Hundreds of military and Central Security Forces personnel evicted today the remaining protesters from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, which has been occupied for nearly a month. The sweep comes two days before the trials begin for former President Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, and former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly. Mubarak and al-Adly are charged with the killings of an estimated 840 protesters during the January uprising. Mubarak’s sons face corruption charges.

Protesters and journalists in the square tell of soldiers and plain clothed Egyptians arresting members of the sit-in as well as chasing away people with cell phones or cameras.  Some bystanders cheered on the police action. Al-Masry Al-Youm provides a detailed report.

I’ve been reminded not to make predictions about Egypt. Not heading this advice, I anticipated last weekend that Tahrir would be cleared. The most visible symbol of public opposition to the slow pace of reforms and of continued military rule is now gone.

Some photos of the eviction can be seen here, here, here, and here.

Videos can be found here.

11:24 am  •  1 August 2011

Ignore the media reports of the “Friday of Unity and the People’s Will.” It is the Friday of Shari’a.

Tahrir Square was packed today. But rather than being filled by a broad spectrum of nationalists, secularists, Islamists, and trade unionists — you name it — today the square is dominated by Salafists. 

Egyptian flags remain aloft but in much smaller numbers and holding them are men — yes, the gender dynamic has changed, too - who speak of Egypt as a Muslim nation. They speak not with the tone of pious religiosity but in a proselytizing manner, with the goal of attaining political power. Discussions are not based on persuasion but on righteousness. And below the surface of these conversations lingers coercion and, I bet, threats toward non-Muslims.

Gone are the chants against the military regime and for a civic government. Call it the Friday of the Beards.

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12:47 pm  •  29 July 2011

The Brooklyn Rail

July 25, 20011

My visit to Suez, where I planned to interview striking Suez Canal workers, began as expected: One of the workers slipped me a USB drive of video footage taken the night before of protesters clashing with the military; two cops rolled up, radiating good cheer, and asked what me and my three colleagues were doing in Suez, while a company security flack confiscated the worker’s computer, strode off, and disappeared behind the company gates. Then, we got back into our car and hightailed it out of there before being detained any longer by the cops, the company, the military, or a combination of the three.

 We drove off looking for 200 strikers that we were told had been picketing down the street in a public park adjacent to the Suez Canal. But all we found were armored military vehicles, the scruffy park surrounded by coils of barbed wire but empty of protesters, dozen of soldiers, and three men standing across the street from the park, who said one shouldn’t negotiate with “stupid people,” meaning the striking workers. All the while, our local contact, a striking worker, insisted, while speaking with one of my companions over the phone, that the rest of his comrades were there.

We agreed to meet with our contact later in the day, when things “cooled off.” Until then, we decided, we should check out a sit-in that had been underway for several days in Arbaeen Square in the city center—Suez’s version of the occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo.

And then things got really strange.

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6:19 pm  •  25 July 2011

Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces escalated over the weekend its antagonism toward the protest movements that since early July have occupied city squares in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez.

On Friday evening the military dispersed a blockade in Alexandria, firing warning shots into the air and beating back stone throwing protesters. When news reached Cairo, outraged protesters began marching from Tahrir Square toward the headquarters of the military council but were prevented from reaching the building by several hundred soldiers and armored vehicles. 

That evening the SCAF released a communique that accused the April 6th Youth Movement — a central force in the January uprising and the current occupation of Tahrir Square — with sowing discord by driving a wedge between Egyptians and the military. 

It was to be the opening salvo, for Saturday was a national holiday, celebrating the 1952 military coup that overthrew the British-backed Egyptian monarchy. In Cairo, protesters had scheduled a march to the same military headquarters that they marched to on Friday in order to highlight the military’s decades long hold on power and to continue to push for their on-going demands (“justice” for martrys’ families, eradicating former regime elements from government, televised trials of Mubarak and other former officials, etc.).

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5:12 pm  •  24 July 2011

The American Prospect

July 12, 2011

Cairo, Egypt—Five months ago, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced from power following 18 days of nationwide protest that claimed the lives of more than 800 Egyptians.

“Hold your head high; you’re Egyptian,” protesters chanted in the streets after Vice President Omar Suleiman announced Mubarak’s resignation. In the Middle East’s most populous nation, the moment’s jubilation then seemed capable of wiping away decades’ worth of humiliation under the U.S.-supported despot.

Since that historic February evening, however, Egypt’s political constituencies have been locked in a battle over how to turn the page on the Mubarak era and set the nation on a path toward representational democracy. The protesters who filled the streets and public squares in January and February brought with them years of grievances: from pervasive corruption and police brutality to yawning economic inequality and government collusion in Israeli’s blockade of Gaza. But Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), to which Mubarak relinquished power, and the former regime officials who remain in ministry-level positions throughout the government have been slow to respond, if at all, to demands for change.

Egypt is entering another period of political turmoil. The summer sun burns very hot above this North African nation, and the politics are again beginning to boil.

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10:59 am  •  13 July 2011

Ahaab Mohammad has something to say. A pharmacist from Cairo, he interrupts the conversation that I’ve just begun with a friend from the U.S. to explain the importance of today’s protest in Tahrir Square, how vital it is for achieving the unfulfilled demands of the Egyptian uprising. 

I’m told this is a common, albeit recent, phenomenon. The frustrated political critiques and quotidian complaints that have been bottled up for thirty years of Mubarak rule, now come forth freely, especially in the liberated space of Tahrir Square.

“Our revolution was about changing the regime,” says my long-lost interlocutor. “We will not end our revolution until the regime — the whole regime — is gone. The regime is made up of institutions, not individuals.”

But not even the individuals are gone, as the banner strung up above are heads indicates. It reads in black Arabic script: “The People Demand the Prosecution of Mubarak” — a reminder that not even the despised former ruler has been brought before a court, nearly five months to the day since his resignation. And the institutions, particularly the military, remain in place. 

That, everyone knows. Which is why Tahrir has been reoccupied. 

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7:52 pm  •  8 July 2011

Dear Brother:

I write these few lines to let you know we’re doing well, on the whole, though it varies from day to day: sometimes the wind changes, it rains lead, life bleeds from every pore. To tell the truth, I’m not quite sure where we stand; when you’re up to your neck in war, you can’t tell till the end whether to celebrate or mourn. And there it is, the crucial question: whether to follow or precede the others. The consequences aren’t the same. Some victories can fall short, while some defeats are the beginnings of truly great victories. In this game where death always takes you by surprise, there is the time before and the time after, but only one extraordinarily fleeting moment to make up your mind.

Boualem Sansal, Algiers, June 2011

Letter to Mohamed Bouazizi

6:30 am  •  8 July 2011

[Ed: This editorial by Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany was published on June 5th, 2011 by al-Masry al-Youm. It has been translated from the Arabic original by Noha Radwan. In it al-Aswany highlights the ways in which the aspirations of the January uprising that toppled Husni Mubarak are far from being achieved and that protests scheduled for Friday are intended to set the country back on its intended path for full regime eradication. Up to now, the regime remains largely in place and journalist-apologists for the military and economic elites continue to spin regime lies. The failures of the regime are being cast as failures of the uprising. Protests — possibly very heavily attended and confrontational — will occur on Friday. Meanwhile strikes and protests against the police have become more frequent and more militant along the Suez Canal. The Egyptian chapter of the so-called Arab Spring has yet to be completed. Friday will likely be a major highlight in this evolving narrative.]

Did the Egyptian Revolution Go Wrong? By Alaa al-Aswany 

The American Comedian, George Carlin (1938-2007), was known for his deeply sarcastic remarks and in one of his shows he was asked what he would do if he were on a flight that was about to crash.

Carlin’s response was that he would, of course, save himself, that he would shove women and kick children and disabled passengers out of his way with all his strength until he had reached the emergency exit. Afterwards, he would try to save the other passengers.

This sarcastic remark demonstrates how some people would do anything to save themselves and their own interests. Every time I see the new Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Muhammad al-Urabi, I remember Carlin’s words.

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1:08 pm  •  6 July 2011

I visited yesterday striking workers from the Timsaah Canal Company in Ismailiyya. The trip was part of a reporting project on the Egyptian working class that I’ve been doing since arriving two weeks ago.

By the time I arrived in the late morning, a hundred picketers had already been out in the streets since six a.m., occupying a traffic circle just outside of the city center. Charred logs sat by the side of road — evidence of an earlier blockade of the street.

About four-dozen soldiers and police kept watch and directed traffic. Six workers were forced to appear later in the day before military prosecutors. Workers I spoke with said that such intimidation and repression was common but that lawyers from legal aid were providing representation. 

Workers at Timsaah are demanding an increase in base pay as well as wage and benefit parity with employees of the Suez Canal Authority. Workers at Timsaah earn less than $100 a month. The company is a government-owned subsidiary of the Suez Canal Authority. Workers directly employed by the Authority make three times that collected by Timsaah workers and are the recipients of generous housing and health care subsidies.

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9:53 am  •  4 July 2011

9:46 am  •  4 July 2011