Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • 18 days
the regime’s security forces melting into the night, while the Army mobilized
to secure key government buildings.
They were still hanging on when I reached downtown Cairo late Thursday
afternoon, after cruising along nearly deserted streets, past tanks, armored
personnel carriers, and tense soldiers holding bayoneted assault
rifles. I had landed in a war zone. The windows on the ground floor of my
hotel, located right near the main entrance to the square, were barricaded,
the lobby’s lights dimmed, perhaps in the hope that Mubarak’s goons would
ignore us if they couldn’t see us. Security guards nervously searched my
bags and hastily ushered me inside.
Ironically, the safest place in Cairo was Tahrir Square itself. Although a
rock battle was still raging on the northern end of the square near the landmark
Egyptian Museum, it had settled into a stalemate. The “pro-Mubarak
protesters”—as some gullible Western news outlets still referred to them—
knew by then that they were badly outnumbered, and in any case their tactics
had backfired badly; governments around the world expressed shock
and demanded that Mubarak allow the demonstrators to express their
grievances in peace.
Meanwhile, attacks on journalists continued, made all the more dangerous
by a vicious campaign whipped up by Egyptian state television against
foreigners. The following morning, I called a friend with long experience
in Cairo. Military police had just raided the offices of the Hisham Mubarak
Law Center, a legal-aid clinic that had become the locus of efforts to document
instances of abuse and illegal detainment. My friend told me his organization
might be next; he was leaving town and lying low for a while. Management
at the big hotels around the square had been told in no uncertain
terms to control their journalists or have them controlled for them, other
friends warned me.
But we journalists were never the story; the protesters’ desperate struggle
to hang onto the square was. My impression upon arrival was that the regime,
having tried violence, was now deftly maneuvering to marginalize the
protesters after failing to crush them. Outside the square, Egyptians began
clamoring for their lives to return to normal. As for the protesters, state TV
darkly warned that they were traitors serving a foreign agenda, part of an
Israeli-Iranian axis bent on destroying Egypt.
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