The joy was explosive. People rushed to hug each other and jumped up and down. A middle aged woman wiped tears from her eyes with a tissue. Chants of “Freedom! Freedom!” and “It’s finished! The people brought down the regime!” echoed throughout the street, just a few hundred feet from the building that was, until that moment, Hosni Mubarak’s official residence for 30 years.

By the time I arrived at the palace after marching from downtown, the protesters had already established a similar set up to the one they had in Tahrir. They were prepared to stay. Civilian guards checked IDs upon entry, a makeshift hospital treated people’s soar feet and dehydration, tents were pitched on the concrete. The sit-in infrastructure evaporated in minutes as the protesters joyfully dispersed themselves throughout the streets of Heliopolis.

They banged drums and sang songs and waved flags and rode on top of cars and blocked traffic and blared stereos and chanted and screamed and danced. They celebrated. The people had brought down the regime.

I asked a young man, Mohamed Abdel Rahman, how he felt. “Free,” he said, as he stood on the base of a lamppost and watched the crowd dancing in a circle in the middle of a usually-busy intersection. “This is a new Egypt.”

I rode the metro downtown toward Tahrir. When we arrived at the closest station and the doors opened everyone sprinted toward the exits, eager to get themselves to the square that has been the epicenter of the pro-democracy movement for 18 days. The whole station sang together, “Free Egypt! Free Egypt!” as they marched through the gates. The exit was packed and as people excitedly, but patiently, filed out they sang the national anthem.

Tahrir Square was madness. Thousands and thousands of people jam packed together, barely able to move but continually saying, “Congratulations!” An old man was perched on a concrete barrier watching the scene. “I haven’t seen Egypt like this since ’73,” he said, referring to the Egyptian army’s successful attempt to retake the Sinai Peninsula from Israel. At another downtown traffic circle (they had all been overtaken by revelers) a loudspeaker played a well-known song that celebrated the Egyptian military after the war.

The euphoria was everywhere last night. No one was concerned about the political process ahead (which will surely be difficult) or what the government was made up of now (essentially a military junta). Mubarak is gone and the people made it happen.

Photo by Frame Maker

The post On the Ground in Egypt: The Joy Was Explosive appeared first on The Faster Times.

Within a few hours the news had circulated through the square: Mubarak would speak. That he would step down seemed inevitable. I ran into a group of friends (three guys named Ahmed) who were positive that tonight was the last of Mubarak’s rule. “What else could he be speaking about?” Ahmed asked.

The conversation had moved toward what would happen next. A middle-aged man in a traditional Egyptian robe approached the Ahmeds to discuss the situation. Would they support an interim military government? Would they stop protesting if Mubarak left Vice President Omar Suleiman in charge? Similar debates continued elsewhere and a crowd chanted, “Civilian, Civilian! We don’t want a military government!”

In the center of Tahrir Square a team of protesters have begun construction on a bathroom. A cement floor has been laid, plywood walls have been erected. At 10:00PM, the state start time of Mubaraks speech, they continued hammering nails into the beams that support the roof. I thought that maybe the Liberation bathroom wouldn’t be necessary by the next morning.

Images of the first days of the protests were projected on a screen, showing protesters fighting back the army and taking over an important bridge, showing a group of men being shot with a water cannon as they prayed. I thought these would soon be nostalgic, reminders of the glory days of the protest movement that changed Egypt’s history.

Mubarak started speaking a little before 11:00PM. No one where I was could hear him. The speakers were scratchy and his voice was hushed. From those gathered around the sound sytem there was, at one brief point, an explosion of cheering followed by silence. A few minutes later an angry murmur went up from the crowd and people held up their shoes and pointed them at the imaginary president.

The speech ended and Tahrir Square erupted. “Down with Hosni Mubarak!” as loud and as synchronized as I have ever heard. A sense of helpless fury swept over the crowd. They marched back and forth chanting and it was immediately clear that some of the festive atmosphere of Tahrir Square had been sucked away. Families headed for the exits.

An old man with only a few teeth ran up to me. “He didn’t understand?” he yelled in my face and then ran away. Immediately, people I talked to were intent of moving the protests out of Tahrir and toward other centers of power, the state TV building or the presidential palace a few miles away.

“You know a refrigerator?” Abdallah Mustafa, 24, asked me as he sat on a curb near the square. “Mubarak is a refrigerator. You can’t move him.” Mustafa took the whole thing in better humor than people. As I walked through Tahrir I saw a woman wearing a niqab, the full face veil, ranting angrily at no one in particular. “You’ll see. He will leave! He has to leave!”

I reached the barricades that make up the gates to Tahrir Square. The protesters have a Walmart-like system of greeters set up at the barbed wire. “Goodbye. See you tomorrow,” they say to everyone who passes through.

The post On the Ground In Egypt: The Speech Ended and Tahrir Square Erupted appeared first on The Faster Times.

Life seemed to regain some level of normalcy throughout Cairo today as the protests against Hosni Mubarak come close to reaching the two-week mark. Traffic once again clogged main roads. Metal carts selling fuul, the Egyptian breakfast of mashed fava beans returned to their posts. Many of the checkpoints — both civilian and military — seem to have vanished overnight. Stores re-opened, people returned to work, even banks starting to do business again, albeit for only a few hours. “Normal life made a surprise comeback today,” a friend told me. “I need to do laundry.”

Meanwhile, much of the political momentum has moved off of the street and into the backrooms. Pundits are now discussing the constitution and legal mechanisms for a transfer of power and newly-appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman held meetings with opposition figures including the Muslim Brotherhood and members of the youth movements that helped launch the current uprising. The protests in the streets, it seems, have become a secondary concern.

That is, except for the people there. Yet again, Midan el-Tahrir, or Liberation Square, was full of thousands taking part in the continuous protests emphatically demanding the removal President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. They continue to line up at the military checkpoint to pass by the tanks and through the concertina wire into the square, even though the wait can last hours.

Inside the square things have taken on an air of permanence. Vendors have set up shop selling roasted sweet potatoes and cigarettes and phone cards. The field hospital looks better equipped and more firmly ensconced than it did two days ago. The tent city that occupies the center of the square is muddier than it was but, like the people, shows no sign of leaving. A band played patriotic songs from a stage with a massive sound system as a crowd of thousands sitting in the dirt listened and sang along.

The crowd’s chants of “Down with Mubarak!” are as loud as ever, though they have added, “Mubarak is expired!” and “He is leaving, we aren’t leaving!” and “Leave means go, what don’t you understand?” The new chants reflect the feelings of frustration and determination. How much longer do they need to stay before the president gets the message?

Today was also marked by a focus on Christian-Muslim cooperation, including a Coptic mass and numerous signs featuring a crescent and a cross next to each other. Members of the crowd insisted that I understand that it is President Mubarak who keeps Egyptians of different faiths divided. And today was the day of the martyrs. In Lebanon and Palestine it is common to see posters commemorating those killed in war. They typically feature a head shot, a name, some religious imagery and a few words about the deceased. It has been 37 years since Egypt’s last war, but today the martyrology common elsewhere in the Arab world appeared in the streets of Cairo, paying tribute to those killed in Egypt’s own occupation.

After exiting Tahrir and heading elsewhere in the city, for example the posh neighborhood Zamalek, located on an island in the middle of the Nile, it is almost easy to forget the current state of unrest. The reminder comes when the radio is turned on and the state-sponsored station plays a steady stream of nationalist anthems and ballads or the television in a coffee shop features an Egyptian flag in the corner under which is written, “No to violence, no to destruction.”

Photo here

The post On the Ground in Egypt: Chants of “Down with Mubarak!” as Loud as Ever appeared first on The Faster Times.

I was ready to see the protests for myself and make my way toward Midan el-Tahrir, or Liberation Square, now a household name outside of Egypt thanks to the protesters’ sit in. I approached from the Qasr el-Nil bridge, which connects downtown to the island of Zamalek and ends in front of the Cairo Opera House. When I arrived the crowd there was large but there was still room to maneuver. On a patch of grass nearby groups of people sat in what looked as much like a picnic as a protest. A vendor sold plastic cups of tea from a metal tray. Hundreds of people were in line to pass through the army checkpoint into the square.

Within a half hour the crowd had swelled. This entrance to the protest had become a side protest in its own right. The crowd chanted, “Down with Mubarak, down with the tyrant!” and “Tonight is your last night!” and “Leave! Leave! Leave!” They sang the national anthem. They told jokes. They made way for families to pass through to less crowded spaces.

For days I have been reading about the diversity of the protesters, how the demonstrations include people from all walks of life. Today is saw it with my own eyes. Women wearing heavy make up and lots of jewelry stood next to young men with the long beards that indicate a fundamentalist view of Islam. Fathers stood with their teenage sons. An eight-year-old boy, chanting “Down with Mubarak!” looked up at me and gave me a thumbs up and a smile.

The scene inside of Midan el-Tahrir surpassed my expectations. Protesters have been camping out there, more or less continuously, for about ten days. The mood was downright festive. Children ran around with “Leave!” painted on their faces. A man hoisted a stuffed donkey labled “Mubarak” on a stick. Egyptian flags waved, banners unfurled, chants resonated.

The demonstrators have gone to great lengths to organize themselves. And while the situation remains a bit chaotic, they are vigilant. To enter the square requires passing through several civilian checkpoints, which include a frisking and an ID check. A few times I saw protesters discover a weapon on someone entering. When this happened, they wrestled him to the ground, took the weapon and brought him to the military nearby. Meanwhile, others formed a human chain around the scene.

I asked people if they were afraid of violence and they all assured me that they weren’t. Many, judging by their bruised faces and bandaged heads, had already seen their share of violence. The rocks piled near the edges of the square suggested that at least some in the crowd were ready for more street battles. But things went off peacefully and instead of fear, the people showed a tremendous optimism, assuring me that the regime would fall by the end of the night. At the time of writing, almost 10:00pm in Cairo, it hasn’t happened yet. But, as one man told me optimistically, “If he doesn’t leave tomorrow he will leave the day after that. Or the day after that.”

The post On the Ground in Egypt: Checking In From Tahrir Square appeared first on The Faster Times.

As I watched events unfold after January 25 I was incredibly inspired by the strength of the Egyptian protesters and their civil behavior and the reports of people forming committees to protect their neighborhoods and picking up garbage after the protests. As I sat in Istanbul, I desperately wanted to be in Cairo with my friends and colleagues as they took part in a major turning point in the history of the Middle East. It took me a while to decide whether or not to go, but then I made my mind. About an hour after I had booked my ticket, things in Egypt seemed to take a turn for the ugly.

My experiences in the last few hours since I arrived are unremarkable. They simply confirm what the news reports have said about Cairo for a few days. But I saw them today firsthand.

When I arrived in the airport I was, frankly, a bit terrified. Last night I was reading many reports of violence against journalists and foreigners and protesters and I’d heard a lot about the civilian and military checkpoints throughout the city. As I exited customs the guards searched me thoroughly for any signs of a camera. I didn’t bring one with me, but two Turkish men with video equipment behind me in line were taken out for separate questioning.

I found a taxi (who, obviously, charged me more than I’ve ever paid for an airport taxi) to take me to my friend’s apartment in a middle-neighborhood across the Nile from downtown and the heart of the action in Midan el-Tahrir.

Cairo does not look now the way it did when I left in July. Armored personnel carriers were stationed along the road from the airport into the city. We quickly passed through the first and only checkpoint on our trip. One of the strangest things, for me, was the lack of traffic, which is normally unfailing in Cairo. On a big flyover we passed the scene of the most intense battle of the last 48 hours. A large crowd gathered at the side and looked down at the rock throwing mobs beneath them. A man walked through the crowd selling Egyptian flags.

When I arrived at my friends’ apartment and talked with them I noted a few things: First of all, they had all lost their sense of time. No one can remember what happened yesterday or three days ago or four days ago. The dizzying speed at which the revolt and looting and crackdown have progressed seems to have left people a bit dizzy. More importantly, morale is low. Everyone I have talked to feels discouraged that people are leaving the protests and that the counter-revolution is showing such a strong force.

I ventured out for a bit and saw anti-Mubarak graffiti spray painted on walls near my friend’s apartment. In some ways the scene on the street looked normal. Men sold fruit from carts. Pharmacies, butchers and small shops were open. But there was something eerie and unfamiliar about the sidewalks in Giza.

Midan el-Tahrir, or Liberation Square, remains the heart of the protest movement. My friend and I wanted to go so I could see it first had. As we approached the bridge that would take us across the Nile we were confronted by a mob of angry people. “Who are you? What is your nationality? What is your occupation?” they shouted at us in Arabic and English as we approached. An armored personnel carrier full of soldiers looked on from nearby. We said we were students but that didn’t satisfy them. They surrounded us and started yelling until a young man in a green sweatshirt pulled us out of the crowd, assuring them that he would deal with us. He told us to get out of here because these “shit people” wanted to hurt us. We did.

I went out again shortly after sundown to see what the streets look like. The neighborhood patrols dominate the roads, with crowds of men, some as young as 12 and others as old as 65, gathering around holding swords or pipes or pieces of wood. They were friendly, but armed gangs are never a reassuring sight. Now I am looking out of the window from this ninth floor apartment as a group of kids play soccer while older men with clubs look on. Occasionally they break their game to stop and search a car coming down the street.

It’s a different city from the Cairo I used to know.

The post On the Ground in Egypt: Part One of a Special Report appeared first on The Faster Times.

Some of the details around Khaled Mohammed Said’s murder on June 6 remain murky. The initial reports stated that police came into an Internet café where he was using the computer and asked the patrons for their IDs. According to initial reports in local newspapers, Said refused to show his documents, which apparently offended the police sufficiently to cause them to beat him right there. Said was then taken to a police station where he was further beaten and then dumped, either unconscious or dead, on the sidewalk before he was picked up by an ambulance. When his body was recovered, his face was barely recognizable.

Egypt’s state apparatus has rallied to defend the police and keep the story quiet. In the days following Said’s murder, as anger mounted and the news-including some very graphic photos-spread throughout Egypt via blogs, Twitter and Facebook, state-run newspapers refused to cover the story.

The police department in Alexandria claimed that Said was either a drug addict or drug dealer, who died after swallowing narcotics as he tried to evade arrest. That this explanation contradicts the photos of Said’s bloody and broken face does not seem to be a matter of concern. More recently, some activists are saying that Said was in the Internet café uploading a video of corrupt police officers distributing dividing cash and drugs after a drug raid.

Regardless of whether Said was a drug addict or a daring citizen journalist, the fact remains that he was killed at the hands of police, without, needless to say, the benefit of a lawyer or a trial. This most recent murder fits in with a long pattern of torture, police abuse and state violence-a pattern that alienates Egyptians from their government and encourages instability in the country.

In 2007, police beat and sodomized a bus driver in he apparently resisted arrest. Later that year, police in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura beat a 13-year-old boy to death for stealing teabags. The same week that Said was killed, a 59 year old kiosk owner died in a Cairo police station under mysterious circumstances. These are just a couple of the most high profile incidents in recent years. Torture and arbitrary arrests are routine in Egypt.

This kind of behavior from authorities often falls under the umbrella of Egypt’s Emergency Law, which has been continuously in place since Hosni Mubarak took over the presidency in 1981. The Emergency Law, among other things, gives security forces sweeping powers of arrest and prolonged detention without trial. Egyptian newspapers reported that when the police first stormed the Internet café they cited the Emergency Law as they requested everyone’s documents.

Last month the Egyptian government renewed the Emergency Law for another two years. Some provisions were added stipulating that it would only be employed in cases related to drug trafficking and terrorism, though how the government will define these two things remains unclear. That Said has been repeatedly accused of being a drug dealer as the state attempts to defend its thugs gives us an idea of what it means.

The state violence that rules in Egypt serves one purpose and it is not combating terrorism or stopping the use of drugs. It maintains the power of the (increasingly) unpopular government. Citizens live in a state of fear that prevents them from demanding their basic rights. The government made this point clear earlier this week when, with a characteristic lack of irony, police violently broke up a protest against police brutality.

So what does this have to do with the US government? The United States is Egypt’s biggest backer. For the Washington, Mubarak’s 29-year-long authoritarian rule is a pillar of regional “stability.” Mubarak is the US’s “moderate” ally in the Middle East, whether or not defending the brutal murder of a innocent civilians seems like a moderate thing to do.

Washington relies on Mubarak’s government to broker reconciliation talks between the embattled Palestinian factions, and uses the head of the national intelligence agency to conduct shuttle diplomacy between Israelis and Palestinians. Egypt is also seen as a counterweight against the growing influence of Iran and served as a crucial ally in George W. Bush’s War on Terror, a popular site for the extraordinary rendition of terror suspects. As former CIA agent Robert Baer said of the rendition program, “If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear — never to see them again — you send them to Egypt.”

In exchange for performing these vital services and maintaining a pro-Washington government, Egypt receives approximately $1.5 billion in US aid money every year, making it the second largest recipient after its neighbor to the north Israel. But it’s not just money that Egypt gets in exchange for its cooperation with the US agenda in the Middle East, Mubarak’s government gets cover from the Washington on its human rights abuses.

When Egypt renewed the Emergency Law in May, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement calling the extension “regrettable.” Clinton also said, “The United States understands the challenges that terrorism poses to free societies and we believe that effective counterterrorism measures can be based on legal principles that protect the rights of all citizens.” Since then there have been no further statements on the matter.

On June 14, the State Department issued a similarly feeble statement about Said’s murder, saying, “The United States is concerned” about the issue and “We welcome the Government’s announcement of a full investigation…” This appears to be the Obama Administration’s standard procedure for human rights violations in the Middle East: issue a mild statement that placates the human rights community while keeping serious pressure off of important allies. (See the response to Israel’s deadly raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla as a perfect example.)

Subsidizing a government that grabs young men from Internet cafes in broad daylight and viciously beats them to death, is not only an immoral foreign policy, it is also a dangerous one. The US government believes it needs allies in a region where America is deeply unpopular and extremism poses a serious problem, but propping up a repressive regime like Mubarak’s only helps to create the kind of angry, disillusioned youth likely to head down the path of terrorism. When these youth see the US’s complicity, it is easy to imagine where their anger can be directed.

The post Is the U.S. Responsible for the Torture and Murder of Khaled Said? appeared first on The Faster Times.

The biggest topic of conversation here in Egypt is the disappearance of hashish from the local market, a shortage that has become known, at least in some quarters, as “the hash crisis.”

In many ways Egypt is a very conservative Muslim society. But that doesn’t mean people don’t love to get stoned.

Official estimates put the number of hash smokers in Egypt at seven million, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the real number was much higher. It’s not uncommon to see the butcher in a local market smoking a fat joint while he takes a tea break. Cabbies will occasionally drive around Cairo’s congested streets with a little spliff held under the steering wheel. The smell of hash often drifts from the seats of the doormen who sit in front of Cairo apartment buildings.

It’s not only working class types who get high, either. Egypt’s Nobel Prize-winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz was rumored to partake on a regular basis. Wealthy, English-speaking Cairenes like to smoke. Even former president Anwar el-Sadat was well known to enjoy his hash pipe.

My favorite evidence of the ubiquity of hash in Egypt is that rolling papers are available at almost every cigarette kiosk and convenience store while rolling tobacco is almost impossible to find.

But over the past month or so, hashish has all but disappeared from this North African country. Nobody knows why.

Conspiracy theories-something of a national pastime-abound. Some people have told me that those who control the hash trade have created the shortage with the aim of raising prices. Other people suggest that the government controls the hash supply and everyone’s favorite intoxicant will reappear shortly before the elections in a few months, lulling Egyptians back into a stone complicity in time for President Mubarak’s party to steal another election.

Most likely, the disappearance of hash is due to a government crackdown. There was news of a major bust in Alexandria a few weeks ago and government officials have said in statements that the police are doubling down on their efforts to limit the supply of dope, the majority of which comes from abroad.

Whatever it is, it’s working. Nobody knows where to find any hash and when they can find it, prices are out of control. Some people have turned instead to the cheap weed known as bongo that is grown in the mountains of the Sinai. But this seedy, stem-y, shwag gives you a headache and a much more intense high than the pleasant mellowness of hashish. In short, it’s no substitute.

But in a country where more than twenty percent of the population lives below the international poverty line of less than two dollars per day, I have to wonder why the government bothers to deprive people of a national hobby that is deeply embedded in the culture. Will ridding Cairo’s streets of dope help to alleviate the overwhelming unemployment? Will making it hard to get high decrease the rate of illiteracy, which currently stands at about thirty percent? Will it help improve the status of women?

I have to wonder why the government bothers. Life is difficult for most people here. Let them get stoned.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user p.s.v.

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“Holy shit!” I thought. The president of Egypt, in power for 28 years and with no vice president is dead!? The biggest news in Egypt–and I learn about it from a Facebook group? (I started to feel guilty for sleeping until afternoon.) But with a little bit of quick research I realized that reports Mubarak’s death were premature In fact, it’s almost definitely not true and its viability as a rumor is due–unsurprisingly–to shoddy Internet journalism. (The Egyptian president has been in a German hospital for over a week after having his gallbladder and some “benign tissue” removed.)

The whole experience, even if it only lasted about four minutes, got me thinking: What if Mubarak really had died? The implications would be tremendous in ways that I can’t even imagine–soldiers in the streets, riots, an internal power struggle, a quiet military coup, who knows?

But one very obvious (and serious) effect of Mubarak’s death would be seen on the Egyptian economy.

This reminded me an article I’d read in Reuters a few days prior. “Egypt’s political stability turning into liability?” the headline asked.

The Reuters story, being for a business audience, naturally focused on the economic implications of Mubarak’s 28-year-long dictatorship. But these-not human rights violations-are perhaps the most likely to affect change in the international politics that help keep Mubarak in power.

“The stable political outlook has obviously long been something that has been identified as an advantage for Egypt,” Reuters quotes some financial wonk saying. “Now, as the presidential succession is approaching, there has been obviously more uncertainty, and this uncertain political outlook has turned into somewhat of a disadvantage.”

Egypt is often heralded as a great place for international business. The International Monetary Fund consistently champions Egypt’s liberal economic reforms and its friendliness to foreign investment. GDP growth has been consistently high in recent years. (Of course very little of this reaches the majority of Egyptians, who have gotten poorer over the past 20 years, but that’s a topic for another day.)

It is not just Mubarak’s economic policies that make the country attractive, it is that under this dictatorship there is confidence among foreign capitalists that Mubarak’s policies will continue to drive Egypt. With Mubarak, investors have a government they can trust will stay the same way for a long time. In Italy, Berlusconi’s pro-business government could fall at any time and the left coalition could take over. In Egypt? Not gonna happen.

But with the president a few months past his 81st birthday and in the hospital for a week with a gallbladder removal (is that a normal thing for old people?), things are starting to look a little more risky. Sure there are most likely plans in place to install Hosni’s even more pro-business son Gamal on the presidential throne, but what if it doesn’t work? What if the Muslim Brotherhood takes power and imposes Islamic financial restrictions on the country? That’s unlikely, but it’s worth keeping in mind back on Wall Street and in Dubai.

The financial situation, of course, mirrors the political one. A number of countries, in particular the United States and Israel, are deeply invested in the Mubarak regime for regional political stability. They, perhaps more so than investors who can move money around relatively quickly, have committed themselves to the continuing “success” of the Mubarak regime.

Right now Mubarak is only dead on Facebook and Twitter. Investors can stay confident in their money that is being plowed into luxury housing on the Mediterranean Coast or natural gas exploration in the desert. For now, at least.

Photo courtesy of the World Economic Forum on Flickr.

The post How Egypt’s Dictatorship is Bad for Business appeared first on The Faster Times.

Or maybe it’s not meant to be ironic. Police play a crucial role in this country, which is, for all intents and purposes, a police state. The government wants to celebrate the police for making Egypt the country that it is today.

On Police Day Eve (I’m probably the only person who called it that), the Middle East director for Human Rights Watch spoke at a press conference in Cairo unveiling a report on the state of human rights in the region in 2009. The title was “Egypt and Libya: A Year of Serious Abuses.” Implicated in many of these abuses are the police and other security forces.

While it isn’t the worst in the region–Syria’s Bashar al-Assad rules with a fist so iron that even Facebook can barely squeeze in–the security services have tremendous power in this country. Egypt has been under “emergency law” since President Hosni Mubarak came to power in 1981 after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Among other things, the emergency law permits indefinite detention without trial, preserves the government’s right to try civilians in military courts, and prohibits gatherings of more than five people. Naturally, the state of emergency gives broad powers to the security services.

The main purpose of the police and security forces here in Egypt is to protect the regime. Police arrest the regime’s opponents regularly. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most popular and best organized opposition movement, had over seven hundred of its members in jail as of last March, according to the Human Rights Watch report. Dissidents are often arrested under ridiculous pretenses. Bloggers, in particular, suffer under the yoke of Egypt’s police state. The most notorious case is that of Kareem Amer, a blogger who criticized the government and religious institutions for discrimination against women and inciting sectarianism. Amer has been in jail for four years and is not even allowed visits from his lawyers.

When activists hold political demonstrations, the government responds with an overwhelming show of force. Within minutes hundreds of riot police arrive on the scene, cordon off the area of the protest, and, frequently, beat on protesters. American and European pro-Palestine activists learned this lesson the hard way when they staged demonstrations in Cairo last month. They seemed surprised.

But one doesn’t have to be a dissident or an activist to feel the heavy hand of Hosni Mubarak’s police force. General thuggery abounds. To fill quotas, police will sweep a neighborhood and arrest dozens of young men, hoping that one of them will have his documents out of order or a chunk of hash in his pocket. People disappear for weeks at a time into police stations, where they are beaten or suffer other forms of torture.

This is not a secret. Stories of abuse and torture appear daily in the local independent press. In the past few years there have been several cases of police throwing people from windows. In July 2008, police apprehended a borderline mentally disabled man and, after accusing him of soliciting a prostitute, beat him so severely that he had bleeding in his brain, his shoulder and neck were fractured, and his left arm paralyzed.

Think Giuliani’s New York City times a thousand.

As a foreigner living here, I have very little occasion to deal with the police here. Foreigners are largely off-limits for the security services-unless they do something really bad like talk about Gaza. Even then, the punishment is light by Egyptian standards.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m shielded from it completely. It’s not uncommon to see a police officer grabbing some dude by the collar and screaming at him in the middle of a sidewalk, sometimes going as far as punching him in the face. Occasionally, trucks full of police officers will tear through an open-air market kicking over people’s stalls and stealing goods. A friend of mine told me her landlord informed her that the secret police had been lurking around the apartment building trying to figure out who the foreigner was. Another friend, who volunteers with street children, says that a few weeks ago one of the kids was randomly arrested by the police and hasn’t been heard from since.

Moreover, cops are everywhere in this city. You can’t turn a corner without seeing a police officer. Gigantic boxy trucks packed with cops rumble through the streets day and night. Plainclothes police are ubiquitous.

So what does Egypt do to celebrate Police Day? CNN’s Cairo correspondent suggested on Twitter that “the president will be giving a ‘golden cow prod’ and a ‘silver broomstick’ on police day to Cairo’s best.”

It would be funny if it weren’t so scary.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user 3arabawy.

The post Celebrating Police (State) Day in Mubarak’s Egypt appeared first on The Faster Times.

Last week, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Egypt is building an underground wall to prevent smuggling tunnels between Sinai and Gaza. The tunnels are used to transport everything from livestock to motorcycles to weapons into Gaza, which has been under blockade since the Islamist militant group Hamas took control of the Strip in June 2007. Egypt has cooperated with the blockade by keeping its border with Gaza closed. The tunnels are illegal and periodically bombed by Israel.

Egypt has justified the construction of the metal by way of an editorial in a state-run newspaper that said, “They forget that the smuggling of weapons through tunnels under the Sinai is a direct assault on Egypt’s sovereignty — on the legitimacy of the state.” The Foreign Minister has said that Egypt will do whatever it needs to in order to protect itself.

Egypt’s security is not the main issue in Egypt’s decision to block the tunnels or take part in the Israeli-led blockade on Gaza. Ostensibly, it’s possible that an open border with Gaza could allow a free flow of Hamas militants into Sinai, which they could then use as a base to fire rockets at Israel, something along the lines of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. This could be a potentially disastrous scenario in which Israel bombs Egyptian territory to stop rockets aimed at its soil.

But this doesn’t seem like the real reason behind the underground anti-tunnel wall, or for that matter, Egypt’s aid in the blockade. Rather it seems that these policies are at the urging of Egypt’s patron: The United States.

Reports on the underground wall all indicate that the project comes at the behest of the United States. One newspaper even said that the Army Corps of Engineers is involved in the wall’s construction. At the same time, the US pressures Egypt to maintain the blockade in order to help achieve Israeli policy goals. With Egypt receiving about over a billion dollars in aid from the United States every year (the second largest recipient after Israel) it doesn’t have much choice but to comply.

The Egyptian government’s decision to ban the Gaza Freedom March, on the other hand, is a little less simple.

The Gaza Freedom March is a non-violent protest scheduled to begin on December 27 in Egypt and culminate in the Gaza Strip on January 1. The aim of the march, which comes on the one-year anniversary of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, is to draw attention to the plight of Gaza’s population. The omnipresent, pink-shirted, anti-war group CODEPINK is one of the major sponsors, but a number of other organizations are also involved. An 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, Britain’s uber-solidarity MP George Galloway, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd will all be attending, in addition to 1,300 others. They are hoping to go through the Egypt-Gaza border crossing, presumably walking right past-or on top of-the tunnels and the wall.

Yesterday Egypt announced that it was banning the Gaza Freedom March. The reason given by the Egyptian government was the “sensitive situation on the border area.” The government is warning that “any attempts to violate the law or public order by any group whether local or foreign on Egyptian soil will be dealt with in conformity with the law.”

The situation is not much more sensitive now than it was a month ago, when plans for the march were proceeding apace. The only thing that has changed the status quo is construction of the underground wall. Hamas supporters have launched protests at the main border crossing with Egypt. A member of the Palestinian Legislative Council said that the wall is “a sign of an impending attack on Gaza by Israel.”

Egypt doesn’t want the solidarity protesters to enter Gaza through the Egyptian border simply because it draws attention to the border’s existence. Cairo was once the focal point of Arab nationalism and Egyptians still celebrate their almost-victory against Israel in 1973. Israel is widely despised throughout Egypt and the rest of the Arab world. That the Egyptian government is perceived as a collaborator in the Israeli siege of Gaza puts it in an uncomfortable position. That Egypt has no choice but to collaborate because of what America dictates makes for an even more uncomfortable position.

Egypt’s solution has been to deflect attention from the Gaza border as much as possible. State security forces regularly break up pro-Gaza protests. At least two foreigners who attended such pro-Gaza events have been deported. The Gaza Freedom March and the new underground wall draw attention to one of Egypt’s most embarrassing issues.

If they could make the border disappear, they surely would.

Photo courtesy of Flickr User piersonr, used through a Creative Commons license. This is actually a photo of a portion of the above-ground wall, which was breached a few weeks after the end of Operation Cast lead last year.

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