Friday, January 28, 2011

Egyptian Army Called In as Protests Rage

CAIRO — After a day of increasingly violent protests throughout Egypt, state media reported that President Hosni Mubarak ordered the military into the streets to reinforce police struggling to contain one of the most serious challenges to his long and autocratic rule.

The president also imposed an overnight curfew nationwide, but fighting continued on the streets of Cairo, the capital, and smoke from fires blanketed one of the city’s main streets along the Nile. The ruling party’s building was in flames at nightfall, and dramatic video footage on Al Jazeera showed a crowd pushing what they identified as a burning police car off a bridge.

CNN said that Mr. Mubarak was expected to deliver a televised address, though it was unclear when that would happen.

Demonstrations began earlier in the day as thousands poured from mosques after noon prayers, growing increasingly violent as protesters clashed with police who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. The demonstrations, on what protesters called a “day of wrath,” were on a scale far beyond anything in the memory of most residents.

The unrest in Egypt came after weeks of turmoil across the Arab world that toppled one leader in Tunisia and encouraged protesters to overcome deep-rooted fears of their autocratic leaders and take to the streets. But Egypt is a special case — a heavyweight in Middle East diplomacy, in part because of its peace treaty with Israel, and a key ally of the United States. The country, often the fulcrum on which currents in the region turn, also has one of the largest and most sophisticated security forces in the Middle East.

Calling out the military is a signal of how dramatically the situation had spiraled out of control. The army, one of the country’s most powerful and respected institutions, prefers to remain behind the scenes and has not been sent into the streets to quell unrest in many years. But the police, a much reviled force prone to violent retribution against anyone who publicly defies the state, appeared unable to quell the unrest. In several cases in the capital and elsewhere, the police were forced to back down by throngs of protesters.

In one of the most dramatic scenes of the day, in Alexandria, protesters snatched batons, shields and helmets from the police. Honking cars drove up and down a main street, holding police riot shields and truncheons out the windows as trophies.

In both Cairo and Alexandria, some army patrols were greeted with applause and waves from the crowds — a seemingly incongruous response from demonstrators who say they want to bring down the president. But many people support the army for its success in shocking the Israeli Army with a surprise attack in 1973 and for its perceived reluctance, at least in the past, to get involved in politics.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, reading a prepared statement, called Friday on Egypt’s government to “restrain the security forces” and said that “reform is absolutely critical to the well-being of Egypt.” “We urge the Egyptian authorities to allow peaceful protest and to reverse the unprecedented steps it has take to cut off communications,” she said. She also urged that protesters “refrain from violence and express themselves peacefully.”

The unrest is Egypt, a close ally, poses unique challenges for the Obama Administration, which has publicly supported Mr. Mubarak but privately pushed him to reform after decades in power.

At least one person appeared to have been killed during rioting in Suez, east of Cairo and the site of some of the most violent clashes. Reuters reported that protesters were carrying a man’s body through the streets as one demonstrator shouted, “They have killed my brother." Details of his death were not immediately clear. According to the Associated Press, Egyptian security officials said they had placed the most prominent opposition figures, Mohamed ElBaradei, under house arrest, but that could not be independently confirmed and reports throughout the day had been contradictory.

Shortly before, police doused Mr. ElBaradei with a water cannon and beat supporters who tried to shield him. “This is an indication of a barbaric regime," said Mr. ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as he took refuge in a nearby mosque. “By doing this they are ensuring their destruction is at hand.”

Early in the day in Cairo, protesters set fire to a police truck as police lobbed tear gas to try to block access to a key bridge across the River Nile from the island of Zamalek. Some demonstrators stamped on photographs of the president and others chanted “Down, down with Mubarak.” The acrid stench of tear gas spread across the capital reaching up to the windows of high-rise buildings. Television images showed plainclothes security policemen beating protesters.

At Al Azhar in old Cairo, thousands of people poured from one of the most iconic mosques of Sunni Islam, chanting “The people want to bring down the regime.” The police fired tear gas and protesters hurled rocks as they sought to break though police lines. From balconies above the street, residents threw water and lemons to protesters whose eyes were streaming from tear gas.

Although the police beat back protesters in many places, they appeared to be struggling in parts of Cairo and Alexandria.

In a stunning turn of events in Alexandria, one pitched battle ended with protesters and police shaking hands and sharing water bottles on the same street corner where minutes before they were exchanging hails of stones and tear-gas canisters were arcing through the sky. Thousands stood on the six-lane coastal road then sank to their knees and prayed.

Internet and cellphone connections have been disrupted or restricted in Cairo, Alexandria and other places, cutting off social-media Web sites that had been used to organize protests and complicating efforts by the news media to report on events on the ground. Some reports said journalists had been singled out by police who used batons to beat and charge protesters.

One cellphone operator, Vodafone, said on Friday that Egypt had told all mobile operators to suspend services in selected areas of the country. Vodafone, a British company, said it would comply with the order, Reuters reported.

In Alexandria, as soon as Friday prayers ended, a crowd of protesters streamed out of one mosque, chanting “Wake up, wake up son of my country. Come down Egyptians.”

Police there closed on the crowd, firing tear gas as the demonstrators pelted them with stones. A stone struck the officer firing the gas from the top of the truck and the truck pulled back, but reinforcements quickly arrived and officers marshaled a new offensive.

The protest in Alexandria turned into a block-by-block battle. The riot police managed to push the demonstrators one block back from the mosque, sealing it off from both sides and slowly advancing behind the tear-gas truck.

Several women shouted “dirty government,” leaning from the balconies of their high-rise apartments to hurl bottles down on the police. Officers pounded their clear shields with their billy clubs and chanted in unison.

“We wanted this to be a peaceful demonstration, but we are all Egyptians," said Ahmed Mohammed Saleh, 26, a protester in Alexandria who had been struck by a rubber bullet.

In Cairo, too, an eerie silence fell in one section of the city at midafternoon, as hundreds of protesters began a prayer session in the middle of the street, according to live images from Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel. Protesters bowed their heads as smoke billowed into the air behind them from the skirmishes between demonstrators and riot police.

Despite predictions otherwise, there were only sporadic protests elsewhere in the region. The Yemeni capital of Sana, where thousands had gathered a day before, was quiet Friday. Across the Middle East, attention seemed focused on Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, the most influential Arab satellite channels, broadcast nonstop coverage of the demonstrations in Cairo.

“It has blown up in Egypt,” read the front page of Al Akhbar, an influential leftist daily newspaper in Beirut. “Today all eyes are focused on the mosques in the land of Egypt, where the protests are expected to reach their peak.”

The protests across Egypt have underscored the blistering pace of events that have transformed the Arab world, particularly among regimes that have traditionally enjoyed the support of successive administrations in Washington.

Earlier this month, entrenched autocracies seemed confident of their ability to ride out the protests. But, just two weeks ago, on Jan. 14, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia fled abruptly into exile after weeks of protest, and his departure emboldened demonstrators to take to the streets in other countries.

Images of the lowly challenging the mighty have been relayed from one capital to the next, partly through the aggressive coverage of Al Jazeera. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have given the protesters a potent weapon, enabling them to elude the traditional police measures to monitor and curb dissent. But various regimes have fallen back on a more traditional playbook, relying on security forces to face angry demonstrators on the streets.

On Thursday, the Muslim Brotherhood, which had remained formally aloof from the earlier protests, seemed to be seeking to align itself with the youthful and apparently secular demonstrators, saying it would support Friday’s protests. But it was unclear what role the Brotherhood had played in Friday’s protests, which seemed to be spearheaded by angry young people and to include a cross-section of Egyptians. Even some of the capital’s wealthiest neighborhoods such as Zamalek and Maddi were caught up in the turmoil.

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