News Brief: Egypt protesters gain momentum

Protesters in Cairo begin to gain some ground as some move from Tahrir Square to surrounding the area outside Egypt’s parliament buildings. The Egyptian cabinet building in the capital has been evacuated as demonstrations enter their 16th consecutive day. Human Rights Watch is reporting that the death toll since the beginning of the protests have reached at least 302 — 232 killed in Cairo, 52 in Alexandria and 18 in Suez. 

In Tahrir Square, thousands of protesters gave a hero’s welcome to Wael Ghonim, a Google executive and activist who was kidnapped and held by the Egyptian government for 12 days. Ghonim has become a symbol of the pro-democracy movement. (Video available here) Protests have also seemed to gain momentum as a result of the largest crowds Cairo has seen in two weeks, and strikes and stoppages among workers in Cairo and the rest of Egypt. About 6,000 workers at five service companies owned by a major component of the Egyptian economy — the Suez Canal Authority — began a sit-in on Tuesday night. 

The United States has called on the Egyptian government to immediately withdraw its decades-old state of emergency that has empowered security forces. The demand was made through a telephone conversation between U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman. A spokesman for a coalition of youth protest groups, Abdul-Rahman Samir, accused Vice President Suleiman of creating a “disastrous scenario,” according to the Associated Press news agency. “He is threatening to impose martial law, which means everybody in the square will be smashed,” he said. “But what would he do with the rest of 70 million Egyptians who will follow us afterward?”

El Amrani explores the underlying structural factors in common between the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. While the largest obstacle to the Egyptian opposition’s protests over the last decade has been the entrenched state security establishment, “the system proved surprisingly unable to adapt when faced with a leaderless protest movement. It turned out that the biggest weakness of the Egyptian opposition – its inability to produce a charismatic leader with wide public appeal – was also its strength.”

Also at the LRB, Adam Shatz looks at the US’s options in the Middle East “After Mubarak.” His bottom line:

From the Obama administration we can expect criticisms of the crackdown, prayers for peace, and more calls for ‘restraint’ on ‘both sides’ – as if there were symmetry between unarmed protesters and the military regime – but Suleiman will be given the benefit of the doubt. Unlike ElBaradei, he’s a man Washington knows it can deal with.

Today’s New York Times editorial, “Suleiman’s Empty Promises,” echoes this critique.

‘The Muslim Brotherhood After Mubarak’ (Carrie Wickham, Foreign Affairs)

Carrie Wickham, a specialist on the rise of Islamic activism in authoritarian settings, takes stock of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s trajectory, mobilization capability, and political aspirations. Wickham notes the movement’s pragmatism: “Although the Brotherhood entered the political system in order to change it, it ended up being changed by the system.” Moreover, Wickham provides important historical context on how demands for internal reform within the Brotherhood have expanded the movement’s “call for an expansion of public freedoms, democracy, and respect for human rights and the rule of law.” Meanwhile, in the Los Angeles Times, Tarek Masoud examines the fabric of Egypt’s opposition, including the Muslim Brotherhood’s role.