Images: 20 Years of Revolution and Counterrevolution in Egypt

Summary: this week marks 10 years since the coup that overthrew Mohamed Morsi but the events that led to the coup and the events that followed are entwined in Egypt’s story of revolution and counterrevolution captured in these images by Hossam el-Hamalawy.

We thank Hossam el-Hamalawy for today’s second newsletter, a photo essay that traces the arc of the revolution and what followed as we continue our interrogation of the coup that overthrew Egypt’s only democratically elected president ten years ago this week 3 July 2013. Hossam is a journalist and scholar-activist, currently based in Germany. He was involved in the Egyptian labour movement and was one of the organisers of the 2011 revolution. You can follow his writings on Substack and Twitter. All the images save one are his.

Egypt’s 2011 uprising is usually dubbed a “Facebook revolution,” however it is largely the climax of a long process of simmering dissent in the previous decade. The initial spark that revived street politics in a country where dissent had been systemically crushed for two decades after Mubarak rose to power in 1981 was the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000, followed by the war on Iraq in 2003. Both aired live on the Al Jazeera network and were extensively covered in Egypt’s burgeoning private media sector rousing strong support from ordinary Egyptians.

After mobilising for three years around regional causes, Egyptian activists began to organise around domestic issues, namely police brutality which won them a relatively bigger margin of support compared to that which had existed in the previous two decades.

Campaigners later convened, launching the umbrella movement Kefaya (Arabic for Enough), demanding President Hosni Mubarak step down and rejecting his plan to groom his son Gamal for succession.

Over the following two years, Kefaya organized a series of demonstrations, which usually attracted only a handful or a few hundred protesters. However, thanks to electronic and social media, the visuals of those mobilizations reached millions of other Egyptians through the newly rising private and online media, electrifying the country. Kefaya activists were media-savvy, and ensured that the visuals of every action — despite the small numbers involved — reached as many Egyptians as possible.

Dissent was spread quickly by the domino effect. By December 2006, textile workers struck in the Nile Delta town of Mahalla. Other workers in the same sector and elsewhere followed suit, triggering the Winter of Labour Discontent.

Civil servants also joined the strike wave, and started forming independent unions, away from those dominated by the state.

Anti-police torture protests were also snowballing, following the brutal murder under torture of an Alexandrian young man, Khaled Said, at the hands of the police.

The dissent that had been brewing for a decade, exploded into an uprising which started 25 January 2011, coinciding with National Police Day.

With the collapse of the police on the Friday of Rage, 28 January 2011, the military deployed troops across the country to protect the regime. The generals were forced to give up Mubarak on the 18^th day of the uprising, following the resilience of protesters in Tahrir and the outbreak of mass strikes.

Mubarak’s overthrow did not end the revolution as the generals had hoped. Instead, wave after wave of mass protests and strikes continued over the course of the following two years, turning into full confrontations with the military and the police. One of the most powerful took place on Muhamed Mahmoud Street in central Cairo.

The first democratic presidential election in the history of the country brought Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brothers to power in the summer of 2012. After a short period of relative calm, marked with high expectations among the public, industrial actions and protests resumed. The violence took a sharp upturn, following Morsi’s November 2012 Constitutional Declaration, which empowered him over the judiciary. The ensuing polarisation was increasingly fermented across Islamist – secular lines. The banner reads ‘The people want the downfall of the regime’.

The military exploited the situation and the chaos that engulfed the country by the spring of 2013. The generals, led by Morsi’s then Minister of Defence Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, reached out to the secular opposition and encouraged a broad alliance which included both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces, staging a coup backed by mass protests. A series of bloody crackdowns against Morsi supporters ensued including, on 14 August, Rabaa the biggest massacre in Egypt’s modern history.

Despite fierce resistance from both the Islamists and sections of the secular opposition in the months following this photo the military and police onslaught was merciless. Thousands were killed. Tens of thousands were thrown in jail. The voice of protest was silenced and Egypt was pacified by a bloodbath orchestrated by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Arab Digest is grateful to Maged Mandour, Dina Wahba, Hossam el-Hamalawy and Atef Said for their contributions to this week’s examination of the 3 July 2013 coup that brought Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power in Egypt 10 years ago.