Understanding Protest Diffusion: The Case Of The Egyptian Uprising Of 2011 [1st Edition] 3030393496, 9783030393496, 9783030393502

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements......Page 6
Contents......Page 8
1 Introduction......Page 9
The Puzzle and Central Argument......Page 10
Plan of the Book......Page 15
References......Page 18
2 It Did Not Start on National Police Day......Page 21
Domestic Protests, Non-domestic Claims......Page 22
Domestic Protests and Domestic Claims......Page 27
Kefaya and Its Successors......Page 29
Come April: New Actors, Claims, Connections, and Tactics......Page 32
The Return of Baradei: A Campaign Built on Hope......Page 39
An Increasing Current Threat......Page 42
Increasing Opportunity: Tunisian Hopes......Page 49
Chapter Summary......Page 52
References......Page 54
3 Planning and Coordinating a Protest, Not a Revolution......Page 59
Organizing and Mobilizing for #Jan25......Page 60
Planning the Protests on National Police Day......Page 64
Rallying Support, Coordinating Actors, and Disseminating Information......Page 69
Contentious Collective Action on #Jan25......Page 76
New and Old Protesters......Page 80
Chapter Summary......Page 85
References......Page 86
4 From Protest to Revolution......Page 88
Preparing for January 28......Page 89
Preparing the ‘Friday of Rage’......Page 91
Preparing to Counter the ‘Friday of Rage’......Page 95
Meet You at the Mosque......Page 98
Contentious Collective Action on January 28 and Beyond......Page 103
Diffusion and Escalation......Page 106
Small-Scale Coordination During the Final 15 Days......Page 111
Defeating a Pharaoh......Page 114
Chapter Summary......Page 116
References......Page 118
5 The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same......Page 120
Continuity and Change......Page 123
References......Page 130
Index......Page 133

Citation preview

Understanding Protest Diffusion The Case of the Egyptian Uprising of 2011

Arne F. Wackenhut

Understanding Protest Diffusion

Arne F. Wackenhut

Understanding Protest Diffusion The Case of the Egyptian Uprising of 2011

Arne F. Wackenhut School of Global Studies University of Gothenburg Gothenburg, Sweden

ISBN 978-3-030-39349-6 ISBN 978-3-030-39350-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39350-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Harvey Loake This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Edith and Sabrina

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of a multi-year project that evolved out of my Ph.D. thesis in Peace and Development Research at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. One might argue that the process of writing is in some ways a rather lonely one. Countless hours were spent in front of an ever-changing body of text with little company but Microsoft Word and Endnote. However, at closer inspection, this book is just as much the result of numerous social interactions through a period spanning more than seven years. It would have been impossible to complete this monograph without the countless interactions with research participants, colleagues and friends, in Sweden, Egypt and Germany. While the text and all of its mistakes are my own, I would like to briefly acknowledge the contribution of a few key individuals who made this book possible. I am deeply grateful for the continuous support, encouragement and constructive feedback from my supervisors Michael Schulz and Isabell Schierenbeck who witnessed the genesis of this book through its various and occasionally messy stages of construction. At the same time, I acknowledge the invaluable contribution of my thesis committee consisting of Eva Bellin, Ellen Lust, Henner Fürtig and Camilla Orjuela. Thank you very much for engaging with my work and encouraging me to sharpen both my theoretical argument and analysis. Likewise, I acknowledge the

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helpful feedback of the two anonymous reviewers who greatly aided me in sharpening my argument and fleshing out my contribution. Furthermore, I am deeply indebted to Professor Bahgat Korany who invited me to the AUC as a research fellow. You, Kevin Köhler and Holger Albrecht helped make the AUC both a welcoming and productive research environment, which is greatly missed (especially during the somewhat depressing winters on the Swedish West Coast). To my Cairo friends—you know who you are—thank you for your friendship and company. You made Cairo my home away from home. Furthermore, I would like to express my gratitude to all of my research participants who agreed to share both their happiest and saddest memories of 2011 and what came afterwards. Talking to you over a cup of tea (occasionally there might have been a Stella involved) was by far the most interesting and inspiring part of this journey. At this point, I would also like to thank the Swedish Research Council, the Nordic Africa Institute, the Grants Committee of the University of Gothenburg, the Adlerbertska Foreign Student Hospitality Fund and Lars Hiertas Minnesfond for their generous financial support, which allowed me to fund my field research in Egypt and to present my research at various conferences in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. At Palgrave, I am deeply indebted to Sarah Roughly and Oliver Foster for believing in this project and solving various problems along the way in the most professional and kind manner possible. Last but not least, I would like to thank my entire family for being the best support system one can imagine. You are simply the best.

Contents

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1

Introduction

2

It Did Not Start on National Police Day

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3

Planning and Coordinating a Protest, Not a Revolution

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4

From Protest to Revolution

81

5

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract This chapter introduces the January 25 Uprising and lays out the book’s central aim, research problem and argument. Taking its point of departure in the consistent and repeated failures of the Egyptian prodemocracy movement to mobilize significant popular support for their struggle against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak during the first decade of the new Millennium, it is argued that, to understand the rapid and large-scale diffusion of protest during the Egyptian Uprising of 2011, one not only needs to account for the underlying objective structure of political opportunities, but also for the ways in which different actors at different times perceived, navigated and affected these structures. Keywords January 25 Uprising · Egyptian prodemocracy movement · President Hosni Mubarak · Egyptian Uprising of 2011 · Political opportunities

On January 25, 2011 thousands of Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Ismaïlia, and other cities throughout the country. However, rather than commemorating the deaths of fifty policemen by the hands of the British Armed Forces in 1952 on this National Police Day, the protesters soon demanded ‘the fall of the regime.’ These protests were organized by a coalition of social movement organizations and other groups within the broader Cairo-based political opposition,1 and marked the visible beginning of a large-scale protest episode. © The Author(s) 2020 A. F. Wackenhut, Understanding Protest Diffusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39350-2_1

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Within a period of eighteen days, they resulted in the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak who had, at the time, been in power for nearly thirty years. Not unlike the uprising in Tunisia, which had led to the removal of President Ben Ali from power only eleven days before the first protests in Egypt, the scale and outcome of this episode of contention came as a surprise to many observers. In fact, the size and scope of the Egyptian protests surprised even most of the very activists who were responsible for the initial planning and coordination of the event. For instance, a member of the Revolutionary Socialists, a relatively small Trotskyist movement belonging to the broader prodemocracy movement, put these protests on January 25 into historical perspective. He recalled that: It was unbelievable. It was really a surprise. We were not expecting it. I mean, we expected it to be one big demonstration, but according to our standards, that would have been, maybe a few thousand; that would have been the maximum. (Ahmed H., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014)

Here, Ahmed H. echoed one of the constant dilemmas of the Cairo-based political opposition, which is best described as an ideologically diverse conglomerate of different social and protest movement organizations with a—at the time—predominantly educated and (upper) middle-class membership. These groups had, for more than a decade, tried to rally popular support for the purpose of effecting socio-political change. However, they had largely failed to mobilize other societal actors and sectors. Even relatively successful campaigns, like the so-called Kefaya (enough) protest episode that started in late 2004, rarely attracted more than a few hundred protesters (El-Mahdi, 2009).2 While the January 25 uprising—now with the benefit of hindsight—did not result in the somewhat cautiously anticipated democratic transition in the country that we have seen, for instance, in the case of Tunisia, the case remains highly relevant and instructive. It remains relevant and instructive insofar as it allows us to garner important new insights into the ways in which visible grassroots resistance in less- and non-democratic settings materializes. Thereby, it not only contributes to a rapidly growing body of literature on this ‘Egyptian Revolution of 2011’ (see e.g. Abdelrahman, 2011, 2015; Beinin, 2012; Clarke, 2014; Jumet, 2018) and the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ more generally, but it also helps us to better understand the complexities of mobilization and large-scale protest diffusion processes more generally.

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The Puzzle and Central Argument Bearing in mind the aforementioned stark differences in terms of protest participation rates between, on the one hand, the 18 days-long uprising that commenced in the wake of the initial protests on January 25, 2011, and previous protest episodes on the other, this book contextualizes and traces the mobilization process leading up to the large-scale diffusion of protest during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.3 Drawing on social movement theory and the broader contentious politics framework (McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001; Tilly & Tarrow, 2007), this book endeavors to more fully understand the complexities of mobilization and protest diffusion processes during this protest episode. Here, it is argued that it is essential to not only account for the underlying objective structure of political opportunities, but also for the ways in which different actors at different times navigated, affected and perceived these structures. The combination and interaction of these factors allows for a more complete understanding of the subsequent rapid and large-scale diffusion of collective protest during this episode. Scholars studying mobilization and protest diffusion processes have long asserted that grievances alone are insufficient to understand the occurrence or non-occurrence of large-scale contention (see e.g. Guerney & Tierney, 1982; Snyder & Tilly, 1972). It is now widely accepted that the context in which aggrieved actors operate does, in fact, matter. This context—described in terms of a political opportunity structure—can either facilitate or inhibit the emergence of collective protest for social or political change. McCarthy, Britt, and Wolfson (1991) noted, for example, that the complex social, political, and economic environment ultimately shapes the ways in which people formulate their goals and how they work toward achieving them. Relatedly, David Meyer (2004) argued that it is largely this set of structures that determines the grievances around which activists mobilize, advantaging some claims and disadvantaging others. Further, the organization of the polity and the positioning of various actors within it makes some strategies of influence more attractive, and potentially efficacious, than others. (Meyer, 2004, p. 128)

These structures are, generally, considered to be relatively stable, but might change or be changed over time. This implies that they might be

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conducive to collective challenges at certain points in time, whilst being less so at other times (Tarrow, 1996). However, while scholars like Charles Kurzman (1996, 2009) have long argued that political opportunities are one of several key variables affecting forms and extent of such contentious collective action, the precise nature and effects of these structures have on mobilization and protest diffusion are still less than fully understood. There can be little doubt about the fact that the historical, economic, social and political context affects the opportunities non-state challengers have to advance their claims vis-àvis an incumbent. If, for instance, potential protesters are confronted with a very real risk of imprisonment or even torture will they dare to take to the streets? Traditionally, one would expect such a hostile environment to have a quite chilling effect on protest participation rates. Conversely, one would—assuming that individuals are rational decision makers—expect higher protest participation rates if the inherent risks are comparatively low. This linear conceptualization of opportunities has, more recently, been enriched by the notion of threats, which can have a similar mobilizing or deterring effect. Goldstone and Tilly (2001, p. 183) elaborate that [t]he way that “threat” and “opportunity” combine, rather than shifts in the chances of success or the costs of action alone, will shape decisions regarding action. A group may decide to bear very high costs for protest if it believes the chances of achieving success are high; but the same group may decide to avoid even modest costs of protest if it believes the chances of succeeding are low. (Goldstone & Tilly, 2001, p. 183)

Hence, it is not only a broadening opportunity structure that might instigate protest and trigger contentious collective action, but also the direct opposite. Here, it is interesting to note that the notion of threats actually captures two distinct but interrelated phenomena. Goldstone and Tilly (2001, p. 185) differentiate between a ‘current threat,’ on the one hand, and a ‘repressive threat,’ on the other. The current threat denotes “harms that are currently experienced or anticipated,” meaning issues that are common causes of protest and unrest. Such harms entail, for example, social, economic, and other policies that are seen as undesirable. Here, one might think of policies that increase the daily costs of living, or those that are limiting or curtailing political rights and civil liberties. This threat represents the potential costs of inaction. The repressive threat, on the

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other hand, captures the costs or burden that the initiation of protest would incur on the individuals involved. If these costs, outweigh the potential benefits, individuals might be deterred from initiating collective action in the first place (Goldstone & Tilly, 2001, p. 185). In sum, neither opportunity nor threat alone, but the complex combination of the two affect the onset of collective protests or the lack thereof. Whilst important and instructive, an isolated analysis of opportunities and threats is, just like an analysis that exclusively focuses on grievances, insufficient to fully understand the mobilization and subsequent protest diffusion process that commenced on January 25. It is equally important to carefully and closely study the actors that challenged the ruling regime. Already years before the beginning of the uprising, Egypt experienced a slight but not insignificant expansion of political opportunities. This expansion allowed for limited but visible resistance to the power of President Hosni Mubarak and his regime. Ever the since the start of the Second Palestinian Intifada in the year 2000, street protests had become increasingly common (Korany & El-Mahdi, 2012). In parallel to, but largely separated from, an ever more assertive unofficial labor movement (Alexander & Bassiouny, 2014; Beinin, 2001, 2011, 2015), various prodemocracy groups and movements openly sought to challenge an authoritarian leader who had been in power for the better part of three decades (see e.g. Wackenhut, 2019). However, protest movements like Kefaya, which was founded in late 2004 by an ideologically diverse group of activists for the purpose of mobilizing, among other issues, against yet another term for Mubarak, often faced significant challenges in attempts to attract larger numbers of participants to their rallies and demonstrations (Abdelrahman, 2013; ElMahdi, 2009). Thus, while a variety of different oppositional actors tried to capitalize on these new opportunities, their success in terms of actually mobilizing a broader cross-section of society should be regarded as—at best—limited. While Kefaya and similar episodes erupting during the decade preceding the uprising did not result in the desired socio-political change in the country, they, nevertheless, had a marked impact on the very actors advancing contentious claims against the regime. These episodes not only helped to recruit and professionally socialize a new generation of activists, but also facilitated the formation of new movements, networks, as well as modes and patterns of organizing protests and resistance, which were

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employed in the preparations for and during the Egyptian Uprising of 2011 (Abdelrahman, 2009; Hafez, 2013; Wackenhut, 2019). Zooming in on the role of these groups and movement organizations within the broader Cairo-based political opposition, it is argued that their role in the January 25 uprising is best understood as one of trailblazers and early risers. Sarah Soule (2013, p. 349) described early risers as innovators “who are the very first to adopt some movement innovation and are usually adventurous and willing to take risks.” Activists belonging to Egyptian prodemocracy movement organizations seem like the ideal typical exemplars of such early risers. This group of actors played a key role in signaling perceived changes in the opportunity structure to other segments of society. Discussing the diffusion of collective contention, Tarrow (2011) noted that when “opportunities widen and information spreads about the susceptibility of a political system to challenge, not only activists, but also ordinary people, begin to test the limits of social control.” Similarly, in their work on the diffusion of protest, Stuart Hill and Donald Rothchild (1992, p. 193) described how “as protests and riots erupt among groups that have long histories of conflict, they stimulate other citizens in similar circumstances to reflect more on their own background of grievances and mass action.” This latter group of people, which then joins protests and emulates the behavior of early risers could be described in terms of ‘late comers’ (Tarrow, 2011), or as ‘late adopters’ (Soule, 2013, p. 349). A similar pattern emerged during the Uprising of 2011. Operating within a somewhat more permissive environment, activists of the Cairobased political opposition planned, coordinated, and called for a protest event against police brutality on January 25, 2011. While similar events in previous years had failed to attract significant numbers of protesters, the year of 2011 marked a turning point. Instead of merely hundreds, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Cairo as well as other parts of the country; soon demanding the downfall of the regime. To understand this shift, it is crucial to consider not only the grievances, the detailed planning and coordination, and structural opportunities and threats, but also the ways in which the balance of opportunities and threats was perceived by different segments of society at the time. Perceptions of this balance shifted, and shifted dramatically, a few days earlier when, on January 14, the Tunisian ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to step down as the result of a nonviolent popular uprising (Clancy-Smith, 2013). This display of successful people power acted as a powerful transnational

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demonstration effect (Tarrow, 2011) that signaled to Egyptian citizens that resistance to a non-democratic regime was, in fact, not only possible but also feasible.

A Note on Methodology In terms of its empirical foundations, the present volume builds on both primary and secondary sources. As far as primary sources are concerned, 69 semi-structured interviews with activists, NGO workers in the human rights advocacy sector, journalists and regional experts form the bulk of the material. The interviews were, with a few exceptions, conducted in Egypt during the period between 2014 and late 2015. Two additional interviews were conducted in Germany in 2014 and one interview was conducted in London in 2016. The maintenance of the highest ethical standards was deemed to be of critical importance not only during the data collection stage, but also after the fieldwork had been concluded (see e.g. Wackenhut, 2018). Here, informed consent and the protection of both sources and data were two of the key aspects, since Egypt has—ever since the coup d’état of 2013—yet again taken a marked turn towards authoritarianism and associated restrictions on both political rights and civil liberties (see e.g. Freedom House, 2019). Bearing in mind a substantially increased repressive threat for civil society actors generally and prodemocracy activists in particular, the identities of all informants have been anonymized using a list common Egyptian first names.

Plan of the Book The present book shows that the large-scale diffusion of protest in authoritarian settings is the result of the complex interplay of oppositional societal actors navigating and affecting a set of structural opportunities and constraints whereby shifting perceptions of these structures are just as— if not even more—important than those that objectively exist. Here, the Egyptian Uprising of 2011 represents an ideal test-case to develop and illustrate this argument. With this purpose in mind, the book proceeds as follows. The following chapter fulfills two distinct but interrelated purposes. Firstly, the chapter provides necessary background on a number of previous contentious interactions between the broader Cairo-based political opposition and the ruling regime of Hosni Mubarak. Taking its point of

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departure in the beginning of the first decade of the new Millennium, the chapter traces how various protest episodes like the Second Palestinian Intifada, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Kefaya (El-Mahdi, 2009), or the April 6, 2008 episode (Hafez, 2013) shaped not only the structure of political opportunities in the country, but also how various actors and networks within the Cairo-based Political Opposition changed and evolved over time. Here, an emphasis will, on the one hand, be placed on the relational networks linking different actors within what El-Mahdi (2009) called the Egyptian pro-democracy movement, and on the other, on the ways in which the repertoire of contention of these actors changed and evolved over time (Tilly, 2008). Secondly, the chapter outlines how a number of events—occurring in somewhat closer temporal proximity to the uprising—markedly affected perceptions of both political opportunities and threats. Events like the killing of Khaled Said, a young man from Alexandria, or the flawed parliamentary elections in 2010 resulted in perceptions of an increasing current threat. Similarly, the Tunisian uprising demonstrated to different actors—both within and outside of the Cairobased political opposition—that resistance to a non-democratic regime was, in fact, both possible and feasible. The combination of these factors, as this chapter will show, acted as important catalysts for the January 25 Uprising. Subsequently, the third chapter illustrates how a diverse group of activists recruited from different social movement organizations within the broader Cairo-based political opposition started to plan a protest event against police brutality on the Egyptian National Police Day. Drawing on interviews with key players in this process, the chapter sketches out how this group, which later on came to be known as the “Coalition of the Youths of the Revolution” (cf. Abdelrahman, 2015; Clarke, 2014) sought to build alliances with other societal actors for the purpose of broadening the base of potential participants. Subsequently, the chapter provides insights into the planning of and mobilization for the protest event, and recounts how the initial protests, including a secret protest in a less affluent neighborhood of Cairo, unfolded on January 25. Building on this discussion of the mobilization process and the initial protests that occurred on the Egyptian National Police Day, the fourth chapter deepens our understanding of the actual and large-scale diffusion of collective contestation during the remainder of the uprising. This account takes its point of departure in the days leading up to January 28, which is now widely known as the Friday of Rage. The chapter elaborates

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not only on the ways in which activists sought to call and mobilize for these new protests, but also how the regime tried to counter these efforts by, for instance, cutting access to cellphone and Internet services. Focusing first and foremost on events playing out in the greater Cairo area, the chapter subsequently outlines the complex and contingent ways in which the uprising unfolded during the prolonged occupation of Tahrir Square until February 11, which marked the day on which Hosni Mubarak was finally forced to step down from the presidency. The fifth chapter concludes this volume and seeks to achieve two broader aims. Firstly, based on the discussion of popular mobilization for socio-political change prior to and during the Egyptian Uprising of 2011, it fleshes out some of the theoretical insights that are generalizable beyond the individual case in question. For instance, it touches upon the finding that short-term shifts in the perceptions of political opportunities and threats play a crucial role not only in attempts to mobilize a large crosssection of society, but also in the actual diffusion of various forms of collective contentious behavior. Secondly, the chapter contextualizes the January 25 Uprising with regards to events and protest episodes that played out in Egypt in the years following President Hosni Mubarak’s downfall. This is to say that the chapter also addresses—to some degree—the Muslim Brotherhood period and the June 30 protests as well as President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s rise to power. Here, the discussion will focus on the implications that these processes had on oppositional actors and their abilities to mobilize for various forms of contentious collective claimsmaking.

Notes 1. Killian Clarke (2011) originally coined the term “Cairo-based political opposition” to describe this diverse conglomerate of different social and protest movements. Rabab El-Mahdi (2009) used the term Egyptian prodemocracy movement to essentially refer to the same set of actors. In the context of this work, both terms will be used interchangeably. 2. Even the largest Kefaya demonstrations, according to El-Mahdi (2009), did not attract more than 2500 participants. 3. Here, diffusion is understood along the lines of Simmons, Dobbin, and Garrett (2006) who defined it as a social process in which the adoption of a particular object of diffusion (or a behavior like protest) in unit B is largely premised on similar choices in unit A.

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References Abdelrahman, M. (2009). ‘With the Islamists? Sometimes: With the state? Never!’ Cooperation between the left and Islamists in Egypt. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 36(1), 37–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13530190902749556. Abdelrahman, M. (2011). The transnational and the local: Egyptian activists and transnational protest networks. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 38(3), 407–424. https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2011.621701. Abdelrahman, M. (2013). In praise of organization: Egypt between activism and revolution. Development and Change, 44(3), 569–685. https://doi.org/10. 1111/dech.12028. Abdelrahman, M. (2015). Egypt’s long revolution: Protest movements and uprisings. New York: Routledge. Alexander, A., & Bassiouny, M. (2014). Bread, freedom, social justice: Workers & the Egyptian revolution. London: Zed Books. Beinin, J. (2001). Workers and peasants in the Middle East: Struggles, histories and historiographics. Albany: State University of New York Press. Beinin, J. (2011). A workers’ social movement on the margin of the global neoliberal order, Egypt 2004–2009. In J. Beinin & F. Vairel (Eds.), Social movements, mobilization, and contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (pp. 181–201). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Beinin, J. (2012). Egyptian workers and January 25th: A social movement in historical context. Social Research, 79(2), 323–348. Beinin, J. (2015). Workers and thieves: Labor movements and popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Clancy-Smith, J. (2013). From Sidi Bou Zid to Sidi Bou Said: A long durée approach to the Tunisian revolution. In M. L. Haas & D. W. Lesch (Eds.), The Arab Spring: Change and resistance in the Middle East (pp. 13–34). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Clarke, K. (2011). Saying “enough”: Authoritarianism and Egypt’s Kefaya movement. Mobilization: An International Journal, 16(4), 397–416. Clarke, K. (2014). Unexpected brokers of mobilization: Contingency and networks in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising. Comparative Politics, 46(4), 379–397. El-Mahdi, R. (2009). Enough! Egypt’s quest for democracy. Comparative Political Studies, 42, 1011–1039. Freedom House. (2019). Freedom in the world 2018: Egypt. Retrieved from https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/egypt. Goldstone, J. A., & Tilly, C. (2001). Threat (and opportunity): Popular action and state response in the dynamics of contentious action. In R. R. Aminzade, J. A. Goldstone, D. McAdam, E. J. Perry, W. H. Sewell, S. Tarrow, & C. Tilly (Eds.), Silence and voice in the study of contentious politics (pp. 179– 194). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Guerney, J. N., & Tierney, K. J. (1982). Relative deprivation and social movements: A critical look at twenty years of theory and research. Sociological Quarterly, 23(1), 33–47. Hafez, B. N. (2013). New social movements and the Egyptian Spring: A comparative analysis between the April 6 movement and the revolutionary socialists. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 12(1–2), 98–113. https:// doi.org/10.1163/15691497-12341245. Hill, S., & Rothchild, D. (1992). The impact of regime on the diffusion of political conflict. In M. Midlarsky (Ed.), The internationalization of communal strife. London: Routledge. Jumet, K. D. (2018). Contesting the repressive state: Why ordinary Egyptians protested during the Arab Spring. New York: Oxford University Press. Korany, B., & El-Mahdi, R. (2012). Arab Spring in Egypt: Revolution and beyond. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Kurzman, C. (1996). Structural opportunity and perceived opportunity in social movement theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979. American Sociological Review, 61(1), 153–170. Kurzman, C. (2009). The Iranian Revolution. In J. Goodwin & J. M. Jasper (Eds.), The social movements reader: Cases and concepts (pp. 42–52). Malden, MA: Blackwell. McAdam, D., Tarrow, S., & Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarthy, J. D., Britt, D. W., & Wolfson, M. (1991). The institutional channeling of social movements by the state in the United States. Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 13(2), 45–76. Meyer, D. S. (2004). Protest and political opportunities. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 125–145. Simmons, B. A., Dobbin, F., & Garrett, G. (2006). Intoduction: The international diffusion of liberalism. International Organization, 60(4), 781–810. Snyder, D., & Tilly, C. (1972). Hardship and collective violence in France, 1830 to 1960. American Sociological Review, 37 (5), 520–532. Soule, S. A. (2013). Diffusion and scale shift. In D. A. Snow, D. Della Porta, B. Klandermans, & D. McAdam (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of social & political movements (pp. 349–353). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Tarrow, S. (1996). States and opportunities: The political structuring of social movements. In D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy, & M. N. Zald (Eds.), Comparative perspectives on social movements: Political opportunities, mobilizing structures and cultural framings. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Tarrow, S. (2011). Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Tilly, C. (2008). Contentious performances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, C., & Tarrow, S. (2007). Contentious politics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Wackenhut, A. F. (2018). Ethical considerations and dilemmas before, during and after fieldwork in less-democratic contexts: Some reflections from postuprising Egypt. The American Sociologist, 49(2), 242–257. Wackenhut, A. F. (2019). Revisiting the Egyptian Uprising of 2011: Exploring the role of relational networks within the Cairo-based political opposition. Social Problems, online first. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spz014.

CHAPTER 2

It Did Not Start on National Police Day

Abstract This chapter traces the roots of the Egyptian Uprising of 2011 back to a series of protest episodes that occurred during the decade preceding the uprising. Through these repeated contentious interactions with the regime, the Cairo-based political opposition not only managed to facilitate a slight but noticeable opening of political opportunities, but also managed to build new mobilizing structures, and recruit and professionally socialize a new generation of activists. Against this backdrop, the chapter outlines how a number of events like the killing of Khaled Said or the revolutionary uprising in Tunisia dramatically altered the ways in which both activists and non-activists perceived the threats and opportunities associated with resisting a non-democratic regime that had been deemed practically immune to grass-roots pressures for socio-political change. Keywords Egyptian Uprising of 2011 · Cairo-based political opposition · Political opportunities · Killing of Khaled Said · Tunisia

While some scholars and journalists initially portrayed the 2011 Uprising as a bolt out of the blue, a substantial body of scholarly work and more recent empirical data suggest that a set of actors from different strata of the Egyptian society consistently and continuously challenged the social order upheld by the regime of Hosni Mubarak throughout the first decade of the new Millennium (cf. Korany, 2012). © The Author(s) 2020 A. F. Wackenhut, Understanding Protest Diffusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39350-2_2

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However, it could also be argued that the bread riots of 1977, which ensued after substantial cuts to subsidies on basic food stock items, would have marked another appropriate point in time to begin this account (Beinin, 2001; El-Mahdi & Marfleet, 2009). Alternatively, one could have started with the protest episode of February 1986, when conscripts serving in the Central Security Forces (CSF) violently protested for higher wages (cf. Frisch, 2001). While these examples show that both the felt intensity of grievances as well as levels of collective contestation varied over time, they can be said to have increased notably during the last ten years of Mubarak’s presidency (Abdelrahman, 2015; al-Sayyid, 2013; Jumet, 2018). During the 2000s, there were several phases of heightened collective mobilization and contestation. Some instances, like the protests starting in 2000 in support of the Second Palestinian Intifada, or in 2003 against the U.S. invasion of Iraq were primarily geared toward external events (Bayat, 2007; Korany & El-Mahdi, 2012, p. 9). Other episodes occurring later during the decade were more focused on domestic issues. Claims made vis-à-vis the regime in this arena can be broadly divided into two categories. First, there were rather material claims for the improvement of livelihoods, and, secondly, more post-material claims geared towards socio-political change. This chapter is divided into three main parts. The first section discusses major protest episodes that were mostly motivated by external events and processes—but nevertheless helped to normalize protests as a form of collective contentious behavior and fostered dense relational networks within the Cairo-based political opposition. The second section then turns toward episodes of contention that first and foremost sought to address domestic grievances, which were either material or post-material in nature. Subsequently, a third section introduces a number of events which, occurring in close temporal proximity to the January 25 Uprising, markedly affected perceptions of political opportunities and threats within and beyond the opposition. Events like the killing of Khaled Said, a young man from Alexandria, markedly affected perceptions of both the current and repressive threat, while the example of the successful uprising in Tunisia drastically altered the ways in which some actors perceived their opportunities to stage large-scale protest events in such less-democratic regimes.

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Domestic Protests, Non-domestic Claims Egyptian activists mobilized on a significant scale both in the wake of the Second Palestinian Intifada as well as the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. While these actors mobilized domestically, the contentious claims they sought to advance during these campaigns were mostly directed at targets outside of Egypt. This made the ensuing outbursts of protest at least somewhat acceptable to the ruling regime. In fact, some of these activities were tolerated, if not actively supported by the regime. Despite the explicitly non-domestic nature of these claims, it is worthwhile to discuss them at some length for two reasons. First, they are worth discussing due to the fact that these episodes helped to normalize visible forms of contention in the Egyptian context. Secondly, in addition to fostering new ties between new and old activists adhering to different ideologies and political leanings, these episodes saw the emergence of a new and more network-based mode of mobilizing together and across the boundaries of movement organizations (cf. Abdelrahman, 2009, 2015). Likud-leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, which Muslims call Haram al-Sharif, is often considered to be the trigger of the Second Intifada, since both faiths consider this particular area to be a holy site.1 Initial Palestinian protests were broken up by Israeli security forces, which, as Gelvin (2005, p. 244) noted, used live ammunition and killed four of the protesters in the process. These events marked the beginning of what some observers have called the al-Aqsa Intifada. On the one hand, the intifada was marked by “demonstrations and attacks on army posts and settlements” (Lindholm-Schulz, 2002, p. 21), and, on the other, a suicide bombing campaign by Palestinian militant organizations like Hamas, which is a descendent of the Muslim Brotherhood. A statistical account of the first four years of the Intifada lists a total of 135 suicide bombing incidents against mostly civilian targets, “killing at least 501, and injuring at least 2,823” (Esposito, 2005, p. 108). Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operations to quell the insurgency triggered an outcry in large parts of the Arab World. Egypt was no exception in this regard. Locally, several different groups took the lead in mobilizing support for the Palestinians during this episode. These efforts were largely framed in terms of a broader anti-normalization campaign that had long mobilized against warmer and better relations between Egypt and Israel following the 1979 peace agreement between the two countries (Colla, 2002, p. 10). Ahmed H., a member of the Revolutionary

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Socialists, described the emerging campaign and its context in the following way. He remarked that In September 2000, it was the second Palestinian Intifada and you know, the Palestinian struggle always has an echo on Egyptian politics, here. So, it mobilized lots of students in the universities and many other leftist, nationalist and even Islamic powers in Egypt. So, we have some support and solidarity with the Palestinian people at the time. So, there was some kind of a committee, a political committee. So, at that time there was a political committee, or let us say front, that was inaugurated by different groups, students and movements and so on, for the support of the Palestinian revolution. (Ahmed H., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014)

Thus, it was not only large parts of the then somewhat dormant student movement, leftists, and nationalists who staged protests in the streets of Cairo, but also followers of the Muslim Brotherhood. When discussing the second Palestinian Intifada, Wael B., a leftist and former member of the Revolutionary Socialists, also stressed the broad variety of groups and individuals engaged in this campaign. He noted that the Palestinian Intifada […] gathered sort of loosely connected networks of activists of sympathizers, Leftists like myself, Socialists, and Nationalists, Nasserists, Liberals and Islamists. I was in the Popular Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada, the main organ that evolved. It worked by this way of loose networking. It had a steering group, but more or less, people responded to the types of initiatives and calls that suited them. (Wael B., interview, Cairo, November 24, 2015)

Activism in support of the Palestinian cause during this time basically took two different forms. On the one hand, it entailed the collection of both financial and material donations to aid the Palestinian population. For instance, activists organized a number of aid convoys to the Palestinian territories, which delivered medical and other supplies (Abdelrahman, 2009, p. 42). Wael B. also noted that such initiatives formed one of the main activities of the Popular Committee. He stated that “the committee did lots of things. It gathered, its main core was, gathering medicine and aid and delivering it” (Wael B., interview, Cairo, November 24, 2015).

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On the other hand, there were also more classical examples of collective contentious behavior. Elliot Colla (2002, p. 12) mentions the mobilization of thousands of Egyptian professionals, university students, high school students and, for the first time in decades, elementary school students […] heading for the streets in Cairo, Alexandria, and other major cities.

In Cairo, these explicitly political activities were spearheaded by the Egyptian Popular Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada—commonly abbreviated EPCSPI. Initiated by a coalition of more than 20 movement organizations and NGOs, it became a focal point for activism and popular mobilization on the issue (Abdelrahman, 2009; Wael B., interview, Cairo, November 24, 2015). As Paul Schemm (2002) noted, some of the ensuing demonstrations attracted up to 10,000 participants, which occasionally presented a significant challenge to the protest policing abilities of the CSF. When judging the relative importance of these demonstrations and protests, one should not only consider their sheer size, but also the composition of individuals who chose to participate. Here, Wael B. emphasized that […] the significance […] was that it gathered huge momentum outside of the normal circles. Of course, universities were very important. Throughout the 90s, we had glimpses of actions coming from within the universities, like with the first Gulf War, 1991, huge demonstrations at Cairo University. If I remember it correctly, in ‘94 the Hebron massacre, and then the attack on Iraq in ‘98, the bombing of Iraq. So, there was something happening at universities, but it was not really spilling outside, but rather in the normal circles.2 (Wael B., interview, Cairo, November 24, 2015)

This means that it was no longer just a relatively small number of highly politicized and committed activists engaging in such forms of contentious collective action, but also—at least temporarily—other segments of society, which typically did not engage in such forms of behavior. Having said that, it should, also be noted that the Mubarak regime, up to a certain extent, succeeded in co-opting and instrumentalizing the campaign for its own purposes. On the one hand, as Schemm (2002) pointed out, the regime, or to be more precise, the security apparatus,

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found ways of reigning in and channeling the visible protest activities on the streets after a while. On the other hand, the regime—to some degree—instrumentalized this public outrage to deflect attention from the more domestic issues of the time. Henner Fürtig (interview, Hamburg, September 18, 2014) noted that the channeling of public attention to external events was a common strategy at the time to overshadow domestic issues.3 On a similar note, one interviewee, Beshoy I., stressed that all the opposition movement [at the time] was anti-Israeli and proPalestinian. If you can [organize a] demonstration, you can do it very easily. But nobody can talk about the internal action. What Mubarak is doing, you cannot talk about the corruption; you cannot talk about anything. (Beshoy I., interview, Cairo, October 19, 2014)

Here, Beshoy I. was exclusively referring to the situation in the wake of the Intifada. However, it could be argued that the same principle applied to the Egyptian streets approximately three years later when the United States were about to invade Iraq in their hunt for weapons of massdestruction. The invasion on March 19, 2003 triggered another wave of protests in the country, which—again—attracted a broad and diverse followership. Just like the protests in late 2000, this episode was partly coopted and instrumentalized by the Mubarak regime. Prior to the onset of hostilities, in late February of 2003, the Muslim Brotherhood, “together with a few other opposition parties, staged a rally of 140,000 at Cairo’s main stadium that was markedly devoid of anti-government slogans” (Schemm, 2003). On a substantially smaller scale, similar pictures could be seen on March 28, when several thousand protesters gathered peacefully in the vicinity of the iconic al-Azhar Mosque in Islamic Cairo. During this protest, the security forces adopted a very hands-off approach and allowed the demonstrators to voice their opinions regarding the military operation. Schemm (2003) interpreted this as the regime recognizing “the need to provide a state-sanctioned outlet for the growing rage over the US-led assault upon Iraq.” However, these two events could and should also be understood in terms of the aforementioned strategy of instrumentalizing and co-opting popular mobilization in order to channel the public’s attention toward non-domestic issues.

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Whilst tolerating, if not actively encouraging, certain forms of protest, the regime adopted a different strategy towards contentious collective action that did not abide by its rules. For instance, during large-scale protests on March 20, in which protesters were able to occupy Tahrir Square for a few hours, the response of the security forces was markedly different. In this case, the CSF reacted forcefully; dispersing a crowd that had gathered in the square and arresting scores of protesters (Human Rights Watch, 2003). Overall, these two episodes are not only noteworthy due to the regime’s ambiguity toward them but also for a number of other reasons. Korany and El-Mahdi (2012) mentioned, for example, that the Intifada, in the Egyptian context, marked the beginning of a process that would make street demonstrations a much more common occurrence. Thus, the Intifada could be argued to have contributed to a change in the repertoire of contention (Tilly, 1993) available to regime challengers. On an organizational level, these episodes were a catalyst for the formation of new actors and coalitions. As Abdelrahman (2009) stressed, the mobilization process in 2000 marked a transition in terms of the underlying mobilization structures. She noted that the Egyptian grassroots response to the Intifada marked a shift toward more campaignoriented modes of mobilizing and organizating. Now, it was more often than not coalitions of different actors rather than individual groups, organizations, and movements trying to mobilize support for claims around certain grievances. Furthermore, on a micro-level, it could be argued that these episodes were of certain significance. For quite a few individuals, the protests surrounding the Intifada and the Iraq war marked the beginning of their political socialization and careers as activists within the Cairo-based political opposition. Lastly, these episodes marked a period in which new connections across the boundaries of established movements, and groups, were formed. One might, for example, have been a leftist, nationalist, liberal, or even an Islamist; but this did not necessarily mean that there was no common ground. In fact, in a few instances, the commonalities outweighed the ideological differences by quite a large margin.

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Domestic Protests and Domestic Claims While many major episodes of contention during the early 2000s were primarily geared toward events and issues outside of the realm of Egyptian domestic politics, the following years also saw a number of significant protest campaigns and outbursts of contentious collective behavior. Importantly, the target of claims—advanced by both old and new protesters—were no longer the governments of Israel or the United States but rather the very regime of Hosni Mubarak. Some of these claims were rather materialistic in nature, striving for higher wages or better living conditions, while others sought to drastically alter the Egyptian political system. Even though some of these episodes represented formidable challenges to the regime, none of them, at least in the short-term, really succeeded in fulfilling their set objectives and goals. Following in the footsteps of his predecessor—Anwar As-Sadat who was assassinated in 1981—Mubarak and his regime continued to implement neoliberal policies of privatization and liberalization throughout much of the first decade of the 2000s. Economic policies continued to follow the set out trajectory; but intensified markedly when Hosni Mubarak’s son, Gamal Mubarak, took on a greater role in the political sphere starting in 2000, when he was appointed to the General Secretariat of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) (Rutherford, 2008, p. 219). From this point on, a further liberalization of the economy and privatization of previously state-owned firms became an even higher priority (Cook, 2012, p. 173). In fact, these more radical policies produced positive results in some ways. On an aggregate level, and especially during the second half of the 2000s, the Egyptian economy grew substantially. While growth rates did not come close to the double-digit numbers of, for example, China, the annual GDP growth averaged at around five percent. Until 2010, and even during globally difficult economic times after the onset of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, the Egyptian GDP growth outperformed both regional competitors and the global mean value.4 While this represented positive news, it should be noted that such macro-level indicators of economic development fail to provide an accurate picture of the actual distribution of wealth. Discussions with both activists and country experts revealed that the proceeds from this growth were distributed unequally and that the higher strata of the Egyptian society were much more likely to benefit (Hisham A., interview, Cairo,

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November 24, 2014). Ayman G., a member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, noted, for example, that […] the government was really relying on this. They were relying on the trickle-down theory that never happened. [I]t never trickled down; So, people would never get any benefit of that [economic growth]. (Ayman G., interview, Cairo, October 29, 2014)

Yet another activist put it somewhat more bluntly and pointed out that “[t]he rich got filthy rich, and the poor got even poorer” (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, October 8, 2014).5 It was in this context that the unofficial labor movement adopted a more assertive stance in relation to the regime. Beinin (2009, 2011, 2015) and others have made significant inroads toward an appraisal of the ever-growing labor movement in the country. Here, it should be noted that much of the labor activism during the 1990s and 2000s occurred outside of the bounds of formally organized trade unions and the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which represented the only trade union federation in the country prior to the Uprising of 2011 (Cook, 2012, pp. 178–179). Workers could not rely on ETUF to effectively work on behalf of their interests and to fight for their demands, since it was highly co-opted by the ruling regime. Henner Fürtig (interview, Hamburg, September 18, 2014) compared it to the functioning of trade unions in the German Democratic Republic, which means that it was rather a form of token representation and almost exclusively worked on behalf of the interests of the ruling elites and party. However, during the decade preceding the Uprising of 2011, workers increasingly took matters into their own hands. The number of strikes and other forms of collective contentious behavior skyrocketed after the turn of the century. While an average of 27 strike activities was reported for the period ranging from 1988 to 1993 (Aidi, 2009, pp. 142–143), this number increased to 265 collective labor actions in 2004 alone (Beinin, 2012, p. 327). Kefaya and Its Successors For the better part of the 2000s, the workers’ efforts were—to a large extent—separate from those of other predominantly secular activists. Mostly toward the end of the decade some attempts were made to create limited coordination and cooperation between these actors (Clarke,

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2014). Secular mobilization that was primarily geared toward advancing domestic and rather post-material claims really started to gain traction around the middle of the first decade of the 2000s (Clarke, 2011). The year 2004, which preceded the parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for 2005, saw the formation of the Egyptian Movement for Change, which is more commonly known as the Kefaya. Kefaya has to be considered as one of the first6 predominantly secular social movement organizations in the country (El-Mahdi, 2009, p. 1012). A number of factors might help to explain the emergence of this new movement. First and foremost, there was a slight but noticeable opening in the Egyptian political opportunity structure around this time. Some scholars, like Clarke (2011, p. 405), attributed this to the effects of the 2003 Iraq war and the so-called democracy promotion agenda of the United States throughout the region. Here, one might argue that the somewhat remote threat of a U.S.-led invasion and regime change convinced parts of the regime to pursue this limited opening of the political sphere. Amin Iskander, a Kefaya member, described the political sphere during these days as “a ripe piece of fruit that was waiting for whomever might come along and pick it” (interview with Amin Iskander, cited in Clarke, 2011, p. 405). In addition to this rather external factor, a number of other issues and grievances helped trigger the movement’s emergence at this particular moment in time. Hosni Mubarak’s fourth term as president was about to end in 2005. A fifth term seemed like the most likely—albeit undesired by many—scenario. However, it was not only the prospect of yet another six-year term for Mubarak that brought activists together. Ever since the year 2000 and the associated reshuffling within the ruling NDP, a succession scenario where Gamal Mubarak would take over after his father seemed not too far-fetched (El-Mahdi, 2009, p. 1012). Kefaya, sought to mobilize for an end to the one-party rule, against a fifth term for the president and in opposition to the “prospect that Gamal Mubarak, the president’s younger son, would ‘inherit’ power” (Shehata, 2004, p. 4). The core group that initiated Kefaya was quite diverse in terms of its composition. Beshoy I., an early member of the organization, noted that it was originally six individuals from different ideological backgrounds. He recalled that in 2004 […] we had a meeting with friends [and] we start to talk about […], we start to think about what we can do. So, we choose six persons from

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different elements, one communist, one socialist, one from the Muslim Brotherhood, one leftist, and a Nasserist. We are six and we start to meet, to write […] and to talk about our demands […]. (Beshoy I., interview, Cairo, October 19, 2014)

In the period from December 2004 until after the presidential elections in September 2005, the movement had some success in mobilizing support for their objectives and in staging street demonstrations (Clarke, 2011, p. 401). Mansour (2009, p. 205) pointed out that Kefaya represented a noteworthy phenomenon, since it managed to form a broad coalition, made up of ideologically diverse groups. The group staged the first of its demonstrations on December 12, 2004. Talking about this event, Beshoy I. noted And then, you know, we made it [the demonstration] in front of the High Court, because we want to send a message, we are defenders of law, and then […], it was the 12th of December, we found 1,000 people awaiting us. […] That was much more than I would have expected. The police were thousands and thousands, but we do it [sic!], and to defend ourselves, we say that this demonstration is a silent demonstration. We put Kefaya on our mouths and stayed like that. The people which are passing by, they ask themselves, ‘What are they doing? This is against Mubarak, this time, they are mad!’ […]. (Beshoy I., interview, Cairo, October 19, 2014)

El-Ghobashy’s (2005) account of this protest puts the number of protesters closer to several hundred and elaborates that they “remained mostly silent and [had] taped over their mouths a large yellow sticker emblazoned with the word Kefaya” (El-Ghobashy, 2005, cited in Mansour, 2009, p. 208). Even though a petition campaign collected more than 17,000 signatures, Kefaya’s success was quite limited in terms of physically mobilizing support for its agenda (Mansour, 2009, p. 208). Their regular street demonstrations and protests consistently failed to attract more than 2,500 participants (El-Mahdi, 2009, p. 1014). While failing to attract greater numbers and whilst not succeeding in forcing the regime to give into most of their claims, it could be argued that Kefaya—to a certain extent— managed to affect and open the structure of political opportunities.7 Referring to Kefaya’s impact on Egyptian politics, Beshoy I. somewhat boldly stated that

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the people started to break the wall of fear. […] Kefaya [achieved] very important things. First, break the culture of fear, secondly obtain the right to demonstrations, and three obtain the right to criticize the president. We break it (sic!). All the taboos [we]re broken. (Beshoy I., interview, Cairo, November 6, 2014)

Hisham A. (interview, Cairo, November 24, 2014) pointed toward Kefaya’s role in establishing something of a protest culture, which over time helped to normalize demonstrations as part of the repertoire of contentious performances available to actors and activists (Tilly, 2008; Tilly & Tarrow, 2007). In terms of actual and measurable effects on the political arena, the picture looks somewhat different. It is indeed true that some rather significant changes occurred during the period of heightened Kefaya mobilization. However, it seems close to impossible to establish a direct causal connection between these changes and the various forms of activism and its followers. In fact, shortly after the initial protest in December 2004, the regime announced that the upcoming presidential election, for the first time in Egyptian history, would be conducted as a competitive election in which multiple candidates would be allowed to run (Cook, 2012, p. 173). Here, it remains unclear whether this actually represented a result of Kefaya’s activities, or if it was more of an attempt to signal a credible democratic opening to the United States. Come April: New Actors, Claims, Connections, and Tactics While much of the explicitly political activism at the time was focused on the greater Cairo area, other parts of the country became hubs for the aforementioned ever-growing labor movement. One industrial city, Mahalla al-Kubra, located about a two-hour long drive to the north of Cairo, saw major instances of labor action and protests in both 2006 and 2008 (Cook, 2012, p. 179). Mahalla is home to a large state-owned production facility in the textile sector. The Misr Spinning and Weaving Company employs thousands of workers. In December of 2006, thousands of workers went on strike and occupied the factory. Their protests, as Cook (2012, p. 179) notes, were motivated by “broader concerns about the possibility of privatization.” Such fears come as little surprise, since the regime had markedly accelerated the pace of selling off state-owned companies over the last few years. During the final years of the Mubarak

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regime, the private sector “accounted for more than 70 percent of all economic activity” (Cook, 2012, p. 173). The main motivation for the strikes that would engage approximately 20,000 workers, however, was a dispute over wages and promised bonus payments (Beinin & Hamalawy, 2007). The regime ultimately ended the occupation of the factory by giving in to some of the workers’ demands and promising other financial incentives to appease them. While the textile workers did, in fact, return to their work places, the strike had set a precedent. Alexander and Bassiouny (2014, p. 102) even considered this strike and the associated concessions of the regime as a turning point for the whole of the Egyptian labor movement. Over the next months and years, strikes and similar forms of activism occured in other factories and economic sectors throughout the country. The regime would usually refrain from using force to break up the protests and rather give in to the workers’ demands (Beinin, 2009, p. 80). Two years later, in the month of April of 2008, the city of Mahalla once again became a focal point for labor actions (Alexander & Bassiouny, 2014, p. 120). This time, however, the protest episode in the Nile Delta reverberated through much of the country and also had a long-lasting impact on actors operating within the Cairo-based political opposition. The strike on April 6, 2008 has to be considered a follow-up event to an earlier labor action in February of the same year, when the workers first took to the streets to demand an increase in the national minimum wage. When the February strike failed to produce the desired outcome, April 6 “was set as the date for a strike in protest at the failure to meet the demands […]” (Alexander & Bassiouny, 2014, p. 120). It was during this period of time leading up to the planned strike that a few Cairene activists from a middle-class background launched an online campaign aiming to support the workers’ efforts in Mahalla, whilst linking the workers’ more socio-economic claims with their own political objectives. At the time, no one anticipated that this campaign would form the breeding ground for the April 6 Youth Movement. Their public Facebook group called for a general strike on, April 6, 2008—the same date scheduled for the protests in Mahalla. Farah E., when discussing their underlying motivation for starting this group, argued that […] we organized this strike as support for the El-Mahalla workers. It was not our idea, it was their idea; we just wanted to help the idea of them, by social media. And then, [we] thought about Facebook for this, and

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we created this Facebook group. We started maybe in the 28th or 30th of March, and we tried to publish everything about this strike, why we need this, and what we should do to support this strike, and our demands. (Farah E., interview, Cairo, November 18, 2015)

When prompted about the number of Facebook users that eventually joined the group, she mentioned a total user count of close to 77,000, and it was very big number, it was just the start of Facebook in Egypt, and in numbers and figures this was really big. (Farah E., interview, Cairo, November 18, 2015)

In their account of the strike, Alexander and Bassiouny (2014, p. 120) somewhat echo Farah E.’s recollection and noted that this Facebook group “attracted nearly 70,000 members,” which has to be considered a huge success, since the Egyptian Internet penetration rate at the time was only 18% (WorldBank, 2019). Even though the online campaign did not result in the envisioned nationwide general strike, the episode had a number of notable consequences. For instance, the workers in Mahalla actually succeeded in conducting their planned protest to demand a higher minimum wage. This time, however, the regime responded to the challenge with force. Security forces cracked down on the workers. Some observers described Mahalla during this particular day as resembling a war zone. In his recollection of the protests on April 6, 2008, Wael B. recalled that there was […] a huge show of resistance in Mahalla. Because all what they did was, they did nearly close the factory in the first shift, and had plainclothes [officers] all over the factory floor during the first shift. So, at 8 o’clock with the first shift moving out and the second shift coming in, there was a huge explosion [of] clashes. You can really look at the photos and see the confrontation. This was really the 6th of April. It wasn’t successful, but again, it was resistance against the regime. (Wael B., interview, Cairo, November 24, 2015)

Similarly, to Wael B.’s account of these confrontations, another political activist stressed the intensity and brutality of the clashes between the workers and the security forces. Mostafa G., a member of the Democratic Front party, noted that

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[…] what happened on the 6th of April 2008 had a huge impact on me. I was in Mahalla that day and I saw everything with my own eyes. It wasn’t just someone telling me about it. I saw the people revolting against Mubarak, really furious, and, their slogans were all abusing Mubarak, insulting Mubarak. (Mostafa G., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

Notably, it was during these confrontations in Mahalla, marking one of the first times during a major protest, that a picture of Hosni Mubarak was torn down and trampled on (Ghonim, 2012). This is noteworthy for two reasons. First, this represents a significant and drastic sign of disapproval and disrespect. Secondly, up until the Uprising of 2011, direct critique of the president was commonly understood as representing a clear red line. As noted earlier, Kefaya was one of the first groups to openly and directly criticize Hosni Mubarak. However, such forms of criticism were still rather unusual and not without risk. As a number of local journalists interviewed in the context of this project noted, it would be possible after 2004–2005 to criticize certain government policies, and also—to a lesser degree—ministers. However, directly attacking the president was still very much considered off limits (Hazem B., interview, Cairo, April 28, 2015; Tarek R., interview, Cairo, November 19, 2014). Meanwhile in Cairo, the administrators of the Facebook group were arrested shortly after the events that unfolded on April 6. According to Farah E., one of the group’s administrators was tortured by state security personnel during his detention (Farah E., interview, April 20, 2015). However, soon after their release, a number of members of the Facebook group—some of whom had never met before in the physical world—started to meet face-to-face to discuss options for continued joint activism. While the group’s administrators knew each other personally from their previous work as volunteers for Ayman Nour’s al-Ghad party, this was not the case for most of the other individuals (Farah E., interview, Cairo, April 20, 2015). Others, like Mohamed A., had met the founding members in person shortly before the events on April 6, but had previously only conversed and discussed politics with them on different social media sites over the Internet (Mohamed A., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015). Yet, others had never met in person before. Talking about the initial period of the movement, Ramy N. noted, for example, that Some of us knew each other before that, like [from] Kefaya; some of us know each other through Facebook. Like, I never knew them before the

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April 6 Youth Movement. I only knew them from Facebook. We were just speaking by inboxes in Facebook with each other, and then we started to meet each other. (Ramy N., interview, Cairo, April 16, 2015)

Initial meetings in the physical world eventually resulted in the formal formation of the April 6 Youth Movement, which soon developed small presences in most of the Egyptian governorates (Sara S., interview, Cairo, April 27, 2015). According to Ramy N., the initial operations and dayto-day activities were neither formalized nor well-organized. When discussing the early phase of the movement, he stressed that Basically, we organized on a ‘what you can do, you do it’ basis. And then send a report to everyone that you did this and that. We were like, so random. There w[ere], like, no hierarchies, there was no, who is the leader, who is doing this, who is doing that. No, it was like, it was 25 persons who were working all day and night, doing whatever it takes. (Ramy N., interview, Cairo, April 16, 2015)

Despite this somewhat unorganized beginning, the movement developed and thereby created a growing mobilizing structure for future events (Clarke, 2014, p. 384). Despite a relative increase in the number of protests, overall levels of political engagement, especially among Egyptian youths, were comparatively low (Sika, 2012, pp. 192–193). Data from the ‘Survey of Young People in Egypt’ (SYPE), which was conducted in 2009 by the international NGO ‘Population Council,’ supports similar findings (Population Council, 2010). SYPE data show, for example, that merely 0.39% of young Egyptians between the ages of 15 and 29 were part of a political party. Similarly, only 0.10% of the same age group were members of a humanitarian or charitable organization (Population Council, 2010, p. 135). This should, however, not be understood to mean that young Egyptians did not care about social or political issues. The survey illustrated that in 2009, 92.4% of the respondents rated poverty reduction to be a very important issue, “followed by curbing rising prices (89.9%) and corruption (88.2%)” (Population Council, 2010, p. 132). While this data indicates that a vast majority of Egyptian youths were politically rather passive, Amy Austin Holmes and Hussein Baoumi (2016) reported a marked increase in the total protest activity across the country between 2008 and 2010. The average number of daily protests increased from

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3.9 protests per day in 2008 to 5.5 protest events per day in 2010. This means that, discounting the contentious collective activities of the unofficial labor movement, a relatively small group of activists accounted for the vast majority of Cairo-based political protest activities. When discussing the size of the activist sector in and around Cairo prior to the Uprising of 2011, Amany S., a member of the Youth for Freedom and Justice movement, noted that In total, with the eminences of the 70s, they are often the parents of the new ones, we are not very young. Most of them are in their thirties. I am thirty-seven, for example, but my parents weren’t activists. In total, 300, like 500 people. If you count the siblings or so, it would be a thousand. But if you want count the Ikhwan [the Muslim Brotherhood], it would be tens of thousands, but you can’t really count them. It is like a giant organization, with four or five million people. But we wouldn’t see them. We would only see the representatives. (Amany S., interview, Cairo, November 17, 2015)

Thus, this particular segment of Cairo’s population was comparatively small. It could even be regarded as minuscule, when considering that the Egyptian capital is home to more than twenty million people. This rather low estimate of the number of activists was also confirmed by a number of other individuals. Mohamed M., who is head of a local human rights NGO, estimated that there were “a few hundred, maybe a thousand” activists operating in and around Cairo (Mohamed M., interview, Cairo, April 20, 2015). When asking Amal C. (interview, Cairo, April 22, 2015), a former member of the Revolutionary Socialists, the same question, she noted that the number of one thousand activists was probably set too high already. This rather limited personnel base also found its expression in the size and scope of the various movements’ protests and demonstrations throughout the years preceding the uprising. Participation tended to be quite limited, and in many cases the CSF would actually outnumber the protesters (Clarke, 2011). Discussing the average size of protests during this period, Amal C. estimated that for a regular event You can start with fifty people. The majority of the people at demonstrations were tens, sometimes [a] hundred. When you reach one thousand, it is a big thing. (Amal C., interview, Cairo, April 22, 2015)

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Similar estimates of protest participation totals appeared in almost all interviews conducted with activists or observers. Long-time activist Wael B. stated that even during Kefaya, and during the anti-war [demonstrations], if we have fifty more, this is good. I have people to testify how excited I was about the fifty [people] more. We were larger than the last time. (Wael B., interview, Cairo, November 24, 2015)

Another activist described his experience of a slightly larger protest that took place in Downtown Cairo in January of 2010 in the following way. He elaborated that We were two hundred maybe, it was only two hundred surrounded by four rows of police, and they had the strategy to get closer, closer to each other [squeezes his hands together]. (Omar B., interview, Cairo, November 2015)

Encircling the protesters to contain them and to physically separate them from regular public life in Downtown Cairo seemed to be a common strategy for the CSF. In his discussion of protest events at the very height of Kefaya, Clarke (2011) paints a similar picture. He noted Often, the protesters were outnumbered by as much as ten to one. As the activists began chanting, the police would close in and surround them in a tightly contained ring. In this way, the security forces served as a constant reminder to Kefaya’s activists of their relative weakness and vulnerability. (Clarke, 2011, pp. 409–410)

As far as the size of protest events and the reactions of the CSF are concerned, there was a significant overlap of experiences between activists during the Kefaya-era, protests organized by the April 6 Youth Movement, and other movement organizations that were active at this time. For instance, members of the Revolutionary Socialists described very similar scenes. Ahmed H., a member of this radical leftist organization, noted the following when prompted about forms, participants, and extent of protests prior to the Uprising of 2011. Yeah, we know each other from before. You know, the political arena in Egypt, even though it is a ninety million population, activists are quite small groups, because of the police terror. So, at that time, I mean before

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the revolution, everybody who is an activist knew other activists. Because, as I told you, each demonstration will not exceed three or four hundred, and they are the same three or four hundred each time. (Ahmed H., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014)

The Revolutionary Socialists were one of the other small movement organizations trying to effect radical social and political change in the country. The roots of this group date back to the early 1990s, when it began to take shape in the form of a study circle at Egyptian Universities (El-Hamalawy, 2007). The Revolutionary Socialists emerged as a coherent organization only during the mid-1990s (Wael B., interview, Cairo, November 24, 2015); remaining a small albeit vocal group within Cairobased political opposition (Browers, 2007, p. 81). For instance, a number of its members took on a leading role in facilitating the activities of the committee supporting the Palestinian Intifada starting in September of 2000, and against the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States. Additionally, the Revolutionary Socialists later took on an active role in Kefaya as well (Amal C., interview, Cairo, April 21, 2015).8 In sum, as political opportunities opened and were created throughout the early 2000s, a number of different movements and movement organizations (re-)emerged, and increasingly sought to exploit these opportunities. While these actors shared objectives and a common enemy, they were highly diverse in terms of their underlying visions, policy preferences, and ideologies. Various protest episodes during this period were organized and coordinated in rather loose networks that transcended the boundaries of the groups and organizations. It was during these episodes that mobilizing structures were formed, which also entailed the formation of strong ties among and between activists across these boundaries. Additionally, a new generation of activists was politically socialized and inducted into this rather small activist sector. However, at the same time, it has to be acknowledged that the activists belonging to these movement organizations still largely failed to successfully mobilize support from other segments of society, which one activist described as ‘normal people’ (Ramy N., interview, Cairo, April 16, 2015). The Return of Baradei: A Campaign Built on Hope By the very end of the decade, yet another event would rattle the Egyptian political sphere and help to politicize scores of, first and foremost, youths.

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During the year of 2009, approximately two years before the onset of the uprising, Mohamed El-Baradei was about to end his international service as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). According to Ghonim (2012, p. 39), El-Baradei seemed displeased with the current state of affairs in Egypt. Activists, like members of the April 6 Youth Movement, but also youths that were previously rather apolitical soon came to place great hopes in his return to Egypt. During an informal conversation with a former member of the Baradei campaign, the imminent return of Baradei was compared to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008. Wael B. described the effect of Baradei’s approaching return to the country in the following way; he noted, I mean, I was very enthusiastic, I mean, not about him personally, but what he embodied, and the kind of opening that he allowed. (Wael B., interview, Cairo, November 24, 2015)

Hope and change had been the two dominant themes during Barrack Obama’s bid for the presidency. These themes had resonated widely with a predominantly young generation of voters who were displeased with the policies of two-term president George W. Bush (Finn & Glaser, 2010). At least for the above-mentioned member of the campaign, Baradei seemed to represent an Egyptian Barack Obama who promised change after roughly 30 years under President Hosni Mubarak. A number of interviewees had described the situation in the country at this point in time as one where stagnation on many levels seemed to be the most fitting description (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014). The notion of stagnation seems not only applicable to the socio-economic situation, but it can be applied just as well to the political sphere. Here, issues like corruption, patronage, electoral fraud, and repression of the political opposition represented some of the major grievances (see e.g. Jumet, 2018). Amr N., who first became politically active during the Baradei campaign, noted very similar experiences, by saying the things in the country at this time were so tired and so difficult. A lot of bad things, the corruption, the police […]. I […] have two daughters in Egypt, and [trying] to make a good future for them; that is what pushed me to go for the political life. (Amr N., interview, Cairo, November 29, 2015)

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Several interviewees mentioned corruption as a pressing issue, and timeseries data seems to support these perceptions. Egypt consistently landed in the bottom half of the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, which points to severe challenges in this arena (Transparency International, 2016).9 This sense of stagnation and a hope for political change was, however, not limited to Egyptians residing within the country, but also seemed to capture the imagination of some of those living abroad. For instance, the campaign had—by most accounts—a well-organized and functioning subsidiary organization operating in the United Kingdom (Mostafa G., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015). Dina T., who was first active in the UK-based campaign and later became involved in the Egyptian Baradei campaign, noted that the London-based organization was highly diverse in terms of its members. She pointed out that it was a strange mix. It was leftists, and also Muslim Brothers, [and] by the way, politicians. There were a lot of those who were against Sadat in the 70s, and they were now doctors and so on. [It was] politicians and activists, and the new ones who were active. (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015)

Back in Egypt, dozens of activists made their way to Cairo International Airport when Baradei was scheduled to return home after his term at the IAEO had come to an end in February 2010 (Mohamed S., interview, Cairo, November 29, 2014). At the airport, he was greeted enthusiastically by his supporters (Amr N., interview, Cairo, November 29, 2015). At the same time, he seemed to enjoy growing popularity not only in the physical but also in the virtual world (see e.g. Khalil, 2011). In his personal recollection of the uprising, Wael Ghonim stressed that he and Abdelrahman Mansour were the administrators of a pro-Baradei Facebook group that attracted thousands of followers in a relatively short period of time (Ghonim, 2012, p. 40). The strong online presence of Baradei’s supporters also played a key role in a signature collection campaign supporting Baradei’s bid for the presidency in 2011, and included a list of seven key demands directed toward the ruling regime (al-Sayyid, 2013, p. 18). This list “amounted to sweeping domestic reform and would have required rewriting of three separate articles of the constitution.” Demands included, but were not limited to, an abolition of emergency legislation and adjustments to the electoral process, like supervision of

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elections by the judiciary and (international) civil society organizations, a two-term limit for the president as well as the removal of interferences in the campaigning of presidential candidates (Khalil, 2011, p. 108). In Khalil’s account of the Baradei campaign, a strong emphasis is placed on the importance that supporters assigned to the abolition of the emergency law, which had been in place since the assassination of Anwar As-Sadat in 1981 (Cook, 2012). For some signatories, like college student Abudalla Sultan, this aspect was the sole reason that made him sign the petition (Khalil, 2011, p. 109). In sum, it could be argued that the emerging Baradei campaign, which was also called the National Association for Change (NAC), evolved to become yet another actor on the scene that was the Cairo-based political opposition under Hosni Mubarak. However, unlike other oppositional groups, this organization was not exclusively directed toward small-scale grassroots mobilization, but also entailed a component—Baradei’s potential bid for the presidency—that was explicitly geared toward affecting the institutionalized political process. Therefore, it could be argued that the campaign occupied a somewhat special role within the political opposition prior to the uprising. The figure of Mohammed El-Baradei, or the hope for change that he embodied, reached and mobilized yet another segment of the Egyptian population that might have been aware of many of the pressing issues at the time but had so far been either unwilling or unable to articulate and voice these grievances and demands publicly.

Shifting Perceptions of Opportunities and Threats Having discussed how political opportunities changed during the first decade of the 2000s, and how a combination of both old and new actors in the Cairo-based political opposition tried to navigate and exploit these structures, it is also worth noting that a number of catalyzing events occurred in the months leading up to the uprising. These events affected perceptions of the political opportunity structure. Some of them could be argued to have increased the perceived current threat, while others, like the uprising in Tunisia, could be said to have markedly increased the levels of perceived opportunities (cf. Goldstone & Tilly, 2001).

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An Increasing Current Threat Goldstone and Tilly (2001, p. 183) proposed, as noted in the introduction, the notion of a current threat to capture the “harms that are currently experienced or expected.” It could be argued that perceptions of this current threat increased markedly during the months leading up to the uprising. This increase in the expected costs of inaction can be attributed to at least two events. First, the killing of Khaled Said and secondly, the bombing of All Saints Church in Alexandria on New Year’s Day of 2011. The killing of Khaled Said raised awareness for the issue of police brutality, especially among middle-class youths. Discussing the case and its implications, Mostafa G. noted that Khaled Said was a stunning case for all of us. I remember the day it was announced. I think it was the next day after he was killed, when the pictures were being published. We had a big meeting with Doctor Baradei in London. We had one minute of silence. It had just happened, and the people were furious. He was furious. No one can describe the emotions. When you see the famous two pictures of his mutilated body, it gives you a feeling for how uprooted this regime was. […] It was the first time that people would get exposed to it that much. So, it was a big deal. (Mostafa G., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

Khaled Said, a young man from Alexandria, was beaten to death by two police officers on June 6, 2010. Accounts of the ways in the situation that resulted in Said’s death unfolded vary. However, several of them remark that a conflict developed between Said and the two officers (Ghonim, 2012, p. 58). Subsequently, the officers confronted Said, beating and kicking him. The injuries sustained in this encounter ultimately proved fatal. That really underlined the brutality of the police in the Mubarak era. I mean, this was, a normal practice of the police. Not only toward the activists but also the normal population. The police were kind of [a] gang in Egypt that use their power into actually torturing and brutalizing the normal population. So, that was kind of the crowning of these practices. (Ahmed H., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014)

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This case should be considered as different from other instances of police misconduct for at least three reasons. First, Said was a member of the middle class; however, it was usually the lower social strata that suffered the most from police humiliation and brutality in the contexts of their everyday lives (see e.g. Jumet, 2018). Hence, at least for a segment of the middle class, this event could be considered to have increased perceptions of both the repressive and current threat. People realized that it could very well have been them being beaten to death—merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time (Ramy N., interview, Cairo, April 16, 2015). The following account of an activist in his early twenties associated with the April 6 Movement echoed this sentiment. He said that it was very shocking. I remember myself, when I saw the picture for the first time. It was very, very shocking, to see someone at your age in this situation. And, I think, everyone started to think that [they] might be the next Khaled Said. (Ahmed F., interview, Cairo, April 13, 2015)

Several interviewees of similar age noted that they had comparable feelings when they were first confronted with the Khaled Said incident. Additionally, the case attracted unusually wide attention. This is to say that it also engaged activists who were usually focusing on a different set of issues, like questions of citizenship or equality. For instance, Marios T., a Coptic activist, noted that the protest events following this incident were—at least for him—the first explicitly non-Coptic political event he attended (Marios T., interview, April 26, 2015). The issue of young Egyptians potentially recognizing themselves in the fate of Khaled Said, however, was just one of the effects that this incident would have on the Egyptian opportunity structure. Secondly, and more importantly, pictures of Said’s body were circulated over the Internet and gained the attention of an even wider audience. Reportedly, Ayman Nour, a former presidential candidate, was among the first to share the picture on his personal Facebook account (Ahmed F., interview, Cairo, April 23, 2015). Shortly afterwards, a Facebook page entitled ‘We are all Khaled Said’ was created.10 Two individuals were responsible for the creation of this site. Wael Ghonim, at the time a Dubai-based Google executive, and Abdulrahman Mansour, a graduate of the journalism program at Mansoura University, started the page shortly after the incident. The identities of the two administrators remained a well-kept secret until much later.

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Not even the activists planning and coordinating with Ghonim and Mansour knew their real names (Mohamed S., interview, Cairo, November 29, 2014). ‘We are all Khaled Said’ quickly attracted a large number of followers and soon became an online hub for both news and discussions. According to data cited by Khamis and Vaughn (2014), the page gained more than 350,000 members over the months leading up to the uprising. The site became not only a hub for cyber-activism (Khamis & Vaughn, 2014), but it also came to form a space in which “users were becoming producers of information and circumvent[ed] the editorial control of state censors and mass media outlets […]” (Lynch, 2011, p. 307). Thus, it became a space for a form of citizen-journalism where information on issues like “violations of human rights, corruption, fraud, and all types of governmental malpractices” was shared (Khamis & Vaughn, 2011, p. 152; 2014). This means that the page, to a some extent, helped to “overcome the atomization and social isolation produced by authoritarian regimes, which enforce political conformity and silence” (Lynch, 2011, p. 304). When asked about the role and functioning of the Khaled Said page, one respondent noted So, ‘We are all Khaled Said’ started to grow very rapidly, because all the young Egyptians who were on Facebook started to join this group, and were very angry, and wanted to voice that. (Ahmed F., interview, Cairo, April 15, 2015)

Users realized through interactions and discussions on this page that they were similar in many regards. They came to realize that they shared many of the same grievances, faced similar threats—like police violence—and might have similar visions of how the Egyptian society should look like. Additionally, the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ page was also used as a venue to organize and call for various forms of collective contestation. The silent stand-ins, like the one organized in June of 2010, became one of the trademarks of the whole campaign. During these events, people clad in black would stand silently, in a long line along, for example, the Nile Corniche, holding or reading a copy of their holy book (be it a copy of the Quran or the Bible). An activist that participated in one of these events described it in the following way I was just joining the activities of Khaled Said page, as an activist. […] It was my personal commitment. […] I started to believe that we can

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do something. I remember that, once, one of the activities, one of these events, it was standing in front of the Corniche, in Alexandria, wearing black clothes and reading some Quran for Khaled Said. […] I travelled to Alexandria and I was expecting that a [small] number of people would be there, and a lot of police. I found a lot of police and a lot of investigation, but found a big number of youths. It was covering more than five kilometers of the Corniche. They were standing about ten meters between each of them. They didn’t know each other. I didn’t know any of them. We were standing here, another ten meters, another one. Ten meters on the left another one. […] That was all. We were standing there for, maybe, forty minutes, or something, then each one went home. Without even protesting, or demonstration, without anything. (Sherif M., interview, Cairo, November 4, 2014)

Discussing the same series of events, Amal C. noted that during 2010, there were those events concerning the Khaled Said page, and those were, we call it the cute events. They were demanding from people to go and to look to the sea and to wear black. It was very symbolic. (Amal C., interview, Cairo, April 21, 2015)

Abdelrahman T., a youth activist and former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, drew attention to the creativity of such events by pointing out that […] nobody can say that you are saying ‘no’ to Mubarak, but at the same time [you] are objecting. It is like a snowball. It is growing bigger and bigger. (Abdelrahman T., interview, June 18, 2015)

In addition to facilitating these events—as discussed in more detail in the following chapter—the Facebook page also came to play an important role in disseminating information about the plans for the January 25 Uprising. In short, the Khaled Said incident and the campaign emerging in its wake, influenced perceptions of the opportunity structure in several important ways. First, Said’s death greatly increased perceptions of the current threat, since pictures of his smashed body quite graphically illustrated the risks of becoming a victim of police brutality under Mubarak’s reign. Secondly, as Lynch (2011) argued, the Facebook group managed,

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at least up to a certain extent and for a specific target group of rather educated and middle-class youths, to help overcome the challenge of social isolation in the context of a repressive non-democratic regime. Thus, the realization that there were, in fact, individuals with similar views, grievances, and policy preferences might have also affected perceptions of opportunity. Only a few weeks before the beginning of the uprising, another event shook the country and affected perceptions of the current threat. On New Year’s Day of 2011, an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated in front of the All Saints Church in Alexandria, just as worshippers were leaving the church. Twenty-three people died in the blast, while more than 90 were injured. The event triggered widespread national and international condemnation (AhramOnline, 2011b). In the immediate aftermath, the Iraqi branch of Al-Qaeda was identified as the most likely force behind the attack (AhramOnline, 2011a). A few days later, according to Ahram Online, the Ministry of Interior announced that they had ‘conclusive evidence’ that a Palestinian group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, calling itself the ‘Palestinian Islamic Army’ was responsible for the bombing (AhramOnline, 2011a). Some interviewees interpreted the incident as a false-flag operation conducted by members of the security apparatus in an attempt to divert attention from the results of the parliamentary elections. Whilst not talking about this particular event, Ahmed H. remarked out that activists suspected that the regime from time to time accentuated and used sectarian dividing lines for their own purposes, for example, to “overshadow other problems” (Ahmed H., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014). By “other problems”, Ahmed H. was referring to the parliamentary elections that had been conducted in November of 2010, and which were “heavily manipulated […] in favor of the NDP, effectively denying all opposition groups any representation in the parliament” (Shehata, 2011, p. 29). Regardless of the question as to which entity was ultimately responsible for the attack, it is worth noting that it was immediately followed by a substantial degree of mobilization and mass protests in both Cairo and Alexandria. One Coptic activist even considered these demonstrations to be the real beginning of the revolution (Marios T., interview, April 26, 2015). Shortly after the incident, large numbers of, predominantly young, Christians took to the streets, and confrontations with the security forces ensued. In Cairo, the initial protests occurred in the vicinity of Saint

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Mary’s Church in the Shobra neighborhood. The events that unfolded throughout the next few days were described as follows: [I]n my memory, this was the first time that Christians stayed like, in a camp, for the Coptic case. […] I think this was the first time, and the security, [they] were really annoyed, and they tried to suppress us many times. They tried to keep the Muslims away from Shobra. They succeeded to do that the day before the camp, and they made like a human wall to prevent them from coming into Shobra. But, the next day, they were able to come to our camp. The security couldn’t accept that, and they arrested many of the Muslims; only the Muslims. (Marios T., interview, April 26, 2015)

Similarly, a former member of the Revolutionary Socialists noted that The Copts in Egypt usually have some kind of a tattoo, a cross tattooed on their body. So, during the sit-in, they [the police] were checking that everyone has one. And, they detained the Muslim ones. (Amal C., interview, Cairo, April 21, 2015)

The issue was no longer an exclusively Coptic one. Instead it became a truly Egyptian issue that transcended religious boundaries. Interestingly, this protest episode also represented one of the few instances where the CSF were seemingly unable to completely contain the situation. Amal, the activist quoted above, noted that this was only the second time in her life that she witnessed the lines of CSF officers being broken by protesters. Despite their size, the protests failed to evolve into a sustained campaign. They are, nevertheless, interesting and important in the larger context of the January 25 Uprising for at least two reasons. First, as noted by Hazem B.—a journalist for an online news outlet—this was one of the first times since the protests against the Iraq war in 2003 that large numbers of Coptic Christians took to the streets to voice their anger (Hazem B., interview, Cairo, April 28, 2015). Otherwise, it was considered relatively rare for Copts to protest outside of their churches, as Amal C. noted (Amal C., interview, Cairo, April 22, 2015). Secondly, it represents a relatively rare series of contentious interactions where the group of claim makers encompassed both Muslim and Christian protesters. Both Copts and Muslims realized that they might have more in common than they oftentimes thought. At least for parts of the Coptic community, this

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might have entailed to no longer perceive the regime and with it the security apparatus as an entity that holds out its protecting hand over them. In fact, quite the opposite might be true, which means that the regime might be a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, October 14, 2014). In sum, both episodes discussed here, as well as the fraudulent parliamentary elections conducted in 2010, could be said to have affected not only the actors challenging the regime but also the ways in which these actors perceived the Egyptian structure of political opportunities. The Khaled Said incident as well as the bombing of the church in Alexandria resulted in a perception of an increasing current threat; especially among middle-class youths and parts of the Coptic community. Hence, these events further illustrated the potential costs of inaction. Increasing Opportunity: Tunisian Hopes The months preceding the uprising saw not only increasing perceptions of a rising current threat among parts of the Egyptian populace, but also a new sense of opportunity. Here, the Tunisian revolution, which visibly began with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17, 2010, has to be considered as yet another catalyst for the Egyptian mobilization process. While it would be wrong to solely attribute the onset of the Egyptian Uprising to its successful Tunisian counterpart, the role of a Tunisian demonstration effect should not be underestimated. Echoing this sentiment, Alimi and Meyer (2011, p. 476) argue that it would be wrong to identify Bouazizi’s act of despair as “the single spark that would provoke an Arab Spring, but that the conditions across the Middle East and North Africa had made it possible for such sparks to create contagion at the time.” This position is shared among many scholars interested in the Arab Uprisings (cf. Clancy-Smith, 2013; Lynch, 2011). Just as the Egyptian Uprising, the root-causes of its Tunisian counterpart lie much deeper, and as Kaboub (2013) pointed out, can be traced back over a longer period of time. The grievances motivating the Tunisian incident were similar but not exactly the same. Both countries had, for several decades, been ruled by individuals who maintained their power by means of both repression and co-optation. In this context, the Tunisian security apparatus has to be considered even more far-reaching and effective than its Egyptian counterpart. Both countries instituted neo-liberal

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structural adjustment policies that resulted in significant, but unequally distributed, economic growth. However, without going into too much detail, it should also be pointed out that the two countries were rather disparate in terms of other factors like literacy rates, levels of education, which were, generally speaking higher in Tunisia (cf. Clancy-Smith, 2013; Kaboub, 2013). Following the Bouazizi incident, protests started rather localized in Sidi-Bouzid, but “[w]ithin a week […] spilled over to several neighbouring cities” (Breuer, Landman, & Farquhar, 2015, p. 773). Over the following weeks, when the regime’s security apparatus failed to suppress the demonstrations, the insurgency developed into a nationwide phenomenon (Breuer et al., 2015, p. 773). Only 23 days after the onset, when the military disobeyed orders and refused to open fire on protesters, Ben Ali and family fled the country. Most interviewees mentioned the Tunisian revolt in their accounts of the Egyptian Uprising even before being asked about it. While, in some cases, they might have simply been echoing the dominant media narrative of the events, a number of themes emerged in this context that are usually less explicitly discussed in popular accounts. A fair share, not to say the vast majority, of respondents framed their interpretations of the events playing out in Tunisia in terms of either fear-centric or hope-centric accounts. Despite these marked differences, both types of accounts point toward a presumably high degree of similarity between Tunisia and Egypt. Similarities were largely identified at the level of the broader political system. Some respondents were eager to point out that Tunisia, just like Egypt, had been ruled by individuals who considered the country to be pretty much their own personal property (Tamer A., interview, Cairo, April 14, 2015). Additionally, it was noted that both regimes used repression and at times brute force to maintain their rule. Here, the large police and security apparatuses were mentioned as the prime means of securing power (Ahmed H., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014). However, instances of police misconduct or brutality, like the Khaled Said incident in Egypt or the events that preceded Bouazizi’s self-immolation, were not the only perceived similarities between the two countries. Issues like high rates of (youth) unemployment, rising food prices, widespread corruption, and limited political rights and civil liberties, which are often considered as the grievances underlying the Tunisian Uprising, very much

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resonated with the Egyptian audience as well. In this sense, the underlying grievance structures were relatively similar (Haas & Lesch, 2013, p. 1; Mariam M., personal communication, Cairo, November 14, 2014). Despite these similarities, Egyptian pundits who were rather close to the government emphasized that the events in Tunisia would be unlikely to spread to Egypt. They argued that the Egyptian political system was, in many respects, more open and advanced than its Tunisian counterpart. They argued, for instance, that there was more space for open discussions and more opportunities to voice dissent, thus reducing the need for and likelihood of such open rebellion (Bahgat Korany, interview, Cairo, October 16, 2014). A number of scholars like Lesch (2012, p. 24) or Albrecht (2013, ch. 3), have argued, however, that the system was not quite as open as these analysts proclaimed it to be. Among some of the Egyptian activists, after the onset of the largescale protests in this neighboring non-democracy, and especially when it became obvious that Ben-Ali would be unable to remain in power, hope was one of the predominant emotions. This hope was directed toward similar events playing out in the domestic context. “If they can do it, we can do it” (Omar R., interview, Cairo, April 23, 2015) was one of the typical answers when inquiring about the implications of the Tunisian case for the Egyptian context. In most instances, this was expressed more in terms of a diffuse hope rather than a calculated or even anticipated outcome. Another interviewee noted, for example, We felt that finally we have a hope for change, through a peaceful way. A way without blood, by (making) demonstrations against the regime, for example, with a strike here, or a sit-in there, to mobilize for our cause. (Hussein B., interview, Cairo, April 19, 2015)

Implicitly drawing upon the work of critical mass-oriented scholars like Kuran (1989) or Kurzman (1996) and Rutherford (2013, p. 40) identified the events playing out in Tunisia as one of the factors changing individuals’ personal perceptions of the Egyptian structure of political opportunities. He noted that “after Ben Ali’s exit, many thousands of Egyptians concluded that meaningful political change could be accomplished by going out to the street.” As noted earlier, a feeling of hope was not the only effect of the Tunisian example. In many accounts, it was also described in terms of an event that reduced or even completely removed fear. One interviewee

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noted, for example, that a ‘wall of fear’ was broken after the Tunisian Uprising spread, grew in scale and became a substantial threat for the ruling elite (Noor N., interview, Cairo, April 20, 2015). Hence, the Tunisian revolution could not only be interpreted in terms of having helped to create a new sense of opportunities for socio-political change in the country, but it might have also reduced perceptions of the repressive threat. The combination of these two factors could then be interpreted in terms of cognitive cues (McAdam, 1982), which are considered necessary to overcome inaction or perceptions of the futility of collective contentious behavior for social change (Kurzman, 2009, p. 42).

Chapter Summary In the broader context of this study, the present chapter fulfilled two interrelated purposes. On the one hand, it provided relevant and necessary background on several previous protest episodes between the Egyptian prodemocracy movement and the ruling regime of Hosni Mubarak. Taking its point of departure in the protests surrounding the Second Palestinian Intifada and the US invasion of Iraq, and, subsequently discussing a number of protest episodes geared more towards domestic aims and claims, the chapter laid out processes that affected both actors and structures. Episodes like the Kefaya or April 6 protests not only created slight cracks in the structure of political opportunities, but also affected the very actors making claims vis-à-vis the regime. Over time, these episodes resulted in new modes and patterns of organizing and mobilizing within the Cairo-based political opposition. They, furthermore, helped to recruit and professionally socialize a new generation of activists. Secondly, the chapter outlined how a number of events, like the imminent return of Mohamed El-Baradei, the killing of Khaled Said, or the Tunisian Uprising, dramatically affected the ways in which both activists and non-activists perceived the threats and opportunities associated with actively and successfully resisting a non-democratic regime that had been deemed largely impervious to grass-roots pressures for socio-political change. As the next chapter will illustrate, it was in this context that a number of different groups and movement organizations started to plan a protest event for January 25, 2011.

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Notes 1. As Gelvin (2005, p. 243) noted “Muslims regard Haram al-Sharif as hallowed ground because it marks the location of the al-Aqsa Mosque, which was built on the site from which Muhammad made his night journey to heaven.” At the same time, this location is considered the location of the first and second temple in the Jewish faith. 2. By ‘normal circles,’ Wael B. refers to a rather small group of people (i.e., activists) that would usually attend such events. As others, like Amal C., have noted the activist sector in and around Cairo at the time was limited in terms of its size (Amal C., interview, Cairo, April 22, 2015). 3. On this point, see also Colla (2002, p. 14). 4. See also Cammett, Diwan, Richards, and Waterbury (2015, p. 4) for a brief discussion on regional economic developments prior to the Arab Uprisings. 5. In this context, AGEG, the Egyptian Anti-Globalization Group, might be worth mentioning. The group, founded in 2002, “by individuals from different political and professional backgrounds” (Abdelrahman, 2011, p. 409) found relatively little expression in direct and visible acts of collective contentious action but developed into a—rather short-lived—hub that connected activists in the broader extra-institutional opposition. With its fluid and often interchangeable membership (cf. Abdelrahman, 2015, p. 36), “the group mainly provided information and offer[ed] a space for discussion and debates on globalisation and neoliberalism” (Abdelrahman, 2011, p. 411). 6. Hafez (2013) notes that one should actually consider the Revolutionary Socialists, which were founded as early as 1991, to be the first secular social movement organization, which thus precedes the founding of Kefaya by more than a decade. 7. Here, it is worth noting that Kefaya was not the only predominantly secular movement within the broader pro-democracy movement that sought to realize contentious claims vis-à-vis the ruling regime at that time. At least two other, but somewhat smaller, movements should be mentioned in this context. These are, on the one hand, the March 9 Group for Academic Freedom, which was established as early as 2003 to “challenge the draconian measures imposed on academics” (Abdelrahman, 2015, p. 40), and on the other hand, the so-called Judges’ Movement, in which members of the judiciary struggled for greater independence within the given institutional constraints, and “threatened not to oversee the upcoming 2005 elections” (Abdelrahman, 2015, p. 43). 8. It is also interesting to note that the Revolutionary Socialists were one of the few groups that actively tried to bring the Muslim Brotherhood into

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the fold of the extra-institutional political opposition in the aftermath of the 2005 parliamentary elections (Browers, 2007). 9. See Jumet (2018) for an excellent and thorough discussion of the ways in which corruption pervaded many aspects of Egyptian life during the years preceding the uprising. 10. Technically, there were at least three such Facebook pages. One page, which was called ‘My name is Khaled Said,’ disappeared shortly after its creation. The other two sites were both named ‘We are all Khaled Said.’ The page that gained most momentum was predominantly in Arabic. An English page also attracted an active following, but on a much smaller scale.

References Abdelrahman, M. (2009). ‘With the Islamists? Sometimes: With the state? Never!’ Cooperation between the left and Islamists in Egypt. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 36(1), 37–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13530190902749556. Abdelrahman, M. (2011). The transnational and the local: Egyptian activists and transnational protest networks. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 38(3), 407–424. https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2011.621701. Abdelrahman, M. (2015). Egypt’s long revolution: Protest movements and uprisings. New York: Routledge. AhramOnline. (2011a). ‘Conclusive evidence’ shows Palestinian Islamic Army behind church attack: Egyptian Interior Ministry. http://english.ahram.org. eg/NewsContent/1/64/4647/Egypt/Politics-/Conclusive-evidence-showsPalestinian-Islamic-Army.aspx. AhramOnline. (2011b). Egypt terrorism expert: Church bombing evidence points to Qaeda in Iraq. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/95/3157/ Egypt/Attack-on-Egypt-Copts/Egypt-terrorism-expert-Church-bombingevidence-poi.aspx. Aidi, H. D. (2009). Redeploying the state: Corporatism, neoliberalism, and coalition politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Albrecht, H. (2013). Raging against the machine: Political opposition under authoritarianism in Egypt. New York: Syracuse University Press. Alexander, A., & Bassiouny, M. (2014). Bread, freedom, social justice: Workers and the Egyptian revolution. London: Zed Books. Alimi, E. Y., & Meyer, D. S. (2011). Seasons of change: Arab Spring and political opportunities. Swiss Political Science Association, 17 (4), 475–479. al-Sayyid, M. K. (2013). What went wrong with Mubarak’s regime. In D. Tschirgi, W. Kazziha, & S. F. McMahon (Eds.), Egypt’s Tahrir revolution. London: Lynne Rienner.

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Austin Holmes, A., & Baoumi, H. (2016). Egypt’s protests by the numbers. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. http://carnegieendowment. org/sada/?fa=62627. Bayat, A. (2007). Making Islam democratic: Social movements and the post Islamist turn. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Beinin, J. (2001). Workers and peasants in the Middle East: Struggles, histories and historiographics. Albany: State University of New York Press. Beinin, J. (2009). Workers’ struggles under ‘socialism’ and ‘neoliberalism’. In R. El-Mahdi & P. Marfleet (Eds.), Egypt: Moment of change. London: Zed Books. Beinin, J. (2011). A workers’ social movement on the margin of the global neoliberal order, Egypt 2004–2009. In J. Beinin & F. Vairel (Eds.), Social movements, mobilization, and contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (pp. 181–201). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Beinin, J. (2012). Egyptian workers and January 25th: A social movement in historical context. Social Research, 79(2), 323–348. Beinin, J. (2015). Workers and thieves: Labor movements and popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Beinin, J., & Hamalawy, H. (2007). Egyptian textile workers confront the new economic order. Retrieved from https://merip.org/2007/03/egyptian-textileworkers-confront-the-new-economic-order/. Breuer, A., Landman, T., & Farquhar, D. (2015). Social media and protest mobilization: Evidence from the Tunisian revolution. Democratization, 22(4), 764– 792. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2014.885505. Browers, M. (2007). The Egyptian movement for change: Intellectual antecedents and generational conflicts. Contemporary Islam, 1(1), 69–88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-007-0006-y. Cammett, M., Diwan, I., Richards, A., & Waterbury, J. (2015). A political economy of the Middle East. Boulder: Westview Press. Clancy-Smith, J. (2013). From Sidi Bou Zid to Sidi Bou Said: A long durée approach to the Tunisian revolution. In M. L. Haas & D. W. Lesch (Eds.), The Arab Spring: Change and resistance in the Middle East (pp. 13–34). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Clarke, K. (2011). Saying “enough”: Authoritarianism and Egypt’s Kefaya movement. Mobilization: An International Journal, 16(4), 397–416. Clarke, K. (2014). Unexpected brokers of mobilization: Contingency and networks in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising. Comparative Politics, 46(4), 379–397. Colla, E. (2002). Solidarity in the time of anti-normalization. Middle East Report, 224(Autumn), 10–15. Cook, S. A. (2012). The struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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El-Ghobashy, M. (2005). Egypt looks ahead to a portentous year. Middle East Report Online. https://merip.org/2005/02/egypt-looks-ahead-toportentous-year/. El-Hamalawy, H. (2007). Comrades and brothers. Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). http://www.merip.org/mer/mer242/ comrades-brothers. El-Mahdi, R. (2009). Enough! Egypt’s quest for democracy. Comparative Political Studies, 42, 1011–1039. El-Mahdi, R., & Marfleet, P. (2009). Egypt: Moment of change. London: Zed Books. Esposito, M. K. (2005). The Al-Aqsa Intifada: Military operations, suicide attacks, assassinations, and losses in the first four years. Journal of Palestine Studies, 34(2), 85–122. Finn, C., & Glaser, J. (2010). Voter affect and the 2008 U.S. presidential election: Hope and race mattered. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 10(1), 262–275. Frisch, H. (2001). Guns and butter in the Egyptian army. Middle East Review of International Affairs, 5(2), 1–12. Gelvin, J. L. (2005). The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: One hundred years of war. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ghonim, W. (2012). Revolution 2.0: The power of the people is greater than the people in power: A memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Goldstone, J. A., & Tilly, C. (2001). Threat (and opportunity): Popular action and state response in the dynamics of contentious action. In R. R. Aminzade, J. A. Goldstone, D. McAdam, E. J. Perry, W. H. Sewell, S. Tarrow, & C. Tilly (Eds.), Silence and voice in the study of contentious politics (pp. 179– 194). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haas, M. L., & Lesch, D. W. (2013). The Arab Spring. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Hafez, B. N. (2013). New social movements and the Egyptian Spring: A comparative analysis between the April 6 movement and the revolutionary socialists. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 12(1–2), 98–113. https:// doi.org/10.1163/15691497-12341245. Human Rights Watch. (2003). Egypt: Crackdown on antiwar protests—Use of torture, excessive force by Cairo police. https://www.hrw.org/news/2003/03/ 23/egypt-crackdown-antiwar-protests. Jumet, K. D. (2018). Contesting the repressive state: Why ordinary Egyptians protested during the Arab Spring. New York: Oxford University Press. Kaboub, F. (2013). The making of the Tunisian revolution. Middle East Development Journal, 5(1), 1350003/1350001–1350022. Khalil, A. (2011). Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian revolution and the rebirth of a nation. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

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Khamis, S., & Vaughn, K. (2011). ‘We are all Khaled Said’: The potentials and limitations of cyberactivism in triggering public mobilization and promoting political change. Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research, 4(2–3), 145– 163. Khamis, S., & Vaughn, K. (2014). Cyberactivism in the Egyptian revolution: How civic engagement and citizen journalism tilted the balance. Arab Media and Society, 14(3), 21–54. Korany, B. (2012). Egypt and beyond: The Arab Spring, the new Pan-Arabism, and the challenges of transition. In B. Korany & R. El-Mahdi (Eds.), Arab Spring in Egypt: Revolution and beyond (pp. 271–294). Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press. Korany, B., & El-Mahdi, R. (2012). Introduction. In B. Korany & R. El-Mahdi (Eds.), Arab Spring in Egypt: Revolution and beyond (pp. 1–6). Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press. Kuran, T. (1989). Sparks and prairie fires: A theory of unanticipated political revolution. Public Choice, 61(4), 41–74. https://doi.org/10.1007/Bf00116762. Kurzman, C. (1996). Structural opportunity and perceived opportunity in social movement theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979. American Sociological Review, 61(1), 153–170. Kurzman, C. (2009). The Iranian Revolution. In J. Goodwin & J. M. Jasper (Eds.), The social movements reader: Cases and concepts (pp. 42–52). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Lesch, A. M. (2012). Concentrated power breeds corruption, repression, and resistance. In B. Korany & R. El-Mahdi (Eds.), Arab Spring in Egypt: Revolution and beyond (pp. 17–42). Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Lindholm-Schulz, H. (2002). The ‘Al-Aqsa Intifada’ as a result of politics of transition. Arab Studies Quarterly, 24, 21–46. Lynch, M. (2011). After Egypt: The limits and promise of online challenges to the authoritarian Arab state. Perspectives on Politics, 9(2), 301–310. https:// doi.org/10.1017/S1537592711000910. Mansour, S. (2009). Enough is not enough: Achievements and shortcomings of Kefaya, the Egyptian movement for change. In M. J. Stephan (Ed.), Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent struggle, democratization, and governance in the Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. McAdam, D. (1982). Political process and the development of black insurgency 1930–1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Population Council. (2010). Survey of young people in Egypt: Final Report January 2011. Cairo. Rutherford, B. K. (2008). Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and democracy in the Arab world. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

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Rutherford, B. K. (2013). Egypt: The origins and consequences of the January 25 Uprising. In M. L. Haas & D. W. Lesch (Eds.), The Arab Spring: Change and resistance in the Middle East (pp. 35–63). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Schemm, P. (2002). Sparks of activist spirit in Egypt. Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). http://www.merip.org/mero/mero041302. Schemm, P. (2003). Egypt struggles to control anti-war protests. http://www. merip.org/mero/mero033103. Shehata, D. (2011). The fall of the Pharaoh: How Hosni Mubarak’s reign came to an end. Foreign Affairs, 90, 26–32. Shehata, S. (2004). Opposition politics in Egypt: A fleeting moment of opportunity? Arab Reform Bulletin, 2(9), 3–5. Sika, N. (2012). Youth political engagement in Egypt: From abstention to uprising. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 39(2), 181–199. https://doi. org/10.1080/13530194.2012.709700. Tilly, C. (1993). Contentious repertoires in Great Britain, 1758–1834. Social Science History, 17 (2), 253–280. Tilly, C. (2008). Contentious performances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, C., & Tarrow, S. (2007). Contentious politics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Transparency International. (2016). Corruption Perception Index: Egypt. Retrieved from https://www.transparency.org/country/#EGY. WorldBank. (2019). Individuals using the Internet (% of population). Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS? locations=EG.

CHAPTER 3

Planning and Coordinating a Protest, Not a Revolution

Abstract This chapter discusses how a diverse group of activists from different movement organizations within the Cairo-based political opposition started—under the impression of the revolutionary uprising in Tunisia—to plan a protest event against police brutality on the Egyptian National Police Day. Drawing on interviews with key players in this process, the chapter outlines how this group—which later on came to be known as the “Coalition of the Youths of the Revolution”—sought to build alliances with other actors and planned at least one secret protest for January 25, 2011. Subsequently, the chapter recounts the ways in which these initial protests, much to the surprise of the organizers, attracted numerous Egyptians from all walks of life. Keywords Cairo-based political opposition · Tunisia · Police brutality · Egyptian National Police Day · January 25

As discussed in the previous chapter, repeated episodes of collective contestation between the regime and the Cairo-based political opposition affected not only actors, but also shaped and changed both the objective and perceived structure of political opportunities during the years leading up to the January 25 Uprising. These earlier protest episodes fostered strong relational networks across both organizational and ideological boundaries between different groups and movements in the opposition. © The Author(s) 2020 A. F. Wackenhut, Understanding Protest Diffusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39350-2_3

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Now, under the impression of events in Tunisia, a coalition of oppositional actors sought to organize an event on the Egyptian National Police Day to protest against police brutality. This is to say that the organizers did not plan—or even hope—for a prolonged large-scale protest episode that would unseat Hosni Mubarak. The preparations for this event depended heavily on the aforementioned relational networks, and— as also shown by Clarke (2014)—on a number of human rights NGOs that acted as intermediaries to other social sectors. Despite coordinated efforts to rally as many potential supporters as possible, only a few of the organizers had high expectations—given their experiences from a decade of similar events. Therefore, it came as a big surprise to the activists when it was not just the usual forty to fifty individuals that took to the street on January 25. To elucidate the planning process for the event and to show how contentious collective behavior spread on that day, this chapter proceeds as follows. The first section introduces the coalition which, in coordination with the administrators of the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook page, called for and coordinated the protest event on January 25. In this context, some organizational and tactical details will be discussed. These include not only the planning of a ‘secret’ demonstration originating in the less affluent area of Nahia but also issues of tactically framing the event to appeal to and mobilize a broader cross-section of society. Analytically, this section is therefore rather focused on the interaction between different actors of the Cairo-based political opposition, and the ways in which they sought to exploit the newly perceived political opportunities by pooling their organizational resources in an attempt to encourage a new set of actors to engage in visible forms of collective contestation. Subsequently, the second section turns toward the actual events of January 25, and how the planned protest on this Egyptian National Police Day played out. Notably, the eventual turnout of protesters exceeded the organizers’ expectations by far. It was not only a core group of activists that took to the streets, but thousands of individuals from basically all walks of life. A third section summarizes the main findings and concludes the chapter.

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Organizing and Mobilizing for #Jan25 While the large-scale popular protests on January 25, 2011 marked the visible beginning of the uprising, they were not the first instance of collective protests on this particular date. As noted earlier, the day marks the Egyptian National Police Day. It became a public holiday in 2009 (cf. Osman, 2013)—meant to commemorate the killing of about 50 Egyptian police officers in Ismailiyya, by the British forces in 1952 (Cook, 2012, p. 37; El-Hennawy, 2011).1 Already in the years prior to the 2011 Uprising, various elements of the Cairo-based political opposition had called for anti-regime protests on that particular day. They had, however, been consistently unable to mobilize larger numbers of protesters. Lim (2012, p. 242) noted, for instance, that “the April 6 Youth Movement organized a ‘Day of Mourning’ through Facebook to protest torture and police brutality on January 25, 2010.” However, this protest remained rather small. When discussing this protest event with Sara S., a member of the April 6 Youth Movement, she noted that: In 2010, people came, but it was not a very large number. Compared to the past, of course, it was a large number. One thousand persons, maybe. It was a very good number. And after that, in 2011, we got phone calls, but we didn’t expect people to go out on the streets. (Sara S., interview, Cairo, April 27, 2015)

Considering the surprisingly high turnout of protesters only one year later, it seems worthwhile to shed some light on the mobilization process leading up to January 25, 2011. Here, it is important to note that the preparations for this particular day involved a substantial amount of deliberate planning and coordination among a number of different actors, involving a coalition that would later on become known as the “Coalition of the Youths of the Revolution.” Importantly, these preparations were not necessarily geared toward overthrowing President Hosni Mubarak but rather to protest against police brutality. While a number of different actors sought to rally protesters for the planned event, the aforementioned coalition played a key role in this context. On the eve of the uprising, it was comprised of representatives of the Baradei Campaign, the April 6 Youth Movement, the Youth for Freedom and Justice, which represented an ideologically diverse conglomerate of activists, the liberal Democratic Front party, as well as a small number of

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youth leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood. The group was first assembled to select representatives for a parallel parliament that several opposition groups and politicians had set up in the aftermath of the flawed parliamentary elections in November of 2010 (Cook, 2012; Kareem N., interview, Cairo, November 30, 2015). Most members of the group had known each other personally for many years. This can be partly explained by the relatively modest size of Cairo’s activist sector, and the fact that many protest events prior to the uprising attracted activists belonging to different movement organizations regardless of the group that had called for the protest. Kareem N., a leading member of the Baradei Campaign at the time, described how close social ties between some members of the coalition had developed through student activism at Cairo University. He noted that In 2007, there was a committee to coordinate with the students at Cairo University. I was representing the socialist group, and Khaled was representing the Nasserist group before he became a socialist. Abdelrahman T. and Mostafa N. were representing the Muslim Brotherhood, so, we were coordinating for a long time, during the Cairo University time […]. (Kareem N., interview, Cairo, November 30, 2015)

Notably, some of these connections had an even longer history. Kareem N. described, for example, how he first met and became friends with Abdelrahman T., a youth leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, during the 1990s when Abdelrahman T. was studying at Cairo University and Kareem was still attending high school (Kareem N., interview, Cairo, November 30, 2015). Talking about his relation to Kareem, Abdelrahman T. noted jokingly that He is a communist, and I am an Islamist, and we had a good relation all of this time […] most of the time [laughs]. (Abdelrahman T., interview, June 18, 2015)

There were, however, some instances in which there were no direct connections between coalition members. In these cases, as Mohamed A. noted, it was mutual friends or acquaintances that helped to establish trust between the members. When discussing this aspect with Mohamed A., a member of the April 6 Youth Movement at the time, he pointed out that

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Some of us know each other, and some of us don’t know each other. [pause] If I don’t know Mostafa N., but Khaled knows Mostafa N., there is still trust. From that time, we tried to work together. (Mohamed A., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

The group functioned not only as a node connecting the different movement organizations it represented, but there were also direct communication channels with the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook page, which, according to Ghonim (2012) had about 300,000 followers as of November 2010. At the time, Mohamed A. was one of the key individuals facilitating communication between the coalition and the then-anonymous administrators of the page. He noted that, “I communicated with [the administrators] to figure out how we can help them” (Mohamed A., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015). The exact moment at which the planning process for the protests on January 25 began is somewhat unclear. In his personal recollection of the uprising, Ghonim (2012) noted that he talked to his co-administrator as early as November 2010 arguing that they ought to organize some kind of event on the National Police Day. Most members of the coalition that were interviewed in the context of this project pointed out, however, that the detailed planning only began much later. For instance, Dina T., a representative for the Baradei Campaign in the coalition, noted that Yeah, I mean, it was discussed, but we were already planning for something to happen for Khaled Said on January 25, because it is the Police Day in Egypt. So, once Tunisia started happening, we didn’t really start discussing Tunisia before the end of December, when it started showing that something big was happening. Actually, the discussion started on the 14th of January, which is the day when Ben Ali fell […]. We were actually going to a concert, and we discussed that we might as well make things pick up. It was just a dream, you know, and then, all of a sudden, from the 14th to the 23rd things just started to escalate quickly in meetings, and we realized this is actually going to be big and massive. (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015)

Sherif M., a former youth member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was not directly involved in the work of the coalition, pointed toward the symbolism inherent in a protest event on this particular day. He described the rationale for choosing the day in the following way

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With that, you will see our objection [on] the day, on which we should celebrate and salute you. No, we will not celebrate you; we will give you our objection. And, we thought this, it is very ethical, and [a] very good objection to send. You are expecting me to be happy about you, and you see that I am not. This is what we did [on] the 25th . (Sherif M., interview, Cairo, November 4, 2014)

Planning the Protests on National Police Day As the situation in Tunisia evolved, the coalition’s members intensified their efforts to jointly plan a protest event for January 25. In the days leading up to the event, several meetings were held, where the representatives of the coalition discussed the plans for the envisioned protest event. At the same time, other movement organizations within the Cairo-based political opposition began their own preparations. The representatives of the coalition held their meetings in different places. Some, for example, took place in the facilities of the Democratic Front Party, while others were held in Kareem N.’s law office, which was considered a somewhat safe space (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015). There were, however, a few additional meeting places, especially during the final days before the event. When prompted for more details on the exact locations, Amany S., a member of the Youth for Freedom and Justice noted that […] Al-Gabha 2 party, but that was very early. And at a certain moment we started, Al-Gabha, that is the party [of] Mostafa G., at a certain moment we started to move the meetings to a house, and in the later stage on the 20th , 21st and so on, in T[…]’s house, Kareem’s mom’s house, things like that. In one meeting, we actually asked Amal to leave her house for us to meet in. She wasn’t part of the meetings. (Amany S., interview, Cairo, November 17, 2015)

In these meetings, decisions regarding the planned course of action were mostly made on the basis of thorough discussions trying to build a consensus. Kareem N. described the process in the following way Discussions […]. I don’t think that we used to vote a lot. Just talking about it, and by making compromises. I get something I want, and they

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get something that they want. We can make it. (Kareem N., interview, Cairo, November 30, 2015)

Dina T. described the decision-making process in very similar terms, but also noted that this became much more difficult after the onset of the uprising when the group officially transformed into the ‘Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution.’ She explained that [w]e were all agreeing on everything in the beginning. Later on, in the youth coalition, we started to have problems; but before that, we were actually the same people. But it was before the youth coalition; it was unanimous decisions for everything. What happened was, that we would delegate [tasks] to two or three of us […]. (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015)

The members of the coalition agreed during these meetings that there should be a large-scale protest on January 25, which was meant to be geared toward the issue of police brutality. In this context, Dina T. noted that so […] we started to do something [about] the police brutality in Egypt, and we started to plan January 25. [T]hen Tunisia happened, and when Tunisia happened, we quickly thought that this is not just going to be a protest against police brutality, but that something bigger is going to happen. (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015)

However, as Amany S. cautioned, it was not the coalition’s declared goal to actually oust President Mubarak. Their goals were much more modest. She stressed that after the fall of Tunisia, we decided that we need to do something on the 25th of January, because it is the Police Day. We did not think of a revolution at the time. Just because it was the Police Day […] and then, we expected that we can pressure enough to bring down the Minister of Interior. Yes, that was the maximum that we expected. But then, and we, communicated with the administrators of the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ page, we communicated with them in secret, of course, in a very discreet way, and we decided that they will publish the kind of gathering points and meeting points. But these were not quite the real gathering points. We published like 20 meeting points, but we decided that we will only march from one of them. (Amany S., interview, Cairo, November 17, 2015)

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At this point, it is worth mentioning that the event was planned to consist of a number of different marches that were supposed to start from various, announced and unannounced, locations. While not unprecedented, protest marches were a rather atypical protest activity in the Egyptian repertoire of contention at the time, to use Charles Tilly’s (1986, p. 2) term denoting the “whole set of means [a group] has for making claims of different types on different individuals” (Della Porta, 2013, p. 1081). When discussing this particular protest form, Farah E. noted that […] in 2011, we took the position that we will not demonstrate in one place. We will walk so that the police cannot surround us. But even as we walk, we can walk two steps and then we find that the policemen block our way. Then, we can try to go back and to change our way, all the way. All the time, they tried to prevent the demonstrations and they tried to prevent the marches in the streets. (Farah E., interview, Cairo, April 20, 2015)

Here, it is interesting to note the focus on the relatively mobile and more difficult to contain form of protest marches rather than demonstrations that start and end in one and the same place. Such stationary protests were much more common prior to the uprising and were usually encircled by multiple rows of the Central Security Forces (CSF) to physically separate the protesters from the surrounding population (Youssef I., interview, Cairo, November 21, 2015). While up to 20 different locations were announced in cooperation with the administrators of the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook page (cf. Ghonim, 2012), knowing full-well that they could count on a substantial CSF presence at those officially announced locations, the coalition discussed the possibility of organizing a ‘secret’ demonstration that would start in a different and not officially announced place. Dina T. described these deliberations in the following way Well, we discussed where we would start the marches. We had not decided to go to Tahrir at all. We decided to choose Nahia as one of the places to come out from, and we discussed other, like other camouflage places, to say that we would be there, so that the police would not find us there. Gameat al-Dowla was one such place. (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015)

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Relatively speaking, Nahia is a less-affluent neighborhood bordering the middle-class area of Mohandessin. The members of the coalition deliberately opted to start their unannounced protest march in this rather poor neighborhood, even though they had previously failed to mobilize this particular segment of society for their claims. Mohamed A., one of the individuals that developed the idea of mobilizing protesters in this neighborhood, described his thought-process in the following way. He stressed that First thing, we can’t do it in Downtown. Because, I have a history [with] Downtown. Every time we start [there], we go to jail, and no one joined us. I tell them, we will go to Nahia. (Mohamed A., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

The plan to start this ‘secret’ protest in a less affluent neighborhood also had, according to the members of the coalition, a number of implications regarding the types of claims that were to be made during the event. I said that to them in that meeting that on the 25th , we can’t say just freedom. We have to [find] that missing part in that machine to let people join us and to move to [with] us. […] We have to say, or demand, on our banners, […] economic rights. They all agreed with me about that part. (Mohamed A., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

When mentioning a missing part in the machine, Mohamed A. referred to the fact that most previous protests organized by groups like the April 6 Youth Movement consistently failed to mobilize a broader cross-section of the society. As discussed earlier, most demonstrations would only attract a very limited number of participants, which usually originated from the same and arguably limited circle of activists. When discussing one of these earlier protests that occurred during 2010, Mohamed A. noted that there is something missing in there. Every time we move, the society didn’t move, because something here is missing, between us and the society, because we are trying to move for political things, or rights, [but] society is moved by economic rights. (Mohamed A., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

This is a clear indication of the coalition’s realization that it would be necessary to adjust the ways in which they framed their claims if they

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wanted to reach and potentially mobilize a broader cross-section of the society. Benford and Snow (2000, p. 621) would conceptualize this in terms of an attempt to increase the centrality and salience of the collective action frame. When bringing up the issue of framing contentious claims, Dina T. stressed that well, we were talking about bread and freedom, of course the social demands that are always there. But they are never the sexy ones, the sexy ones are those about human dignity, and the clashing with the police, and the state being classist and racist and so on. […] We were mentioning the seven demands of change of Baradei and that it was about time to ask for police reform, and that we had to move against Habib el-Adly, he was the Interior Minister at the time. So, it was not just Mubarak, we did not mention Mubarak at all. We mentioned the state as sectarian, the state as brutal, the state as corrupt. So, it was a protest against the state, and the state symbolized by Habib El-Adly, the Minister of Interior, the head of the police. (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015)

Therefore, it is important to note that the removal of Hosni Mubarak and his regime were not the claims that were initially agreed upon. The slogans that later became a hallmark of the uprising ‘Ash-shab yurid isqat annizam’ (The people demand the fall of the regime), and ‘Yaskut, yaskut, Hosni Mubarak’ (Down, Down, Hosni Mubarak) only appeared at a later stage during the protests. Ahmed H., a member of the Revolutionary Socialists, described the initial and explicitly political claims in the following way. He noted that [a]ctually, the demands were quite low at the time. It was actually the resignation of Habib Al-Adly, the Interior Minister at the time, and, ahh, the abolition of the emergency laws as well, and the dissolution of the parliament […]. When we discussed these goals, we said that, well, it is too much, we said, it was too much and too idealistic. But this was the goal of the day […]. (Ahmed H., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014)

While Ahmed H. put a relatively strong emphasis on the more political claims vis-à-vis the Mubarak regime, Dina T. rather echoed the concerns raised by Mohamed A. and stressed the importance of taking into consideration the grievances of the economically less well-off segments of society. What becomes clear, however, is that Dina T. very rationally sought to incorporate these more socio-economic claims into their plans in an

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attempt to maximize protest participation. Therefore, whilst from a tactical perspective being fully aware of the necessity of such more central and salient collective action frames, the more explicitly political claims seemed more important for her from a personal perspective. In sum, it was jointly decided within this coalition to stage a protest march starting in Nahia, which was not to be publicly announced on the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook page, in an attempt to deceive the CSF and to mobilize a broader cross-section of society. Then there is why, why Nahia. I say we will start in Nahia […] and they asked, how will we do that? I said, [the people] from Nahia [will] join us. We will be like, all of us, and when we move that ball [of people] will be huge. It would be bigger when we move. No one, no policeman will stop us. (Mohamed A., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

Before discussing how the tactical element of this planned ‘secret’ demonstration eventually played out on January 25, it is also important to note that this coalition should not and can not be considered solely responsible for the mobilization of this large-scale display of collective contentious behavior on the National Police Day. While it is true that the coalition played a key role in this context, other groups and movement organizations made their own plans for the day. Rallying Support, Coordinating Actors, and Disseminating Information Even though the main thrust of this study is geared toward the role of the more secular social movements in the mobilization process leading up to the uprising, it is also necessary to discuss the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in this process, since they were, at least at the time, considered the largest, best-organized and most influential social movement operating on Egyptian soil (Ranko, 2015). Some interviewees, like Sara S., a member of the April 6 Youth Movement, argued that the Brotherhood did not partake in the planning process for January 25. She noted that participation was limited to [p]eople from ‘We are all Khaled Said,’ people from April 6, people the Baradei campaign, people from the Revolutionary Socialists; [but] people

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from the Muslim Brotherhood, they refused to join. (Sara S., interview, Cairo, April 27, 2015)

This statement is, however, only partly accurate. It is most certainly true that the senior leadership of the organization was more than hesitant to openly support such an event. Openly siding with revolutionary forces would have threatened to jeopardize the limited acceptance and legitimacy as a political actor that the Brotherhood had achieved in the eyes of the regime during the 2000s (Henner Fürtig, interview, Hamburg, September 18, 2014).3 While the senior leadership might have disagreed with such a move, the younger generation was less opposed. Abdelrahman T., at the time a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was expelled in the aftermath of the revolution, elaborated on the deliberations occurring within the organization. This time, internally, on our committee, we decided that we will participate, and we gave the green light to the students to participate. You know, nobody expected it would be like this. But Tunis, Tunisia gave us the soul and the spirit that something will happen. But we did not know exactly what would happen, so, we provided all the groups of the Muslim Brotherhood student groups […], we let them organize themselves and we gave them the permission. And, personally, I told them, later on, if somebody asks them, tell them, when someone makes an investigation or makes a disciplinary meeting with you, why you participated without a permission, tell them that Abdelrahman T. gave the permission. Or that we got the permission from this committee, just to cover their backs. And, we kept negotiating with some of the members of the guidance bureau until we convinced them on the 23rd . But they accepted to let us participate, but with conditions, and, the decision was not clear. The decision was to not prevent anybody who wanted to participate from participating, so, it was not direct. So, go […] participate. But, if someone wanted to participate, we will not […] prevent them. (Abdelrahman T., interview, June 18, 2015)

This quotation illustrates two interesting aspects. First, it shows that the Muslim Brotherhood is not the unitary actor it is often made out to be. There are, in fact, differences of opinion between the generations, as Ranko (2015) was able to show. The younger generation’s desire to participate in the planned events created friction between them and the Brotherhood’s senior leadership. Eventually, however, it was agreed that they could go in their capacity as Egyptian citizens, but not as members

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of the Muslim Brotherhood (Sherif M., interview, Cairo, November 4, 2014).4 Secondly, it is a forceful reminder that it was not exclusively the rather secular pro-democracy movement sector comprised of rather welleducated and well-off middle-class activists organizing and mobilizing for this day. While the youth within the Brotherhood were preoccupied with the struggle to get the senior leadership’s permission to attend the events on January 25, other movements like the April 6 Youth Movement were able to use their internal resources in an attempt to mobilize as many supporters as possible. In a deliberate division of labor between various parts of the movement, some members were focusing on mobilization in cyberspace (Clarke, 2014, p. 388). One activist who was involved in this particular operation pointed out that There are some people, they were involved in the coordination with ‘We are all Khaled Said’ and other movements. And there were other groups, like my group, we were only involved in how to communicate the message, how to publish the post on Facebook, on YouTube, and Twitter, like this stuff. (Ahmed F., interview, Cairo)

However, it was not only the April 6 Youth Movement that intensified its efforts to mobilize support for the protest event on January 25. Simultaneously, Wael Ghonim and his co-administrator also sought to rally more supporters. Ghonim created a Facebook event for the day as well. As noted by Khamis and Vaughn (2011), the page had attracted about 350,000 ‘likes’ at the time, and by January 20, according to Ghonim (2012, p. 153), members posted an average of 15,000 comments per day, which made the page one of the most active Facebook pages in Egypt at the time. About four days before the National Police Day, the administrators of the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ page published several meeting points for demonstrations. Some were to take place in areas like Mohandessin, Shobra, Matariyya, or in front of the Cairo University (Ghonim, 2012, p. 167). According to data provided by Khamis and Vaughn (2011), approximately 50,000 individuals had indicated their intention to participate in the protest on the eve of the designated date. At the same time, in an attempt to mobilize a greater number of supporters, activists reached out to different Ultra groups of soccer fans. Ghonim (2012, p. 145) describes how a founding member of the April 6

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Youth Movement sought to win over the key leaders of the Ultras Al Ahly and Zamalek (The White Knights). Officially, as Dorsey (2012) noted, the Ultras Al Ahly stated that they would “remain non-political, but that its members were free to participate as individuals in the protests.” George Z., at the time a member of the White Knights, described how similar deliberations occurred within his own group. He noted that “they [the Ultras] joined, but not in the name of the Ultras. Everyone joined for himself” (George Z., interview, Cairo, November 18, 2015). Interestingly, the Ultras were not necessarily considering the regime of Hosni Mubarak as their primary opponent, and their grievances were not explicitly political. Instead, they were rather related to the Egyptian security apparatus, and especially to the police force. George Z. elaborated on this point by saying that There was no politics talked, but the Ultras all the time talk about the bad police, and talk about them in the stadium. It was very well known that the Ultras didn’t like them […]. I think the Ultras, at first, when they joined, they found the police to be the prime enemy. Because, in the match, they are treating us like slaves. ‘What did you bring with you, what do you want?’ When traveling to the matches, they are stopping us, ‘don’t go.’ So, [we] found that the regime is not with us, they are the first enemy. (George Z., interview, Cairo, November 18, 2015)

Therefore, the Ultras were considered a useful ally in these upcoming confrontations, since they possessed a very particular skill set. These football fans were, in fact, very organized, disciplined, and had extensive experience in dealing with security forces during and after matches. Efforts to coordinate with different segments of the Egyptian society were, however, not strictly limited to the Ultras but encompassed other actors as well. In this context, as Clarke (2014) demonstrated, a number of human rights NGOs came to play a key role due to their position within the Egyptian opposition (see e.g. Albrecht, 2013). These NGOs were not only closely connected to movements and individuals within the Cairo-based political opposition but also, as Mohamed M. an employee of one such NGO explained, maintained very good and close relations with parts of the unofficial labor movement (Mohamed M., interview, Cairo, November 6, 2014).5 This was especially true for one organization that aided workers through various training activities, legal aid in court cases against the privatization of formerly state-owned companies

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but also through “a labor committee, with a monthly meeting where all the workers’ activists would discuss their issues and roles in their factories” (Mohamed M., interview, Cairo, April 20, 2015). In his discussion of the role of brokerage in the diffusion of contention during the 2011 Uprising, Clarke (2014) shows how human rights NGOs helped to bridge a lack of direct relational linkages. These NGOs became important brokers in the mobilization process, since they helped to connect two segments of the opposition that were, aside from a few low-level and personal contacts, rather distinct from one another (Mohamed M., interview, Cairo, April 20, 2015; Amany S., interview, Cairo, November 17, 2015). Aside from brokering connections between previously unconnected actors, some of these NGOs would play several additional roles, once the uprising had started. First, the staff members would carry out their typical role of providing legal aid to protesters arrested by the security forces, and try to document instances in which the police used excessive force in their attempts to control the protests (Mohamed M., interview, Cairo, April 20, 2015). Secondly, and in addition to these activities, their facilities were used to store and distribute medical supplies to protesters once the occupation of Tahrir Square had commenced. Lastly, one NGO provided the April 6 Youth Movement with office space to establish a control room that was meant to allow the activists to manage and coordinate the protests on January 25 (cf. Clarke, 2014, p. 388). However, it should be pointed out that the term control room might be somewhat overstated, since it did not so much serve the purpose of actively managing the protest activities on the ground; instead it was used to collect information about the ways in which the protests unfolded. Ramy N., at the time a member of the April 6 Youth Movement, who was present in the facility during the initial protests, noted that it was merely [a] few people with laptops and central computers and Facebook groups, and other people in another place, in case this place had been closed or stopped by the police or something. (Ramy N., interview, Cairo, April 16, 2015)

In sum, the role of these human rights NGOs is notable since as they used their capabilities and relations with different segments of the Cairobased political opposition to support the planned protest event. Importantly, as Clarke (2014) stressed, this was basically the first time that these

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organizations agreed to link the different actors together, since they had previously feared that such actions might hurt their credibility in the eyes of the labor activists. All of this points to the critical role that inter-personal as well as interorganizational linkages, played during the early stages of the mobilization process. Most groups and individuals were closely linked not only by similar goals and objectives but also a rather long shared history of previous and largely unsuccessful attempts to effect social change in a hostile political environment. Inspired by the events in Tunisia, and drawing upon these commonalities, the coalition as well as other segments of the Cairo-based political opposition sought to jointly mobilize a broader cross-section of the Egyptian society for the planned protest event on January 25. This should largely be understood as an attempt to overcome the common problem of only being able to mobilize a very limited segment of society. Reiterating the limits of the activists’ ability to mobilize, Noor N. noted that […] most of the people that I would see in those relatively small demonstrations were almost the same people, or people from the same background. [P]eople from a similar political or social background. (Noor N., interview, Cairo, April 20, 2015)

Thus, considering the experiences from previous protest events, many members of the various groups and movements that organized the event were rather skeptical about the likely turnout on the National Police Day. Sara S., a member of the April 6 Youth movement, said that “I was sure of myself going, but I wasn’t sure if [they] would be going. Because, I knew the Egyptians, I couldn’t guarantee that they were going” (Sara S., interview, Cairo, October 30, 2014). Despite the high degrees of uncertainty, there were some indications that protest participation on January 25 might exceed expectations. As noted earlier, the coalition and other actors had put a substantial effort into the dissemination of more general information about the protest through social media channels, while the specific plans were handled more confidentially. As time went on, a certain dynamic developed even outside of activist circles. Information about the planned protest event was also shared and disseminated in cyberspace by individuals not directly involved in the planning process. The most prominent venues for this dissemination were most certainly Facebook and Twitter. One independent activist

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who was not directly involved in the preparations described this in the following way. He noted that So, on the 17th I saw a poster on Facebook, with an Egyptian flag and it said 25th of Jan. So, I posted it and everyone said, ‘What’s gonna happen on the 25th ?’ And I was like ‘I don’t have to say right now; otherwise, I am not gonna make it on the 25th ’. (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, October 14, 2014)

Among the respondents who had considered themselves as not politically active, but somewhat politically aware prior to the uprising, Facebook and particularly the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ page was a main channel to gather information about the planned event. Mohamed, a university graduate, had never participated in political events prior to the uprising. He described himself as a “normal and unpolitical” person. He explained that he learned about the event on Facebook, where “they [some of his online acquaintances] would speak about organizing these demonstrations on January 25” (Mohamed, interview, Cairo, April 24, 2015). In this context, it is also important to note that the dissemination of information was not limited to cyberspace, but took place in the physical world as well. While Ghonim (2012, p. 143), mentioned the use of text messages to reach those without Internet access, even Gutenberg’s printing press played a role in this process. As noted by Clarke (2014, p. 388), activists printed and distributed large numbers of pamphlets calling for protests on January 25. When discussing the distribution of these flyers, Omar R. noted how this outreach increasingly developed its own dynamic. He noted that There were various things, we made 25,000 papers asking people to go, but, you know, even other people copied it and re-distributed it. And, I remember, on the 24th of January, I was in a café in the place where I live, […] and, I usually go out from the cafés at 1 am, or something. […] I found on my car, it was like dew, someone had written on it, 25th of January. So, I thought, you know, people will go, they will go. (Omar R., interview, Cairo, October 30, 2014)

Thus, it could be argued that the pace of events picked up substantially during the days leading up to the planned protest. While some actors, like Omar R., became much more optimistic in the face of the clout that the preparations seemingly developed, the vast majority of the activists

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involved in the mobilization process were much more cautious about their own expectations, given their multi-year experience of failed attempts to rattle the cage in an attempt to effect change in a country that had been ruled by one and the same individual for almost thirty years.

Contentious Collective Action on #Jan25 As discussed earlier, the coalition sought to organize a separate protest on January 25, which was not to be officially announced on the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook page. This particular event was supposed to start in Nahia, a less affluent neighborhood located reasonably close to Downtown Cairo and directly adjacent to the relatively rich area of Mohandessin. According to individuals involved in the planning of this particular protest, the specific area was not only chosen to surprise the CSF, but also in an attempt to rally a segment of society that was otherwise very difficult to mobilize for social and political protests by the Cairo-based political opposition. In an attempt to maintain the element of surprise in a situation where a leak might have compromised the secrecy of the planned protest, only a very limited number of people knew the exact details of the protest. When discussing the preparations, Omar B., who developed the plan and route together with Mohamed A., noted that a few people were tasked with coordinating a somewhat larger group of protesters in the hours leading up to the uprising. He recalled that the leader of each group would meet them at a point close to Nahia, and at this point he would tell them we will start from Nahia. We didn’t know if we were infiltrated by the police. (Omar B., interview, Cairo, November 19, 2015)

Amany S., who was responsible for one of these groups, recalled the events as follows, by noting that Each one of us had the responsibility to bring people. I, for example, had to bring seven people. For these, I was responsible, and each of these seven had to bring ten people. None of the seven or the seventy knew exactly where we would be marching from. With the seven, we had a meeting point, Giza Square, Midan El-Giza, and we met them there on the 25th in the morning. From there I told the seven where to take the other ten to meet from there. (Amany S., interview, Cairo, November 17, 2015)

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Dina T., who was also participating in the ‘secret’ protest starting in Nahia, reiterated the technique of compartmentalizing the detailed information before the beginning of the event. She also points toward a tactic of initially trying to mobilize the residents of the area in smaller groups, before converging on Mostafa Mahmoud Square. Each of us was assigned three or four people. We couldn’t go as a group to Nahia, so these were the people that we would be protesting with. Those who decided to join our circle. We decided that we would split up all over Nahia, and not all be in one place. At 2p.m., we would gather at a specific point and then we would move back to the bridge. And that is what happened. (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015)

When asked for more information about the people that were part of the first group of protesters, which she referred to as their ‘circle,’ Dina T. noted that it was not necessarily people from the movement, but people that we knew who would side with us. Friends, connections, from Facebook. Friends from Facebook, friends from real life. Just like that. All sorts (of people). (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015)

The protest would, however, not remain limited to this comparatively small group of individuals. As the organizers had expected, or hoped, a substantial number of residents subsequently joined the demonstration. Omar B. recalled, for instance, that “only when we got these people together, we started out from Nahia, […] but then we were more than five, six thousand after only half an hour” (Omar B., interview, Cairo, November 19, 2015). Referring to this particular protest, Hazem B., a journalist who worked for a newspaper at the time, described it in the following way. This one, this protest, actually, [is] what made the 25th of January. It was a huge protest; it started from a very poor area […] it is quite close to Mostafa Mahmoud Square [in] Mohandessin, which is a rich area. And [it] started with like 20 people, but after a while they become hundreds in the district, then three thousand. (Hazem B., interview, Cairo, April 28, 2015)

Upon growing in size and gaining momentum, this protest march then moved on toward nearby Mostafa Mahmoud Square in Mohandessin,

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which was one of the assembly points officially announced on the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook page. Nahia is…, there was only a bridge from Nahia to Mostafa Mahmoud. It was like 500 meters from Nahia to Mahmoud. From half a kilometer to one kilometer. We got [to] Mostafa Mahmoud in like half an hour, and we broke the first police cordon. And, it was clear that this number, this march, could break down any police blockade. When we got to Mostafa Mahmoud, the number was uncountable. I think by this time; we lost the count. It was really something great. (Omar B., interview, Cairo, November 19, 2015)

Mostafa G., member of the Democratic Front party, who participated in the protest coming from Nahia, remembered that the protest taking place in Mostafa Mahmoud Square had, to a large extent, been contained by the CSF prior to their arrival. He recalled that security thought that we would be starting our gathering in front of Mostafa Mahmoud Mosque. That is why most of them were there. We had some people in Mostafa Mahmoud Square, trying to gather as many as they can, but they were soon easily dispersed. But we were in contact with them over the telephone and we told them ‘hold them until we come with the big bulk.’ They can join the bulk afterwards. The plan worked. (Mostafa G., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

At the same time, Wael B., a long-time member of the Revolutionary Socialists, participated in the demonstration in Mostafa Mahmoud Square. He described the stand-off between the security forces and the protesters in the following way They, (the police) they overran us in Mohandessin, but then the demonstration, the ‘secret’ demonstration from Nahia came, and it stopped there. (Wael B., interview, Cairo, November 24, 2015)

Similarly, Hazem B., who was covering the events for his news outlet, noted that [When] they crossed the bridge and when they reached Mostafa Mahmoud Square, they become like thousands, tens of thousands. That is what happened on the 25th of January. And the thing is. When people were looking in the street and saw tens of thousands chanting and asking them to join

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[…], so it became bigger and bigger. (Hazem B., interview, Cairo, April 28, 2015)

Interestingly, the chants and slogans changed as soon as the protest march coming from Nahia made its way to the more affluent area of Mohandessin. As pointed out previously, most of the protesters’ chants during the beginning of the protest in Nahia were deliberately more of a socioeconomic nature. Mohamed A. noted that these demands all of a sudden gave way to more explicitly political and drastic claims. He recalled that […] when we moved across the bridge from Nahia to Gameat El-Dowal Street, all of our slogans were about political rights. When we go down from the bridge, our slogans, our demands were converted to Irhal, go out Mubarak. Literally, there was the bridge from Nahia to Gameat AlDowal Arabia, with the bridge it changed. (Mohamed A., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

As part of the initial reporting for Daily News Egypt on the protests on January 25th, Tamim Elyan (2011) covered this demonstration and described the chants used, in the following way Hundreds of protestors marched from Nahia and Boulaq toward Gamet El-Dowal Street to join thousands of others gathering in front of Mustafa Mahmoud Mosque chanting ‘Leave, leave.’ The protest then marched through Al-Batal Ahmed Abdel-Aziz Street in Mohandiseen and through Tahrir Street in Dokki to join thousands that ended up in the heart of Egypt’s capital. (Elyan, 2011)

In sum, it could be argued that this ‘secret’ demonstration starting in this comparatively poor neighborhood came as a big surprise to many actors involved. First, it greatly exceeded the quite modest expectations that most of its organizers had built up. Being used to the rather small demonstrations of previous years, the fact that the residents of Nahia joined them in this event was highly unusual and surprising. Secondly, the fact that this protest march actually managed to overpower the CSF, which had gained the upper hand in Mostafa Mahmoud Square, should also be considered highly unusual. While there was some historical precedent for this, like during one protest against the Iraq War in 2003 (cf. Schemm, 2003), this was by no means the norm. Even though Hazem B., who was quoted above by saying that it was this particular protest that

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‘made’ January 25 a success, it should not be forgotten that several other protest events, many of which were advertised on the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook page, were more than sizeable as well. New and Old Protesters Having outlined how the eventual turnout during the ‘secret’ protest and on nearby Mostafa Mahmoud Square came as a surprise to the activists engaged in the mobilization process, it seems warranted to shed some more light on these new protesters who had so far largely refrained from actively and visibly voicing their grievances with the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Ahmed H., when discussing the ways in which the protests on January 25 developed, emphasized his surprise about the participation, by stating that we were supposed to meet another group at a meeting point at that time. So, while we were marching, the numbers were already getting much bigger. And that was quite amazing […]. So, we started to march and met with [the other] group. At a certain time, after an hour or so, marching, it was really unbelievable. It was the first time that we saw these numbers. (Ahmed H., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014)

This broader-than-usual protest participation, which exceeded the usual fifty to one hundred protesters, was not limited to these few sites, but it was rather a phenomenon occurring in many neighborhoods in Cairo as well as other parts of the country. Rana N., at the time a contributor to a daily Egyptian newspaper, covered the events for her employer. In this process, she witnessed both quite common and highly unusual sights during the early hours of the National Police Day. She recalled that On the 25th of January, I actually went into the streets pretty early on, because we didn’t really know what the situation would be, and we wanted to catch it. So, I started the day by the journalists’ syndicate, there was a protest starting there. It was one of the meeting points of the day. And, there was a protest there, people from the syndicate […] And, it was not a very big group, but then the protest started to get more members. I remember the first surprising thing is that the protest block[ed] the street. Because, it was not a usual affair at all. It was something that is very surprising that they would be allowed to do [it]. Ah, and then the protest,

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people were talking, people from the protest were talking to by-passers, asking them to join. Some people actually did. So, it was starting to look a bit different from the contained protests, you know, that are not really connected to the rest of the street. Then they started to walk toward Tahrir Square through Ramsis Street, and they were growing in numbers as we were walking toward the square. (Rana N., interview, Cairo, April 26, 2015)

The scenes described here are insofar typical, as the professional syndicates were a rather common gathering point for activists’ public protests, which would then usually be quickly encircled by riot police and then physically separated from the surrounding environment. Thus, others would usually refrain from joining such an event. Therefore, the broader participation on this occasion was considered highly unusual, since it exceeded the limited number of activists. At the time, Daily News Egypt also reported on a variety of different protest marches that occurred in other parts of the city and noted that the security forces were seemingly unable or unwilling to contain the protests. Furthermore, the newspaper stressed that in some instances, even families with children joined the demonstrations and marches (Elyan, 2011). Salma M., an artist and activist, emphasized the variety of the protesters’ socio-economic backgrounds when describing her impressions of the National Police Day. She stressed that […] for the first-time things got out of control. This is when people, ordinary people from their neighborhoods [came]. Wherever they were and whoever they were, whether they were in the streets selling vegetables, or fruits, they just joined in. And now, that was not perceived through a political agenda. It was, it was a momentary response to a crowd that was marching and getting bigger and bigger. (Salma M., interview, Cairo, November 13, 2014)

Here, Salma M. emphasized an element of spontaneity, meaning that individuals of varying backgrounds joined the demonstrations and marches and not necessarily out of deeply held beliefs or political preferences. The fluidity of such situations helps to understand these micro-level decisions that were being made in the moment. For some individuals, January 25 became the first time that they would participate in any kind of protest event. Mohamed, for example, decided to join the protests after

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[…] for the first time in Egypt, as an individual, as Mohamed, seeing thousands, fifty, sixty thousand people marching in the street. This gave [me] hope that change might be possible in Egypt. (Mohamed, interview, Cairo, April 24, 2015)

Mohamed emphasized that he did not consider himself as particularly interested in politics prior to this day but then decided to join one of the marches heading to Tahrir Square (Mohamed, interview, Cairo, April 24, 2015). Reflecting on the different sets of participants during this event, Noor N. noted how […] the 25th of January was very different. Because, when I went down, I saw, other people that I knew. People that always wanted to take part, or other people that never wanted to take part. Ah, and for the first time, they actually did. (Noor N., interview, Cairo, April 20, 2015)

During the day, several protest marches sought to make their way to Tahrir Square. Ayman G., a member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, described how the day developed from his own perspective, and pointed out that the situation in Tahrir, at least initially, seemed relatively calm. He recalled that So, I went down, I had a dental appointment, and when I came back, I went by Tahrir [Square]. It was, I think, around midday and it was empty. There were just a few people scattered and everything was just, you know, as normal. An hour [later] I had appointments, and things escalated really in the evening when no one was expecting that things would be escalating. Following that, I joined the crowd. (Ayman G., interview, Cairo, October 29, 2014)

This account of the early stages of January 25 corresponds very well with Mohamed N.’s memory of the day, who stressed that the protest march he was participating in was unable to make its way to Tahrir until the evening. He recalled that by ten o’clock there were over 15,000 people, chanting, ‘down with the regime,’ and that’s it. The flame was bursting in every vein in me. […] We tried to make it to Tahrir Square, but we were scattered all over Downtown in groups, because the police forces, […] they had [a] heavy presence. (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, October 14, 2014)

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While some protest marches were eventually successful in making their way to Tahrir Square, this was not necessarily the case for all of them. Mohamed N. noted how the march he participated in was dispersed by the CSF and how the protesters would then be spread out through parts of Downtown Cairo. Similarly, Ramy S., at the time a member of the Revolutionary Socialists, described how he and a number of fellow protesters unsuccessfully tried to rally supporters in a part of Giza. Recalling his experiences of that day, he pointed out that I was trying with some of my colleagues to start a demonstration in Giza. One of my colleagues was living there, he invited us to come. Let us go to the people in our neighborhood, let us talk to them and make our own demonstration. We tried to do this, but we were there at 10 or 11 a.m., we had no response and found ourselves to have no response. Our nearest demonstration was in Imbaba, so me and two of our colleagues decided to participate in that demonstration. We went there at around 1p.m. and remained there probably until 5p.m. or 6p.m. (Ramy S., interview, Cairo, November 16, 2015)

Thus, while far from all attempts to mobilize protesters were successful, either due to a lack of willing participants, or due to effective protest policing by the CSF, the size and scope of the demonstrations went far beyond the expectations—or even hopes—of the organizers and activists that called for the protests in the first place. During the afternoon and early evening, as Rana N. recalled, increasing numbers of protesters managed to make their way to Tahrir Square. She noted that earlier during the day […] we arrived at Tahrir Square, and see that it is completely empty. There were just officers located, talking on their walkie-talkies. The square had been completely evacuated from cars and pedestrians. And then the protest arrived […] the last cordon, which was by Abdel Moniem Riad, that is at the entrance of Tahrir Square, and then, you know, there was a minute of deliberation, and then they just pushed through and went into the square. That is where I was for the rest of the day. Then other protests arrived and it started to get really big […]. (Rana N., interview, Cairo, April 26, 2015)

Here, Rana N. mentioned the beginning of what some of the protesters had planned to be the beginning of a prolonged occupation of the square.

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Farah E., who actively participated in the April 6, 2008 Facebook group and was now a memver of the Baradei Campaign, mentioned that she arrived as part of a larger protest in the square during the late afternoon. Noting the lack of a pre-planned course of action, she pointed out that I think we reached Tahrir Square about 5 or 6 p.m., then we celebrate, when we find all these people in Tahrir square, ah, for the first time, and then to think, with the people, what is next. What will be the next move? (Farah E., interview, Cairo, April 20, 2015)

Upon having arrived on Tahrir Square, Dina T. who had been participating in the protest originating in Nahia, noted that Yeah, so, when we reached Tahrir, we were supposed to buy blankets and to prepare to stay. So, when we got to Tahrir, we started collecting money, and we got 11,000 pounds, and we gave the 11,000 [Egyptian] Pounds to people to buy blankets and food, and they were arrested the moment they got out of Tahrir. (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015)

Not only were the people dispatched to organize the necessary supplies arrested by the security forces, but the CSF attempted to disperse the protesters and to clear the square only a few hours later. Wael B. described how the riot police foiled the plan to establish a presence in the square during that evening. He remembered that We got to Tahrir Square, and we make the decision that we will stay […]. After some time, we have a lot of news that the police will come at 12 o’clock and disperse all people. And, we said, okay, let them come. What will happen? From the beginning, we knew what would happen. So, we will stay in Tahrir Square. At 11 o’clock, they come with a lot of tear gas and try to break it up. Most of us are running out and go to other places. Me myself and some of my friends go to Downtown streets and run from the police. That is another strategy. We found it in this time. This was not planned, moving in the streets, in the small streets. The police come and block the street, and we run into another street. We wait and see what will happen. So, from 12 until 4 a.m., or 5 a.m., we are just moving in the streets. From Downtown to Shobra, to Imbaba to whatever streets we can use, and in the beginning, we are very few people. After some time, more people join us, and we are demonstrating in the street. (Wael B., interview, Cairo, November 29, 2015)

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In Downtown Cairo, the night did not end when the protesters were dispersed around midnight. While some actually went home, others were chased by the police through the quarter for the better part of the night (cf. Ahmed H., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014).

Chapter Summary Building on the account of previous protest episodes that occurred during the first decade of the new Millennium, the present chapter illustrated how a diverse group of activists originating from a number of different social movement organizations within the broader Cairo-based political opposition, under the impression of the revolutionary uprising in Tunisia, started to plan and mobilize for a protest event against police brutality on January 25, which marks the Egyptian National Police Day. Building on interviews with key players in this process, the chapter recounted how this group, which later on came to be known as the “Coalition of the Youths of the Revolution” (cf. Abdelrahman, 2015; Clarke, 2014), sought to build alliances with other societal actors, like human rights NGOs and Ultras —groups of radical football fans. These alliance building efforts served the purpose of broadening the base of potential participants. Additionally, the chapter provided deep insights into the planning of and mobilization for this protest event—including a secret protest in a less affluent neighborhood of Cairo. Building on this discussion, the chapter outlined how these initial protests, to the surprise of both the activists who had called for these protests and that of the security forces who sought to suppress them, unfolded on January 25 and attracted Egyptians from all walks of life.

Notes 1. See Cook (2012, pp. 36–37) for a more detailed discussion of the circumstances that led to this incident. 2. The Democratic Front Party. 3. The Muslim Brotherhood, which renounced violence as a means to fulfill their objectives already in 1981, has tried, since the turn of the Millennium, to establish itself as a legitimate political actor. Their main objective was to achieve their desired policy goals, through the institutionalized political process (Henner Fürtig, interview, Hamburg, September 18, 2014). By some, at least until the Uprising of 2011, they were considered the only legitimate

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political sense of 4. See also 5. See also

opposition. Legitimate, in this case, should be understood in the not being co-opted by the regime (Ranko, 2015). Clarke (2014, p. 390). Clarke (2014, p. 386).

References Albrecht, H. (2013). Raging against the machine: Political opposition under authoritarianism in Egypt. New York: Syracuse University Press. Abdelrahman, M. (2015). Egypt’s long revolution: Protest movements and uprisings. New York: Routledge. Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 611–639. Clarke, K. (2014). Unexpected brokers of mobilization: Contingency and networks in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising. Comparative Politics, 46(4), 379–397. Cook, S. A. (2012). The struggle for Egypt: From Nasser To Tahrir Square. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Della Porta, D. (2013). Repertoires of contention. In D. A. Snow, D. Della Porta, B. Klandermans, & D. McAdam (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of social & political movements (Vol. 3, pp. 1081–1083). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Dorsey, J. (2012). Pitched battles: The role of ultra soccer fans in the Arab Spring. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 17 (4), 411–418. El-Hennawy, N. (2011). The making of a police state: From the battle of Ismailiya to Khaled Saeed. Egypt Independent. http://www.egyptindependent. com/news/making-police-state-battle-ismailiya-khaled-saeed. Elyan, T. (2011). Thousands protest across Egypt in ‘day of anger’. Daily News Egypt. https://wwww.dailynewssegypt.com/2011/01/28/egypt-police-firetear-gas-rubber-bullets-at-protestors/. Ghonim, W. (2012). Revolution 2.0: The power of the people is greater than the people in power: A memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Khamis, S., & Vaughn, K. (2011). ‘We are all Khaled Said’: The potentials and limitations of cyberactivism in triggering public mobilization and promoting political change. Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research, 4(2–3), 145– 163. Lim, M. (2012). Clicks, cabs, and coffee houses: Social media and oppositional movements in Egypt, 2004–2011. Journal of Communication, 62(2), 231– 248. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01628.x. Osman, T. (2013). Egypt on the brink: From Nasser to the Muslim Brotherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ranko, A. (2015). The Muslim Brotherhood and its quest for hegemony in Egypt: State discourse and Islamist counter-discourse. Wiesbaden: Spring VS.

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Schemm, P. (2003). Egypt struggles to control anti-war protests. http://www. merip.org/mero/mero033103. Tilly, C. (1986). The contentious French. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER 4

From Protest to Revolution

Abstract This chapter discusses the widespread and large-scale diffusion of protest following the initial protests on January 25. Taking its point of departure in the preparations and plans activists made for an even larger protest event on January 28—as well as the regime’s efforts to counter these attempts, the chapter outlines how the so-called ‘Friday of Rage’ played out in the streets of Cairo. These events not only marked the beginning of the prolonged occupation of Tahrir Square in the heart of Downtown Cairo, but also the beginning of the end of Hosni Mubarak’s presidency, which had lasted for nearly thirty years. Keywords Diffusion of protest · January 28 · ‘Friday of Rage’ · Tahrir Square · Hosni Mubarak

Having discussed the preparations for and unfolding of the large-scale popular protests on January 25, 2011, this chapter is geared toward, what some activists called, the ‘real’ beginning of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Rather than speaking of 18 days in Tahrir Square, these individuals prefer to speak of 15 days, since it was only on January 28—commonly known as the ‘Friday of Rage’—that a prolonged and sustained occupation of the square in the heart of Downtown Cairo was initiated. Focusing on a set of actors engaging in forms of contentious collective action by navigating and operating in a given political opportunity structure, this chapter tackles the preparations for said ‘Friday of Rage.’ A clear © The Author(s) 2020 A. F. Wackenhut, Understanding Protest Diffusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39350-2_4

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focus is placed on the efforts of the Coalition of the Youths of the Revolution and its attempts to organize an even bigger protest event. At the same time, some attention will be paid to the ways in which the regime tried to counter these efforts by, for instance, cutting Internet and cellphone services on January 28. In subsequent sections, the initial phases of this protest event will be discussed, while also touching upon the ways in which January 28 paved the way for the long-term occupation of Tahrir Square until February 11 when Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down after nearly thirty years as president of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Interestingly, the relative importance and influence of the activists from the Cairo-based political opposition, who yet again functioned as early risers during the early stages of the ‘Friday of Rage,’ diminished markedly as more and different segments of the Egyptian society joined the protests. To illustrate this point, the chapter is structured as follows. The first section provides a detailed account of the ways in which the coalition sought to prepare for the large-scale protest event on January 28. Considering, however, that such episodes, as McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001) have argued, are best understood in terms of dynamic interactions between two or more actors with interests that are perceived to be incompatible, some attention will be devoted to the regime’s efforts to counter the activists’ efforts to mobilize supporters, by cutting the Internet and cellphone services. As shown in a subsequent section, these drastic measures failed to produce the desired outcome, as the overwhelming protest participation on the ‘Friday of Rage’ demonstrated. Then, a third section outlines how this protest event, starting after the traditional Friday prayer, developed and became the starting point for the prolonged and sustained occupation of Tahrir Square by protesters from many different segments of the Egyptian society. While protest participation broadened significantly, the coordination between protesters and activists became increasingly difficult, due to the highly organic and contingent nature of the ensuing confrontations. Only during the days following January 28 were the activists and protesters on Tahrir Square able to self-organize their prolonged occupation of the square, which eventually outlived the Mubarak presidency.

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Preparing for January 28 The protesters who had managed to occupy Tahrir Square on January 25 were dispersed and driven from the square by the Central Security Forces (CSF) before the day ended. While some long-time activists had initially expected the day to be an isolated event, this was, as it turned out, not the case. For much of the night from the 25th to the 26th, smaller groups of protesters were chased by riot police units through the streets of Downtown Cairo. Confrontations, on a smaller scale, continued even during the following two days in many parts of the country. In Cairo, these protests mostly took on the form of small-scale clashes between groups of protesters and the CSF. Hazem B., described the next two days in the following way. He recalled that on the 26th and 27th most of the demonstrations were like spontaneously gather, protest, police disperse them, gather again, protest and so on and so on. There was no organization. The police arrested hundreds of people […]. Okay, if you arrest hundreds of people, there is other hundreds and thousands, so you will not affect the movement. That is what happened on the 26th and 27th . (Hazem B., interview, Cairo, April 28, 2015)

Similar scenes played out in other parts of the country as well. The people of Suez, for instance, maintained higher degrees of collective mobilization during the days following the initial protests. Notably, as multiple interviewees emphasized, it was also in Suez where the security forces killed the first protester. Mohamed S. recalled that The change came, when they killed someone in Suez. This one was a poor guy, a worker, had a decent education, is earning like 10 Dollars a week, or something. (Mohamed S., interview, Cairo, November 29, 2014)

Mohamed S., and others, stressed that this death outraged many of those who had participated in the first protests on National Police Day. Following Hess and Martin’s (2006) work, this could be understood in terms of a ‘backfiring of repression,’ which has been identified by scholars like Chenoweth and Stephan (2011, p. 50) as a factor potentially increasing protest participation. Along these lines, Hazem B. pointed out that What happened in Suez, when the first protester was killed, and the anger in Suez, was that it started huge clashes between protesters and police

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officers there. They started to burn the police stations one by one, the number jumped from one to four. At that time, when the number jumped from one to four it was like, oh my god. (Hazem B., interview, Cairo, April 28, 2015)

While protests continued, to varying degrees, during the following days, most members of the coalition that had called for and coordinated these events kept a low profile and sought to plan a follow-up event on January 28, which would later on become known as the Friday of Rage. Preparing the ‘Friday of Rage’ When discussing the period between the initial protests and the Friday of Rage, Hazem B. described how many of the organizers of January 25 vanished from public view during the next few days. He noted that Actually, the main activists who organized the 25th of January, they disappeared from the streets. Most of them, not all of them. They are not public figures. They are not El-Baradei […] no, I am talking about young men. They were known very well to the police; [but] they were not known [to] the normal people. They were known in the political sphere, but they disappeared, because actually, if anyone of them went to the street on the 26th or 27th [they would be arrested] and people needed to think about what they would do. (Hazem B., interview, Cairo, April 28, 2015)

His observations correspond very well to the first-hand accounts of several coalition members who noted that they had to disappear from public view for a number of days. Dina T. stressed that We could not get home, because we would get arrested. They actually raided some houses. So, we stayed out for two nights. (Dina T., interview, Cairo, November 20, 2015)

For these activists, the risk of getting arrested was very real. Mohamed A., who had played a key role in developing the plan for the ‘secret’ protest in Nahia, was arrested on January 26. He had to spend three nights in police custody before being released on January 29. He noted that I was in jail, and I was crying since they are doing it (the uprising) without me. (Mohamed A., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

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However, activists who had successfully avoided arrest started to think about yet another large-scale protest event. Discussions among the members of the group quickly came to focus on the upcoming Friday. Referencing a meeting that took place in the early morning of January 26, Kareem N. noted, for instance, that On this day at five, we had a meeting and we decide to support these demonstrations on the 26th and the 27th , and to announce that the 28th will be our great show. I write on Facebook that for all of our colleagues in all the governorates, stay hard today and tomorrow, and our great show will be on the 28th . (Kareem N., interview, Cairo, November 30, 2015)

The rationale underlying the decision to schedule the protest event for the upcoming Friday was relatively simple. Mostafa G. stressed the role of the traditional Friday prayers as a regularly occurring gathering of large numbers of people, which presented the organizers with a sufficient population of potential protesters. He emphasized that In our meetings we decided about this. It is the Friday prayers. It is a natural gathering, of course. Through these gatherings, like the one in Nahia, we will try to lead [people] from the mosques to Tahrir Square. When we all agreed on that, we decided who is responsible for this mosque and that mosque. The Muslim Brotherhood took responsibility for a couple of mosques. (Mostafa G., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

Here, it is important to note that mosques, all throughout the country, were identified as potential rallying points for the protests. Mosques, as Kurzman (2004, p. 38) pointed out, had already played an important role as focal points for popular mobilization during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Similarly, churches had been used as staging grounds for protests during the Montagsdemonstrationen (Monday demonstrations) in the German Democratic Republic during the final months preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (cf. Opp & Gern, 1993). While Egyptian activists had called for protesters to gather at a delimited number of predetermined sites prior to the National Police Day, this was not the case during the planning of the ‘Friday of Rage’. Here, the plan was to simply call for protests following the Friday prayer. Amr N., a member of the Baradei Campaign, recalled that

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We didn’t [specify] places in the announcement, so people just, after their prayer, after the Jumu’ah prayer, go for the square by themselves. This was very, very smart, because it is making demonstrations from every mosque in Cairo. After the prayer, each small mosque takes a demonstration from it to Tahrir Square, and they start very small, but they are moving. (Amr N., interview, Cairo, November 29, 2015)

Hazem B.’s recollection of the publicly announced calls for the Friday protests corresponds very well to those cited above. When discussing the days and hours leading up to January 28, B. pointed out that So, I think that was a turning point. That is what really affected the people and made the 28th of January. On the 28th of January, there was no sort of telling people, we will start here, and here, and here. The call was to protest everywhere, to start from every mosque and every church, to protest in every square after the Friday prayer. Of course, there was sort of internal organization. We will go to this area and you to that […]. (Hazem B., interview, Cairo, April 28, 2015)

Similarly, Wael Ghonim, one of the administrators of the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ page, described how the Facebook event created for January 28 quickly reached a broad audience. Ghonim (2012, p. 195) quoted a number close to 500,000 potential protesters. However, Ghonim himself, as noted by Sullivan (2013, p. 78), was arrested by the Egyptian police shortly afterwards only to be released on February 7. While Ghonim was arrested, the public announcement, which was circulated, for instance, on Facebook, called for Egyptians to rally after the Friday prayer at their local mosques. At the same time, members of the coalition tried to coordinate their own activities. Mohamed El-Baradei had announced that he would be returning to Egypt to participate in the protests on January 28, starting in a mosque in Giza. Knowing that Baradei’s participation in a specific gathering would attract a substantial presence of the security forces, the coalition members decided to deliberately avoid this particular mosque. Kareem N. recalled that At this point, we decided that he will pray in Giza and no one will go with him, because we have to get a lot of people. If you are in anywhere, the police will go there. So, you have to start from the outside. I called A., and went to him. I told him, the Doctor will go from Giza, but we will not go with him. We will go from another location. Okay, we were thinking

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that we would start our protest after the prayer, but actually, we started our protest before the prayer, and our plan was Talbeya in Haram Street. This protest will come to Giza Square, and a lot of our protesters will be from up of the bridge. Because, when you are down, and they (the police) are up, they can shoot you easily. We had to get all of the bridges, also the October bridge, and the May bridge. (Kareem N., interview, Cairo, November 30, 2015)

While Kareem N., a leading member of the Baradei Campaign, was quite naturally in favor of Baradei’s presence during the event, a number of other activists viewed his planned participation in somewhat less favorable terms. Noting the necessity of a number of last-minute changes due to Baradei’s intention to pray in Giza, Amany S. pointed out that For example, on the 27th we had to change the whole plan, the marching and meeting point. Because Baradei came back to Egypt on the 27th . […] So, we were originally supposed to march from somewhere in El-Haram, where we would meet poor people, and also some middle-class people on our way. [To] gather people, we always needed to start from a very poor area, with chants for social justice for them, to convince them that this is for them. So, he (Baradei) decided that he, on the 28th , will pray in Giza Square. This means that all the cameras will be there and waiting for us to join, but we [would] not be available to join. (Amany S., interview, Cairo, November 17, 2015)

Already a day prior to these discussions, it became apparent that yet another actor would officially start to support the uprising. Mostafa G. noted that he learned on January 26, the day following the initial protests, that the Muslim Brotherhood would now officially back the planned protests on January 28. He recalled that Then, on the 26th came the message that the Brotherhood came to join. I hadn’t met [the two Muslim Brothers] before the 25th . But, then they formally joined. Maybe before that they had informally joined through their friendship with Kareem mainly, but afterwards, they formally joined. And then it was when the coalition was formally in place, but again, it was not yet called the coalition. (Mostafa G., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015)

Tarek H., at the time a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, recalled that much of the organization’s leadership had maintained its rather skeptical

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position vis-à-vis the uprising and continued to stress the importance of trying to effect political change through the institutionalized political process. However, since most leaders had been arrested in the wake of the initial protests on January 25, Tarek H. noted that one of the leaders who had managed to evade the authorities decided to officially endorse the ‘Friday of Rage.’ Tarek recalled that a senior member of the organization responded to their request to officially back the uprising by saying Yes, Tarek, yes Mostafa, I do what you need. And he called other groups in […] Cairo, please do what they ask. This is the place to meet in Imbaba, Shobra, […] in Aghouza, in Dokki, in all of this. We must pray in this mosque, and hear to what the other movements say, when they say the slogan ‘Yaskut, Yaskut, Yaskut Mubarak,’ when they say this […] say it. (Tarek H., interview, Cairo, October 22, 2014)

In sum, it could be argued that the ‘Friday of Rage,’ just like January 25, was planned and coordinated by a number of different actors within the broader Cairo-based political opposition. However, on this occasion, the planning was not as detailed as it had been for the previous event. The officially released call for the protest was less specific and significantly broader. The fact that Mohamed El-Baradei returned to Egypt and that the Muslim Brotherhood now threw its weight behind the event is a clear indication of the changed perceptions of, now broader, political opportunities to openly challenge the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Preparing to Counter the ‘Friday of Rage’ As protesters geared up for this new large-scale protest, the regime sought to counter and suppress popular mobilization. To accomplish this objective, the regime adopted quite drastic measures, namely, disrupting various means of communication on the eve of January 28. These countermeasures included the suspension of both Internet and cellphone services. Mohamed L. described the events in the following way. He noted that Yeah, no, the Internet was cut on Friday. It was cut by Friday in the morning, or maybe Thursday in the evening that is when the Internet was cut. But, I mean, everybody said that Friday, Friday we are going back. So, everybody knew. I don’t know how it spread, but everybody basically expected Friday, Friday after the prayer to be the day. The Friday of Anger. (Mohamed L., interview, Cairo, April 15, 2015)

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Some activists, like Sherif M., attempted to circumvent the regime’s measures. While there were some temporary successes, according to his own account, they ultimately failed to break through the Internet blockade. When I came back from work, the country, all the country was moving like crazy. Some friends told me that the NTI, the National Telecommunications Institute, [was] putting up a firewall to block any access for Skype or Facebook. So, we made a small committee to break this firewall. And, we broke it three times until 3a.m. The first attack was 7p.m., the second attack was 11p.m., [and] the third attack was 2a.m. And everything was working fine this time. At 5a.m., they started to shut down the Internet. It was completely shut down by 5a.m. I do not know how. This was a surprise to me. […] It is illogical, but, they did it. There was no Internet access all over the country. And, I, even I with all my Internet skills, my network skills, all my security skills, I did not find a connection behind this. Behind the backbone, the backbone itself, I am losing the connection. So, for me, it was a physical shutdown. They stopped the backbone itself. So, honestly, I do not know how they did it. (Sherif M., interview, Cairo, November 4, 2014)

The fact that access to the Internet was shut down to a large extent is well established in the literature, and it was brought up by basically all respondents interviewed in the context of this project. Various news outlets reported on the issue and noted that such a step was rare, but not completely unprecedented. The online edition of the New York Times reported that, up to that point, only Burma and Nepal had taken to this measure of last resort. Burma had cut off access in 2007, and Nepal in 2005 (Richtel, 2011). Christopher Williams, writing for the online edition of The Telegraph, mentioned that “more than 3,500 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routes by Egyptian ISPs” were rendered inoperational. He continued by pointing out that about 88 percent—the NYT mentioned circa 90 percent—of the Egyptian Internet was offline (Williams, 2011). During the research for this book, Sherif M.’s account of the shutdown and his committee’s attempts to circumvent the blockade were presented to two IT experts to assess its plausibility. Tiny S., who works in the IT security division of a German medium-sized company, noted that such a two-pronged approach would be the standard operating procedure when confronted with a security breach. In a first step, intrusion prevention, one would attempt to lock out or re-direct one or more intruders with

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firewalls. Only then, if these measures prove ineffective, one would quite literally ‘pull the plug’ to mitigate damage. Such a drastic step, however, would only be a measure of last resort (Tiny S., email conversation, June 3, 2015; Nils Löwe, email conversation, June 2, 2015). However, it was not only access to the Internet that was cut, but also other means of communication, like cellphone services. Mobile phones have, by all means, become ubiquitous throughout the country. While access to cell phones was something of a rarity during the beginning of the decade, these devices quickly proliferated in the second half. By 2010, there were 85 mobile cellular subscriptions per 100 people, according to World Bank (2019) data. Since cell phones were one of the primary means of communication, aside from direct messages sent via Facebook, for many of the respondents, such a step had the potential to dramatically hinder the timely exchange of information (Mohamed S., interview, Cairo, November 29, 2014). Also, on the 28th , mobile phones were disconnected, totally. I mean, the coverage, it was completely disconnected. And even the net, all connections to the Internet were completely cut on that day. There was not even […], I mean, if you lost somebody, if you lost a friend, you could not just talk to him at all. It was impossible. […] So, they thought on Friday that we would be much more and they decided that they would not accept that people go to Tahrir Square by any means. […] So, they, from the day, from the start of the day, they completely disconnected mobile phone services and the Internet services. (Ahmed H., interview, Cairo, November 1, 2014)

While the authorities successfully cut access to these means of communication, it could be argued that these measures did not have the desired effect. Rather than curtailing mobilization, these steps backfired; producing an unintended—if not the opposite of the intended—effect (Hess & Martin, 2006; Martin, 2006). As Noor N. pointed out, it was not even necessarily outrage over the fact that people were all of a sudden unable to connect, which made people go out into the streets. In some cases, it was simple and honest curiosity. […] People wake up in the morning. Internet isn’t working at night, telephones, mobile phones are not working in the morning. So, lots of people are like ‘What […] is happening?’ Lots of people who didn’t even know

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what was happening, or didn’t even care what was happening, went down to see what is happening, because their phones were switched off. There was no signal. Typically, lots of people go and pray on Fridays. So, that means that there were lots of congregations. (Noor N., interview, April 20, 2015)

Meet You at the Mosque Using mosques as rallying points for the ‘Friday of Rage’ was, as discussed above, the general plan announced by the coalition of activists who had also called for the initial protests on January 25. One activist, Mohamed N., described the beginning of the Friday in the following words: The Coalition of the Youth, they started an announcement where everyone should congregate on the 28th of Jan. It is a Friday […] you know the Friday prayers, right […]. All Egyptians are in the prayers, so that was an easy point to mobilize people. And, we were told, they were gonna shut down cell phones. So, we had agreed, I had agreed with one of my cousins, she is a young activist, she and her three brothers, they were going to come to my place and meet with my mother and my sisters. We stayed at my mom’s place, me and my sister, we went to stay at my mom’s place in Nasr City. So, we went to a local mosque where we used to pray. (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, October 14, 2014)

When discussing the early hours of January 28, Omar R. shared his own, very personal preparations for the day, before heading out to a mosque in Downtown Cairo. I wrote my name and address on my hand, because I thought that there would be violence in the streets. And I thought that I might get injured or even shot dead […]. I am from Cairo, but my dad is from the village, so I go there. And the people, they wrote their names [on] their hands when they went to Cairo, so that when something happens, if they get a disease, dead or sick they can return him to the village. So, they can’t write, lots of them don’t even have identity cards as villagers, so, it is […]. It was put in my mind that whenever you are going into a place that you don’t know if you are going to live or not, just write your info down. This was the first time [for me]. (Omar R., interview, Cairo, October 30, 2014)

Then, he continued to describe the unfolding of the events.

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This is the first thing that I did. Secondly, I thought that [with] my colleagues at the Nasr City mosques, I will go Downtown, like I told you, I went by Qasr Al-Nile street, and then to Omar Makram Mosque and found that it was closed. So, I went to the mosque to do my prayer at, ah, Bab El-Louk, it is a place near at Tahrir Square. And then, I prayed the Jumu’ah prayer. Even when I was going, I was going early. And, my mother was astonished. I was (laughs ) I was not used to go praying before Jumu’ah prayer. My mamma used to beg me, please go and pray, please (laughs ). So, she was really astonished. I was going up early, I was going to pray (laughs ). (Omar R., interview, Cairo, October 30, 2014)

Not far from this location, at the symbolic Azhar Mosque, Mohamed S. also meant to attend the Jumu’ah prayer. On Friday, I was taking my last exam, everyone was mobilized, everyone was agitated, we will go there, we will protest. Everyone was planning to go to Azhar Mosque. It was so symbolic; it was the first place to have a demonstration against the French campaign of Napoleon here in Egypt. It was the first place to say ‘no’ to the British occupation back in 1919. (Mohamed S., interview, Cairo, November 29, 2014)

There was little variation in the ways most interviewees described the hours leading up to the Friday prayer. Mariam M. described similar experiences, not only during the hours leading up to the prayer, but also when it comes to the minutes after the prayer ended. This was how it started. It was people going into a mosque, and I could see that there was a level of fear inside of the mosque. Because, people were praying. […] and, if you look beside you, you could see a [surgical mask] in the mosque […]. I knew, I knew that she was going to a protest. I knew she was not a doctor. I can see, I could see that she is going to a protest. So, just please tell me that you are going to a protest, but there was also this level of fear. You just couldn’t trust the person next to you […], you know, so, I couldn’t say ‘We are going to do this together.’ We were alone, but still there was this feeling that we are going to do it. I couldn’t say it, and the other person couldn’t say that […] and even if she would say it [sic!], you couldn’t be sure. But I had made the decision to go with my three brothers, and some of my acquaintances that I knew who [were] going to the streets, so it was about close circles. (Mariam M., interview, Cairo, November 14, 2014)

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The experiences of Omar R. and Sara S. during the moments following the end of the Friday prayer are essentially identical to those outlined above by Mariam M., even though they were praying in different mosques in different parts of the city. Especially the elements relating to mutual distrust, a fear of each other—but also hope—are worth emphasizing in this context. Omar R.: Yeah, so, I went there and I prayed the Jumu’ah, and then, after the prayer, everyone in the mosque was looking at each other, absolutely everyone in the mosque was looking to each other. They were waiting for someone to start. Sara S.: Because they were not trusting each other. Omar R.: Yes. Sara S.: They thought that they were police or something. Omar R.: Yes. Sara S.: And even if you were suspecting that they were going to the demonstration, you did not know. Omar R.: Yes. Sara S.: They were afraid that I might be a police[man]. So, they were standing and waiting and looking at me. And, I was standing and looking at you. So, we were looking to each other. Omar R.: Yes. […] So, this is the first thing that I did, I got over my fear, and said that we are going against Mubarak. Sara S.: And then, we got beaten up (laughs). Omar R.: Yes, and, and then I shouted ‘The people demand the removal of the regime,’ and then I started a march toward Talat Harb and then on to Tahrir. And, you know, at that time I was going from Bab El-Louk and from every side street I found people joining. And, at that time, I just looked behind me, and I found thousands of people. And then, the clashes started. It was first by tear gas, and then, by rubber bullets. And then, they used everything in their power they can do. But, you know, we were a lot of people. (Omar R. and Sara S., interview, Cairo, October 30, 2014)

Similar scenes played out in the vicinity of other mosques as well. Mariam M. recalled, for instance: And then, we walked. And then, after we prayed, we went out and everyone was just standing there, looking around. And then, I can’t remember who, but somebody started to shout and everyone shouted afterwards. […] It was amazing. It was amazing! And then, we started walking, and

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people started to come out, they started to gather, and we started, we moved. The march that I walked in –I don’t know if you know the geography of Egypt– but we walked from Heliopolis. (Mariam M., interview, Cairo, November 14, 2014)

After praying in a mosque in yet another part of Cairo, Mohamed N. described the events that began to unfold in the following way [It is] a huge mosque and we started to protest immediately after the prayer was done. We were like five people. In no time, there were like 250 people from the mosque with us. By the time we reached the main street, there were more than 3,000. Later, there were more than 30,000 walking behind me thinking I was some kind of an underground, organized leader. I was just like everyone. (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, October 14, 2014)

The number of protesters joining the march that was mentioned by Mohamed N. could not be independently verified. Hence, it should not be taken for granted, but rather should be understood as an account of the process through which individuals joined the march. Starting at another mosque in the area of Imbaba, a less well-off neighborhood of Greater Cairo that administratively belongs to the Giza Governorate, Salma M. described the dynamics of the march that formed in front of a mosque. So, I joined on the 28th . Well, this is probably the first time I filmed a protest, a march, a demo. It was really exciting. I was there from the beginning, and it was the Friday of Anger. We met in front of a Mosque in Imbaba, and carried on from there. I remember at the beginning of the march, it was actually, a small crowd. Not small, but compared to what happened later, it was small. Actually, you could see people leaving what they were doing, like selling in the street, and joining. It was just people joining. Sometimes just for a little bit, like walking and then leaving. There was this curiosity. (Salma M., interview, Cairo, November 13, 2014)

Here, it is interesting to note the nuances in Salma’s account of the participants in this protest. Only a minority of individuals joining the protests on this day were actually experienced and committed activists. The vast majority were, what some activists would usually call, ‘normal’ people (Ramy N., interview, Cairo, April 16, 2015). Notably, not all of them

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joined for the purpose of directly confronting the regime. Some, as Salma M. and others pointed out, only joined the march out of curiosity. Some stayed with the march, while others dropped out after a while to return to their daily activities. This is in so far notable as it provides some additional details on the dynamics of the protest diffusion process during these early stages of the ‘Friday of Rage.’ While, in fact, a very large number of Egyptians from all social strata took to the streets, it was not Egypt in its entirety that rose up to confront the regime. Just to dwell a little longer on these early stages of the day; it is worth stressing that events seemed to follow a very similar pattern for most activists, regardless of their ideological convictions or organizational affiliation. The accounts of (former) Muslim Brotherhood members read similar to those of the secular activists. The Muslim Brotherhood’s senior leadership had, as noted earlier, been hesitant to officially endorse the protests on January 25. However, as various scholars, like Hesham Al-Awadi (2013, p. 541) have pointed out, this stance changed markedly prior to the ‘Friday of Rage,’ when the size and scope of the demonstrations became apparent, and the organization “officially endors[ed] participation in the demonstrations […] until Mubarak’s resignation on 11 February” (Al-Awadi, 2013, p. 541). Sherif M. described it as follows: […] I got a message from my responsible person in [the Brotherhood]. It was an SMS. He was telling me that they might cut all communication lines. Moving tomorrow after Jumu’ah prayer with black, black leather jackets and any head cover. Black leather jackets, because [we were] expecting rubber pellets, rubber bullets. And, any cover on [the] head, just to protect, or to eliminate the effect of any [blows to the] head. So, that was a surprise to me. Because, usually, you are telling me, moving from which mosque, to which direction [and] to do what. (Sherif M., interview, Cairo, November 4, 2014)

Sherif M. meant to attend the Friday prayer at the Mostafa Mahmoud Mosque in the rather affluent neighborhood of Dokki. The mosque is located close to the neighboring district of Mohandessin. Recalling the hours after receiving his instructions, Sherif noted: After [hearing] Mostafa Mahmoud Mosque, I just stayed, I couldn’t sleep all night, then, in the morning, I took my car to Six Stars Parking, and I left it there. Then I came back with a taxi. The streets were normal, just quiet. Quieter than normal. Then I went to pray in Mostafa Mahmoud Mosque.

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In the morning, I found many soldiers around Mostafa Mahmoud Mosque. Just before the prayer time. There was nothing around Mostafa Mahmoud Mosque. Usually, from our security experience, usually, they are hiding in the side roads. When the mosque is full of prayers, and they start to pray, they make a siege around the mosque to prevent us from getting out. So, I just prayed in a small mosque near Mostafa Mahmoud. I didn’t pray in Mostafa Mahmoud. We finished our prayer, and found what I had expected. Mostafa Mahmoud prayers [were] under the siege, and many people started to come around Mostafa Mahmoud in the square itself. I met M., he was doing the same. He was praying in another mosque as well, and I asked him what will we do? We were around six or seven people. We just made a circle around Mostafa, and started to call for demonstrations. Once we called in Mostafa Mahmoud Square, they started to release the prayers from there, and people started to come to this mess. And, we started to move from Mostafa Mahmoud square to Talat Ahmed Aziz into the direction of Tahrir Square. (Sherif M., interview, Cairo, November 4, 2014)

As Sherif’s account of the first few hours of January 28 illustrates, there was little difference between the experiences of Islamist and non-Islamist protesters. Much of what happened inside the mosques strongly resonates with Kuran’s (1991) thinking on hidden preferences in the context of his work on the ‘surprising’ revolutions of 1989, which toppled the autocratic regimes of the former Soviet Union. In the mosques, as shown by the Mariam M.’s account, the true preferences, a feeling of opposition to the regime, or maybe the wish to participate in the protests, was initially hidden. People were waiting for someone to take the first step before they could dare to reveal their true preferences. However, since they could not be sure about the preferences of the person next to them, there was a moment at which everyone just looked at each other without anyone taking the initiative. They could not be sure of the true intentions, since the person next to them, as noted by Omar R. and Sara S., could be a plain clothes policeman, or a member of the intelligence apparatus. Only after some had gathered the courage to take the first step and to begin chanting anti-regime slogans, others would reveal their true preferences and join in.

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Contentious Collective Action on January 28 and Beyond The previous section outlined how different activists recalled experiencing the very early phases of the protests on January 28. Building upon this discussion, the present section turns to the ways in which events during that day evolved, from confrontations with the security forces, to the eventual and successful occupation of Tahrir Square, as well as the role played by the Egyptian Armed Forces, which deployed troops later that same evening. Farah E. described, for example, how the protest march she participated in grew in size and subsequently moved in the direction of Tahrir Square. She noted that Farah: We went to a mosque that is close to us in Al-Dokki, and started from there. I came late, so they finished their prayer, and I waited outside for them. Me: How many people were there? Farah: Thousands, a thousand maybe. Me: Was there security around? Farah: Yes, it was security around, but since we were walking, they couldn’t prevent us. When we were walking, they couldn’t surround us, until we came to the main place, the Qasr el-Nile (bridge) when they started the gas bombs. (Farah E., interview, Cairo, November 18, 2015)

According to most accounts, the protesters were initially unable to penetrate a police blockade set up on the Qasr al-Nile bridge. Jenna Krajeski (2011), writing for the New Yorker described the ensuing confrontations when the protesters attempted to take the bridge. She outlined scenes of enormous anti-government protests, with hordes of police officers trying to prevent tens of thousands of protesters from crossing into Downtown. On Friday afternoon, the protesters, braving tear gas and singing the Egyptian National Anthem, made it about a third of the way across before they were pushed back to Opera Square, where they seemed to disperse. After that, the bridge emptied. (Krajeski, 2011)

When recalling these very same moments on January 28, Sherif M. described how the protesters, approaching the area from the Western

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bank of the Nile, made their way onto the bridge and then temporarily halted to pray, when the Muezzin called for the afternoon prayer. We moved. From Galat Square and we started to get back into the Tahrir direction, when we reached Qasr al-Nile bridge. On Qasr al-Nile bridge, al-Asr prayer started to call, so we started to pray on Qasr al-Nile bridge. I was in the fourth row. Until then, no one was killed in Cairo. Of course, I knew about the killed in Sinai and Suez, but no one was killed in Cairo, until then, until that moment. I remember that we were in the fourth row, and they started to shoot the rubber pellets, while we are in sujud.1 We were running, and it was a total mess. (Sherif M., interview, Cairo, November 4, 2014)

Continuing his account of these events, Sherif described how some members of the security forces tried to run over protesters with their vehicles. He remembered that […] I noticed they started to attack with their cars, and I was expecting [them] only to let us get home. Just go home, or you will be arrested for two or three days, and then released. I knew, especially, during the demonstrations. I met some friends who were arrested on 25th and released on 27th or 26th . So, it was, this is the normal repression. But what I found, that they are moving, they are going to hit the people with cars. Not just letting them run. Even myself, I found a car behind me, and I just jumped to the trottoir. I found the car is […] on the trottoir. I was about to fall in the Nile behind me, until it almost touched me. I was telling the driver, what are you doing, you stupid! What you are doing is stupid. I thought it was just a stupid driver, not more than this. But, after they finished all Qasr al-Nile bridge and started to get back, there were many bodies in the street. (Sherif M., interview, Cairo, November 4, 2014)

It was only later during the day that the protesters on the Qasr AlNile Bridge were able to penetrate the blockades set up by the CSF. At the same time, Mohamed N., who participated in another protest that tried to reach Tahrir Square from the North by crossing through Abdel Moniem Riad Square, located close to the Egyptian Museum, detailed how riot police units used large quantities of tear gas trying to disperse the protesters. He noted that The battle for Tahrir was fierce, it was so fierce. They fired their teargas canisters every […] second. Second! You could smell the tear gas miles

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away. It was my first time. I was suffocating. I almost died several times due to suffocation. You would find strangers giving you onions, and vinegar and Coke to wash your face and stuff like that. You enter any building, you would find people, bodies on the ground trying to breathe again. But, the people were adamant they were going to take over Tahrir. (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, October 14, 2014)

Recalling these very same scenes, Amany S. described how the protesters, building on their experiences from January 25, had developed a new tactic to deal with the heavy use of tear gas by the security forces. She elaborated that Later, on the 28th , we decided that we would have ‘hunters.’ People would be standing in front of the march to, their job was to catch the gas bombs and redirect it away from the protesters, so they can keep marching without the effects of the heavy tear gases. […] We bought gloves, but they were very cheap ones. We didn’t have much money back then. I had to wear the gloves of hunters, many of whom were shot, and they carried them away, and I had to act as a hunter on that day. […] That was my first time ever in a real violent confrontation. […] There, I discovered that I can stand in the (tear) gas for like 30 minutes without falling. (Amany S., interview, Cairo, November 17, 2015)

Eventually, the different protest marches, ignoring a curfew that had been declared, were able to make their way to Tahrir Square. Unlike the protest event a few days earlier, the protesters were then able to establish a sustained presence on the square, which would last for, at least, the following 15 days until President Hosni Mubarak stepped down. Here, it should also be noted that a number of interviewees considered this ‘Friday of Rage’ as the real beginning of the uprising. Amal C., for instance, noted that it was only on this day that the protests really came to mobilize and encompass a broad cross-section of the Egyptian society, making it a truly revolutionary uprising (Amal C., interview, Cairo, April 22, 2015). A number of scholars, like Sullivan (2013, pp. 73–74), agree with this assessment and stress that the protest participation broadened markedly in comparison to the January 25 protests, which had still been somewhat dominated by members of the middle-class.

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Diffusion and Escalation The Egyptian Uprising of 2011 has often been touted as a non-violent revolution; as an ideal typical example of successful civil resistance (cf. Sullivan, 2013). There can, in fact, be little doubt that this episode of contention was largely waged by the means of non-violent conflict. However, there were exceptions to this general rule. As discussed above, the security forces used direct violence (cf. Galtung, 1969) in their attempts to quell the protests. In some cases, however, protesters fought back violently as well. As the following quotations indicate, acts of violence were often directed against the security forces as they represented symbols of the regime’s coercive power. But at this time, we lost communication because they cut off the network. They cut the communication network. By this time, we heard that taxi drivers, café boys, everyone who has a direct relation with the police, of being oppressed, of being raped, of being kicked, is now moving with a Molotov, or with guns. They are now moving against the police because they have been oppressed for thirty years. (Mohamed S., interview, Cairo, November 29, 2014)

Hazem B.’s account of these violent episodes is quite similar. That was a reality, there was nothing to lose actually […]. Prices are really high. We have to read what happened on the 28th of January really carefully, and why people concentrated mainly on the police and the interior ministry. Because that was a frontline of the state to keep the social order. There was a huge gap between classes. Lots of socio-economic problems, people were suffering from. From the [19]90s and especially during the last ten years of Mubarak, the only way to keep the social order, was the police. During these ten [years, the] police did everything, from torturing people, from making people afraid to death to talk to a police officer or to go to a police station, and people were really angry because of all of that. (Hazem B., interview, Cairo, April 28, 2015)

For these reasons, police stations were targeted throughout the country. Reports on the exact numbers vary, but a high estimate puts the number at 125 stations that were attacked and set alight. In his account of the role of the lower social strata of society during the Egyptian and Tunisian Uprisings, Yaghi (2014, p. 25) notes that about 99 police stations were burned down on January 28, of which at least 30 were located in and

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around Cairo. Recalling one such incident that occurred on the Friday of Rage, Mariam M., who now works as a researcher for a human rights NGO, noted that I actually saw the police station burn, but I didn’t see exactly how it happened. But I saw the police station burning. I saw with my own eyes, police stations burning. But, I didn’t see who did what. [There were] these individuals that looked, they looked very, very poor. They looked frustrated with the system. One of them went into the police station, and he took the carpet that was inside of the, inside one of the offices. And he came out and held it high, like that (lifts her arms above the head). This is the Carpet Mother […] This is the carpet that they didn’t let me stand on. This is the carpet that they didn’t let me stand on when they were investigating me. This is the carpet mother, now I am having it, and I will bring it back home. (Mariam M., interview, Cairo, November 14, 2014)

Here, Mariam M. described how the protesters channeled their anger on the police, which represented not only a symbol of the regime’s coercive power, but also a focal point for many of their own and very personal grievances.2 Discussing this aspect, Nasr A., researcher at a local human rights NGO, noted that “the people from these neighborhoods burned the police stations everywhere, because this was the symbol of the violence of the state against the people” (Nasr A., interview, Cairo, April 27, 2015). However, it was not only police stations that were torched by protesters during the confrontations on the Friday of Rage. During the protests, the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party, located between the Nile and the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square, was set ablaze and burned out completely. Covering the protests, the BBC (2011a) reported that no one tried to put out the fire as it devoured this symbol of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. As the events on January 28 unfolded, it became increasingly clear that the CSF would be unable to contain the protests. Mohamed N. described how the CSF troops seemed tired and worn out after days of confrontations (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, October 14, 2016). It was in this rather volatile situation that units of the Egyptian Armed Forces were deployed in and around Cairo. Ramy S. described how troops initially moved to secure critical infrastructure. He recalled that

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I saw tanks going to the radio building in Maspiro and the ministry of foreign affairs. After they thought (that) these were secure, they began coming to Tahrir. (Ramy S., interview, Cairo, November 16, 2015)

When the protesters on Tahrir Square saw the military approaching, some greeted them enthusiastically, proclaiming that “the people and the army are one hand,” while others were more ambiguous in this regard, viewing the army—as an institution—as part of the problem rather than as part of the solution (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, October 14, 2015).3 When discussing the initial stages of the military (non-)intervention, Hazem Kandil (2012) noted how from day one, combat units were visibly supportive of the revolt, without waiting for instructions from above, and those higher up in the chain of command prudently issued a number of communiqués describing the people’s demands (the overthrow of the regime) as legitimate, and pledging not to use violence against demonstrators, contrary to what their colleagues did in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. (Kandil, 2012, p. 193)

While many protesters were full of joy about the fact that the armed forces largely replaced the security forces of the Ministry of Interior at the gates to Tahrir Square, others were somewhat more critical. One reason for these less than positive attitudes can be found in the role that the military played during a confrontation that occurred on February 2, which is now commonly called the ‘Battle of the Camels.’ Ramy S. noted that the army had declared their neutrality and that they maintained this stance orally, but during the camel battle, they opened the Square. After the 29th , the tanks were guarding the entrances to the square. At every entrance to the square, there were at least two or three tanks. They opened this and let the Mubarak supporters inside. The Mubarak supporters came from the Abdel Moniem Riad side, and they (the army) said we are not going to intervene in this situation. ‘This is people against each other, so we will not intervene’. (Ramy S., interview, Cairo, November 16, 2015)

Covering this violent confrontation, the Guardian (2011b) outlined how “Egypt’s pro-democracy revolution descended into violence and bloodshed overnight as President Hosni Mubarak’s regime launched a coordinated bid to wrest back control of city streets.” Kareem N. described the

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situation during the early hours of this attack on Tahrir Square in rather bleak terms by noting that They asked me what will happen, and I said, okay, we are dead. We can’t do anything, we are dead. I was thinking like that, at that time. At that time, I thought that they will kill us […]. (Kareem N., interview, Cairo, November 30, 2015)

George Z., who also witnessed these confrontations, described the chaos and confusion that the battle caused among the protesters in Tahrir Square. He outlined how mounted attackers violently sought to drive the protesters from the square, and how the occupiers fought back, trying to repel the attacks. He noted that We were there for some days, and suddenly we found that there were some horses and camels coming. So, we attacked them, and they attacked us. So, everyone attacked each other, because you don’t know who is who. You couldn’t know who is the enemy. I was not in the very front row, but everything is in front of my eyes. Some people on horses, they have weapons, and they try to make everyone around them leave Tahrir Square. The thing happened, we brought them down. I brought down someone from his horse, and he was beaten. Everyone beat him, because he killed many of us. If you let him, he will kill many of us, it was like a war. I don’t want to kill anyone, but I bring him down, and everybody beats him, so, I tell them, please, we don’t want to kill him. And, I push him out of the square. We arrested him for some time, because at the time, we were very kind. We wanted to give him to the police or something. Like that, because he is a really bad person. (George Z., interview, Cairo, November 18, 2015)

It was during this and similar confrontations that groups like the Ultras, but also the Muslim Brotherhood, proved their worth for the anti-regime protesters in Tahrir Square. According to several accounts, the support and experience of the Ultras was invaluable for defending the entrances to the square against the attacks by Mubarak’s supporters. Discussing the role of the Ultra fan groups during this particular day, the blogger Yousssef I. stressed the importance of the Ultras’ rather special skill set— meaning extensive experience in confronting opponents like the security forces—during these clashes. He noted that

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They have experience dealing with the police. There were a lot of them out there, but not just the Ultras. My friends were out there; some of my friends are, like, into fights and stuff. One of them goes to the front and gets shot all over the side and his back. They had to take out all the pellets, and some pellets are still in there, but that is what happens, you go in, and then they bust you all up. That is what happened to the Ultras as well in the battle of the camels on the second of February. There was basically just one camel or two, but it is a fancy title. Then on Wednesday, a lot of them died protecting the north side of the square at Abdel Moniem Riad. They had a huge role to play. (Youssef I., interview, Cairo, November 21, 2015)

The Muslim Brotherhood came, as noted above, to play a role similar to that of the Ultras during this confrontation, which continued through much of the night until February 3. In her discussion of the role of Islamists during the uprising, Sherine ElGhatit (2013, p. 112) pointed toward the critical role played by, most of all, young members of the Muslim Brotherhood. She argued that On the day and night of the February 2 battle in Tahrir Square, Muslim Brotherhood Youth, well trained in tactical battlefield maneuvers, brought homemade firebombs into the square and organized its defense. Barricades were erected with pedestrian guardrails torn out of the pavement. (ElGhatit, 2013, p. 112)

Small-Scale Coordination During the Final 15 Days It was only during the following days that something resembling coordination (re-)emerged among the protesters, when the people occupying Tahrir Square sought to create the conditions necessary for maintaining a prolonged presence in this public space. While, as Ramy S. noted, ever since January 29 “tanks were guarding the entrances to the square. At every entrance to the square there were at least two or three tanks” (Ramy S., interview, Cairo, November 16, 2015), protesters wanted their own security system in place. Mohamed N. outlined how organically formed committees set up a system of checkpoints to control the influx of people coming into Tahrir Square. Mohamed N. described how I started making small meetings where people, the security people started brainstorming on different strategies, [to] gather all the information on

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how to identify, you know, police officers or intelligence officers trying to infiltrate, trying to create problems. So, I got people from the different groups who were volunteering and we made an organizing committee. Every day it would get more and more sophisticated, and every day we learned so many things, how to manage the masses, how to address them. We broke the tiles from Tahrir Square, and also the railings. You will see that Tahrir Square has railings, metal railings all around it. So, we used to bang on them whenever there was an attack by thugs coming from different streets. (Mohamed N., interview, October 14, 2014)

These security measures also included a number of checkpoints at the entrances to the square. As part of his coverage of the events for CNN, Ivan Watson (2011) noted that the protesters manning these control points “conducted their own searches of bags, and ordered arriving people to show their identity cards as they streamed in.” Similar developments occurred in other parts of the city as well. Following the protests on January 28, as a number of interviewees recalled, there was an increasing number of reports of convicted criminals, commonly called ‘thugs,’ either escaping or being released from prisons to create turmoil in the country. Discussing the role of popular committees, El-Meehy (2012) pointed out that police disappeared from the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities at the same time that the state emptied the prisons of thousands of convicts. Neighbourhood watch brigades, typically led by young men, sprang up to fill the security void as reports of criminal violence mounted. Face to face, or via Facebook, these ‘popular committees’ quickly organized themselves and spread beyond urban centers, driven by the imperative of community defense. (El-Meehy, 2012)

To protect their property, many people in the different neighborhoods around Cairo formed local defense committees, running checkpoints in their areas to control who comes and goes and to protect against looters (Hatem Z., interview, Cairo, October 20, 2014). When it comes to the protesters in Tahrir Square, security was not the only area of efforts to self-organize during the last 15 days of President Hosni Mubarak’s reign. For some interviewees, these days resembled a real-life utopia. Farah E., for example, pointed out that

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People protect[ed] each other. There is no sexual harassment,4 the Copts and Muslims are working together. There are families there, not just the men. People tried to clean the place. I cannot talk about it; these are the most honest and beautiful days in my life. (Farah E., interview, Cairo, November 18, 2015)

Echoing the perceptions of Farah E., Mohamed N. described how the protesters sought to self-organize the occupation of the square. He outlined the formation of several smaller and issue-specific committees to address the protesters’ needs as they emerged. Every day [we started] realizing different needs, and we swore total selfdenial. We are going to be servants, nothing but servants to the people in Tahrir Square, and to their cause. Every day we would start a new committee based on the needs that we would identify. So, like food and beverage distribution, food storage, hygiene, and hygiene awareness, political awareness, all sorts of committees. Even an engineering committee that started to construct public toilets. We had someone responsible for Wi-Fi networks and Internet broadcasts. (Mohamed N., interview, Cairo, October 14, 2014)

Initially, as Amany S. pointed out, the protesters’ ability to communicate was rather limited, which resulted in concerted efforts to ameliorate this shortcoming. We need(ed) to start a communication tool. People need something to know what is going on, to know what to call for, to communicate, and also to listen to us, of course. So, we started a radio station […]. (Amany S., interview, Cairo, November 17, 2015)

These measures for more and better communication with the masses on the square also included a number of different public stages. Discussing this particular issue, Amany S. stressed that there was only one single stage in the very beginning of the occupation. She noted that the stage was managed by the Ikhwani 5 section, and by us. These two were responsible for managing the stage, which later resulted in a lot of arrogance, because we have to force, for example, the Ikhwan group that women,6 like me, yes, women with the hair and everything can come in and use the microphone. (Amany S., interview, Cairo, November 17, 2015)

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Additionally, protesters set up a medical clinic to tend to the injuries of those hurt in the confrontations. Mostafa G., a medical doctor and surgeon by training, remembered that “I took part in the field hospital in Tahrir, so I saw a lot of people who were killed and injured. All sorts of injuries I saw there” (Mostafa G., interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015). The practitioners manning this improvised clinic were in high demand during the aforementioned ‘Battle of the Camels’ but also during the following days. Citing eyewitness accounts of doctors working in the clinic, the Guardian (2011a) reported that they treated “over a thousand injured through the night [of February 2], including several dead from gunshots.” The following days, leading up to Mubarak’s eventual (forced) resignation, were marked by continuously high levels of popular mobilization. While, at least in Cairo, Tahrir Square continued to be the focal point of the demonstrations,7 protesters tried, on several occasions, to expand their sphere of influence beyond this centrally located roundabout. As Mostafa G. (interview, Cairo, November 22, 2015) noted, thousands of protesters tried, unsuccessfully, to make their way to the presidential palace in Heliopolis on February 4. At the same time, while the protests continued, increasing numbers of workers went on strike. On February 8, the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper reported that thousands of workers in various parts of the country went on strike with their demands (AhramOnline, 2011).

Defeating a Pharaoh President Mubarak gave a rather unrelenting speech on February 10 and refused to step down whilst delegating authority to his vice president Omar Suleiman (cf. Ghonim, 2012, p. 283). When discussing this speech, a number of interviewees remarked the impact it had on the morale of the protesters occupying Tahrir Square. Esam B., a journalist and blogger noted, for instance, that everyone was waiting, even in the few days before that, there was this expectation that Mubarak would go. He kept making speeches, he was making more and more concessions, but no matter what concessions he made, people were just out there. There was this belief that everybody would just stay until he was gone. (Esam B., interview, Cairo, November 15, 2015)

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Thus, Esam B. stressed the protesters’ apparent willingness to uphold the high degree of mobilization even when Mubarak seemed unwilling to give up his grip on power completely. In her recollection of the speech, Mariam M. put a somewhat stronger emphasis on what she perceived to be its effects on the collective mood of the protesters. She pointed out that Yeah, it was just like that on the day before he stepped down. If he hadn’t stepped down, nothing would have happened. We would have stayed, but it was, like (pause) just before he stepped down, he gave a speech and we all thought that he would step down, but he wasn’t stepping down and it was just so frustrating. Everybody was saying that he is going to step down, but then he didn’t, so everybody was fighting with each other on Tahrir Square. (Mariam M., interview, Cairo, November 14, 2014)

On the same day, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) reiterated that it viewed the protesters’ demands as legitimate. Some considered this announcement the beginning of a soft coup (cf. Kandil, 2012, p. 193). Then, on the following day, the protesters on Tahrir Square and other parts of Egypt, finally received the message they had hoped and fought for. On February 11, the vice president announced on national television that Hosni Mubarak had officially decided to step down and instructed SCAF to manage the daily affairs (Ghonim, 2012, p. 289). Miriam A., a researcher at a human rights NGO, outlined how she experienced this official announcement on Tahrir Square. Whilst describing feelings of utter happiness, she also mentioned a general feeling of disbelief and an inability to fully comprehend what had just happened. She noted And I remember, it was 6p.m. and it was Omar Soliman on the TV saying that Mubarak was stepping down. And people were like chanting and happy. And, I couldn’t believe it, obviously. I just sat there and I didn’t think it would take only 18 days. Toward the end, I thought that he would step down, but I thought it would take longer, after major things would happen. And as happy and ecstatic as people were, I don’t know, on that day it was a bit chaotic. People, everybody was in the streets. People that were against the revolution as well, and I didn’t understand. (Miriam A., interview, Cairo, November 25, 2014)

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After nearly thirty years in office and 18(15) days of continuous largescale protests by different segments of the Egyptian population, Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign.

Chapter Summary Building on the discussion of the initial protests on January 25, this chapter tackled the large-scale diffusion of protest that occurred during the so-called ‘Friday of Rage,’ which marked the beginning of the sustained occupation of Tahrir Square. The event was, just like the prior protest, preplanned and coordinated by a coalition of activists from a number of different movement organizations, which came to be known as the ‘Coalition of the Youths of the Revolution.’ However, the plan developed for this particular event was—by far—less detailed than the one devised for the Egyptian National Police Day. The ‘Friday of Rage’ event was publicly announced via a variety of different channels, like the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook page, which had become a focal point for online dissent and offline mobilization ever since its inception in 2010. The plan was quite unspecific and simply called for people to stage protests following the Friday prayer. With this tactic, the activists sought to reach and mobilize an even greater number of people. Following the unexpectedly high rates of protest participation on January 25, it was not only the ruling regime of Hosni Mubarak that adjusted its stance vis-à-vis the protests. While the regime tried to curtail popular mobilization by cutting both Internet and cellphone services on the eve of January 28, other actors, like the Muslim Brotherhood or Mohamed El-Baradei were now officially supportive of the planned demonstrations due to the changed perceptions of the Egyptian structure of political opportunities. On the designated day, the regime’s countermeasures failed to produce the desired effect. On the contrary, it could be argued that the suspension of telecommunication services backfired and actually helped to increase protest participation (Hess & Martin, 2006). Following the Friday prayers, just like during the earlier protests on January 25, the role of activists from the Cairo-based political opposition is best understood in terms of early risers who—at least to some degree—helped others to overcome emotions of fear and mistrust. Soon, thousands of Egyptians of all walks of life gathered outside of their local mosques. In Cairo, many of these protesters, chanting anti-regime slogans, marched in the direction

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of Tahrir Square, where they were met by Central Security Force units who tried to disperse the crowds. Given, however, the scope and highly contingent nature of these largescale protests, participation and coordination did not develop in parallel. On the ‘Friday of Rage,’ quite the opposite seemed to be true. As more social sectors joined the protests, the level and degree of coordination actually seemed to decrease. As, for example, Sullivan (2013, p. 72) noted the coalition calling for the protests had put a comparatively strong emphasis on using the means of nonviolent resistance to achieve their objectives. However, as thousands of individuals from different strata of society started to openly challenge the regime—and also due to the violent reaction of the security forces—this nonviolent discipline could no longer be upheld completely. Thus, the torched police stations throughout Cairo and other parts of the country serve as a tangible illustration of decreasing coordination as the participation based broadened. It was only after protesters had managed to occupy Tahrir Square and after the Egyptian Armed Forces deployed troops throughout the city that efforts to coordinate became somewhat more effective again. Upon having established a presence on the Square, there were concerted efforts by participants, including members of the different movements,8 to create the conditions necessary for a more sustained occupation of this public space. Until Mubarak’s eventual and forced resignation on February 11, different ad hoc committees were established to address issues like security, health, or communications. This is an important reminder of the dynamic nature of such large-scale episodes of collective contestation, in which the participants act within a constantly changing opportunity structure and try to navigate these structures, in an effort to realize their contentious claims vis-à-vis their opponents.

Notes 1. The sujud marks the element of prostration during the Islamic prayer ritual. 2. These accounts correspond well to Jumet’s (2018) thorough discussion of the various grievances that motivated many ordinary Egyptians to participate in the Uprising of 2011. 3. Here, one should keep in mind that events following the ouster of Mohamed Morsi might have colored the account of the ways in which interviewees felt about the deployment of the Armed Forces during the revolutionary uprising of 2011.

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4. In the period following Mubarak’s ouster, sexual harassment—especially of female protesters—became a severe problem, as Jumet (2018) and others have noted. 5. The Muslim Brotherhood. 6. Here, Amany S. mentions some of the latent conflicts that emerged between the different actors participating in this protest episode. After Mubarak had stepped down, which meant that the coalition had fulfilled its main and shared objective, many more contentious issues would arise (Amany S., interview, Cairo, November 17, 2015). 7. As noted earlier, the anti-regime protests were not limited to the capital. The BBC (2011b) reported, for instance, large-scale protests in ‘Alexandria, Port Said, Rafah, Ismailia, Zagazig, Mahalla El-Kubra’ and other cities throughout the country before and after the ‘Battle of the Camels.’ 8. However, as more and more Egyptians participated in these activities, the relative importance and influence of the activists who had called for these protests diminished quite markedly.

References AhramOnline. (2011). Demonstrations and strikes across Egypt. http://english. ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/0/5239/Egypt/0/Demonstrations-andstrikes-across-Egypt.aspx. Al-Awadi, H. (2013). Islamists in power: The case of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Contemporary Arab Affairs, 6(4), 539–551. BBC. (2011a). Egypt protests: Curfew in cities as army deployed. http://www. bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12311007. BBC. (2011b). Egypt unrest: Obama increases pressure on Mubarak. http://www. bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-12371479. Chenoweth, E., & Stephan, M. J. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. New York: Columbia University Press. ElGhatit, S. (2013). Revolution without Islamists? In D. Tschirgi, W. Kazziha, & S. F. McMahon (Eds.), Egypt’s Tahrir revolution (pp. 109–130). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. El-Meehy, A. (2012). Egypt’s popular committees: From moments of madness to NGO dilemmas. Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). http://www.merip.org/mer/mer265/egypts-popular-committees%3Fip_ login_no_cache%3D21b4db9bf8958ba475a07d39150fb52b. Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191. Ghonim, W. (2012). Revolution 2.0: The power of the people is greater than the people in power: A Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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Guardian. (2011a, February 3, Thursday). Egypt protests. https://www. theguardian.com/news/blog/2011/feb/03/egypt-protests-live-updates. Guardian. (2011b). Egypt’s revolution turns ugly as Mubarak fights back. https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/02/egypt-revolution-turns-ugly. Hess, D., & Martin, B. (2006). Repression, backfire, and the theory of transformative events. Mobilization, 11(2), 249–267. Jumet, K. D. (2018). Contesting the repressive state: Why ordinary Egyptians protested during the Arab Spring. New York: Oxford University Press. Kandil, H. (2012). Back on the horse? The military between two revolutions. In B. Korany & R. El-Mahdi (Eds.), Arab Spring in Egypt: Revolution and beyond (pp. 175–198). Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Krajeski, J. (2011). The taking of Kasr Al Nil. The New Yorker. http://www. newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-taking-of-kasr-al-nil. Kuran, T. (1991). Now out of never: The element of surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989. World Politics, 44(1), 7–48. Kurzman, C. (2004). The unthinkable revolution in Iran. Cambridge¨Harvard University Press. Martin, B. (2006). Justice ignited: The dynamics of backfire. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. McAdam, D., Tarrow, S., & Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Opp, K.-D., & Gern, C. (1993). Dissident groups, personal networks, and spontaneous cooperation: The East German Revolution of 1989. American Sociological Review, 58(5), 659–680. Richtel, M. (2011, 2016, January 28). Egypt cuts off most internet and cell services. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/ 01/29/technology/internet/29cutoff.html. Sullivan, E. T. (2013). Youth power and the revolution. In D. Tschirgi, W. Kazziha, & S. F. McMahon (Eds.), Egypt’s Tahrir revolution. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Watson, I. (2011). In Tahrir Square, ‘we talk as Egyptians’. CNN. http:// edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/02/01/egypt.protests.scene/. Williams, C. (2011, January 28). How Egypt shut down the internet. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ africaandindianocean/egypt/8288163/How-Egypt-shut-down-the-internet. html. World Bank. (2019). Mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100 people). Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2?locations=EG. Yaghi, M. (2014). From everyday resistance to revolution: How the powerless in Tunisia and Egypt overcame the resource problem. Paper presented at the 55th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Toronto.

CHAPTER 5

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

Abstract This chapter concludes the volume and fulfills two interrelated purposes. Firstly, based on the discussion of popular mobilization for socio-political change prior to and during the Egyptian Uprising of 2011, the chapter fleshes out a number of key findings of a more general and generalizable nature. These are namely the critical importance of rather short-term shifts in the perceptions of both political opportunities and threats. These changes not only play a crucial role in attempts to mobilize a large cross-section of society, but also in the actual diffusion of protest. Secondly, the chapter puts the January 25 Uprising into the context of the Egyptian post-revolutionary era, which has been marked by a dramatically increased repressive threat to most forms of real or perceived opposition. Keywords Popular mobilization · Egyptian Uprising of 2011 · Perceptions · Political opportunities and threats · January 25 Uprising · Egyptian post-revolutionary era · Opposition

This book took its point of departure in the puzzling differences in both size and scale between, on the one hand, protests organized by the Cairobased political opposition during the first decade of the new Millennium, and, on the other, the first marches and demonstrations on January 25, which marked the visible beginning of the Egyptian Uprising of 2011. While the largest demonstrations during the Kefaya-era starting in late © The Author(s) 2020 A. F. Wackenhut, Understanding Protest Diffusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39350-2_5

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2004 attracted, according to (El-Mahdi, 2009), only about 2500 thousand participants, tens of thousands of Egyptians of all walks of life took to the streets between January 25, 2011 and February 11, 2011 demanding the “fall of the regime.” In trying to understand of these stark differences, the present book argued that it is essential to carefully study not only underlying structural political opportunities, but also the ways in which different actors, at different times, navigated, affected, and perceived these structures. Here, it was argued that the combination and interaction of these factors would allow for a more complete understanding of the rapid and large-scale diffusion of collective protest during this Egyptian Uprising of 2011. The repeated confrontations between the Cairo-based political opposition and the regime of Hosni Mubarak during the 2000s not only helped to—ever so slightly—change and create more political opportunities for the opposition, but also had a profound impact on the different groups and movements trying to effect this socio-political change. While protests, like those against the imminent invasion of Iraq, in support of the Second Palestinian Intifada, or those that were part of the Kefaya or April 6 campaigns, failed—overall—to achieve movement objectives, they altered the ways in which these groups and movements organized and mobilized. For instance, Kefaya activists, as one of the members argued, helped to normalize street demonstrations and to make them an integral part of the Egyptian repertoire of contention. Additionally, there was a noticeable shift towards more network-based modes of mobilizing support for events—cutting across the organizational and ideological boundaries of individual movement organizations. Furthermore, these episodes resulted in the successful recruitment, politicization and professional socialization of a new generation of activists, many of which would actively participate in the events that began to unfold on the National Police Day of 2011. Such shifts and changes within this segment of the Egyptian opposition notwithstanding, it still seemed difficult if not impossible to successfully mobilize a larger cross-section of society for the purpose of effecting socio-political change. Objectively, the situation in the country seemed relatively stable. However, during the year preceding the uprising, a number of events and processes markedly affected the ways in which different actors—both within and outside of—the Cairo-based political opposition perceived their situation. Issues like the killing of Khaled Said, the flawed parliamentary elections or the bombing of the All Saints Church in

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Alexandria helped to create a widespread perception of both an increasing repressive and current threat. At the same time, factors like the imminent return of Baradei or the uprising in Tunisia, which resulted in the ouster of a long-time authoritarian leader, dramatically changed the ways in which opportunities were perceived. Especially the Tunisian revolution demonstrated to the Egyptian populace that resistance was not just possible but, in fact, feasible. It was in this environment that an ideologically diverse coalition of activists sought to mobilize support for a large-scale protest event against police brutality scheduled for the Egyptian National Police Day on January 25, 2011. In the days leading up to the uprising, this coalition sought to build alliances with other relevant actors, like the unofficial labor movement or the Ultras. In cooperation with the administrators of the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook page, dozens of gathering points in and around Cairo were announced. In addition to these sites, the coalition also planned for at least one secret protest in a less affluent neighborhood with the expressed aim of trying to mobilize what some activists would commonly describe as “normal” people who usually did not participate in the different events organized by the prodemocracy movement. The size and scope of the first protests on January 25 surprised not only the security forces, but also the very activists who had organized and coordinated them. Instead of just a comparatively small group of highly committed activists, thousands of Egyptians from—essentially—all walks of life took to the streets. For the first time in years, the Cairo-based political opposition apparently succeeded in mobilizing participants from other social sectors. Even though far from all protests and demonstrations managed to overcome the Central Security Forces, a substantial number of protesters eventually made their way to Tahrir Square; before being dispersed and driven from the square in the evening. Confrontations between the protesters and the regime continued even during the following days in Cairo and other parts of the country. The coalition of activists then tried to rally support for an even bigger event on January 28. Rather than announcing particular assembly sites for this event, the plan was to use mosques in different parts of the city as rallying points. During this period, even the Muslim Brotherhood decided to throw its weight behind the activists’ efforts to stage another largescale protest event. At the same time, the regime sought to counter, or at least hinder, these attempts by cutting access to both Internet and cellphone services. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it can be asserted

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that the regime’s efforts largely backfired and that crowds gathered in front of numerous mosques following the Friday prayer. On this ‘Friday of Rage’ thousands of protesters of essentially all walks of life soon marched towards Tahrir square in a process that was both more organic and spontaneous than during the early stages of the protests on the Egyptian National Police Day a few days earlier. Despite intense clashes with security forces, protesters were eventually able to make their way back to Tahrir square and to establish a sustained presence in this public square which eventually outlasted the Mubarak presidency. The following fifteen days witnessed not only the Egyptian Armed Forces adopt a cautiously supportive stance vis-à-vis the anti-Mubarak protesters, but also renewed and hard-fought confrontations between the protesters and Mubarak supporters. While groups of activists from within the Cairo-based political opposition had played a key role in the preparation of and mobilization for the first protests during this uprising, their relative importance for and influence over events declined markedly as collective contentious behavior diffused upwards and outwards and Egyptians of many different social strata and professions came to follow the example set by these early risers. Even though it were the sustained collective efforts of this large cross-section of Egyptian society that ultimately forced Mubarak’s resignation on February 11, 2011, the years-long struggle of the prodemocracy activists within the Cairo-based political opposition should be regarded as a necessary albeit insufficient condition for the outcome of this uprising.1

Continuity and Change This book focused primarily on the mobilization process leading up to the unexpected large-scale diffusion of collective protest during the Egyptian Uprising of 2011. Therefore, the forced resignation of Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011 marked a logical and natural end point for the detailed analysis of these events. However, at this stage it seems warranted to— at least briefly—sketch out Egypt’s post-revolutionary trajectory and its effects on activism seeking to effect socio-political change in the country. In the wake of Mubarak’s ouster, Egyptians elected Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party as president in a largely free and fair election during the first half of 2012. Morsi’s presidency was, however, rather short-lived. It lasted only a little more than one year, before he was ousted in a combination of a large-scale popular

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uprising and a military coup on July 3, 2013. As a result of these events, the Morsi administration was replaced by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who had been appointed Minister of Defense in August of 2012. Following this coupvolution (see e.g. Springborg, 2015), Sisi was elected President in May 2014, and, subsequently, a new parliament was elected in late 2015. The political and economic situation during these years was quite challenging for the country. Many of the more socio-economic grievances that motivated the 2011 uprising still persist to this day. In the wake of the uprising, Egypt experienced a marked economic downturn. Annual GDP growth dropped from 5.1% in 2010 to a mere 1.76% in 2011 (Haq & Zaki, 2015, p. 5).2 This slump could be partly explained by the fact that the number of tourists visiting the country declined markedly in the wake of a changed security situation.3 The relative importance of the tourism sector also helps to explain an increase in unemployment numbers. The total unemployment rate increased from 8.75% in 2010 to 13.1% in 2014 (WorldBank, 2019d).4 The economic situation is further aggravated by continued high rates of inflation (WorldBank, 2019b) and diminishing foreign reserves (Cook, 2014). These economic woes were, and to some extend still are, accompanied by a less than optimal security situation. The country has, for instance, been confronted with a growing armed insurgency by jihadist extremist groups like Ansar Bait Al-Maqdis, which declared allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS), and has since rebranded itself as the Sinai Province (Gold, 2015, p. 35). In a report on the Egyptian security situation covering the first quarter of 2016, the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy—a think tank based in Washington, DC—detailed a notable uptick in the number of terrorism related incidents throughout the country since the beginning of 2016. The report mentioned a total of 210 attacks in the period from January to March 2016, but it also notes that the majority of these incidents (118 out of 210) occurred in the northern parts of the Sinai Peninsula (The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, 2016, p. 5). Providing details to some of these attacks, the report described one attack on a police checkpoint in Arish that occurred on March 19, during which “at least 15 members of the Egyptian police” were killed. Likewise, “Wilayat Sinai claimed 74 IED attacks, in which 75 deaths were reported” (The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, 2016, p. 12). Aside from attacking military and police targets, the group has also claimed responsibility for the downing of an Airbus A321—Metrojet

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Flight 9268—which was carrying 224 passengers on their way from the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh to St. Petersburg (The Telegraph, 2015). In the wake of this attack, several states temporarily banned airlines from operating passenger air service flights to Sharm El Sheik representing yet another blow to Egypt’s tourism sector (Al-Shuwekhi, 2016).5 In this environment, it is not difficult to imagine that the Egyptian political sphere has remained highly polarized. In fact, it had already been deeply divided prior to6 the coupvolution of 2013 (Springborg, 2015). Following Morsi’s removal, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi sought to assert his control over the country. On August 14, 2013 security forces violently dispersed sit-ins of Morsi supporters who had occupied Rabaa Square in Cairo and Al-Nahda Square in Giza. This security operation left hundreds of protesters dead and marked the beginning of a crackdown that initially focused on the Brotherhood and other Islamist groupings, but soon also targeted other oppositional actors (cf. Wackenhut, 2015, p. 11). In the following months, thousands of activists were arrested. Moreover, hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members, many of whom were tried in absentia, were handed death sentences (Al-Jazeera, 2014). In 2015, some international human rights NGOs estimated the number of political prisoners in the country to be as high as 40,000 (Stork, 2015). In 2017, Human Rights Watch (2019) reported that, since 2013, “Egyptian authorities have arrested or charged probably at least 60,000” people. These number can, at least in part, be attributed to a new law governing the freedom of assembly, which was passed in late November of 2013 (cf. Wackenhut, 2015, p. 11). This ‘protest law’ as it is often called in the Egyptian news media and NGO community has been used to prosecute and imprison activists openly or supposedly defying the regime. Some of the most prominent examples of activists convicted and imprisoned for violating this law included Ahmed Maher and Mohamed Adel—founding members of the April 6 Youth Movement (BBC, 2013). In addition to arrests and convictions based on this law, forced disappearances have, according to different national and international news reports, become increasingly commonplace. For the months of August and September of the 2015, Egyptian human rights NGOs reported at least 215 such cases. By mid-October of the same year, 70 of these 215 individuals had resurfaced either upon being released or by turning up in detention facilities around the country (El-Wardani, 2015). Covering the period from August 2017 to August 2018, Human Rights Watch (2019) reported at least 230 such cases.

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Weighing these issues, it seems safe to argue that levels of political repression have increased quite markedly—especially when compared to the latter years of the Mubarak presidency. This crackdown on both real and perceived dissidents helps us understand why—with a few exceptions—large-scale protests have all but disappeared in the years following Morsi’s ouster. In an unofficial conversation with a Cairo-based political activist in late 2015, the current state of political activism in the Egyptian capital was broadly characterized along the lines of a third of the activists being imprisoned, a third having left the country, and the remaining third being depressed. It was the core contention of this book that it is essential to not only carefully study underlying political opportunities structures, but also the ways in which different actors, at different times, navigate, affect and perceive these structures if one wants to better understand forms and extent of collective activism and protest. This framework, which has proven useful in understanding the mobilization process leading up to the largescale diffusion of protest during the Egyptian Uprising of 2011, can be employed just as productively in analyzing the current state of activism for socio-political change in the country during a time characterized by shrinking opportunities and markedly higher risks. As far as the actors within the Cairo-based political opposition are concerned, it is worth noting that their resources and capabilities have been diminished significantly. This reduction can be attributed to at least three factors. First, this reduction can be partly explained by an institutionalization process that began shortly after the 2011 Uprising. This process, described in more general terms by Della Porta and Diani (2006, p. 161), entailed the founding of numerous new political parties. Examples include the center-left Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Constitution Party, which largely emerged out of the Baradei Campaign, the Strong Egypt Party, which attracted a number of former Muslim Brotherhood members, or the leftist Socialist Popular Alliance Party (cf. Abdelrahman, 2013, p. 581). At the same time, some members of movement organizations preferred to continue their political activism by forming nongovernmental organizations. In several cases, regardless of the proposed organizational structure, these institutionalization processes entailed significant internal disagreements and conflicts. The aforementioned Socialist Popular Alliance Party witnessed, for instance, a mass-exodus of members as a result of intra-party disputes (Amal C., interview, Cairo, April 22, 2015). Similarly, a proposed institutionalization of the April 6 Youth Movement

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created a rift within the group that resulted in the creation of two competing factions (Sara S., interview, Cairo, April 27, 2015). Secondly, one ought to consider the demobilization of activists as yet another important factor contributing to the reduction of resources, capabilities and actual activity. The aforementioned increase in levels of political repression plays an important role in this reduction. For some (former) members of groups and movements within the Cairo-based political opposition the risks associated with more visible forms of activism are now simply deemed to be too high. For others, mere exhaustion (cf. Tarrow, 2011, p. 190) drives a reduced commitment to movement objectives and activities. Thirdly and additionally, the Cairo-based political opposition finds itself in a situation similar to the pre-January 25 period. Yet again, these actors have difficulties to reach and mobilize a broader cross-section of society for their contentious claims. Therefore, the relative importance of these groups and movements as organizers, coordinators and early risers has been, at least for the foreseeable future, severely diminished. This does, however, not mean that the Egyptian population no longer engages in different forms of resistance trying to effect socio-political change. Despite the increased repressive threat, significant collective contestation happens a different and somewhat smaller scale. In fact, it appears as if collective contestation has—compared to the levels of protest activity during the late Mubarak era—increased markedly in postuprising Egypt. Using the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT), Austin Holmes and Baoumi (2016) recorded an average of 38.6 protest events per day during the year that Mohamed Morsi was in power. Since the beginning of Sisi’s presidency in June of 2014, an average of 29.1 daily protest events were recorded. Even though the number of daily events has declined since Sisi’s inauguration by approximately 36.7%,7 the absolute number still compares somewhat unfavorably to the Mubarak era. While Austin Holmes and Baoumi (2016) recorded a marked increase in the number of daily protest events throughout the later years of Mubarak’s presidency, the absolute numbers were significantly lower. Presenting data for the last three years prior to the 2011 Uprising, Austin Holmes and Baoumi (2016) reported an average number of 3.9 daily protests in 2008, 4.4 in 2009, and 5.8 daily protests in 2010. Thus, “the sheer number of demonstrations that have taken place since Sisi’s election is still remarkably high: approximately five times

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the level it was during Mubarak’s last years” (Austin Holmes & Baoumi, 2016). These findings are a clear indication of a comparatively higher number of daily protest events. Unfortunately, the GDELT dataset contains no information on the relative size of such events. This means that a protest with a dozen participants is counted in exactly the same way as a protest with two or ten thousand participants. Considering, however, the dampening impact of the protest law and the overall higher levels of political repression, it is safe to assume that the majority of these protests were comparatively small. Having said that, it is worth noting that the Uprising of 2011 has had a profound impact on the Egyptian repertoire of contention (Tilly, 2008). This is to say that the uprising has successfully established protests, demonstrations, and other visible forms of collective contestation as a preferred instrument for voicing grievances and contentious claims. Protests are no longer limited to events that evoke a broad public outcry like the agreement to transfer sovereignty over the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir from Egypt to Saudi Arabia (Grimm, 2019; Mada Masr, 2016). Now, various, and some rather unexpected, groups take to the streets to voice their grievances. In early 2016, taxi drivers protested against the car service Uber, which they regarded as unfair competition and a threat to their livelihoods (Charbel, 2016). A year earlier, civil servants had collectively voiced their anger over a proposed new law governing their employment and working conditions (Mohie, 2015). During the fall of 2015, even policemen have taken to the streets and demanded higher wages and better living conditions (Mohie, 2015). Similarly, when Cairo city officials announced plans to relocate Feluccas, small tourist boats from the east bank of the Nile, directly adjacent to Downtown Cairo and Tahrir Square, to the west bank of the river, the Felucca captains protested against this decision loudly, albeit unsuccessfully (Mada Masr, 2015). Taken together, these examples clearly show how the Uprising of 2011 and the rather turbulent period that followed in its wake have changed and expanded the Egyptian repertoire of contention. This points toward the continued relevance of Della Porta and Diani’s (2006, p. 183) assertion that “forms of action initially restricted to particular actors (and condemned by others) become generalized” and that repertoires develop over time as the result of “critical learning processes” (p. 184).

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Despite the presidential elections of 2014 and the parliamentary elections of 2015, the country still has a long way to go in order to complete a substantive transition to a more democratic political system, which many activists and protesters during the January 25 Uprising had hoped for. Currently, the NGO Freedom House continues to rank the Egyptian political system as ‘not free.’ Freedom House rates the status of political rights and civil liberties as a 6 on a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 indicates the most free and 7 the least free score achievable (cf. Freedom House, 2019). Thus, while activists articulate, given the current crackdown on civil society and the broader extra-institutional opposition, a rather grim vision of the immediate future, and parts of the population first and foremost desire security and stability, a majority of individuals interviewed in the context of this study remained cautiously hopeful for an Egyptian democratization process in the medium to longer term. In retrospect, considering both the Egyptian Uprising of 2011 and the patterns of collective contestation that emerged in the country following Mubarak’s ouster, there can be little doubt about the fact that large-scale protest episodes are unique in several respects. The grievances motivating protesters will differ from case to case. Similarly, the structural conditions within which different actors operate can be expected to be highly dependent on the local context. Aggrieved individuals seeking to effect sociopolitical change will be faced with unique combinations of current and repressive threats as well as opportunities. Furthermore, depending on the context, actors will have particular repertoires of contention, mobilizing structures, networks and resources at their disposal. The unique and complex combination of these factors, coupled with substantial degrees of contingency, make it difficult—if not impossible—to predict both the onset as well as outcomes of such episodes. However, the analytical framework proposed in this volume, zooming in on the underlying structural political opportunities as well as the ways in which different actors at different times navigate, affect and perceive these structures promises to be a highly relevant and useful toolbox to understand large-scale episodes of collective contestation from their root causes through different stages of mobilization to the diffusion across both scales and social sectors.

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Notes 1. For an in-depth discussion of the argument regarding the causal necessity and insufficiency of the Cairo-based political opposition in this context, see Wackenhut (2019). 2. Since then, annual GDP growth has somewhat recovered from this slump with an average annual GDP growth of 4.55% between 2015 and 2018 (WorldBank, 2019a). 3. The number of international tourists arriving in Egypt dropped from more than 14 million visitors in 2010 to about 9.5 million visitors in 2011 and has remained relatively constant from 2011 until 2015. Only in 2016, the number of international tourism arrivals dropped to 5.25 million, but has since recovered and is nearing pre-revolutionary levels (WorldBank, 2019c). 4. Between 2015 and 2018, the unemployment rate decreased from 13.05 to 11.43%, which is still markedly higher than pre-revolutionary levels (WorldBank, 2019d). 5. Most international airlines have since resumed flights to this popular holiday destination. The British government, for instance, lifted its ban on flights on October 22, 2019 citing substantial improvements in Egyptian airport security protocols and a deepened security cooperation in the aviation sector between British and Egyptian authorities (Department of Transport, 2019). 6. Here, one could think of the so-called Mohamed Mahmoud clashes of late 2011 (BBC, 2012). 7. This rather sharp drop in the average number of daily protests clearly shows that the crackdown on visible forms of dissent has a deterring effect on the opposition.

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BBC. (2012). Egypt: The legacy of Mohammed Mahmoud Street. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-20395260. BBC. (2013). Egypt jails Ahmed Maher and other secular activists. http://www. bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25484064. Charbel, J. (2016). Taxi drivers protest against Uber, Other app-based car services. Mada Masr. https://madamasr.com/en/2016/02/04/feature/ politics/taxi-drivers-protest-against-uber-other-app-based-car-services/. Cook, S. A. (2014). Egypt’s solvency crisis. Retrieved from Council on Foreign Relations website: https://www.cfr.org/report/egypts-solvency-crisis. Della Porta, D., & Diani, M. (2006). Social movements: An introduction. Malden: Blackwell. Department of Transport. (2019). Government lifts restrictions on flights to Sharm El-Sheikh. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ government-lifts-restrictions-on-flights-to-sharm-el-sheikh. El-Mahdi, R. (2009). Enough! Egypt’s quest for democracy. Comparative Political Studies, 42, 1011–1039. El-Wardani, L. (2015). Activists launch campaign against forced disappearance, state denies involvement. AhramOnline. http://english.ahram.org.eg/ NewsContent/1/64/162586/Egypt/Politics-/Activists-launch-campaignagainst-forced-disappear.aspx. Freedom House. (2019). Freedom in the world 2018: Egypt. Retrieved from https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/egypt. Gold, Z. (2015). Sinai militancy and the threat to international forces. Strategic Assessment, 18(2), 35–45. Grimm, J. J. (2019). Egypt is not for sale! Harnessing nationalism for alliance building in Egypt’s Tiran and Sanafir island protests. Mediterranean Politics, 24(4), 332–466. Haq, T., & Zaki, C. (2015). Macroeconomic policy for employment creation in Egypt: Past experiences and future prospects. Geneva: International Labour Office. Human Rights Watch. (2019). Egypt: Events of 2018. Retrieved from https:// www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/egypt. Mada Masr. (2015). Dozens of feluccas removed as part of downtown Cairo’s regeneration scheme. https://madamasr.com/en/2015/08/24/news/ u/dozens-of-feluccas-removed-as-part-of-downtown-cairos-regenerationscheme/. Mada Masr. (2016). Update: Interior Ministry issues warning not to join Friday protests against Egypt-Saudi island transfer. https://madamasr.com/en/ 2016/04/14/news/u/update-interior-ministry-issues-warning-not-to-joinfriday-protests-against-egypt-saudi-island-transfer/. Mohie, M. (2015). Protesting conscripts and civil servants: Cracks in the regime’s support system? Mada Masr. https://madamasr.com/en/2015/

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09/02/feature/politics/protesting-conscripts-and-civil-servants-cracks-inthe-regimes-support-system/. Springborg, R. (2015). President Sisi’s delegative authoritarianism (Instituto Affari Internazionali Working papers). http://www.iai.it/sites/default/files/ iaiwp1526.pdf. Stork, J. (2015). Egypt’s political prisonsers. Open Democracy. https://www.hrw. org/news/2015/03/06/egypts-political-prisoners. Tarrow, S. (2011). Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. (2016). Egypt security watch: Quarterly report: January–March 2016. Retrieved from http://timep.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/01/ESW-QR-2016-Q1-WEB.pdf. The Telegraph. (2015). Russian plane crash: Everything we know on Monday morning about the airliner Isil says it brought down on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/ 11967725/Russian-plane-crash-everything-we-know-on-Monday-morningabout-the-airliner-Isil-says-it-brought-down-on-Egypts-Sinai-Peninsula.html. Tilly, C. (2008). Contentious performances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wackenhut, A. F. (2015). Egypt four years after Mubarak: A tale of high hopes and dashed expectations. Paper presented at the 56th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, LA. Wackenhut, A. F. (2019). Revisiting the Egyptian Uprising of 2011: Exploring the role of relational networks within the Cairo-based political opposition. Social Problems, Online First. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spz014. WorldBank. (2019a). GDP growth (annual %). Retrieved from https://data. worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=EG. WorldBank. (2019b). Inflation, consumer prices (annual %). Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG?locations=EG. WorldBank. (2019c). International tourism, number of arrivals. Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ST.INT.ARVL?locations=EG. WorldBank. (2019d). Unemployment, total (% of total labor force) (Modeled ILO estimate). Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM. TOTL.ZS?locations=EG.

Index

A April 6 Movement, 36 April 6, 2008, 8, 25, 26, 76 Arrested, 27, 40, 65, 76, 83, 84, 86, 88, 98, 103, 118

B Baradei campaign, 33, 34, 53–55, 61, 76, 85, 119 El-Baradei, Mohamed, 32, 34, 87 Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine, 2, 7, 42, 43, 55

C Central Security Forces (CSF), 14, 17, 19, 29, 30, 40, 58, 61, 68, 70, 72, 75, 76, 83, 98, 101, 110, 115 Claims, 4, 6, 14, 15, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 40, 44, 45, 58–60, 71, 110, 120, 121 Clash, 26, 83, 93, 103, 116, 123

Coalition, 2, 17, 19, 23, 52, 54–59, 61, 66, 68, 82, 84, 86, 87, 91, 110, 111, 115 Coalition of the Youths of the Revolution, 9, 53, 77, 82, 109 Communication, 55, 88, 90, 95, 100, 106, 110 Confrontation, 26, 27, 39, 64, 82, 83, 97, 99, 101–104, 107, 114–116 Coordination, 2, 7, 21, 52, 53, 63, 82, 104, 110

D Diffusion, 3, 4, 6, 8–10, 65, 95, 109, 114, 116, 119, 122 Downtown, 30, 59, 68, 75–77, 81, 83, 91, 92, 97, 121

E Economy, 20 Egyptian National Police Day. See January 25, 2011

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. F. Wackenhut, Understanding Protest Diffusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39350-2

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INDEX

Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), 21 El-Sisi, Abdel Fattah, 9, 117, 118

F Facebook, 25–28, 33, 36–38, 46, 52, 53, 55, 58, 61, 63, 65, 67–70, 72, 76, 85, 86, 89, 90, 105, 109, 115 Fear, 24, 43, 92, 93, 109 February 11, 2011, 114, 116 Friday of Rage, 9, 81, 82, 84, 85, 88, 91, 95, 99, 101, 109, 110, 116

G Grievances, 3–7, 14, 19, 22, 32, 34, 37, 39, 41, 42, 60, 64, 72, 101, 110, 117, 121, 122 Growth, economic, 20, 21, 41, 117

H Habib el-Adly, 60 Human rights, 7, 29, 37, 52, 64–66, 77, 101, 108, 118

I Iraq war, 19, 22, 40, 72

J January 25, 2011, 2, 3, 7, 44, 53, 81, 114, 115 January 28, 2011. See Friday of Rage

K Khaled Said, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 55 killing of, 8, 14, 35, 44, 114

We are all, 36, 37, 46, 52, 55, 57, 58, 61, 63, 67, 68, 70, 72, 86, 109, 115

M March, 18, 19, 26, 45, 117 McAdam, Doug, 3, 44, 82 Mobilization, 3–5, 9, 14, 17–19, 22, 24, 34, 39, 41, 53, 61, 63, 65, 66, 68, 72, 77, 83, 85, 88, 90, 107–109, 116, 119, 122 Morsi, Mohamed, 110, 116–120 Mosque, 85, 86, 88, 91–97, 109, 115, 116 Mubarak, Gamal, 20, 22 Mubarak, Hosni, 2, 5, 8, 9, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, 22–24, 27, 32, 34, 35, 38, 44, 52, 53, 57, 60, 64, 71, 72, 82, 88, 93, 95, 99–103, 105, 107–110, 114, 116, 119, 120, 122 Muslim Brotherhood, 9, 15, 16, 18, 23, 29, 38, 45, 54, 55, 61, 62, 78, 85, 87, 88, 95, 103, 104, 109, 111, 115, 118, 119

N Nahia, 52, 58, 59, 61, 68–71, 76, 84, 85 NGO, 7, 17, 28, 29, 52, 64–66, 77, 101, 108, 118, 122

O Opportunities, 4–6, 8, 22, 36, 38, 39, 41, 43, 110, 119, 122 objective, 3, 31, 51 perceived, 3, 6, 7, 14, 34, 41, 44, 51, 52, 114, 115

INDEX

P Palestinian Intifada, 5, 8, 14–17, 31, 44, 114 Police, 23, 30, 32, 35–38, 40, 42, 53, 58, 60, 64, 65, 68, 70, 73, 75–77, 83, 84, 86, 87, 97, 98, 100, 101, 103–105, 110, 117 brutality, 7, 9, 35, 38, 52, 53, 57, 77, 115 Political opportunities. See Opportunities Population, 16, 29, 30, 34, 35, 58, 85, 109, 120, 122 Privatization, 20, 24, 65 Protest, 2–10, 14–20, 23–31, 36, 39, 40, 42–44, 51–61, 63–77, 81– 88, 91, 92, 94–101, 105, 107, 109–111, 113–116, 119–123 R Rabaa Square, 118

129

massacre, 118 Repression, 32, 41, 42, 98, 119–121 Revolutionary Socialists, 2, 16, 29–31, 40, 45, 60, 61, 70, 75

T Tahrir Square, 9, 19, 65, 73–76, 81–83, 85, 86, 90, 92, 96–99, 101–110, 115, 116, 121 Tarrow, Sidney, 3, 4, 6, 7, 24, 82, 120 Tilly, Charles, 3–5, 8, 19, 24, 34, 35, 58, 82, 121 Torture, 4, 53 Tunisia, 2, 3, 14, 34, 42, 43, 52, 55–57, 62, 66, 77, 115

Y Youth for Freedom and Justice, 29, 53, 56