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

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • revolution makers
We Need to ‘Keep Kicking Their
Behinds’: Mohamed ElBaradei on
His New Life of Protest
Interview by Blake Hounshell
In his tastefully decorated villa in an exclusive suburban development
to the west of Cairo, and just a few kilometers north of the Giza pyramids,
Mohamed ElBaradei was holding court nearly around the clock during the
crisis that rocked Egypt, meeting with opposition activists and journalists as
he helped plot the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorial regime, forced
from office by weeks of protests that nobody—including the Nobel Prizewinning
former diplomat and head of the International Atomic Energy
Agency himself—predicted.
ElBaradei, a tall, articulate technocrat who often sounds more like a detached
analyst than a political leader, is an unlikely figure to be leading a
revolt organized on the ground and over the Internet by a loose amalgam
of youth groups and unaffiliated activists. Although he boasts nearly 40,000
followers on Twitter, he speaks somewhat awkwardly about social networking
sites, visibly searching for the right terminology. (His most memorable
tweet, though, was a momentous one, coming right after Mubarak’s defiant
speech refusing to leave office convulsed Cairo: “Entire nation is on the
streets. Only way out is for regime to go. People power can’t be crushed. We
shall prevail. Still hope army can join.”)
Yet of all the Egyptian political figures who claimed to speak for the tens
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