I have a bit of personal perspective on this. My sister and her husband teach at the American University in Cairo. They were with me for the holidays, and they returned last Tuesday.
The day they left, we had been hearing about a few student protests. That was the extent of it. We were heartened by the departure of the Ali government in Tunisia, and while we suspected this to be the spark of the rallies in Cairo, nobody expected the situation to erupt with such swiftness or power.
By Thursday, the internet was shut down, as were the cellular phone networks. We had communicated by VoIP, and that link was now severed. I was left to wonder and worry as activism turned to unrest, then to violence. Historical patterns like this never bode well.
As of Sunday, we were able to reestablish communication via landline. At that point, the police had disappeared, looting was taking place, and they could hear gunshots in the distance with some regularity. The State Department was putting together an evacuation plan, and I wanted them out of there.
Then things changed, and historical projections went out the window. Early Monday morning, I made contact, and they reported the following:
The police were largely returning to their posts. The military was omnipresent, but they were not there to interfere; they were there to protect. When fighter jets flew over Tahrir Square, the crowds cheered them.
The curfew is still in effect, and is being observed by most businesses. Civilians caught out after curfew are mildly chided, then directed to get home, but are not otherwise harassed. In fact, my sister’s interactions with the patrols were marked by joviality. The predominant mood among the people of Cairo is not anxiety, nor fear, but boredom. There is a sense of waiting.
The term “liminal moment” was coined by anthropologist Victor Turner. “Limin” comes from the Latin for “threshold,” and the phrase describes the moment before an event of great importance. Historians are often obsessed with finding it, and Cairo now exists in such a moment.
Tomorrow, there are plans for a massive march on the Presidential palace, and almost everyone will be going. What shocks me is that they are doing so without fear of reprisal. The mood is one of unbridled optimism.
At this point, violence is no longer an option for Mubarak. He has lost the army, and he has lost the police. He obviously didn’t pay attention in Dictator School 101, and he now has no option remaining but capitulation.
There have been worries in the western media that he will be replaced with something worse, but that is not the feeling in Cairo. The involvement of Al-IkhwÄn appears to be vastly over-stated here, and what concerns they do voice are those of general welfare and nonviolence. Nobody seems to be soliciting their opinion on politics, nor have they offered one.
While the end result remains to be seen, we can already draw a few lessons from this.
The first is that peaceful revolutions can still happen. So united, the passion of a repressed people can be a stronger force than arms.
The second is that we’re not as dependent on the internet and social media as I’d feared. A dictator can shut down the routers and switches, but people will find a way to organize and communicate.
The third is that we need to revise our foreign policy, and now. The Tunisian revolt, in a vacuum, could have been considered an anomaly. The revolt in Egypt, coming so soon on its heels, indicates a trend. We need to be behind that, and we need to come out on the side of democracy.
This may be the greatest failure history lays in President Obama’s lap. The moment came, and he blinked. The perception on the ground in Cairo at the moment is that the United States is more concerned with maintaining the balance of our political interests than we are with supporting a revolution for free elections and a multi-party system of government.
Though the result was different, history faults Jimmy Carter for allowing us to be blindsided by the 1979 revolution in Iran. To this day, the Iranians (who, like the Egyptians, have a large and well-educated middle class) blame us for supporting the excesses of Pahlavi’s government. We can’t let that happen again.
Rumor has it that protests will begin in Syria this Friday. We need to be there, in spirit if nothing else.