REFLECTIONSON THE

REVOLUTION IN EGYPT

HERBERT AND JANE DWIGHT WORKING GROUPON ISL AMISM AND THE INTERNAT IONAL ORDER

Many of the writings associated with thisWorking Group will be published by the Hoover Institution.

Materials published to date, or in production, are listed below.

ESSAY SER IES:THE GREAT UNRAVEL ING: THE REMAKING OF THE MIDDLE EAST

In Retreat: America’s Withdrawal from the Middle EastRussell A. Berman

Israel and the Arab TurmoilItamar Rabinovich

Refl ections on the Revolution in EgyptSamuel Tadros

Th e Struggle for Mastery in the Fertile CrescentFouad Ajami

Th e Weaver’s Lost ArtCharles Hill

Th e Consequences of SyriaLee Smith

ESSAYS

Saudi Arabia and the New Strategic LandscapeJoshua Teitelbaum

Islamism and the Future of the Christians of the Middle EastHabib C. Malik

Syria through Jihadist Eyes: A Perfect EnemyNibras Kazimi

Th e Ideological Struggle for PakistanZiad Haider

Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah: Th e Unholy Alliance and Its War on Lebanon

Marius Deeb

[For a list of books published under the auspices of the WORKING GROUP ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER,

please see page 76.]

REFLECTIONSON THE

REVOLUTION IN EGYPT

Samuel Tadros

H O O V E R I N S T I T U T I O N P R E S SStanford University Stanford, California

HERBERT & JANE DWIGHT WORKING GROUP ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER

ESSAY SERIES: THE GREAT UNRAVELING: THE REMAKING OF THE MIDDLE EAST

Th e Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, foundedat Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went onto become the thirty-fi rst president of the United States, is aninterdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domesticand international aff airs. Th e views expressed in its publications areentirely those of the authors and do not necessarily refl ect the viewsof the staff , offi cers, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.

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Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 648

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Th e Hoover Institution gratefully acknowledgesthe following individuals and foundationsfor their signifi cant support of the

HERBERT AND JANE DWIGHT WORKING GROUP

ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER:

Herbert and Jane Dwight

Beall Family Foundation

Stephen Bechtel Foundation

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. Clayton W. Frye Jr.

Lakeside Foundation

vii

Series Foreword by Fouad Ajami and Charles Hill / ix

Refl ections on the Revolution in Egypt / 1

About the Author / 73About the Hoover Institution’s Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamismand the International Order / 74Index / 77

CONTENTS

ix

It’s a mantra, but it is also true: the Middle East is being unmade and remade. Th e autocra-cies that gave so many of these states the appear-ance of stability are gone, their dreaded rulers dispatched to prison or exile or cut down by young people who had yearned for the end of the despotisms. Th ese autocracies were large prisons, and in 2011, a storm overtook that stagnant world. Th e spectacle wasn’t pretty, but prison riots never are. In the Fertile Crescent, the work of the colonial cartographers—Gertrude Bell, Winston Churchill, and Georges Clemenceau—are in play as they have never been before. Arab

SERIES FOREWORD

The Great Unraveling: The Remaking of the Middle East

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S E R I E S F O R E W O R D

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nationalists were given to lamenting that they lived in nation-states “invented” by Western pow-ers in the aft ermath of the Great War. Now, a cen-tury later, with the ground burning in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq and the religious sects at war, not even the most ardent nationalists can be sure that they can put in place anything better than the old order.

Men get used to the troubles they know, and the Greater Middle East seems fated for grief and breakdown. Outside powers approach it with dread; merciless political contenders have the run of it. Th ere is swagger in Iran and a belief that the radical theocracy can bully its rivals into submission. Th ere was a period when the United States provided a modicum of order in these Middle Eastern lands. But pleading fatigue, and fi nancial scarcity at home, we have all but announced the end of that stewardship. We are poorer for that abdication, and the Middle East is thus left to the mercy of predators of every kind.

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We asked a number of authors to give this spectacle of disorder their best try. We imposed no rules on them, as we were sure their essays would take us close to the sources of the malady.

fouad ajamiSenior Fellow, Hoover Institution—Cochairman, Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order

charles hillDistinguished Fellow of the Brady-Johnson Programin Grand Strategy at Yale University;Research Fellow, Hoover Institution—Cochairman, Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order

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Refl ections on the Revolution in Egypt

SA MUEL TADR OS

It is said that . . . 1

It is said that . . . once upon a time / Th ey stole our country, the Americans

Th ey will enter Baghdad by noon / By evening they will enter Egypt

It is said that . . . that what? / Our people grabbed the light with their hands

It is said that . . . generation aft er generation / Egypt was born in Tahrir

It is said that . . . our dawn is arising / And Roses are blossoming in the street2

(Amin Haddad)

“But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating eff ect. Th e circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme benefi cial or noxious to mankind.”(Edmund Burke: Refl ections on the Revolution in France)

“It was not an event depending on chance or contingency. It was inevitable; it was necessary; it was planted in the nature of things.”(Edmund Burke: Refl ections on the Revolution in France)

1. Th e poem was written by Amin Haddad ten days before the fall of Baghdad in 2003 and sung by the band Eskenderella. Th e poem refl ects the feeling of helplessness and ends with a depress-ing note.

2. Aft er the Egyptian revolution, new lines were added to the song, refl ecting the newly discovered optimism and salvation found in the square.

3

At 4:34 a.m. Cairo time on March 20, 2003, coalition forces led by the United States began their invasion of Iraq. Less than six hours later security lines in Cairo’s Tahrir Square were being overrun by the most unlikely protesters: students of the American University in Cairo. Egyptian opposition parties had called for a protest at one o’clock in Tahrir, but three hours earlier 1,000 students had taken the initiative, surprised security forces, and managed to reach the square. Th e smell of euphoria was in the air as the students set their gaze on a building a few blocks from the square, that symbolized US hegemony over their country, the fortifi ed US Embassy. Th e mass of people did not hesitate as

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they attacked line aft er line of security forces trying to break through, their attacks bearing fruit. Th ey reached Omar Makram Mosque and then set foot on Simon Bolivar Square. “Tell Bush, tell Blair . . . Iraq is not Afghanistan,” they shouted. Th ere their attacks fell short; the secu-rity forces were better organized, and they could not break their lines no matter how much they tried. Some fell on the sides, their faces covered in blood; they were carried by their comrades. Half the protesters managed to reach the street leading to the Nile Corniche. Bringing traffi c to a halt, they broke for freedom and tried to sur-round the British Embassy. Th ey failed to encir-cle it, and two hours later they returned and joined their comrades in Simon Bolivar Square. Th ey made a last attack and broke security lines back to Tahrir Square.

Opposition activists had arrived by then. Th ou-sands were now in the square. Th ey would attempt several times to reach the US Embassy but be rebuff ed. Circles were forming in the square, graffi ti was being drawn on the asphalt, and people were singing. Magda El-Roumi’s famous song “Th e Street Is Ours” could be heard in the

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square. Voices chanting, “the street is ours . . . the square is ours . . . tomorrow Egypt will be ours.” Th at generation of Egyptians had never seen anything like it. Egypt had not seen any-thing like this since the bread riots of 1977. Th e next day demonstrators started in Al-Azhar Mosque and took over the square again. Clashes continued throughout the day, and a fi re truck used to disperse the crowds was reportedly set on fi re. In the following days police arrested numerous activists of all political stripes. What remained of the crowd’s spirit died twenty days later as they saw on TV Iraqis bring down Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad. Th e honor and dignity of a nation stretching from the Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean was lost in the streets of Baghdad.

Th e gods must have been rolling the dice that day on March 20, 2003. Little did the protesters in Tahrir Square know they were writing the fi rst line in the story of the Egyptian revolution.

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Th at Egypt’s revolution has failed is hardly dis-putable today. Th e excitement of those magical

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eighteen days in Tahrir Square and the hopes of a dawn of democracy in Egypt are long gone. Replacing them is widespread despair among Egypt’s revolutionary activists and their interna-tional cheerleaders, and who would blame them? Th e man they sought to topple enjoys his free-dom aft er two years in prison, the old faces of his regime are now back, and the revolutionary activists—those who are not cheering the very military they were chanting against two years earlier—are now among the jailed, the cursed, the emigrant, and the depressed.

It is true some still believe the revolution con-tinues or, more fancifully, the ouster of Mohamed Morsi is but the second wave of the original rev-olution. Joining the ranks of the delusional is the American Secretary of State John Kerry, who suggested the revolution was “stolen” by the Muslim Brotherhood, with Egypt now apparently set on the right path to democracy. But outside of those few voices—and regardless of whether one believes that Egypt is witnessing a counter-revolution, as the author contends, or a coup, or that no revolution occurred in the fi rst place, as

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Hugh Roberts3 argues in the pages of the Lon-don Review of Books—the general consensus is that Egypt has returned to an authoritarian grip albeit this time with the masses cheering along. Whatever happened on January 25 failed miser-ably in transforming the country in the direction of a true democracy.

For those lamenting the failure of a revolu-tion that captivated the world, the blame is usu-ally placed on two forces: Egypt’s military and the Muslim Brotherhood. A military that never accepted the notion of civilian control and that aimed to protect its exclusive domination of the state and its economy and a Brotherhood that ruled in a noninclusive manner and alienated many segments of Egypt’s population have formed the basis of the explanations given by analysts as to why Egypt reached the state it is in today.

Remarkably little attention has been given to the actions and choices of Egypt’s non-Islamist

3. Hugh Roberts, “Th e Revolution Th at Wasn’t,” London Review of Books, Volume 35, No. 17, September 12, 2013.

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revolutionaries. Besides the usual criticism of their organizational weakness and the more recent critical look at those among them who supported the military coup, they have largely escaped any critical examination and hence blame. Th is is all the more surprising given the fact that three years earlier, when the crowds occupied Tahrir Square, both the media and Western analysts fi xed their gazes on those young men and women, oft en described as liberals, democrats, moderates, and secular, to the extent of seeing nothing but them. Egypt’s revolution-aries were hailed as the heroic force that ended what seemed like an eternal dichotomy between repressive authoritarian regimes and totalitar-ian Islamists. People like Google executive Wael Ghonim, April 6 founder Ahmed Maher, and international diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei would create the much-awaited third alternative or route.

On January 25, 2011, thousands of Egyptians—some of them veterans of earlier demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak, some of them demon-strating for the fi rst time in their lives—took to the streets to demand change. Th ree days later

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hundreds of thousands joined them, and fi ft een days later Mubarak resigned as Egypt’s presi-dent. Who were those revolutionaries and where did they come from? What was their composi-tion ideologically and organizationally? Why were they angry with the Mubarak regime and decided to bring it down? What were their demands and aspirations for a new Egypt? And how did they go about attempting to achieve them? To understand the story of Egypt’s revo-lution, one has to begin, not on January 25, 2011, but years earlier when those revolutionaries were meeting one another for the fi rst time and acquiring the skills that they would later use to bring down the regime.

Th e lack of a thorough investigation of Egypt’s revolutionaries creates a serious gap in our understanding of the events that unfolded in the past three years. From their decision to call for mass demonstrations on January 25, 2011, their rejection of participating in politics, their calls for an end to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) rule, their continuous demon-strations and violent clashes with the police, and the choices they made in the par liamentary and

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presidential elections, Egypt’s revolutionaries were not helpless victims but actors who aff ected and shaped the direction of the country. As Egypt continues on its destructive path into the abyss, it is important to examine what role the revolutionaries played in its trajectory.

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On December 12, 2004, the Egyptian Movement for Change held its fi rst demonstration. Th e movement quickly became known by its slogan Kefaya (Enough). Kefaya demonstrators were few in numbers, but their public act of defi ance created a stir in the dull political scene that was Mubarak’s Egypt. Th e demonstrators’ chants, while attacking the regime’s foreign policy and its capitulation to US and Israeli hegemony, also targeted the regime’s domestic policies and, more importantly, the regime itself. Mubarak; his wife, Suzanne; and their son Gamal, rumored to be groomed for the throne, were no longer off -limits. A red line seemed to have been crossed. Taboos were being shattered.

Th e movement had its roots in the pro- Palestinian demonstrations in October 2000, with

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the start of the second intifada, but those had quickly fi zzled away. Smaller campaigns had followed calling for the boycott of American products and organizing aid convoys to the Pal-estinians, but they had little eff ect. Th e Ameri-can invasion of Iraq in 2003 created the fi rst real spark that gathered those opposition activists together. In July 2004 a new Egyptian govern-ment was sworn in that included a signifi cant number of new faces, businessmen who had prospered in the private sector were recruited for government ministries. With Mubarak’s health rumored to be in decline and Gamal’s increasing public role, a transition moment seemed to be in the air. Roughly 300 intellectuals and activists gathered to write and sign Kefaya’s manifesto during the hot summer months. Th eir demands were hardly small. Th ey demanded real political change in the country. Mubarak’s fourth term was to end in September 2005, and they wanted it to be his last. Gamal shall not inherit us from his father, they insisted.

Who were the 300 men who signed Kefaya’s manifesto? Th ey came from all stripes of the Egyptian opposition. Nearly all of them were

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veterans of the roaring ’70s. George Ishak was the movement’s fi rst coordinator. A communist, he had used his offi cial position in the adminis-tration of Catholic schools in Egypt to gather a group of young men around him. Abdel Halim Kandil was a committed Nasserite who was edi-tor in chief of the leading Nasserite newspaper, in which he cursed Mubarak for abandoning Nasser’s domestic project and his anti-American foreign policy. Abdel Wahab El Misiri, who was later chosen to lead the movement, dedicated his life to writing about Jews and Israel. His conspiracy-driven mind led him to believe the Camp David accords included secret clauses calling for the banning of his writings. Kamal Khalil was a Revolutionary Socialist, the name given to Egypt’s Trotskyites, and a veteran dem-onstrator. Magdy Ahmed Hussein was the son of Ahmed Hussein, Egypt’s fascist leader in the ’30s and ’40s. In the ’80s Magdy had made the political transformation from socialism to Islamism, with the fi nal outcome uniting the worst of both worlds. Kamal Abu Eita was another Nasserite who had never missed an anti-regime demonstration in his life.

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None of these men could excite a revolution-ary populace, let alone one that had been apa-thetic for years. Th ey were more representative of the ills of Egypt than its cure. Formed by a group of communists, Islamists, and Nasserites, there was nothing novel about its message with the exception of its bald animosity toward Mubarak and his son. Th e message was simply the repetition of every long-held myth and demand of the Egyptian opposition; these men decried social and economic exploitation, believ-ing that the country was rich but was being sto-len by corrupt businessmen and that the regime was serving American and Israeli interests. Th eir hatred of Mubarak dwarfed the hatred they expressed toward the United States and Israel, and anti-Semitism was rampant among them. “Th eir real objection to Mubarak was not his authoritarianism, but his abandonment, like that of Sadat before him, of the pan-Arab vision Nasser had proclaimed,” Roberts said.4 As Abdel Halim Kandil stated: “Egypt falls under American

4. Hugh Roberts, “Th e Revolution Th at Wasn’t,” London Review of Books, Volume 35, No. 17, September 12, 2013.

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hegemony and Israeli occupation, and the regime is loyal to them. Th erefore, opposition toward Israel and America is a cornerstone of Kefaya’s program.”5 What was novel was their decision to bring their message out of the salons of the left ist intellectuals and to the street.

Kefaya activists were soon creating sister orga-nizations, the most important of which was Youth for Change. Th e initial members were hardly sur-prising. Th ey were the sons and daughters of vet-eran left ist activists. However, they had at their disposal a tool not available to their parents’ gen-eration: blogging. Blogs became very powerful tools not just for self-expression, but more impor-tantly for disseminating information. Th rough videos of police torture, election fraud, or dem-onstrations, activists were reaching a new gen-eration of young, middle-class Egyptians. Citizen journalism was the new hit in town as thousands of young Egyptians started blogs. Naturally jour-nalistic standards were hardly present and the quality and truthfulness of many of them were

5. Tarek Masoud, “US must back democracy in Egypt regard-less,” Los Angeles Times, February 9, 2011.

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lacking. But with state propaganda techniques unchanged for decades, the activists held a sig-nifi cant advantage in the war of perception. Blogs also served as an important forum for network-ing. A bond was being created between activists across the political spectrum.

Blogs were hardly the domain of left ist activ-ists alone. Numerous young Muslim Brother-hood members began blogging, and the new phenomenon caught the attention of analysts desperate for a “moderate Brotherhood.” Kefaya was not the only group that took notice of the winds of change unleashed by President George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda and the opportuni-ties it presented. Th e Muslim Brotherhood took note and attempted to present a new face. It increasingly coordinated with the rest of the opposition, though unlike them it always remained aware of the red lines imposed by the regime. Women were being presented as candi-dates for Parliament, and a platform for change was presented to the public and more impor-tantly to Western analysts and policy-makers.

Egypt’s offi cial opposition parties were also infl uenced by the changing political environment.

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Th e parliamentary elections of 2005 were extremely frustrating to the two main parties: Al Wafd and El Tagamuu. Many of their members, especially the younger ones, had already begun to question the wisdom of their parties’ tamed oppo-sition approach to the regime. Th e man who best embodied those changes was Ayman Nour. An unimpressive journalist with Al Wafd newspaper, Nour had distinguished himself with fabricated and sensationalist stories. His relationship with the regime was hardly bad. He twice won a seat in Egypt’s Parliament and had been useful as a con-trolled opposition face to use as a mouthpiece when the regime faced an international scandal over its police behavior in the El Kosheh massacre of Copts. His ambitions were matched only by his ego. He left Al Wafd in 2001 and sought to establish his own party. When he received the party approval from the regime-controlled com-mittee in October 2004, it was another sign of the regime’s approval. Suddenly on January 30, 2005, Nour was arrested on charges of forging applications for his new party. While the charges were correct, leveling them was indisputably a political decision.

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Nour’s real crime was perceived to be his meet-ing with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in which he presented himself as a lib-eral alternative to the regime. His liberalism, of course, had very little to do with the actual mean-ing of the term: but he wasn’t an Islamist, and for many that automatically made him a liberal. More importantly, between October and Janu-ary, the Orange Revolution had taken place in Ukraine and the regime became scared. Nour was allowed to stand against Mubarak in the presidential election in September of that year, but his fate was sealed. He soon landed in jail, though not before his case had become a cause célèbre for Western journalists, analysts, and governments.

Kefaya’s last serious stand was in the spring of 2006 when it supported two judges who were investigated by the regime for their protests against election fraud during the parliamentary elections. Th e Judges Club had been fi ghting for judicial independence for years and had increas-ingly played a vocal role in criticizing regime practices. Th e regime viewed a challenge by the judiciary as a serious threat and moved swift ly

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to silence the judges and attack protesters in soli-darity with them.

Kefaya’s eff orts did not bear fruit, and the movement soon lost steam. With its largest demonstration attracting no more than a few thousand participants, the movement was hardly a challenge to the regime. Nevertheless, while it lasted, it served an important role in linking Egypt’s left ist, Islamist, Nasserite, and quasi-liberal opposition. More profoundly it served as a training ground for many of the young stars who would later play a key role in the Egyptian revolution.

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