Arab spring
Welcome to the new world
( taz, 01.28.2011 )
For 20 years, our correspondent reported from Egypt. But what happens now, of which he would have dared not even dream of. BY KARIM EL-GAWHARY
The authorities tried to control the streets to win again. Photo: AP
CAIRO taz he was behind the conversation. When I smiled at him and said that we hope, in Egypt this week to do something similar, broke with the official of all dams. He delivered a long speech about how proud he was on the Tunisians. To me at the end with a cheery "Have fun at work and pass on up to" adopt. "Welcome to the new Arab world", I thought. Just two days ago was the same border official part of the apparatus of the dictator Ben Ali, and had every journalist denied the inlet.
As I write this, I'm back in my home in Cairo. It's been less than two weeks. What I told the Tunisian border guards have to cheer have is a reality faster than I had dared to dream. Out on the streets of Egypt, the revolt is raging against the regime of President Husni Mubarak.
For two decades I worked as a correspondent in the region. It was 20 years of political stagnation, punctuated by violent crises, two wars in Iraq, one in Lebanon and in Gaza.
negotiated the editors of my favorite stories of the subjects al-Qaeda and Islamists. Just yesterday I had to smile when I saw on TV the great demonstrations in Yemen against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. There is exactly one year ago, there was no other topic than the Christmas-bomber had tried to blow up a U.S. airliner in the air. All Plott was planned in Yemen, as well as the later failure of packet attacks.
Yemen is the same al-Qaida, was the media order of the day. And now this is initiated peaceful protests for regime change is not from Washington but from the people. Even Osama Bin Laden, who usually comments like bizarre video messages with the events in the Arab world from the sidelines of his hiding place, it is obvious the moment the sly language.
And in Egypt had started the year with a bad attack. The year was not an hour old when someone burst into a Coptic church in Alexandria in the air. The call overtook me when I was on my New Year's Eve celebration in tipsy state on the way home. "This year is going to be fun, I thought me and had not the faintest idea how it actually goes on in the Arabic script. If someone had told me
that soon the Mubarak regime is about to fall, and Ben Ali fled like a thief at night in Tunis, I probably would have laughed at him hysterically also because of the influence of alcohol. This is not a month ago.
It also not a month ago, my phone ran hot in Cairo and all editorial stories about discrimination against Christians in Egypt and the Arab world demanded. On Friday, the Egyptians went back on the streets to protest after Friday prayers against the regime. The beauty of it: About SMS messages have been sent long lists, go to mosques from which the protests.
are on the list as well as numerous churches. They march together against the hated regime. A little was the same atmosphere is already evident in the protests following the attack in Alexandria. Especially as young Christians took to the streets, often accompanied by young Muslims who had then protested together against Mubarak, because the regime does not care enough to protect the Copts and they face discrimination in the state apparatus. Instead loszugehen each other, they had even then their anger against the regime.
They had even accused him a Muslim-Christian strife stir around with this distraction strategy to keep themselves in power. Back when the young people with home-made posters with half moon, crescent and cross, "Down with Mubarak" called for, you might have guessed already can see what will happen three weeks later.
"Our young people run ten steps ahead, and neither politicians nor journalists we come behind," she had told me in Tunis, the chief editor of a newspaper. How right he is. This mix of unemployed, educated youths, intellectuals and people from all areas and all strata, which has the regime change written beyond religion and social status of the flags, driven, but not out of a new Facebook, Twitter and Blogger generation, is something completely new.
To date we set in the West for Arab politics a simple calculation. It was the regime and the Islamists, the dictator or the mosque. Right now the political landscape of the Arab world is completely plowed, and no one knows what new plants will sprout from the ground. You will not be but put the old political categories. It is not only a political but also a generational change, of this is taking place. And the new generation knows is true, as they can handle with the Internet, but it is still not organized politically.
But one thing is certain, the political landscape of the Arab world is more colorful. And the Islamists will find its place, although certainly not in secular Tunisia and probably not take place in Egypt are the largest. The result is a completely new political plurality. Beyond the dictator and the mosque.
that the transition is not easy, as the leader of Tunisia, is where just struggled like many of the old guard is needed in the state apparatus to gently come over to the new time without to give the elderly the chance again to take root. That it is a mistake, the old too fast to cut completely, without having built anything new that could be seen in Iraq, who was overthrown by the dissolution of the Baath Party, the army, the police into absolute chaos.
In that moment, Egypt almost cut off from the rest of the world. The Internet lines are cut off, disconnected the mobile phone networks. I am a little reminiscent of the situation following the recent elections in Iran, where I have also been reported locally. The caps of the Internet was the beginning of a campaign by the Iranian security apparatus, close down the opposition movement.
But in Tunisia, aims at improving the communication channels to stop the young people. A young man who then blogged heavily against the regime, is now the new Tunisian Minister of Youth.
The Domino Effect
17th December 2010: A protest demonstration in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid after self-combustion of a small merchant harassed by the police begin the Tunisian national uprising.
14th January 2011: Tunisia's Ben Ali dictator fled to Saudi Arabia. In the previous nationwide protests, according to the successor government, 78 civilians killed and 94 injured. There are also over 70 victims of a prison fire and several deaths among the security forces.
15th January: Self-Immolation in Algeria, in the city Boukhadra on the Tunisian border. Many more will follow in the coming days in several Algerian cities and also in Morocco and Mauritania. Most victims survive.
16th January: 3000 people demonstrate in Jordan's capital Amman. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit called speculation about the spread of the Tunisian revolution to other Arab countries "absurd."
17th January: Egyptian police arrested a man with gasoline canisters in front of Parliament in Cairo for fear of self-immolation. Demonstration against the government in Oman.
18th January: First Egyptian self-immolation in Alexandria. First anti-government Demonstrations in Yemen.
21st January: New demonstrations in Jordan.
22nd January: Police in Algeria's capital solves the "march for democracy" by violence in Algiers and arrested several opposition politicians.
25th January: First large-scale demonstrations in Egypt, specifically by Tunisian model. Suppression of the protests, calls for three deaths. The demonstrations will continue over the next few days.
27th January: Further major demonstrations in Yemen's capital Sanaa.
28th January: Protests in Egypt reached its previous peak after the Friday prayer.
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