Huge demonstrations across Egypt; crowds reject Mubarak's stance
Huge demonstrations across Egypt; crowds reject Mubarak's stance
By Craig Whitlock, Ernesto Londono and Leila Fadel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 11, 2011; 9:40 AM
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 11, 2011; 9:40 AM
CAIRO -
Egyptian state television reported that President Hosni Mubarak and his wife left their home in an affluent Cairo suburb Friday, as hundreds of thousands of citizens across the country gathered to demand his ouster.
The televised statement did not say where Mubarak was headed, but the Associated Press, citing a local official, reported that he was going to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik.
The apparent departure came hours after Egypt's military chiefs pledged to back the Mubarak's decision to remain in office, but cede some powers to his hand-picked vice president, Omar Suleiman. The supreme military council said it would guarantee "free and honest" elections after Mubarak's term expires, and a lifting of Egypt's 30-year-old state of emergency once calm returned to the streets. The military encouraged protesters to go home, citing the need to "return to normal life."
Instead, throngs of people gathered cities across the country, and anger and frustration mounted as word spread of the military's stance. "Mubarak must go! He is finished!" protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square shouted as a sea of people waved red-white-and-black Egyptian flags.
The armed forces did not move against the demonstrators.
At the state Television and Radio Tower, which is north of the square and flanks the east bank of the Nile, thousands of protesters toppled makeshift barricades erected by the military and swarmed around the building.
Soldiers stood by and watched. For the moment, protesters did not force entry into the building, instead chanting: "this is the people's army, not Mubarak's army." The television channel, a reliable producer of propaganda for Mubarak, continued to broadcast.
On the Mediterranean coast, massive crowds packed public squares in Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city, jeering Mubarak and insisting that he resign. Protests also erupted in Suez, where crowds surrounded 10 government buildings, according to the Egyptian news Web site al-Ahram Online. Large demonstrations were also reported in the cities of Tanta, Mahalla and Assuit.
In the affluent Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, a smaller demonstration was underway at Mubarak's presidential palace. There, 26-year-old Taha Nahas predicted that the military's statement would backfire and that Egyptians who had seen the armed forces as an honest protector of their interests would change their minds. "This is what we've heard before from Mubarak and Omar Suleiman," Nahas said. "We have lost our trust in the military. It's a corrupt organization."
A group of counter-demonstrators congregated nearby, chanting support for the president and urging the other side to disperse. Soldiers kept the two sides separated. "We are afraid. If there is anarchy, looters will come to our homes," said Serge Simon, 60, an Armenian-Egyptian pianist from Heliopolis. "What we are seeing here is hooliganism."
In Tahrir Square, scores of thousands prostrated themselves to the muezzin's prayer call at midday, many of them weeping. Organizers of Egypt's popular rebellion predicted the biggest turnout so far in their 18-day revolt.
Parts of the square grew so packed that it was difficult to walk around. Soldiers in riot gear manned entrances to the square, but did not stop those who were streaming in. Dozens of ambulances were parked on nearby side streets.
Protesters said that three soldiers turned in their weapons and joined the protests an hour before Friday prayers. Many chants focused on the need for a civilian, rather than a military, government.
"The military is now in an embarrassing situation," said Tamer Oweiss, 31,, a superviser at Cairo's airport. "They're trying to stand in the middle. They feel loyalty to Mubarak, an officer, but at the same time, they dont want to hurt the people."
The plaza, next to the Nile River, has served as the heartbeat of the rebellion.
In a rambling televised speech late Thursday, Mubarak ceded some authority to Suleiman but refused to quit, insisting that he would stay in office to oversee a drawn-out transfer of power. His defiance stunned and angered hundreds of thousands of protesters in the capital, who responded with chants of "revolution, revolution."
Enormous crowds, which had gathered in anticipation that Mubarak would announce his resignation, expressed disappointment and fury as the message sunk in that the president had no intention of leaving.
"Oh Mubarak, be patient! The people will dig your grave," protesters shouted. As dawn broke Friday, the Muslim holy day and the start of the weekend here, more and more people came to the square.
Around 200 people had gathered at the presidential palace, al-Ouruba, by midday, outside a wall of barbed wire and two tanks. The mood was calm as soldiers directed traffic.
Said Younis, a 26-year-old advertising executive, said he marched 10 miles from Tahrir Square to the presidential palace immediately after Mubarak's speech, arriving about 2 a.m. "He ridiculed us," Younis said. "We want him to hear our voices from up close."
Mubarak "is an idiot," said Ahmed Suleiman, 62, a physician. "We're very upset about what he said yesterday.
Some protesters vowed to storm the palace. But others appealed for restraint, saying they would not clash with the military.
"The people and the army are continuing their march together!" they chanted.
Younis said military officers stationed at the palace offered their sympathy and support, providing tea and juice to the handful of protesters who pulled an all-night vigil. "They told us, 'Don't worry, we will never fire on you,' " he said.
Outside the palace gate, some protesters appealed to soldiers across the barbed wire to join their cause.
"I'm with you!" one officer shouted back.
"Then come to this side!" one woman demanded.
Mubarak's rejection of the rebellion capped a confusing day of contradictory messages, exultant expectations and, ultimately, flattened hopes. It left Egyptians and the rest of the world anxious and afraid of how the conflict would unfold in the hours and days ahead.
"This stalemate cannot continue forever," Finance Minister Samir Radwan told BBC radio. "I think the military is highly disciplined and they have taken a decision not to fire at the young people."
Some opposition leaders warned that Mubarak was risking a bloody revolt.
"There is no way the Egyptian people right now are ready to accept either the president or the vice president," Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and opposition leader, told CNN. "They have lost all authority, all legitimacy. . . . My fear is that the situation will turn violent."
The developments not only shocked Egyptians but seemed to catch the world by surprise, including the highest levels of the U.S. government. In a written statement, President Obama said "it is not yet clear'' whether the transition to democracy pledged by Mubarak would be "immediate, meaningful or sufficient.''
Earlier Thursday, CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress that "there is a strong likelihood that Mubarak may step down this evening." In an afternoon speech to university students in Michigan, Obama gave no indication that he expected otherwise, calling the events in Egypt "a moment of transformation that's taking place because the people of Egypt are calling for change."
After 17 days of swelling protests and labor unrest, demonstrators in Cairo thought they were on the cusp of forcing Mubarak from power Thursday afternoon when Egypt's military chiefs pledged in unequivocal-sounding language that they backed the protesters' goals.
Crowds had thundered their approval when Gen. Hassan al-Roueini, military commander for the Cairo region, strode into the square and declared: "All your demands will be met today."
Anticipation soared even higher when Egypt's supreme military council announced that it had convened an emergency session - in its commander in chief's absence. In a statement, the military chiefs pledged "support for the legitimate demands of the people" and promised "to oversee their interests and security."
About five hours later, at 10:45 p.m., Mubarak addressed the nation on television from his palace. Standing next to an Egyptian flag, he tried to assure the public that he had heard their grievances.
He promised to investigate the deaths of an estimated 300 people during the demonstrations, which began Jan. 25. But he took no responsibility for the actions of his police and security forces, which have been widely accused of instigating the violence.
"I speak to the youth of Egypt in Tahrir Square and all around Egypt. I speak to you as a father speaks to his children," he said. "I say to you before anything else that the blood of your martyrs will not be in vain and that I will hold perpetrators to account."
"I say to you that my response to your message and your demands is a commitment that I will not go back on," he said. "I believe that the majority of Egyptians know who is Hosni Mubarak, and it hurts me how some Egyptians talk about me."
But as he continued for 15 minutes, he never uttered the lines that many assumed were coming, instead insisting that he would remain in office until the end of his term in September so he could oversee what he called a transition to "free and transparent" elections.
"This is the pledge that I've made before God and the nation, and I swear that I will honor this pledge," he said. "I have lived for the sake of this nation. I will not leave it nor depart it until I am buried in the ground."
Mubarak said he was transferring power to his vice president, Omar Suleiman, Egypt's longtime intelligence chief. He also said he had ordered several constitutional amendments. One would expand the field of candidates eligible to run to succeed him in September, and another would provide for judicial monitoring of elections.
Afterward, Sameh Shoukry, Egypt's ambassador to the United States, asserted that Mubarak had transferred all authority to Suleiman, making the latter the de facto president. "For undertaking all decisions and responsibilities under the constitution, it is Omar Suleiman," the ambassador told CNN.
But there were few signs that Mubarak was about to recede into the background, and few Egyptians believed that he had entirely relinquished his control of the state.
Shortly after Mubarak finished speaking, Suleiman followed with a televised address in which he defended his boss and tried to soothe widespread concerns that Egypt's revolutionary struggle could turn ugly.
"The president puts the supreme interests of the country above everything else. He has empowered me to preserve its achievements and restore stability and happiness," Suleiman said. "We have opened the door to dialogue, and the door is still open to dialogue."
Earlier in the week, Suleiman had made public statements in which he warned protesters that they faced a choice between a "coup" and a "dialogue" and implied that a military crackdown was possible. On Thursday night, he once again urged demonstrators to back off, saying it was for the good of the country.
"Youth of Egypt, go back home. Go back to work. The nation needs your efforts to create and build a bright future," Suleiman said. "Do not listen to television and radio reports and foreign influences whose aim is just to cause chaos and tarnish Egypt's image."
The allusion to outside intervention echoed a warning from Mubarak, whose advisers have expressed anger with the United States, Egypt's longtime ally, for sternly urging the Cairo regime to repeal its state-of-emergency law and to embrace democratic reforms.
"We will prove that we are not followers or puppets of anybody, nor we are receiving orders or dictations from anybody," Mubarak said. "No one is making the decision for us."
The audio of Mubarak's speech was broadcast on loudspeakers mounted in Tahrir Square. His remarks were repeatedly interrupted by the crowd, which shouted, "Go away, go away," even as most people strained to listen so they could comprehend the president's message.
As Mubarak concluded, the response was instantaneous and ear-splitting. "The people want to put the president on trial," the crowd roared. There seemed to be little doubt that the speech had set the stage for decisive and possibly violent confrontation.
"He was provoking us," said Osama Hassan, a 35-year-old Cairo resident. "What he's doing is putting us in conflict with the military. This here is a camp of revolution. And he will need the military to get us out."
After the speech, the European Union signaled a tougher line on Mubarak's handling of the unrest.
"The demands and expectations of the Egyptian people must be met," said Catherine Ashton, the E.U. high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. She added: "The time for change is now."
Special correspondent Samuel Sockol and staff writer Linda Davidson in Cairo and staff writer William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.
Egypt Erupts in Jubilation as Mubarak Steps Down
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
CAIRO — An 18-day-old revolt led by the young people of Egypt ousted President Hosni Mubarak on Friday, shattering three decades of political stasis here and overturning the established order of the Arab world.
Shouts of “God is great” erupted from Tahrir Square at twilight as Mr. Mubarak’s vice president and longtime intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, announced that Mr. Mubarak had passed all authority to a council of military leaders.
Tens of thousands who had bowed down for evening prayers leapt to their feet, bouncing and dancing in joy. “Lift your head high, you’re an Egyptian,” they cried. Revising the tense of the revolution’s rallying cry, they chanted, “The people, at last, have brought down the regime.”
“We can breathe fresh air, we can feel our freedom,” said Gamal Heshamt, a former independent member of Parliament. “After 30 years of absence from the world, Egypt is back.”
Mr. Mubarak, an 82-year-old former air force commander, left without comment for his home by the Red Sea in Sharm el Sheik. His departure overturns, after six decades, the Arab world’s original secular dictatorship. He was toppled by a radically new force in regional politics — a largely secular, nonviolent, youth-led democracy movement that brought Egypt’s liberal and Islamist opposition groups together for the first time under its banner.
One by one the protesters withstood each weapon in the arsenal of the Egyptian autocracy — first the heavily armed riot police, then a ruling party militia and finally the state’s powerful propaganda machine.
Mr. Mubarak’s fall removed a bulwark of American foreign policy in the region. The United States, its Arab allies and Israel are now pondering whether the Egyptian military, which has vowed to hold free elections, will give way to a new era of democratic dynamism or to a perilous lurch into instability or Islamist rule.
The upheaval comes less than a month after a sudden youth revolt in nearby Tunisia toppled another enduring Arab strongman, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. And on Friday night some of the revelers celebrating in the streets of Cairo marched under a Tunisian flag and pointed to the surviving autocracies in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Yemen. “We are setting a role model for the dictatorships around us,” said Khalid Shaheen, 39. “Democracy is coming.”
President Obama, in a televised address, praised the Egyptian revolution. “Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day,” he said. “It was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism and mindless killing — that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.”
The Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Islamist movement that until 18 days ago was considered Egypt’s only viable opposition, said it was merely a supporting player in the revolt.
“We participated with everyone else and did not lead this or raise Islamic slogans so that it can be the revolution of everyone,” said Mohamed Saad el-Katatni, a spokesman for the Brotherhood. “This is a revolution for all Egyptians; there is no room for a single group’s slogans, not the Brotherhood’s or anybody else.”
The Brotherhood, which was slow to follow the lead of its own youth wing into the streets, has said it will not field a candidate for president or seek a parliamentary majority in the expected elections.
The Mubarak era ended without any of the stability and predictability that were the hallmarks of his tenure. Western and Egyptian officials had expected Mr. Mubarak to leave office on Thursday and irrevocably delegate his authority to Vice President Suleiman, finishing the last six months of his term with at least his presidential title intact.
But whether because of pride or stubbornness, Mr. Mubarak instead spoke once again as the unbowed father of the nation, barely alluding to a vague “delegation” of authority.
The resulting disappointment enraged the Egyptian public, sent a million people into the streets of Cairo on Friday morning and put in motion an unceremonious retreat at the behest of the military he had commanded for so long.
“Taking into consideration the difficult circumstances the country is going through, President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave the post of president of the republic and has tasked the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to manage the state’s affairs,” Mr. Suleiman, grave and ashen, said in a brief televised statement.
It is now not clear what role Mr. Suleiman, whose credibility plummeted over the past week as he stood by Mr. Mubarak and even questioned Egypt’s readiness for democracy, will have in the new government.
The transfer of power leaves the Egyptian military in charge of this nation of 85 million, facing insistent calls for fundamental democratic change and open elections. Hours before Mr. Suleiman announced Mr. Mubarak’s exit, the military had signaled its takeover with a communiqué that appeared to declare its solidarity with the protesters.
Read on state television by an army spokesman, the communiqué declared that the military — not Mr. Mubarak, Mr. Suleiman or any other civilian authority — would ensure the amendment of the Constitution to “conduct free and fair presidential elections.”
“The armed forces are committed to sponsor the legitimate demands of the people,” the statement declared, and the military promised to ensure the fulfillment of its promises “within defined time frames” until authority could be passed to a “free democratic community that the people aspire to.”
It pledged to remove the reviled “emergency law,” which allows the government to detain anyone without charges or trial, “as soon as the current circumstances are over” and further promised immunity from prosecution for the protesters, whom it called “the honest people who refused the corruption and demanded reforms.”
Egyptians ignored the communiqué, as they have most official pronouncements of the Mubarak government, until the president’s resignation was announced. Then they hugged, kissed and cheered the soldiers, lifting children on tanks to get their pictures taken. “The people and the army are one hand,” they chanted.
Standing guard near the presidential palace, soldiers passed photographs of “martyrs” killed during the revolution through barbed wire to attach them to their tanks. At Tahrir Square, some slipped out of position to join the roaring crowds flooding the streets.
Whether the military will subordinate itself to a civilian democracy or install a new military dictator will be impossible to know for months. Military leaders will inevitably face pressure to deliver the genuine transition that protesters did not trust Mr. Mubarak to give them.
Yet it may also seek to protect the enormous political and economic privileges it accumulated during Mr. Mubarak’s reign. And the army has itself been infused for years with the notion that Egypt’s survival depends on fighting threats, real and imagined, from foreign enemies, Islamists, Iran and the frustrations of its own people.
Throughout the revolt, the army stood passively on the sidelines — its soldiers literally standing behind the iron fence of the Egyptian Museum — as the police or armed Mubarak loyalists fought the protesters centered in Tahrir Square.
But Western diplomats, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were violating confidences, said that top army officials had told them that their troops would never use force against civilians, depriving Mr. Mubarak of a decisive tool to suppress the dissent.
It has been “increasingly clear,” a Western diplomat said Friday, that “the army will not go down with Mubarak.”
Now the military, which owns vast commercial interests here but has not fought in decades, must defuse demonstrations, quell widespread labor unrest and rebuild a shattered economy and security forces. Its top official, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, 75, served for decades as a top official of Mr. Mubarak’s government. And its top uniformed official, Gen. Sami Hafez Enan, has not spoken publicly.
Egypt’s opposition has said for weeks that it welcomed a military role in securing the country, ideally under a two- to five-member presidential council with only one military member. And the initial reaction to the military takeover was ecstatic.
“Welcome back,” said Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who administered the Facebook group that helped start the revolt.
Mr. Ghonim, who was detained for 12 days in blindfolded isolation by the Mubarak government as it tried to stamp out the revolt, helped protesters turn the tide in a propaganda war against the state media earlier this week, when he described his captivity in an emotional interview on a satellite television station.
“Egypt is going to be a democratic state,” he declared Friday, in another interview. “You will be impressed.”
Dr. Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, 32, a transplant surgeon who was among the small group of organizers who guided the revolution, said the leaders had decided to let the protests unwind on their own. “We are not going to ask the people to stay in the square or leave — it is their choice,” he said. “Even if they leave, any government will know that we can get them to the streets again in a minute.”
“Our country never had a victory in our lifetime, and this is the sort of victory we were looking for, a victory over a vicious regime that we needed to bring down,” Dr. Harb said.
Amr Ezz, 27, another of revolt’s young leaders, said that calling the revolution a military coup understated its achievement. “It is the people who took down the president and the regime and can take down anyone else,” he said. “Now the role of the regular people has ended and the role of the politicians begins. Now we can begin negotiations with the military in order to plan the coming phase.”
The opposition groups participating in the protest movement had previously settled on a committee led by Mohamed ElBaradei, the former diplomat and Nobel laureate, to negotiate with the army if Mr. Mubarak resigned.
Mr. ElBaradei could not be reached for comment on Friday, but in a television interview he indicated that he expected the talks with the military to begin within days.
“I’d like to see that started tomorrow so we can have a sharing of power, the civilian and the military, and tell them what our demands are, what they need to do,” he said.
By evening, Egyptian politicians were beginning to position themselves to run for office. Amr Moussa, one of the country’s most popular public figures, resigned his position as secretary general of the Arab League, and an aide, Hesham Youssef, confirmed that Mr. Moussa was considering seeking office.
In Switzerland, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had frozen possible assets of “the former Egyptian president” and his associates.
In the military’s final communiqué of the day, its spokesman thanked Mr. Mubarak for his service and saluted the “martyrs” of the revolution.
In Tahrir Square, protesters said they were not quite ready to disband the little republic they had built up during their two-week occupation, setting up makeshift clinics, soundstages, a detention center and security teams to protect the barricades.
Many have boasted that their encampment was a rare example of community spirit here, and after Mr. Mubarak’s resignation the organizers called on the thousands who protested here to return once again on Saturday morning to help clean it up.
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