This Thursday, Sherif Mansour, the Senior Program Officer for Freedom House’s Middle East North Africa programs, will be giving what looks to be a very interesting and informative webinar, hosted by the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), on the nonviolent uprising that brought down Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak last week. According to the announcement:
The Egyptian nonviolent uprising was a surprise for many. The world’s attention was primarily focused on the last two weeks. But the struggle for overthrowing Mubarak started over seven years before. Major transformations inside the pro-democracy movement from online activism to street organization mainly happened over the past three years. The breakthrough only happened in the past six months. This webinar will examine some of the major turning points, the organizational tactics that were employed by Egyptian activists, and show some of the early and recent manifestations of these tactics on the ground. The webinar will also highlight important logistical and moral support for the demonstrators during the uprising, and highlight some of the lessons learned and some of the critical points which can be utilized by other nonviolent struggles in the Middle East.
The webinar will run from 12-1pm EST. To reserve your place, click here. And if that time doesn’t work for you, ICNC will post the video of the presentation on their website afterward.
Eric, I can’t make the webinar but one question I have after absorbing much of the excellent analysis on this site, is about the role of the army. It appears the army was neutral-to-supportive of the protestors from the first day – a very unusual dynamic in dictatorships. Was this the result of prior groundwork, or an external ‘political opportunity’ that was successfully exploited?
Also, does anyone has a view on why the police were not more repressive? It’s particularly striking due to the overturning of the “don’t put too much emphasis on occupying a central square” maxim among nonviolence researchers in the wake of Tinannanmen Square.
Justin, you ask a great question that I don’t know I have the answer to. I’m not sure to what extent people in the opposition had reached out to the military before this struggle exploded, but I was surprised by how quickly the people embraced them when they came out on the streets early on. I imagine as more serious reporting is done on how this movement happened we will get a little more clarity on your question.
And I don’t know why the police were not more repressive. I think they tried to be, and were quite brutal both when they were in uniform and when they were posing as looters and pro-Mubarak protesters, but I imagine they realized that their repression wasn’t having its intended effect, as it always had before, and decided to retreat.
Also the presence of the international media probably constrained the security forces somewhat.
What is interesting is that during the Egyptian revolution people were saying that Egypt may turn into another Iran-like regime and now it seems that the people of Iran were in fact inspired by the revolutionary movements in Egypt.