Middle East/North Africa Uprising 2011

“When there is no school, my family keeps me at home and it’s like a jail. I have been depressed for a very long time now, but they would not allow me to seek help,” explains Hagar (not her real name), a 23-year old student of literature and philosophy from Cairo University. “My father beats me up because he disagrees with my ideas on everything, society and politics. The only way out I can see is to try and escape marriage and leave the house, even though for the moment I can’t even so much as suggest the idea to my family.”

Egypt’s high levels of domestic and gender-based violence, including mass sexual assault, are well documented by human-rights groups, with almost fifty per cent of married women reporting abuse (though the majority of cases go unreported). Mostafa Hussein, an Egyptian psychiatrist, says that this has in turn led to post-traumatic stress disorder among victims or the uncovering of existing psychological problems, triggering latent anxieties and insecurities.

“This young woman had taken part in the 2011 uprising; if she hadn’t, maybe she would have adapted more easily to the society,” El Qutt speculates. “Many think they are depressed, but depression is about internal conflict. They actually live in an oppressive society, with an oppressive government. All the people who supported democratic change and saw their dreams crushed may feel that they suffer from depression, when they are reacting to external circumstances.”

President Obama continues to rely on the authorization to give his drone-killing programme a veneer of legality. This is the old colonial formula of liberal values at home sustained by a hidden illiberalism in the periphery – where routine extra-judicial killing is normalised.

colonial history teaches us that violence always ‘comes home’ in some form: whether as refugees seeking sanctuary, whether as the re-importing of authoritarian practices first practised in colonial settings, or indeed as terrorism.

What results is a mutual reinforcing of the militarized identity narrative on both sides: the jihadists point to numerous speeches by western leaders to support their claim of a war on Islam; and western leaders legitimise war with talk of a ‘generational struggle’ between western values and Islamic extremism. What is striking today is the tired rhetoric of military aggression – Hollande’s “pitiless war” – once again recycled, despite the obvious failures of the past 14 years.

There was something very important in this phase which leads up to the mass demonstrations on June 30th 2013 and the following days: The media played an extremely different role than they did in early 2011 and then again after the military coup on July 3rd. Priot to June 30th, They actually covered these events very clearly and showed the police suppression on the streets

Just to give a little anecdote: Our group Mosireen, that in the past had filmed things that were for us the perspective of the street, almost did not have a role any longer because so much of this repression was being covered by television and news outlets.

To rephrase the question in more concrete terms: Were these mass protests a response to continuing repression and social misery or did the specific nature of the MB as an Islamic party, slowly trying to “islamicise” society, play a role? Initially opposition was growing because repression was maintained and especially because it was covered more than in any other period.

The widespread indifference toward the August 14 massacre that accompanied a rising fascistic spirit just confirmed that fall from grace.

Though I do not affirm the Brotherhood's cause to return to power, I believe in their right to dissent. All those that risk their bodies, like Bassem, risk the bullet. I will by no means try to justify the shocking actions of Egyptians that started the morning of June 30, the rise of the fascistic, the acceptance of the torment of others. The most powerful tool to these ends is the discourse of terrorism that has fed into the deep fear in the hearts of so many living inside a regime of terror. 

These news agencies interviewed political commentators or activists — increasingly becoming celebrities in their own right — to decipher the actions behind the images seen. As interpretation and then meaning were layered onto the images, a significant distortion took place to the acts behind the scenes. Non-Arabic language media outlets relied primarily on English-speaking activists, many of us middle class, many of us already politicized before January 25. Arabic-language news stations similarly turned often to middle class activists to speak on behalf of the revolution, each of whom interpreted every moment according to their respective ideological perspectives.

Our explanations also satisfied the practical requirements and standards of a media industry with a target audience accustomed to an interlocutor with a particular profile using a specific political discourse. This process drowned out the voices of the majority. No matter how hard we tried to argue otherwise, we fit the part — middle class, internet-savvy, youth, and thus revolutionary.

Other industries soon followed suit: right after journalism, academia, film, art, the world of NGOs relied on us as the ideal interpreter of the extraordinary. They all eventually bought into and further fueled the hyper-glorification of the individual, the actor, the youth subject, the revolutionary artist, the woman, the non-violent protester, the Internet user.

In the political upheaval that followed the revolt of 2011 and the army takeover two years later, as investors fled and currency reserves plunged, Egypt turned to the GCC. First Qatar and later Saudi Arabia and the UAE obliged, with more than $40bn in grants, loans and investment to prop up sympathetic governments. Meanwhile, repeated talks with the IMF broke off short of a loan accord.

Mr El Sisi is already enacting some policies the IMF typically requires as conditions for loans. Egypt slashed fuel subsidies last year and aims to cut its budget deficit by at least 1.5 percentage points to 10.5 per cent of economic output this year.The fund would be likely to require faster action on that and other issues, and that would be a good thing, according to Lutz Roehmeyer, the director of fund management at Landesbank Berlin Investment.“Investors so far have the impression that politics and reforms are moving too slowly in Egypt,” he said. “An IMF programme would increase certainty that there will be a reform agenda.”

Many economists, though, believe that the squeeze on Egypt’s finances will force the government to overcome any such scruples.“Sooner or later, we will have to resort to the IMF,” said Omar El Shenety, the managing director at the Cairo-based investment bank Multiples Group. “For credibility first, before its money.”

Too many of those who participated didn’t see – for generational reasons, largely – that in order to hit home you have to have some form of political movement. It wasn’t surprising that the Muslim Brotherhood, which had taken part in the protests in Egypt at a late stage, took power: it was the only real political party in Egypt. But then the Brotherhood played straight into the hands of the military by behaving like Mubarak – by offering deals to the security services, offering deals to the Israelis – so people began to wonder what the point was of having them in power. The military was thus able to mobilise support and get rid of the Brotherhood. All this has demoralised an entire generation in the Middle East.

At the lunch, he said: ‘Now it’s time for questions – I’ll start off. Tariq Ali, I read the piece you wrote in the Guardian arguing that Tony Blair should be charged for war crimes in the International Criminal Court. Do you mind explaining why?’ I spent about ten minutes explaining, to the bemusement of the Syrian guests. At the end the ambassador said: ‘Well, I agree totally with that – I don’t know about the rest of you.’ After the guests had left, I said: ‘That was very courageous of you.’ And the MI6 man who was at the lunch said: ‘Yeah, he can do that, because he’s retiring in December.’ But a similar thing happened at the embassy in Vienna, where I gave a press conference attacking the Iraq war in the British ambassador’s living room. These people aren’t fools – they knew exactly what they were doing. And they acted as they did as a result of the humiliation they felt at having a government which, even though the Americans had said they could manage without the UK, insisted on joining in anyway.

The Greeks are being punished not so much for the debt as for their failure to make the reforms demanded by the EU. The right-wing government Syriza defeated only managed to push through three of the 14 reforms the EU insisted on. They couldn’t do more because what they did push through helped create a situation in Greece which has some similarities with Iraq: demodernisation; totally unnecessary privatisations, linked to political corruption; the immiseration of ordinary people.

Although Tunisia is often cited by the Western media as the most stable state among those that experienced upheavals and regime-changes in 2011, the country has experienced political unrest and assassinations. Two leading left-wing politicians, Mohamed Brahmi and Chokri Belaid, members of the same Popular Front alliance, were killed by gunmen just months apart during 2013.

The EU along with NATO and led by the US are responsible for the current chaos in Libya. This pattern of sanctions, massive bombings, ground interventions through direct occupation or proxy forces have failed throughout the entire region of North Africa and the Middle East. Any real reversal of the political crisis in the regions must take on an anti-imperialist character stressing the necessity of genuine political independence and territorial sovereignty designed to break with the legacy of imperialism.

In addition, they were giving small lectures and sermons after prayers. Most of the lecture topics were about how to reform and improve society, using the Koran and Hadith [traditional Islamic teachings] to support their arguments. “This was like some kind of brainwashing but it happened slowly over  six months. I was attending many of those lectures and, after a time, I was preparing in advance the Koranic verses and Hadith texts relevant to the topics. There were weekly competitions between groups of youths. I won two competitions on these religious topics and each time I received 300,000 Iraqi Dinars.”