Who’s behind the Egyptian revolution?

It’s spontaneous, yes, triggered by the explosion in Tunisia. But contrary
to some media reports, which have portrayed the upsurge in Egypt as a
leaderless rebellion, a fairly well organized movement is emerging to take
charge, comprising students, labor activists, lawyers, a network of
intellectuals, Egypt’s Islamists, a handful of political parties and
miscellaneous advocates for “change.” And it’s possible, but not at all
certain, that the nominal leadership of the revolution could fall to
Mohammad ElBaradei, the former chief of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, who returned to Egypt last year to challenge President Mubarak and
who founded the National Association for Change.

Let’s look at the emerging coalition, in its parts.

First, by all accounts, is the April 6 Youth Movement. Leftists,
socialists and pro-labor people know that the movement takes its name from
April 6, 2008 [1], when a series of strikes and labor actions by textile
workers in Mahalla led to a growing general strike by workers and
residents and then, on April 6, faced a brutal crackdown by security
forces. A second, allied movement of young Egyptians developed in response
to the killing by police of Khaled Said, a university graduate, in
Alexandria. Both the April 6 group and another group, called We Are All
Khaled Said [2], built networks through Facebook, and according to one
account the April 6 group has more than 80,000 members [3] on Facebook
 [4]. The two groups, which work together, are nearly entirely secular,
pro-labor and support the overthrow of Mubarak and the creation of a
democratic republic.

The leader of the April 6 movement is Ahmad Maher, a 28-year-old
construction engineer who was profiled last week [5] in the Los Angeles
Times. Well-wired and Internet-connected, Maher told the paper: “After the
revolution in Tunisia, we are able to market the idea of change in Egypt.
People now want to seize something.” A year ago, when ElBaradei returned
to Egypt, Maher was inspired to organize a movement of young, secular, and
pro-labor Egyptians. “Maher began reaching out to secular grass-roots and
student movements emerging to reform a nation they believed had
substituted oppression for vision,” reported the LA Times. “Momentum was
slow to build, particularly enlisting Egypt’s increasing band of labor
activists representing millions of underpaid workers.”

Their self-description on Facebook reads:

"We are a group of Egyptian Youth from different backgrounds, age and
trends gathered for a whole year since the renewal of hope in 6 April 2008
in the probability of mass action in Egypt which allowed all kind of youth
from different backgrounds, society classes all over Egypt to emerge from
the crisis and reach for the democratic future that overcomes the case of
occlusion of political and economic prospects that the society is
suffering from these days. Most of us did not come from a political
background, nor participated in political or public events before 6 April
2008 but we were able to control and determine our direction through a
whole year of practice."

The April 6 movement wasn’t unknown to the United States and its embassy,
we know from Wikileaks [6]. In December, 2008, US Ambassador Margaret
Scobey reported [7] that the embassy was well aware the Egyptian
dissidents, including April 6, had spoken of a plan to organize together
to topple Mubarak, noting that “several opposition forces” had “agreed to
support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy,
involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and
parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections.” Scobey
wrote that the details were “so sensitive it cannot be written down,”
though she called it “highly unrealistic,” she helped arrange for some
activists to attend a youth meeting in New York [8] from December 3–5,
2008, called the “Alliance of Youth Movements Summit,” organized by the
State Department. A representative of April 6, presumably Maher, visited
Washington and met with thinktanks and officials on Capitol Hill.

That’s not to say that the opposition to Mubarak has American support—far
from it, though various ultra-conservatives are trying to portray the
Wikileaks information as evidence that the Obama administration has
engaged in a conspiratorial, anti-Mubarak covert operation. Instead, the
April 6 and its allies are a genuine, grassroots resistance movement that
has carefully cultivated ties to various parts of the anti-Mubarak
spectrum. In addition, its members helped organize Egypt-based protests
against the Israeli invasion of Gaza. A 2008 article [8] in the Christian
Science Monitor described the arrest and torture of Maher in July 2008,
and it described his “Facebook Youth” movement, which, the Monitor noted,
is “tied to its continued detention of dozens of textile factory workers
and townspeople from Mahalla, a large city in the Nile Delta.” The April 6
movement’s use of Facebook also drew an admiring profile in Wired magazine
 [9] in 2008.

According to the New York Times, the April 6 and Khaled Said groups have
emerged as the organizers of the anti-Mubarak coalition [10]. On Sunday,
January 30, they helped bring together a committee of ten people,
nominally led by ElBaradei, that emerged after a meeting of Egypt’s
“shadow parliament,” including officials from the Muslim Brotherhood,
dissident Ayman Nour, ElBaradei’s National Association for Change, and
others. They coordinated with a meeting of several political parties,
including the opposition Wafd Party. The April 6 movement also led the
meetings held in Tahrir (“Liberation”) Square, where they brought
ElBaradei yesterday to speak to the crowds who filled the square, just off
the Nile in downtown Cairo.

ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize while serving at the IAEA,
courageously fought the George W. Bush administration over its false
charges that Iraq had a nuclear program along with stockpiles of chemical
and biological weapons in 2002, and in 2003 he revealed that the documents
that the White House had touted about Iraq’s alleged purchase of uranium
in Niger were fabricated. He also battled the Bush administration over the
issue of Iran’s nuclear program too, leading one right-wing, pro-Israeli
leader to denounce ElBaradei this week as an agent of Iran. Malcolm
Hoenlein, who leaders the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations, said of ElBaradei [11]: “He is a stooge of Iran, and
I don’t use the term lightly. He fronted for them, he distorted the
reports.”

Despite Hoenlein’s absurd comments, ElBaradei is widely accepted and
respected in the West, which is why he was acknowledged as the leader of
the anti-Mubarak opposition by nearly everyone involved in the movement,
from the April 6 organizers to the Muslim Brotherhood. He may or may not
be a transition figure, but his forthright comments since emerging as
spokesman for the opposition have been stellar. Yesterday, he lambasted
Obama and Secretary of State Clinton for their lame calls for “reform” by
Mubarak, saying: “To ask a dictator to implement democratic measures after
thrity years in power is an oxymoron. It will not end until he leaves.”
He’s also said that the United States risks opprobrium in Egypt if it
fails to support the rebels.

The Wafd, which has a proud history, is a shell of its former self. It was
founded in the years after World War I to represent the emerging,
anti-British, nationalist movement. (Wafd means “delegation,” and it was
named after the delegation to the post-World War I peace conference where
the Egyptians argued, unsuccessfully, for an end to British control of
Egypt.) During the period between 1919 and 1952, when Gamal Abdel Nasser
seized power and toppling the corrupt monarchy, the Wafd—highly
factionalized, between more and less militant wings—tried to oppose the
king, the British, and the ultra-reactionary and violent Muslim
Brotherhood. The party was dissolved in 1952, when Nasser banned political
parties, and though it has tried to reconstitute itself in recent decades,
it is mostly a vehicle for old, moderate nationalists.

Robert Dreyfuss

* NEXT: The Muslim Brotherhood