Whose Revolution?

CAIRO — Depending on who answers the question, Egypt’s revolution last year is continuing indefinitely, was completed in 18 days that ended last February, or will be complete when power is handed to a civilian government led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

As hundreds of thousands of Egyptians converged on Tahrir Square and other public spaces around the country Wednesday, marking the first anniversary of the demonstrations that drove former dictator Hosni Mubarak from power, it is clear the security state maintained by Mubarak remains. The Egyptian military has ruled the country since Mubarak stepped down, initially promising to remain in power for six months. Since October, police and military forces have killed more than 100 protestors, with thousands more injured in clashes sparked by police brutality towards demonstrators.

Ahead of Wednesday’s anniversary, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) announced a public holiday celebrating the revolution and made minor concessions to activists, none of which have tempered the mood of those demanding a transition to civilian rule. Most of those in Tahrir Square came not to celebrate, but to demand justice for the nearly 1,000 killed last January and February and the hundreds more who have died since.

The parliamentary elections that began in November and ended earlier this month have placed Egypt’s parliament in the hands of religious parties that were either banned or did not officially exist under Mubarak. Though the sight of former political prisoners taking the oath of parliament is a signal things have changed, many remain unsure whether the new legislature, whose powers are supposed to include appointing the body that will draft Egypt’s new constitution, will actually wield any real power. On the day before the demonstrations, Egypt’s de facto ruler, Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, announced he would loosen the emergency law used to jail thousands since the military took over from Mubarak last year. Activists pointed out that this should have been the parliament’s purview, and only further proved who is really in charge.

Nonetheless, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has spent decades preparing to participate in elections that weren’t rigged, is loath to let the opportunity go. Running in elections as the Freedom and Justice Party, they have accepted the military’s promise that power will be ceded and presidential elections held in June. Others are calling for a faster transition, noting the military has already reneged on its first promised date for a handover.

“The first step of democracy after the revolution is going to be a real festival,” says Dina Zakaria, a member of the Freedom and Justice party’s media team. Zakaria has been active in the party since she was 18. Now a mother of two, Zakaria went to Tahrir with her friends on Wednesday to mark one of the most momentous days of her life. While some accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of hijacking the revolution, the group has no love for the military that banned them decades ago. Zakaria’s husband, also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was arrested after the demonstrations began last year, as were many others affiliated with the Brotherhood, in a preemptive attempt to keep the group from joining the movement to oust Mubarak.

As Zakaria and her friends bought Muslim Brotherhood buttons from a street vendor in the square, I asked what would have happened if she dared wear such an accessory in public one year ago. “Impossible.”

Zakaria rejects the notion that Islamic political parties have hijacked the revolution. Thus far, there is little to suggest that the Brotherhood will accommodate the military long-term. Some members of the Islamic political parties—the Salafi al Nour Party, which is more religiously conservative than the Muslim Brotherhood—won approximately 20 percent of the parliamentary vote, compared to the Brotherhood’s nearly 50 percent.

“It’s not that the revolution has turned out to be Islamic,” Zakaria said. “Who said it wasn’t? We’re Muslims. It’s a revolution of freedom. It’s a reflection of the revolution that the Islamists succeeded, but it’s because the people were allowed to choose.”

It is likely if the military were to again reassert its power, it would push demonstrations to a critical mass.

“If SCAF doesn’t fulfill their promise, all Egyptians will be in the streets,” Zakaria said. It’s a line repeated by many others who counsel giving the military a June deadline to release its grip on power.

Pressure on the Brotherhood has eased, but the military has kept up pressure on other political forces. Two weeks before the anniversary of the revolution, on the day he was standing for election to the new parliament, Tarek Khoury, a member of the April 6 Youth Movement that initially drove last year’s demonstrations, found himself called into a Cairo courthouse for questioning and baselessly accused of promoting violence against the police and military at demonstrations in October and November.

“Whatever happens there are a lot of people who have sacrificed their lives, this is much more important than any charges against me,” Khoury said. “They want to target a specific persons before January 25,” Khoury said. “My feeling towards SCAF in the very beginning of the revolution was the same general feeling of all Egyptians: SCAF was protecting the revolution. But after 11 months of ruling Egypt, we realized  that our big mistake was leaving Tahrir Square and delivering our revolution to SCAF,” Khoury said.

Khoury, like Zakaria, was in Tahrir on Wednesday. Both were gone by nightfall, but the square remained full, and a small but vocal group of demonstrators had broken off to chant outside Maspero, the state television and radio building. As some demonstrators planned to camp in Tahrir and to reoccupy the square, the question again is whether they would be forcibly removed—as has consistently happened since February. The Brotherhood, which had organized security in Tahrir earlier in the day, decamped, leaving those continuing the revolution in the streets on their own.

David Enders is the author of Baghdad Bulletin: Dispatches on the American Occupation (University of Michigan Press)