By Mike Giglio
On the two-year anniversary of Egypt’s revolution, Mike Giglio catches up with its central characters.
A shy midlevel Google executive based in Dubai, Ghonim seemed an unlikely revolutionary. But behind the scenes, he took on the alter ego of el Shaheed, or “the Martyr,” the anonymous administrator of the “We Are All Khaled Said” Facebook page. After protests erupted Jan. 25, Ghonim was rounded up by police, and his link to the Khaled Said page became public—turning him into the revolution’s most recognizable face. His dramatic, tearful interview on Egyptian TV the night of his release from jail served as a lightning rod for the country’s anger. A few days later, Mubarak fell.
Since then, Ghonim has become something of an international sensation, hitting the public-speaking circuit and penning a techie-turned-freedom-fighter memoir, Revolution 2.0. He also became a symbol of how the revolution splintered after Mubarak’s ouster: his fellow activists sometimes viewed him with suspicion and often ignored his pleas for unity.
Ghonim is still agitating on behalf of the revolution. As the Muslim Brotherhood and its opponents battled over the country’s new constitution late last year, he told The Daily Beast that far more work needed to be done to realize the revolution’s dreams. “A big challenge we are facing at the moment is miscommunication and lack of trust,” he said. “Meanwhile, people in the streets are more concerned about the bad economic conditions. Almost one out of every two Egyptians lives on less than $2 a day, one out of every three Egyptians can’t read and write, and one third of the youth is unemployed.”
John Moore/Getty
As Egypt’s revolution became a reality—with the success of the Jan. 25 protests leading to a call for a “day of rage” after Friday prayers Jan. 28—Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, boarded a plane from Vienna to rush back to Cairo. He hoped his high international profile might help shield the opposition, as it had many times before, from crackdowns by Mubarak’s security forces. On the eve of his return, ElBaradei wrote in Newsweek about the need for a “new beginning” in Egypt and said the country’s young people would accept no less: “This week the Egyptian people broke the barrier of fear, and once that is broken, there is no stopping them.”
After Mubarak stepped down, there was speculation that ElBaradei might take a leading role in the country’s political future, crafting a coherent party out of the various opposition factions. But like many in the liberal crowd, he seemed averse to being a front man, and expressed distaste for the ugly power struggles between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military elite. Eventually, he dropped his presidential bid and faded into the background—until late last year, when he came back onto the scene newly energized as Morsi’s main antagonist.
ElBaradei’s revival is emblematic of a new push to play politics by veterans of the revolution. Finally, two years after the Arab Spring, ElBaradei seems to have found his political voice, embracing the kind of brass-knuckles style that can bring about real results. “I’m playing hardball now,” he told The Daily Beast at his home in Cairo last month. “They’re completely off guard. And we’re going to continue to rally. We have the whole silent majority on our side.”
AFP/Getty
For years, the Muslim Brotherhood was Egypt’s only opposition party—after decades of being driven underground and imprisoned by the government, Mubarak allowed it to field a small number of candidates in the country’s 2005 parliamentary elections. Yet despite the brotherhood’s long history of opposition to the regime, when the calls for the Jan. 25 protest came, its leadership refused to support them. But members from the party’s youth league independently organized to march on Tahrir Square. It was a “personal effort,” remembers former Muslim Brotherhood Youth member Mohamed Abbas, done without the blessing of the party brass.
Eventually, the brotherhood joined the revolution—and in its aftermath, it has used its organizational prowess to become the country’s dominant political force. The brotherhood won the bulk of seats in last year’s parliamentary elections and took the presidency, despite initial promises that it wouldn’t field a candidate. But in the process, it has run afoul of the revolutionary crowd, who accuse Brotherhood leaders of playing dirty politics and using undemocratic measures to force through its agenda and consolidate power.
Shadi Hamid, an analyst at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center who has tracked the Muslim Brotherhood closely, says that while the prerevolution brotherhood used to be a “big-tent religious movement,” their fast rise to power has exposed them to controversy. “They’ve become a very polarizing force in Egyptian society,” Hamid says. “Their ‘unfavorables’ have gone up.”
Meanwhile, former members like Abbas—who was kicked out of the brotherhood after he and other members of its youth wing founded their own political party—say they’ll be returning to Tahrir Square on the anniversary of the revolution to send their former allies a pointed message: “Make sure you listen—because we can gather at any time and against anybody.”
Mosa'ab Elshamy
Amid the protests and counterprotests of recent months, the country seems to have moved past the one person whose name used to be on every demonstrator’s lips: Mubarak. But the old dictator—now confined to a prison hospital—may soon be in the headlines again: it was announced this month that he has won a retrial in the case against him.
The initial trial, on top of being riddled with procedural errors, provided few answers about Mubarak’s actions as the revolution unfolded. While the court convicted him for negligence in the deaths of protesters who perished at the hands of security forces, it didn’t find Mubarak—or anyone else—guilty of being directly responsible for the deaths.
Many Egyptians hope that the new trial might bring some answers about who was responsible for the crackdowns. According to a tantalizing new report by a commission appointed to investigate the deaths, Mubarak allegedly watched the carnage on a special live video feed. “He’s guilty. He’s very guilty. And we all know that,” says Michael Wahid Hanna, an analyst at the Century Foundation in New York. But, he adds, “Egyptians still don’t know what the hell happened two years ago.”
AP
Under Mubarak, Egypt’s military enjoyed unchecked prestige and power, running many of the country’s most lucrative industries and taking advantage of officially enshrined exemptions from the rule of law. Yet the Army ultimately took a neutral stance during the revolution, refusing to fire on protesters as Mubarak’s rule crumbled—and then stepped in to take his place.
After Mubarak’s fall, a ruling council of generals, calling themselves the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, led by the 82-year-old Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, announced that they would guide the country through its democratic transition. But the generals always seemed uncomfortable in their new roles and eventually lost the trust of revolutionaries by pushing back election dates and subjecting protesters to military trials, sparking widespread protests. (In some of the revolutionary chants from last year, the name Mubarak was merely replaced by that of Tantawi.)
When Morsi was elected president, Tantawi and the generals stepped back into the shadows—though Morsi clearly worried about their continued influence. In August he unexpectedly forced Tantawi and other leading generals into retirement, replacing them with younger and lower-ranking officers who seemed more loyal to the brotherhood. Since then the once powerful generals have kept quiet, but speculation is rife that they were unhappy with the early retirement. “General Tantawi is an older man, but he still has a lot of vim and vigor,” says Paul Sullivan of the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. “My sense is that Tantawi likely has some resentment brewing at being so summarily dismissed by someone he likely has little respect for.”
During the recent unrest, the Army has remained quiet—but Sullivan notes that it may not stay so passive if protests degenerate into violence. “The Army is being rather acquiescent these days,” he says. “However, if the situation in Egypt gets much worse ... I cannot see how the Army could stay completely out of the situation.”
Amr Nabil/AP
As a young student from Mansoura, a city in the Nile Delta, Essam remembers getting ready for the Jan. 25 protests—an amateur guitarist, he’d been writing songs to express his feelings about freedom. When the protests gathered steam over the coming days, Essam found himself on stage in Tahrir Square, playing one of those songs—an anti-Mubarak ditty called “Irhal,” or “Leave,” made up of famous chants that protesters leveled against the dictator. The song quickly caught on and became the de facto anthem of the revolution, catapulting Essam to fame.
In the revolution’s aftermath, Essam played concerts across Egypt and even appeared in venues in places like Britain and France. These days, he is often back in Tahrir Square, where he’s continued singing protest songs—first against the generals who took Mubarak’s place and now against the Muslim Brotherhood. “Now I have a new song. I’m calling it ‘A Revolution,’” he told The Daily Beast. “I’m hoping for a second revolution, because we didn’t achieve any of the goals of the first. This is not a celebration. We’re getting mentally ready for another revolution against the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Shady Habash; Courtesy of Ramy Essam
