An succinct summary of today's state of play and how we got here:
http://www.juancole.com/2011/02/mubaraks-basij.html
02/02/2011
Informed Comment
Mubarak's Basij
Juan Cole
On Wednesday, the Mubarak regime showed its fangs, mounting a massive
and violent repressive attack on the peaceful crowds in Tahrir Square
in downtown Cairo. People worrying about Egypt becoming like Iran
(scroll down) should worry about Egypt already being way too much like
Iran as it is. That is, Hillary Clinton and others expressed anxiety in
public about increasing militarization of the Iranian regime and use of
military and paramilitaries to repress popular protests. But Egypt is
far more militarized and now is using exactly the same tactics.
The outlines of Hosni Mubarak's efforts to maintain regime stability
and continuity have now become clear. In response to the mass
demonstrations of the past week, he has done the following:
1. Late last week, he first tried to use the uniformed police and
secret police to repress the crowds, killing perhaps 200-300 and
wounding hundreds.
2. This effort failed to quell the protests, and the police were then
withdrawn altogether, leaving the country defenseless before gangs of
burglars and other criminal elements (some of which may have been
composed of secret police or paid informers). The public dealt with
this threat of lawlessness by organizing self-defense neighborhood
patrols, and continued to refuse to stop demonstrating.
3. Mubarak appointed military intelligence ogre Omar Suleiman vice
president. Suleiman had orchestrated the destruction of the Muslim
radical movement of the 1990s, but he clearly was being groomed now as
a possible successor to Mubarak and his crowd-control expertise would
now be used not against al-Qaeda affiliates but against Egyptian civil
society.
4. Mubarak mobilized the army to keep a semblance of order, but failed
to convince the regular army officers to intervene against the
protesters, with army chief of staff Sami Anan announcing late Monday
that he would not order the troops to use force against the
demonstrators.
5. When the protests continued Tuesday, Mubarak came on television and
announced that he would not run for yet another term and would step
down in September. His refusal to step down immediately and his other
maneuvers indicated his determination, and probably that of a
significant section of the officer corps, to maintain the military
dictatorship in Egypt, but to attempt to placate the public with an
offer to switch out one dictator for a new one (Omar Suleiman, likely).
6. When this pledge of transition to a new military dictator did not,
predictably enough, placate the public either, Mubarak on Wednesday
sent several thousand secret police and paid enforcers in civilian
clothing into Tahrir Square to attack the protesters with stones,
knouts, and molotov cocktails, in hopes of transforming a sympathetic
peaceful crowd into a menacing violent mob. This strategy is similar to
the one used in summer of 2009 by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to raise the cost of protesting in the streets of
Tehran, when they sent in basij (volunteer pro-regime militias). Used
consistently and brutally, this show of force can raise the cost of
urban protesting and gradually thin out the crowds.
Note that this step number 6 required that the army agree to remain
neutral and not to actively protect the crowds. The secret police goons
were allowed through army checkpoints with their staves, and some even
rode through on horses and camels. Aljazeera English's correspondent
suggests that the military was willing to allow the protests to the
point where Mubarak would agree to stand down, but the army wants the
crowd to accept that concession and go home now.