Egypt’s Arab Spring Revolution Started Just Like This One. Do Americans Have What it Takes to Bring Real Change?
By Ramsey S. Elsayed, MD with Ali Davis
Authoritarian regimes don’t always seem too bad at first. But that doesn’t last.
Hosni Mubarak took over Egypt in 1981 after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Egypt had issues like any country does, but for the first ten years or so of his presidency, Mubarak worked to make housing, medicine, and some basic goods more affordable. People were, for the most part, content.
I was born in the United States, but my parents moved us to Egypt 1991 after my father suffered a disabling accident at work. I went through high school in Egypt and decided to stay on through medical school and my surgical internship.
By the early ’90s, Mubarak’s children were entering their 30s and eager for their own slices of power and wealth. One of the stories I was told as a kid was about a well-known and respected owner of a car dealership my family knew. He had a successful business that he had built himself. One day, one of Mubarak’s sons walked in out of the blue and said he wanted to be a partner. The dealer thanked him for the opportunity, but explained that he didn’t need a partner. That night Hosni Mubarak himself called the man and told him he had to accept.
The dealership owner, according to friends, spent the next few days in intense worry and sadness, knowing that he had no choice. By the end of the week, the man experienced a fatal heart attack and died. Based on the accounts I’ve heard and my medical training, I believe he died of takotsubo cardiomyopathy — a weakening of the heart due to intense emotional stress. In layman’s terms, I believe he died of a broken heart.
As a rule of thumb, I would say that it’s bad for the head of state to have children that are both greedy and completely unchecked. It’s something the U.S. might want to look into.
Police militarization tends to spiral up and punch down.
Outside forces also wanted pieces of Egypt, whether that was money, land, or power. One way to carve up the country and its wealth without encountering too much opposition was by strengthening and militarizing the police force.
Police were deployed on a daily basis to “keep order.” It will not surprise you to hear that the police used more and more force, but directed it almost entirely against the most vulnerable members of our society: The poor, the undocumented. The people who didn’t have an uncle in the government to call. Every few years, there would be a protest, whether about police brutality or increase in prices of goods, Mubarak would just put all the demonstrators in prison for a week or two. We got used to the cycle.
Police brutality got worse and worse as we crested the millennium, but if you were one of the fortunate, you didn’t see it. The media worked hand-in-hand with the government, so it wasn’t reported. And social media hadn’t yet fully taken off. I was one of the fortunate — I was in medical school and my family had uncles to call. I didn’t see the police brutality, but more and more I heard about it. If I talked with my auto mechanic or chatted with my parents’ housekeeper, I got glimpses of how bad it was getting.
The unrest started coming to a head around 2009 or 2010. I know Facebook has become extremely problematic now, but at the time it was useful for the resistance: People could form groups and talk to each other about what was going on. Now they had an outlet for their anger and distrust.
When enough people see a single barbarous attack, it becomes a flashpoint.
At the end of 2010, Khaled Mohamed Saeed was arrested while he was sitting in a cybercafe. At the time, any officer could stop you and search you without probable cause, another element which will sound familiar to some Americans. He was beaten to death by the police and died on the scene. The media didn’t report it, but the story of his death and leaked photos of his battered face roared through social media. He was an ordinary kid, not political, not connected, and his death was wildly out of proportion with what the police had accused him of.
After about three days, the media realized that this was something they couldn’t stop or control and went along with the wave of popular opinion.
Violent crackdowns galvanize protesters. But governments don’t learn that easily.
On January 25, 2011, 50,000 protesters occupied Tahir Square. The government response was merciless. Hundreds of protesters were killed, but people kept organizing through social media and WhatsApp. The government arrested hundreds more people and made ferocious attempts to quell the uprising. By January 28th, police snipers were shooting protesters from the tops of buildings. A group of demonstrators praying on the Qasr El-Nile bridge were hit with a water cannon. But they kept praying.
The government disabled all the cell phone towers near the square. They cut off the Internet. People were left with nothing but land lines and TV for information, but they kept going, and the numbers kept rising. People were fearless.
On January 31st, the military deployed — but not for Mubarak. The military rolled out to protect the people. And when the Army came, the police completely withdrew. I remember the Army being so kind to everyone, and everyone being so nice to them in return.
On February 11, with the culminating pressure from world leaders to step down, Mubarak realized he wasn’t going to be able to stop it this time and resigned. Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak was stepping down and the military would take care of us. You would expect something like that to be a big production, but the whole announcement took about 30 seconds.
There are a lot of obvious similarities between these two popular uprisings. But I don’t know if there are enough.
In Egypt, people just wanted something to change at first, but once the police started killing more people, Mubarak had to go. I’ve been surprised that the Trump administration and police departments across the country haven’t studied those lessons more closely.
Much like here, 80% of the Egyptian protests were completely peaceful. But also much like here, there’s always someone who’s going to try to hijack them and turn them violent for his own ends. I feel like people are more aware of that, and that’s a good thing.
There are also multiple media outlets that are essentially state media, dedicated to propping up Trump, and 30% of the country refuses to watch or read anything else. I don’t know what it would take to get them to do real reporting, and whether their audience would simply turn to other sources if they did. People won’t learn what they don’t want to believe.
I don’t know if this will create real change.
What I learned from the Egyptian protests is that change happens with numbers and fearlessness. Otherwise the status quo prevails. I don’t know if I have seen enough of either here so far.
It has been amazing seeing protests across the country, in the biggest cities and the smallest towns. But in Egypt, we ended up with 10% of the population taking to the streets. I don’t think I have seen 35 million people out in the States yet. Unless we get to that ten percent, I think these protests will die down.
And as for the fearlessness, we have a saying in Egyptian Arabic: “He left his house and tore up his ID.” People would go out to protests and not care if they ever came back. Too many people here have something to lose. A lot of Americans sympathize with the protestors in theory, but mostly they want things to quiet down so they can go back to their normal lives.
On the other hand, the third thing the protestors had in Egypt was faith. The people praying on the bridge believed that God was on their side and would help them. Others had faith in Fate, or simply in doing the right thing. I see that faith in people who are putting their bodies on the line right now. I certainly see their stamina. I hope it will be enough to turn the tide.
