Revolutionaries have split from their soldier allies and lack political unity and organisation, writes MICHAEL JANSEN
EGYPT IS divided into three parts. Greater Egypt is the 99.99 per cent of the country’s people who go about their daily business as best they can in a climate of contestation.
And then there are the two tiny fractions of the remaining one-tenth of 1 per cent who protest at military rule and engage in bitter confrontations with armed civil and military police.
The division is starkest in Cairo. Along the Nile corniche, election posters advertising smiling candidates in suits and ties are posted on lamp posts and walls of buildings. Egypt’s first democratic parliamentary election is due to be held next Monday.
Cars are double-parked outside the fence of the exclusive Gezira Club where wealthy businessmen putt on a golf green of faded grass. Drivers wash taxis beneath 6th October bridge. A florist shop displays heart-shaped bouquets of red roses and white mums. A vendor sells small packets of boiled chickpeas; a horse-drawn carriage parks nearby.
Twin cast-metal lions continue to guard both ends of Qasr al-Nil bridge where traffic flows normally. A young man snaps photos of his smiling girl in headscarf and tight jeans, the slow flowing Nile in the background.
The boundary between the two Egypts, the 99.9 per cent and the larger of the tiny fractions, is the entrance to Tahrir Square.
At a flimsy barrier a sole civilian conducts random checks of identity cards.
During the 18-day uprising nine months ago, tanks formed a barrier across the broad street, soldiers deployed to protect demonstrators checked documents, and well-organised revolutionaries searched all entering the square for weapons.
At that time revolutionaries and soldiers proclaimed they were “hand-in- hand” in Egypt’s drive to oust the 30-year-old Mubarak regime. Their common aim was to achieve democracy. That partnership has broken down. To make matters worse, the revolutionaries are no longer politically united or organised.
Rubbish is everywhere in Tahrir and street hawkers sell tea, cooked food, roasted ears of corn and cold drinks. A few tents have been pitched here and there.
During the uprising the square was kept tidy by volunteers.
Tents were in neat rows. Egyptians from all walks of life donated food and drink to sustain protesters camped out on the Tahrir roundabout and the grassy areas in front of the Mogamma, the monumental Stalinist- style administrative bloc.
The mood of the protesters has grown dark since they brought down the president on February 11th. Although he has left, his regime remains in power. They chant: “The people want to topple the field marshal,” head of the ruling military council Muhammad Hussein Tantawi.
Unshaven Marwan sports a T-shirt bearing the words: “With Egypt Arabs are strong, without Egypt Arabs are scattered.” He has been here since Saturday. “We do not want the generals. We want Egypt to be given back to the people and to reform. We will stay here until the generals leave.”
A cluster of women in headscarves clap and chant, “revolution, revolution!” and, “freedom, freedom!” A group of two dozen Syrian medical students brandishing a Syrian flag from a bygone era, march by, calling for the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus.
A woman with a bandaged arm lies in a medical tent. A male nurse in white coat holds in his palm rubber pellets the size of blue berries, empty birdshot shells, and a CS gas canister manufactured in 2008 by Combined Tactical Systems in Jamestown, Pennsylvania.
Amer Muhammad, a resident doctor at Ain Shams Hospital, says the majority of people they treat suffer from “gas suffocation and deep burns, blunt trauma, and cuts”. He estimates that at least 50 people have been killed throughout Egypt since protests began last Saturday morning after the military and police violently evicted an encampment of 250 relatives demanding compensation for those killed and wounded during the uprising.
A line of youngsters has formed at a white bus to donate blood for victims.
Two men carry an unconscious man overcome by gas and lay him on a blanket on the pavement near the Sadat underground station. A doctor tries to revive him with an oxygen mask as another bends over a patient to pluck birdshot out of his leg.
Colourless, scentless CS gas wafts through the square, forcing protesters to put handkerchiefs and sterile masks over noses and blink burning eyes. Hollow reports of weapons firing tear gas canisters come from the direction of the interior ministry a few hundred meters away. Collapsed and wounded men and women are ferried into the square, ambulances rush by, sirens screaming. The smaller fraction of the one-tenth of one per cent of Egypt consists of hot fronts in the battle between the generals and Egyptians who have lost faith in soldiers that once supported the revolution.