with us. I don’t understand why,” said a police sergeant, seated in a 4x4 with a broken side window and pointing at a photograph of demonstrators and fires in a newspaper.
“Look what happens when we’re not here,” he said, declining to be identified.

Cairo residents put the disappearance of police at a time of an escalating showdown between authorities and demonstrators down to the political calculations of the regime.

“We are not being told the truth,” declared Mina Roshdy, a 30-year-old resident of the upmarket Zamalek district. “The government pulled out the cops to destabilize the country, to create chaos so that the people would welcome the return of security,” was his theory, shared by many Cairenes.

“That’s the aim: to frighten, in the hope that the people forget they must chase down the dictator. ‘It’s either me or chaos.’ It’s a classic case, but it won’t work,” he added.

“In this country, you can’t trust the police,” said Roshdy. “One day they attack you, the next they defend you.”

The policemen’s smiles to motorists were often met with insults. “I hate them! Look at them … animals!” shouted an angry woman in her forties. “Everyone hates them. They fled because they’re cowards. It was kids who protected our neighborhood. I was so afraid of thieves that I haven’t slept for three days,” she said.

Crowds on the streets spotted a man in plainclothes suspected of being a police officer and set on him, before he was rescued by soldiers firing in the air. Many policemen were seen leaving for work in plainclothes for fear of the popular anger.

Around Tahrir Square, the army, which commands respect in Egypt, has deployed armored cars and tanks without confronting the demonstrators.

The protesters, thousands of whom have been occupying the square at the epicenter of the revolt around the clock, have formed teams to check the identity of newcomers.

“We ask people for their papers. We don’t want undercover police to infiltrate the demonstrators and spread chaos,” explained one young man.
But the fear of lawlessness remains the overriding concern in Cairo.

“There’s no cash in the ATMs, there’s something like 5,000 prisoners roaming the streets and there’s no security,” said May Sadek, a public relations agent who lives in the middle class Dokki neighborhood. There have been jail breaks from at least four prisons around Cairo in recent days.

Meanwhile, at grocery stores across the city, people stocked up on food, water and other supplies. Stores in the areas of Zamalek, Mohandiseen and Dokki were running short of many items, especially bread and bottled water. At one store, water was selling for three times the normal rate. – With AP