Media in the line of fire in Egypt
Domestic and foreign journalists have come under siege amid the turmoil in Egypt.
Al Jazeera's online producer Last Modified: 03 Feb 2011 19:35 GMT
Journalists in Egypt – domestic and foreign – are increasingly under siege, with Egyptian authorities detaining reporters and gangs of young men roaming the streets looking for anyone with camera equipment.
Some of the pressure has come from the government: Six Al Jazeera journalists were detained for several hours earlier this week, and while they were eventually released, their equipment remains with the police.
Earlier on Thursday concerns were raised as another three reporters went missing. They have now returned, safe and well, to their hotel.
Two New York Times reporters were reportedly arrested – or "taken into protective custody", as the government termed it.
'Israeli spy' rumours
Spotters stand outside many hotels, watching balconies with high-powered binoculars. When they see balconies with camera equipment or photographers, they use radios to call in the details.
Egyptian police sources say that information from those spotters has been used to conduct several raids on journalists' hotel rooms in recent days.
And the government has reportedly pressured several hotels not to extend the reservations of foreign journalists.
But most of the intimidation and violence has come from unofficial sources: Young men loiter outside the hotels where many reporters are staying, shouting at (and sometimes attacking) anyone with equipment.
Hotel lobbies are filled with journalists and camera crews wearing bandages, and many have been restricted to watching the events in Tahrir Square from their hotel balconies.
Egyptian state television has actively tried to foment the unrest by reporting that "Israeli spies" have infiltrated the city – which explains why many of the gangs who attack reporters shout "yehudi!" ("Jew!").
The area around Tahrir Square has become a virtual no-go zone for camera crews, which were assaulted on Wednesday almost as soon as they entered the area controlled by supporters of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
Several of them were mistaken for Al Jazeera crews, and were chased off by young men wielding sticks and chanting, "Jazeera! Jazeera!".
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said his crew was also assaulted on Tuesday night after being mistaken for an Al Jazeera crew.
A reporter for the Al Arabiya network was kidnapped for several hours during Wednesday’s protest.
The violence has come exclusively from the Mubarak supporters: There have been no reports of pro-democracy demonstrators attacking or intimidating the media.
Egyptian journalists, too, have been the victims of angry mobs, all of them affiliated with the pro-Mubarak crowd. Sarah El Sirgany, an editor with the Daily News Egypt, tweeted that her brother was assaulted while trying to protect a group of reporters attacked by an angry mob.
An Al Jazeera reporter was held at knifepoint by a group of young men on Thursday morning. One man’s face was still bloodied from the previous night’s fighting.
Bloggers, too, have become targets: The popular Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey has reportedly been arrested (it's unclear by who).
International condemnation
The United States and Britain have condemned what they call the intimidation of foreign journalists reporting on events in Egypt.
Robert Gibbs, White House spokesman, called for the release of any journalist who had been detained in the country and said acts to intimidate the media were "completely and totally unacceptable".
PJ Crowley, state department spokesman, added: "There is a concerted campaign to intimidate international journalists in Cairo and interfere with their reporting. We condemn such actions."
Britain's foreign minister also said the intimidation and harassment of journalists was "unacceptable and disturbing".
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called the attacks on journalists an attempt at "blanket censorship" by the government, and listed a number of reported assaults against Egyptian, Arabic and international media.
The battle for Tahrir Square
It was late on Wednesday as I slipped off to the Corniche road along the Nile to try to make my way inside Tahrir Square.
I had never seen a revolt up close and in real time, so it was with some trepidation that I had left the confines of our building after a full 10 hours of witnessing rock and Molotov barrages out of the window.
The street was empty but for a small army presence – a couple of armoured personnel carriers and some soldiers, most stationed near the Egyptian Museum.
To my left, 300m away, a pro-Mubarak crowd rained Molotov cocktails down on the anti-government protesters from an flyover leading from the 6th of October bridge.
In a few minutes, I had made it south down the Corniche to Kasr al-Nil bridge, which empties into central Cairo from the west and becomes a road that leads directly into Tahrir.
The anti-government protesters in Tahrir had arranged a field of debris 40m in front of their barricade, forcing anyone approaching to stop their stride and hop over.
Twenty metres beyond, they had strung a heavy electric cable about waist high from heavy metal fences on either side of the road, and 10m beyond that lay the final barricade, a stacked mix of metal barriers and spiked fences.
Two wooden boards were jammed length-wise across a side path to bar easy entrance.
I hopped down and walked through a small grassy park, approaching a small squad of men guarding a nearby path that led around the main barricade.
I held my hands up, palms out. They asked me for ID, so I showed them my US driver's license. I also told them that I came from Al Jazeera.
Unlike the pro-Mubarak people, the Tahrir protesters have a passion for our network. You tell the truth, they told me. One of the group patted me down and apologised for the inconvenience.
"It's for security," he said.
'Remember my name'
I approached the Kasr al-Nil barricade from behind, cautiously, and asked permission to take pictures.
Rocks were stacked in piles around the street, and Molotov cocktail bottles sat next to one another near a tree; a revolutionary armoury.
I was referred to the 'boss' of the checkpoint, a man with a lengthy black beard, a white, bloodstained headwrap, and a heavy grey peacoat spattered with blood.
He introduced himself as Hossam Eid al-Sharqawy and took hold of my shoulder. Time was short, I should take pictures quickly and go, he said.
He had blunt words for Egypt's 30-year president, whose two rounds of concessions and promise not to run again have failed to placate protesters. "Hosni Mubarak kills his own people," Sharqawy said.
"Remember my name," he said. "If I die here tonight, you will tell our story."
I told him I would, then photographed the barricade and continued into the square.
The chaos taking place to the north at the Egyptian museum was inaudible.
The square was peaceful but eerily empty; just 24 hours earlier, hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters had staged what might have been the largest political demonstration in Cairo's history, a show which likely prompted Wednesday's violent response.
Men prayed on a large banner that had been laid out on the pavement.
It carried the two words that have become the slogan of anti-government protests from Tunisia to Egypt: "Game Over."
Farther into the square, small groups huddled around fires and inside tents.
The jubilance that had turned the square into a giant camp ground just a day before was gone; people now feared being overrun and killed by the surrounding pro-government mob, many of them reportedly hired thugs.
Apocalyptic scene
As I progressed toward the fighting near the museum, the square became decidedly more apocalyptic.
The roads were carpeted in broken rocks, making it hard to walk.
Men with crowbars and long metal rods – probably stolen from the construction site at the remodeling of the Ritz in the square – chipped away at curbs and at the road to make more projectiles for their comrades.
In the distance ahead, the orange glow of the street lights and the continual Molotov cocktail fire lent an air of medieval combat to the front lines of the fight.
The closer I got, the more frenetic the activity among the anti-government protesters.
Men and women hustled up huge bags of rocks. Another group dragged a metal barricade into a new backup position.
The source of the cacophony that had been echoing off Cairo's streets and through our window was revealed: protesters behind the lines were rhythmically banging on the metal pavement fences in a primal drumbeat to keep the crowd's spirits up.
One storey above us, two men crouched on a balcony and chucked rocks at the pro-Mubarak crowd.
I knelt down behind a pavement about 20m from the barricade.
Fiery Molotovs streamed down toward the pro-Mubarak crowd from above my head, as the government supporters on the 6th of October flyover above and in front of me responded with their own.
The anti-government barricades lay just out of the throwing reach of most of the Mubarak supporters, but occasionally an energetic rock barrage would slam against the metal sheets separating us from them.
Anti-government rock throwers launched their own rocks from behind the barricade, where it was impossible to see where they would land.
Other men crouched in between the sheets, in the shadows, making sure the barrier stayed up and occasionally sneaking a glance out.
What they saw was no-man's land.
War zone
An open space that had once served as a cramped artery of traffic toward Tahrir in one direction and Ramses Square – the main train station – in the other, had become a war zone, covered in rocks and dotted with the fire of petrol bombs.
An army personnel carrier sat parked 75m away, facing us, doing nothing as pro-Mubarak protesters milled about, throwing rocks and taking cover behind bridge supports.
Above, it was hard to discern spectators from rock throwers.
But onlookers eventually withdrew, leaving only dozens of men dancing about, gesturing angrily toward us and throwing rocks.
Everytime an anti-government protester managed to land a petrol bomb on the bridge above, a cheer went up from the barricades, accompanied by joyous cries of "God is great!"
Eventually, the anti-government lines began to advance; skirmishers in front of the line became braver, throwing rocks and petrol bombs with little or no cover.
Loud gunshots rang out, likely from the personnel carrier in front of us, which had been surrounded by pro-Mubarak men.
It was hard to tell exactly when, but at some point the anti-government protesters outflanked the Mubarak crowd on the overpass.
'Take the bridge'
Shouts of "take the bridge" rang out along the line. The anti-government crowd began to advance past the metal sheets, and the Mubarak supporters fled.
Men dropped their rocks and bowed their heads to the ground in prayer.
Others began to immediately scrub the pro-Mubarak graffiti off of the monuments in the area that had, for around 12 hours, been occupied by the government crowd.
On the overpass, a tank roared toward the direction of the retreating Mubarak supporters, flooding the air with fumes.
As I stepped back through the barricades to Tahrir, a group of men dragged someone inside.
I tried to take pictures but was told to walk away. It was unclear if they were detaining a pro-Mubarak supporter or bringing back one of their wounded.
Inside, men gathered in groups to assess the victory. Others walked back motorcycles that they had captured. One held a bloody Egyptian flag as he returned.
A crowd across from the Egyptian Museum pressed in around a wounded man. Doctors carried him away, leaving a puddle of blood on the concrete.
One who remained, dressed in a white coat and a cotton mask, told me that the man had been shot in the head by Mubarak supporters, but that he still had a pulse.
Behind me, a similar crowd gathered around another bloody, wounded man who looked completely unresponsive. They carried him away.
I ran into a 22-year-old man named Mohammed Hassan, a blogger, activist and self-described "revolutionary" carrying a stick.
He showed me a catapult the anti-government protesters had erected at a side entrance to the square, which he said they had used to launch flaming debris at the approaching crowd.
I watched as three men tested its tension.
Bandaged face
Further into the square, Hassan led me through a human chain and down the steps that lead into the Sadat metro station.
On the rubbish-strewn stairs, several bloody men sat nervously. The protesters told me they were captured Mubarak supporters.
One man, allegedly a former employee of the defence ministry, had his face nearly completely bandaged, but made a great effort to explain to me that he was not a lover of the government.
It was hard to watch; every few seconds, he seemed overcome by the pain and stopped to gently touch the wounds on his head.
He denied being paid or ordered to come. "It's my creed," he said in English.
As I stood in the makeshift prison, more people were dragged down the steps.
Some fought back and were shoved against the wall by several anti-government protesters.
A skinny man, almost a boy, with a bleeding head wound, pleaded with the captors and tried to convince them that he hated Mubarak.
Another young man, more calm and less wounded, was accused of using a police handgun to fire on the protesters.
The anti-government protesters could not find evidence that their captives were government employees, either police or interior ministry security, but they promised me that others were.
An official from the defence ministry checked on the condition of the alleged former ministry employee, they pulled him up the stairs to turn over to the army, though the protesters assured me the army was simply releasing those prisoners who were turned over.
Metallic drum beat
I left the prison and headed back to the Kasr al-Nil barricade, navigating a chokepoint made of turned over cars set at sharp angles.
I exchanged a few words with the men I had met on the way in; one told me what name to use if I wanted to re-enter.
Then I climbed through the wooden barricade blocking the path to the side of the wall and left.
As I approached our building, a soldier climbed down a tank and halted me. He found my camera in my pocket and demanded the film.
I had removed the SIM card and hid it, and though the soldier at first indicated that I should go with him to his commander, I finally convinced him to let me go, losing only my battery in the process.
Back inside, dawn was beginning to break over Cairo.
The protesters had reformed their barricades, in preparation for the pro-government attack which would come just hours later.
The metallic drum beat never halted. Deep in the square, the crowd remained.
President Mubarak unleashed his 'personal' thugs in a failed attempt to silence protestors seeking an end to his regime.
The apparently sudden and unexpected violence against Egyptian protesters that started on February 2 has an interesting historical ring to it. The date marks the unbanning of liberation movements in South Africa in 1990, and the start of political negotiations between the apartheid regime and the African National Congress. It also marks the start of the most violent period in South Africa’s turbulent political history.
The parallels with Egypt start with Mubarak’s speech to the nation on February 1, ostensibly making a significant concession to the protesters and a commitment to Egypt’s democratic future. The next day thugs, many now clearly identified as members of the security forces, rallied in central Cairo and launched attacks on hitherto peaceful demonstrators.
The tactics of deploying so-called third forces is a tried and tested method of autocratic regimes, usually utilised when the regime realises that it is on the strategic defencive politically. The focus of the regime then shifts from merely ruling as usual to extending its reign as long as possible, while at the same time sapping the material and political energy of its opponents.
In South Africa this tactic was intended to legitimise the regime as the only thing standing between an orderly transition to democracy on the one hand, and chaos on the other. At the same time it sought to drain the energy of the liberation movement by killing some of its leaders, forcing it into a defencive mode of thinking and compelling it to accept a compromise favourable to the regime. Mubarak’s statements prior to the unleashing of his ‘police-in-civilian clothing’, the inaction of the army and the apparently reasonable response of his Prime Minister after the fact that they will vigorously investigate the violence and bring the perpetrators to book, are well rehearsed elements of a ‘third force’ strategy.
Like in South Africa, the Egyptian ‘third force’ will be constituted of a variety of elements, including members of the security services operating as civilians, party loyalists and some civilians who are attracted by financial incentives. Even criminal gangs will be increasingly utilised, providing further ‘evidence’ that the violence is not perpetrated by the regime but plainly criminal. In the end the entire effort is neither spontaneous nor independent.
Any decent investigation will find that this force is organised, resourced and directed by elements within the Mubarak regime. The Tahrir Square protesters have already collected ample evidence to this effect. In South Africa it took the brave Justice Richard Goldstone (of the UN Gaza Report fame) to expose a similar and wide-ranging network of regime instruments masquerading as various independent third forces.
Unless the army intervenes on the side of the Egyptian democracy movement, this ‘third force’ will continue to strike, not only in Cairo and other cities but increasingly also in the rural parts of the country. In South Africa the third force violence lasted from 1990 to 1994. In Egypt Mubarak’s regime has until September to produce a disorganised, leaderless and desperate opposition unable to execute a proper election campaign. The lessons of South Africa are instructive in how to defeat this effort by a desperate regime.
The continued unity of South Africans, in protest, was the central element that defeated the efforts of the apartheid regime to continue governing. If the Egyptian people continue protesting, as they have for the last two weeks, any claims of legitimacy by the regime are transparently ridiculous. In South Africa the central demand of the liberation movement at the height of third force violence became one for a transitional government.
No autocratic regime can oversee its own demise, and a real election could only take place if the entire state apparatus, including its security forces, were placed under the control of an interim government. The South African Transitional Executive Council established in 1993 and acting as an interim government, ensured the holding of free and fair elections in April 1994.
Anything less than the departure of Mubarak and his key allies will mean a transition always under threat of violence by a so-called third force, and an election that might disappear amidst the violence visited upon the Egyptian resistance.
David Africa is an independent security analyst based in South Africa. He has previously worked in counter-terrorism intelligence and research, and served in the underground of the then-banned African National Congress in South Africa.
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