Vali Nasr’s interview on NPR’s Morning Edition talks about what it takes to make a successful revolution. Particularly, they focus on the need for a vibrant, educated, middle-class for a successful transition to democracy.
Another key, and I think essential point, is that the Egyptian protesters share the same global-citizenship values that Brazilians, South Koreans, and even Europeans and American, share. That they have these values, from years of communication with the outside world, offers the best chance that this revolution will be successful.
Edmund Burke supported the American Revolution, but opposed the French Revolution because the former was a conservative revolution, the colonists were fighting to regain rights that had lost, while the latter were trying to impose an ideal of democracy and equality that they had no experience with. He was right; the French revolution lead to the Terror then eventually to Napoleon and the restoration of the aristocracy.
The events that spark revolutions can come as a surprise. While everyone at home might want to overthrow the dictator, they don’t know if everyone else wants to do so too, so they are reluctant to go against the government. This is why protests are so important (as well as news coverage of the protests), because then the people offended by the government can see that there are a lot of other people like them.
Dictators, like Mubarak, do a lot to prevent protests: their secret police will arrest and “disappear” opposition leaders; riot police will be out in force to suppress protests if people start to gather.
The Egyptian protesters faced this very problem. So they organized over the internet, as anonymously as possible, and, for the January 25th protests, they arranged several meeting places for protesters so the riot police were too spread out to suppress everyone.
Stephen Pinker talks about this in terms of Individual Knowledge and Mutual Knowledge. Individually everyone knows the dictator is bad, but with the protests, they all realize, mutually, that everyone else also thinks the dictator is bad. Which is really bad for the dictator.
TotallyCoolPix has several series of totally cool pictures spanning all the events of the Egyptian revolution. The images are all from the major newswires, and, with their excellent framing and composition, as well as the dramatic subject, are superb examples of the photographic arts.
A first draft of why it happened must begin in a rural town in Tunisia on the shores of the Mediterranean where Mohamed Bouazizi was the unlikeliest catalyst of the extraordinary realignment in the region.
— Sharrock et al. 2010: Egypt: how the people span the wheel of their country’s history
David Sharrock, Jack Shenker and Paul Harris just posted an excellent, big picture, article in The Guardian about the events leading up to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak.
The article starts with the corruption that provoked Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia and makes the connection to Khaled Said death at the hands of the Egyptian police. The descriptions of these events are graphic, so be warned. Sharrock et al., go on to describe how the Egyptian protesters were able to use technology to organize in a way that has not been possible before. The article ends with the vacillating moves of the Obama administration as it was buffeted by events in Egypt.
“This time we were determined to do something different – be multi-polar, fast-moving, and too mobile for the amin markazi [central security forces], giving us the chance to walk down hundreds of different roads and show normal passers-by that taking to the streets was actually possible.”
The plan worked better than they could ever have imagined. Throughout the capital and across the country, pockets of protest sprung up and overpowered the thinly stretched riot police, who had no choice but to let the marches continue. Later, when the different strands rallied in city centres – including Cairo’s symbolic Tahrir Square –the police used guns and tear gas to disperse them.
But it was already too late. By destroying the smokescreen of police invincibility, even for only a few hours, the youths had pierced Mubarak’s last line of defence – the fear his subjects felt at the thought of confronting him – and a fatal blow was struck to a 30-year dictatorial regime.
This piece is a bit long, and the vocabulary a bit advanced, for the average middle school student, but it is an excellent summary and first draft of history.
After hard work, great risk, and sacrifice, euphoria.
The resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the deafening sound of celebration in Egypt (via the Guardian).
Egypt. A victory for peaceful protest (even though they had to fight off attacks).
Going forward, things will not be easy, but for today, euphoria. Will Wilkinson has an excellent essay, in which he puts aside his natural skepticism for a little while:
It is impossible, for me at least, to watch the crowds in Egypt, overjoyed at Hosni Mubarak’s hotly-desired resignation, with dry eyes and an unclenched throat. … Whatever the future holds, there will be disappointment, at best. But there is always disappointment. Today, there is joy.
–Will Wilkinson (2011) Egypt’s Euphoria
Fireworks are necessary:
The singing (via NY Times) before Mubarak’s resignation:
And after:
To be liberated is one thing, but to earn your freedom is fundamentally at another order of magnitude.
For the record, the following was my attempt to simulate the current Egyptian protests. I tried this one afternoon after the class had watched a particularly stirring video of the protesters, and my intention was to give students with a simplified picture of what was going on and who was doing it. We’re not covering revolutions until next year, but the current events in Egypt are too important to ignore.
The Players
The yellow nodes show the major actors included in the simulation.
1. Hosni Mubarak
Hosni Mubarak. (Image by Presidenza della Repubblica via Wikimedia Commons)
Hosni Mubarak is the President of Egypt and autocrat for the last thirty years. I tried to match students, in a rough and ready way, to the personality/characteristics of the people and groups they were supposed to represent, so for Mubarak I picked someone who could think fast on their feet and would play the role to the end, not giving up easily to the demonstrators just because they (as I believe all my students are) are sympathetic to their cause.
2. The Secret Police (also pro-regime “protesters”)
This ID is of an undercover security officer who tried to start a fight, he was apprehended but not hurt, however, he said he was paid to come and start trouble. (via Al Jazerra English)
The student playing the secret police was given a weapon, a popsicle stick, with which he could attack the protesters, but was not powerful enough to “kill” anyone on its own. He had to follow the instruction of Mr. Mubarak. I chose one of my more kinetically oriented students for this role, and he spent a lot of time crawling under tables and harassing the protesters as they tried to make their signs.
I tried the simulation in class before the overnight battles where pro-Mubarak “protesters” attempted to take Tahrir Square, so I just briefed the student tasked with this job that he was the dreaded secret police. However, given that the anti-government protesters were able to beat of their attackers, and that police ID was found on captured attackers, I think the pro-government rioters can be lumped in with the secret police.
3. Barack Obama
Barack Obama.
I chose my student whose major ambition is to be president for this role. He’s quite serious about it, and follows world politics, so could handle the tricky balance of deciding if to support a client who has provided stability (until now), as opposed to supporting the pro-democracy protesters, as his predilections would demand.
4. The Army
Egyptian Army tanks in Tahrir Square in Cairo. (Image from Al Jazeera English)
This was another tricky role to play. The top brass tend to support the regime, while the enlisted soldiers and lower-level officers have shown support for the anti-government protesters. There was even a story of a lower level officer joining the protesters because his brother had been killed in the protests. The Army also has the tanks and power to decide things one way or the other if they so choose. They’re also well respected.
I gave the student playing the Army a simulated gun, but told him, in secret, that he only had three bullets, not enough to “kill” all the protesters.
5. The “People”
The quiet majority. (Image from Al Jazeera English)
Despite all the people protesting in Tahrir Square, the vast majority of the population of Cairo are at home, worrying, watching things unfold on TV, trying to figure out what’s going on and what to do.
My quietest student got this job, one who could exhibit a lot of restraint, and be reluctant to do anything radical. They were instructed that their main role was to worry, but, if things got so bad that they had to take sides, whichever side they took would win. They were that powerful, but unaware or fearful of using that power.
6. Student Protesters
Student protester.
Despite the smile on the face of the student protester in the adjacent image, I instructed the student representing the young student protesters in Tahrir Square that those students were, at the core, angry and frustrated. They are educated so they know a bit of history and about politics. They know what things could be like, how things could be.
7&8. The Muslim Brotherhood
The Muslim Brotherhood.
I assigned two students to be the Muslim Brotherhood, given their relative size. They wrote their protest sign using Arabic characters since the Brotherhood, with all their charities, represent the poorer, less educated people (so they’re less likely to have English as a second language).
My students were told they were pious and work closely together, to represent the religious background of the Brotherhood and the discipline of the organization.
9. Middle Class Protesters
Middle class protester with young child.
In between the major street battles, when the protests swelled to their largest size, the middle class protesters came out. They have something to loose but want the best for their kids. Some of them brought their kids.
They’re educated and probably have a decent income. Although they’re not the loudest or most angry, these are the kind of people with the high per-capita incomes that you want for any new democracy to succeed.
10. Mohammed ElBaradei
Mohamed ElBaradei (image from the IAEA).
ElBaradei is an interesting character in all the turmoil in Egypt. Westernized and liberal-minded, he’s spent a lot of time working for international organizations but has only focused on Egyptian politics in the last few years. As such, he doesn’t seem to have much of a grass-roots constituency.
I try to get my students to argue with me on the basis of logic rather than anything else, and I chose a student who’s rather good at it for this role. Protests, however, are driven more by logic than emotion. So when this student got frustrated and gave up after trying to organize the protesters, who they were all too busy making their signs, I thought added some unexpected verisimilitude to the simulation. (I had to prod them quite a bit to wrap up on the signmaking, otherwise we’d have gotten nothing else done for the rest of the day).
Missing
Putting all this together quickly did mean that I probably missed some major players, including, I suspect, the important role of the media.
Putting it all together
With the actors in place (and signs finally ready), my protesters marched on the square. The Army was caught in between the protesters and Mr. Mubarak. The “People” watched from the sidelines. Everyone had their say, from the perspective of their group, but I had to do a little coaching to keep them to their assigned tasks.
No one won in our simulation. It ended in a stalemate, because the only actor capable of bringing things to a conclusive end, the Army, could not decide which side to choose. Which is pretty much where Egypt has been for the last week. Until today.
Patrick Appel, at the Daily Dish, points out a (paper) in the journal Public Choice on why some major revolutions, like Egypt’s, so often come as a surprise to everyone.
Kuran (1989) posits that people tend to hide the fact that they are opposed to the government, especially repressive governments, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Then when some odd thing, which might seem unrelated to anything, happens, and the opposition to the government starts to look like it might be able to win, then everyone piles onto the bandwagon and a revolution occurs.
Two weeks ago, practically everyone thought that Egypt was too stable, and Mubarak too entrenched to by ousted. A lot of commentators wished the Egyptian regime would go after Tunisia’s, but they pretty uniformly agreed that it was too strong.
at least 1 million people sang egypt's national anthem. Image and caption from Al Jazeera English (Feb 4th, 2011)
Anti-government protesters guard their barricade at the Kasr al-Nil bridge entrance into the square. They erected a complicated defense wall, strung a heavy electrical cable around 10 meters in front of the wall, and scattered lines of debris another 10 meters ahead of that to break up any attacks. (Image and caption from Al Jazeera English)
Following the ongoing convulsions in the Egyptian streets, I’m becoming more and more impressed by the research and thought that Terry Pratchett must have put into his novel Night Watch.
Anti-government protesters anticipating an attack man the barricade at the Kasr al-Nil bridge entrance into the square, where they had arranged complicated defense walls and stockpiled rocks to throw at pro-Mubarak men. (Image and caption from Al Jazeera English).
In typical Pratchett fashion, Night Watch has an amalgamation of influences, from fictional sources like Les Miserables, to historical events, like the Peterloo Massacre of 1819; however, the book follows a character immersed in the events that are remarkably parallel to what’s going on Egypt right now, especially with the Army trying to sit out events and things becoming somewhat medieval.
A man sells koshari to anti-government protesters for three pounds a cup (around 50 cents) inside the barricade at the Kasr al-Nil bridge entrance into Tahrir. (Image and caption from Al Jazeera English).
This is the first time I’ve been able to follow a revolution so closely, and it’s largely thanks to the volumes of raw reports streaming across the twitterverse, blogosphere and media websites. Pratchett gives us the wonderful characters that highlight the inherent conflict in the revolution: the police with their conflicting allegiances; the secret police that have to be dealt with; the idealists whose high hopes are bound to be dashed on the rocky shoals of human nature; and even down to the men selling food to the protesters behind the barricades.
Night Watch
I think I’m going to have to add this book to our reading list for next year.
At the end of Night Watch, the protesters win, and barricades come down when the old dictator is deposed. However, he’s replaced by a new dictator, who turns out to be just as bad as his predecessor. To paraphrase Pratchett, they’re called revolutions because they go round and round.
In the center of the square, anti-government protesters sat around campfires and talked - as they have for the past nine nights of demonstrations. (Image and caption from Al Jazeera English - Feb 4th, 2011)
