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Authors: Paul Danahar
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stayed at home. He lost interest,’ said Nihad, whom I met by accident in a coffee shop in Cairo. 21
Sure there was a lot of corruption, but everywhere, not only in the police, everywhere. My brother takes two thousand Egyptian pounds [US$330] after twenty years in the police. With two thousand how can you feed and educate your children? They work away from Tahrir now, away from any demonstration. They don’t want to mingle with anybody belonging to the revolution because in the end they don’t respect their orders, they don’t respect them, so what is the point?
In the first days after the ‘Day of Rage’ the prospect that Mubarak might end up behind bars still seemed preposterous. It was at this time that Tahrir Square firmly became and stayed the bastion of the revolution, and its battleground. But the humiliation of the police force generally and the cleansing of their presence from Tahrir Square in particular would have far-reaching consequences for Egypt. It caused huge problems for the Morsi-led government, because Tahrir Square and the streets around it, which contain key ministries and foreign embassies, remain even now Egypt’s wild frontier where the law has lost its writ. A broad section of the Egyptian people had defied authority to win their freedom in this arena. A much narrower group of them would return again and again to pick new fights on what had become almost hallowed ground. Not all these gatherings though were noble in cause. This little piece of Egypt is still often owned by the mob. After the revolution, along with the persistent harassment of women Tahrir was the scene of some savage sexual assaults by gangs of young men. This eventually prompted vigilante groups to form to fill the vacuum left by the state.
During the uprising though, the mob represented all the people. On the front lines defending the square were the ‘Ultras’. They were fanatical football fans who supported Cairo’s premier league football club, Al-Ahly. The hooligans among them were the one section of Egyptian society that had had the chance to perfect the art of street battles with the police. Most of the fighting during the revolt involved lobbing rocks and stones at the plain-clothes thugs from the internal security services trying to fight their way into the square. Occasionally though the Ultras would run through the barricades and the battle would take place out in the open just in front of the Egyptian Museum that holds the treasures of Tutankhamen. I watched all this in a riot hat, but the rest of the men around me had to make do with motorcycle helmets, kitchen pots or wads of cardboard wrapped together with tape. One man was photographed with bread rolls sellotaped to his head. The sky rained stones, which bounced and clattered around me. Men were holding their bleeding heads or dragging unconscious colleagues back behind the barricades. It went on like this for days. The most notorious moment was the ‘Battle of the Camels’, when Mubarak loyalists rode into the square on camels and horses to charge at the protesters.
Slowly though the protesters wore down the internal security services, which realised that the army were not going to let them draw arms. Many people believe that the police ultimately took their revenge on the Al-Ahly fans the following February when seventy-four of them died in the country’s worst-ever football violence after a match in Port Said. 22 The trial that followed and the verdicts in January 2013 would present the new Egypt with one of its darkest moments.
While the Ultras made up much of the front line during the revolution, it was the thousands of people behind them who added real legitimacy to the protests. It was their numbers that convinced the world it was a popular uprising. Among them was Sondos Asem, a Muslim Brotherhood activist in her early twenties who took part in the revolution from the first day, even though the leadership had specifically told their
Sure there was a lot of corruption, but everywhere, not only in the police, everywhere. My brother takes two thousand Egyptian pounds [US$330] after twenty years in the police. With two thousand how can you feed and educate your children? They work away from Tahrir now, away from any demonstration. They don’t want to mingle with anybody belonging to the revolution because in the end they don’t respect their orders, they don’t respect them, so what is the point?
In the first days after the ‘Day of Rage’ the prospect that Mubarak might end up behind bars still seemed preposterous. It was at this time that Tahrir Square firmly became and stayed the bastion of the revolution, and its battleground. But the humiliation of the police force generally and the cleansing of their presence from Tahrir Square in particular would have far-reaching consequences for Egypt. It caused huge problems for the Morsi-led government, because Tahrir Square and the streets around it, which contain key ministries and foreign embassies, remain even now Egypt’s wild frontier where the law has lost its writ. A broad section of the Egyptian people had defied authority to win their freedom in this arena. A much narrower group of them would return again and again to pick new fights on what had become almost hallowed ground. Not all these gatherings though were noble in cause. This little piece of Egypt is still often owned by the mob. After the revolution, along with the persistent harassment of women Tahrir was the scene of some savage sexual assaults by gangs of young men. This eventually prompted vigilante groups to form to fill the vacuum left by the state.
During the uprising though, the mob represented all the people. On the front lines defending the square were the ‘Ultras’. They were fanatical football fans who supported Cairo’s premier league football club, Al-Ahly. The hooligans among them were the one section of Egyptian society that had had the chance to perfect the art of street battles with the police. Most of the fighting during the revolt involved lobbing rocks and stones at the plain-clothes thugs from the internal security services trying to fight their way into the square. Occasionally though the Ultras would run through the barricades and the battle would take place out in the open just in front of the Egyptian Museum that holds the treasures of Tutankhamen. I watched all this in a riot hat, but the rest of the men around me had to make do with motorcycle helmets, kitchen pots or wads of cardboard wrapped together with tape. One man was photographed with bread rolls sellotaped to his head. The sky rained stones, which bounced and clattered around me. Men were holding their bleeding heads or dragging unconscious colleagues back behind the barricades. It went on like this for days. The most notorious moment was the ‘Battle of the Camels’, when Mubarak loyalists rode into the square on camels and horses to charge at the protesters.
Slowly though the protesters wore down the internal security services, which realised that the army were not going to let them draw arms. Many people believe that the police ultimately took their revenge on the Al-Ahly fans the following February when seventy-four of them died in the country’s worst-ever football violence after a match in Port Said. 22 The trial that followed and the verdicts in January 2013 would present the new Egypt with one of its darkest moments.
While the Ultras made up much of the front line during the revolution, it was the thousands of people behind them who added real legitimacy to the protests. It was their numbers that convinced the world it was a popular uprising. Among them was Sondos Asem, a Muslim Brotherhood activist in her early twenties who took part in the revolution from the first day, even though the leadership had specifically told their
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