I went to have dinner in the old city last month and had a chat with the workers in the restaurant. I was surprised when one of them said, “If you go to Hussein Square, be careful. It’s now full of thugs and criminals.” When I asked why the police don’t arrest them, he replied, “I asked a local policeman and he said he knew all these dubious characters in person but he had orders not to get in their way whatever they do.” Another incident happened to the well-known writer Medhat el-Adl in Sharm el-Sheikh. He was surprised to see thugs sexually harassing some women tourists, and went to complain to the police officers in the area. “Before the revolution we used to arrest them, but now we’re not allowed to take them on,” one of them said. Of course this is untrue and there is nothing to stop police officers enforcing the law, but they simply do not want to carry out their duties. Every day there are attacks by thugs on the life, property, and honor of Egyptians, and police officers do nothing to prevent their crimes. The thugs are attacking everything in Egypt: police stations, court houses, even hospitals and churches. When armed thugs stormed Mataria hospital, they opened fire and terrorized the doctors and patients for four hours. They left one doctor with a deep wound in his foot, killed one of the patients, and then left, all while police officers looked on calmly. In short, the police force in Egypt is broken: the police officers do not want to protect people and are declining to do their duty. There are many reasons for this:
(1) There is a psychological factor: many police officers were brought up on a culture of disdain for ordinary people and in their view the only way to impose security is by beating and torturing people. For them, the success of the revolution is a defeat and they now feel demoralized. They once thought themselves above the law and they do not know how to deal with people with respect, so they refrain from protecting people, as if they were punishing them for carrying out the revolution or as if they want them to chose between two options: either police repression or intimidation by thugs and outlaws.
(2) Many police officers were corrupt under the old regime and made large amounts of money by illegal means. The revolution has eliminated their sources of income so they no longer have a real incentive to work, and they have to make do with their basic salaries.
(3) Bad management. Interior Minister Mansour el-Eissawi is a good man with clean hands but so far he has failed to purge the police force and restore it to normality. Most of the current assistant ministers were assistants to the former minister, who is on trial for corruption and killing demonstrators. The police chiefs, who are also on trial for killing protesters, have not been suspended: in fact, one of them, General Farouk Lashin, the former police chief in Qalyubia Province, who has been charged with killing protesters, has even been promoted to the position of police chief in Giza Province. These anomalous circumstances explain much of what is now happening in Egypt. What would we expect from a police chief who is charged with killing protesters and who is still at work? Might he not use his authority to get rid of incriminating evidence? The strange thing is that many of the State Security officers who tortured people for years are still at work as if nothing has happened except that the name of the State Security department has been changed to National Security. What would we expect from officers whose only experience is of beating people, hanging them by their feet, and giving them electric shocks? Can these officers change overnight from monsters into investigators who respect the law and human rights?
Although not all the serious incidents happening in Egypt stem from the absence of police, there is a conspiracy being carried out step by step so that Egypt slides into complete chaos to pave the way for something the enemies of the revolution want to bring about. This conspiracy includes domestic and foreign elements. The pillars of the old regime, who are now in jail pending trial, and their followers abroad are ready to spend millions to sabotage Egypt and get their revenge on the revolutionaries who removed them from power and threw them in prison. They are no doubt in collaboration with State Security officers who have all the means of sabotage at their disposal: precise information about all the institutions of Egyptian society, experience, weapons, and agents inserted everywhere. Those plotting against the revolution inside the country are well-known. Of those abroad, first comes Israel, which defended its loyal ally Hosni Mubarak until the last moment. Israel has made clear that it dislikes the change in Egyptian foreign policy after the revolution. Egypt now, for the first time in decades, is acting on its national interests without regard for Israel’s wishes. Egypt is negotiating to sell gas to Israel at a fair price, has decided to reopen the Rafah crossing to break the siege of the Palestinians in Gaza, is working to restore relations with Iran and has succeeded to arranging reconciliation between the Palestinian factions. It would be naive to imagine that Israel, which has one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world, will stand idly by when it sees Egypt on the rise and changing into a powerful democratic state that threatens Israeli interests.
There are also some ruling families in the Gulf states that defended Hosni Mubarak and tried to prevent him going on trial. These Gulf regimes hate the Egyptian revolution and are defending Hosni Mubarak, not just because he was their friend or because members of his family were partners in massive financial projects with some of the Gulf emirs, but maybe most importantly because they know that Egypt always provides a model for the whole Arab world. Overthrowing a corrupt and oppressive president in Egypt, and then giving him a fair trial and convicting him, will definitely help export revolution to those oil-producing countries that still live along tribal lines, in as much as the ruler is the sheikh of the tribe, the patriarch and symbol of the state who is never to be disobeyed and whose policies are never to be criticized, no matter how corrupt and unjust they may be. On top of that, we know that the salafi groups in Egypt have for decades had strong ties with both State Security and with the Saudi regime, which might explain why these groups are now playing a principal role in the successive acts of sabotage.
One important consideration remains: the Egyptian armed forces have protected the revolution and undertaken to fulfill all its demands. Egyptians will never forget the fine role the Egyptian army has played, but the way the army has dealt with incidents of rioting has often varied incomprehensibly from one incident to another. The military police broke up by force the sit-in by students at the mass communications faculty at Cairo University and used cattle prods to remove the students. In the same way, in Tahrir Square on March 9th, the military police arrested demonstrators who have since been tried in military courts and sentenced to jail for between one and three years. But the army has not resorted to this excessive use of force in some more serious incidents: in Qena Province protesters obstructed the railway line to southern Egypt and cut all the highways, but the military police did not prevent them and did not arrest them. Some salafi group in Qena also attacked a Christian and cut off his ear, but the perpetrator was not arrested or put on trial. The only outcome was a reconciliation session in which the Christian waved his rights. A church was demolished in the city of Atfih and the military police did not arrest any of those responsible or prevent them from carrying out the crime. It is true that the armed forces rebuilt the church at their own expense, which was a good thing to do, but justice is done only by enforcing the law. Once again the salafis burned down the tombs of holy men in several provinces and none of them were arrested, which only encouraged the salafis to go further. Breaking into places of worship by force and intimidating people who are praying are, as far as I know, crimes punishable by law, but the military police have not arrested any of those who have attacked churches. They have merely stopped them going in.
The question here is: if the Egyptian police are not operational and cannot be relied on, why didn’t the military police stop the thugs attacking the church? Why didn’t they use cattle prods to push them back as they did at the mass communications faculty? What is more serious: a peaceful sit-in by students or attacking and setting fire to a church? The armed forces, which have long protected Egypt and have embraced the revolution, now have a duty to perform a noble national mission—to enforce the law immediately and decisively against anyone who breaks it. Egypt now faces only two choices: law or chaos.
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