Revolution 2.0

The same year also brought yet another staged attempt to polish the regime’s image in the eyes of the international community. A presidential referendum was turned into a simulacrum of a competitive presidential election. Practically speaking, only leaders of political parties were allowed to run against Hosni Mubarak. State media at that time continued to promote the regime. Stories were written before the referendum to hail his presidential victory as a historical event: Mubarak would be the first Egyptian president to allow competition within an electoral race for presidency.

To say that the Egyptian opposition parties were weak and fragile is an understatement. They were effectively nonexistent. I always used to say that if all the non-NDP parties had united to form one group, its sum of members and supporters would have barely filled Cairo Stadium’s 80,000 seats. The regime had even created a regulatory body that had to approve all potential political parties before they could see the light of day. Ironically, it was headed by the secretary-general of the NDP. It is no wonder that almost no new parties were formed during this era of autocracy.

The 2005 elections were truly comical. One candidate promised to bring back the tarboosh, a cylindrical red hat that men wore until midway through the last century, if elected. Another candidate proclaimed that he personally would vote for Mubarak as the man most qualified for the job.

Gamal Mubarak played a prominent role in the 2005 presidential campaign, and his father appeared in public for the first time ever without his regular formal attire. He wore a tieless shirt in an attempt to look young and energetic, although he was seventy-five years old. (He had always dyed his hair black to look young, but this was a bigger change.) In addition to glowing coverage in the state’s media outlets, positive PR proliferated thanks to businessmen and shop and café owners upon direct orders from the security apparatus in different parts of the country.

Employees of the government and public sector, who amount to more than six million Egyptians, were given orders to vote for President Mubarak. The final tally was ludicrous: 88.6 percent for Mubarak. Mubarak then cracked down on the two true opponents. One was Ayman Nour, head of Al-Ghad (“Tomorrow”) Party. Nour was sentenced to five years on allegations of fraud. Similarly, Noman Gumaa, head of Al-Wafd Party, was removed from his position and expelled from the party’s headquarters. If you ran against Mubarak and you really meant it, you suffered.

We all knew it was a sham. The question was, would we put up with it?

Egypt’s economy continued to suffer despite the new cabinet’s optimistic promises. The regime had been selling off state-owned companies since the 1990s, in an attempt to privatize and vitalize major sectors of the economy. Yet the public was convinced that those deals had been corrupt, and in practice economic conditions had not improved. As a result of their incessant suffering, workers could no longer stay silent. Egypt began to witness a new wave of strikes in 2006 and 2007, in numbers of up to 26,000 protesters at a time seeking social justice. It became obvious that a snowball was gradually forming.

In 2008 workers at Al-Mahalla Textiles called a strike on April 6. This time, Internet activists decided to support the strike, following a suggestion made by a prominent dissident to spread it to all of Egypt. One of the strike’s Facebook pages attracted over 70,000 members — this at a time when most opposition demonstrations attracted barely a few hundred protesters.

Several forces helped make the April 6 strike a popular one, if not enormously so. Many groups promoted it, including Kefaya, the two opposition parties (Al-Wasat Party and Al-Karama Party), and several professional associations (the Movement of Real Estate Taxes Employees, the Lawyers’ Syndicate, the March 9 Movement of university professors, and the Education Sector Administrators’ Movement), not to mention the youth movement that had emerged online for the first time. Members of the latter group came to call themselves the April 6 Youth Movement. It was a loose coalition of many small groups.

Many Egyptians who feared protests and potential arrests found it easier to accept striking. All they had to do was skip work rather than face security forces. Yet many people were disappointed by the strike’s minimal results. There was no discernible impact on Cairo’s streets or in other big cities. Personally, I noticed some limited street activity on that day. I did not join the strike, as I was not politically active at the time, although I was happy that some Egyptians were finally speaking up for their rights. In the Mahalla, on the other hand, two worker activists were killed, and the city briefly turned into a war zone between workers and security forces. A large outdoor poster of Mubarak was pulled down and kicked by protesters. A video of this historical moment was posted on YouTube, but of course such images could never be seen in mainstream media.

Minimal or not, April 6 sent out a clear signal to everyone that the Internet could be a new force in Egyptian politics. The security force’s reaction was to develop a new division dedicated to policing the Internet. Similarly, the NDP established an “Electronic Committee” rumored to have legions of well-paid young men and women whose mission was to influence online opinion in favor of the party through contributions to websites, blogs, news sites, and social networks. Arrest orders were issued for April 6 activists, and they became fugitives. The young activist Israa Abdel Fattah was arrested on the day of the strike because she founded the largest Facebook group promoting the strike online. She was released a little over two weeks later.

I resented the regime more than ever but still wondered what I could do about it. I was not optimistic about the impact of the activists’ efforts, and I was also busy with work, where I spent all my time. Nevertheless, I was inspired by the courage of those heroes who stood up to the regime at the height of its strength. They risked their lives for the dream of change. The Egyptian revolution will remain indebted to everyone who tossed a stone into the still waters at a time when doing so risked beating and arrest, or worse.

One of the April 6 Youth Movement’s prominent young figures, Ahmed Maher, was chased by the police a few weeks after the strike. He tried to escape by car, but he was caught, beaten badly, and dragged to a State Security branch, where he was brutally tortured. Security forces were in disbelief: how had opposition youth groups emerged without any political affiliations, Islamist or other? They fell back on their usual strategy: set an example with group leaders, so that other dissidents would think twice before joining their movements.

Ahmed Maher was released days after his abduction. He headed straight to a human rights activist, who took pictures of his tortured body. Like other audacious young men, Ahmed refused to back down. He went to the media, seeking the protection of public opinion. He was right: regimes of terror cannot stand exposure.

And increasingly, technology made public exposure inevitable. Egypt has seen a significant shift in media patterns over the past decade, thanks to the rise of privately owned printed newspapers and magazines and the spread of satellite television. The private media are not as tightly controlled as the official state-owned media, but they have faced their share of manipulation. Many famous anchors and talk-show hosts have been forced out of their jobs. Still, the new private outlets have produced more even-handed stories, even though their owners tend to have strong connections to the regime.

The Al Jazeera satellite TV channel, established in 1996, also played a significant role. The channel’s talk shows offered heavy criticism of many Arab leaders. Within a few short years, Al Jazeera became the most viewed channel in Egypt and the entire Arab region. The network set an example that has been followed by many channels throughout the Middle East.

In parallel, the number of Internet users in Egypt increased rapidly, from a mere 1.5 million in 2004 to more than 13.6 million by 2008. Discussion forums, chat rooms, and blogs flourished, providing an outlet for many users to express opinions freely for the first time. State Security occasionally arrested and harassed bloggers for discussing sensitive issues and for sharing news that the regime didn’t like. Yet the number of politically focused bloggers only increased.

In the early part of the decade, I was only passively opposed to the regime, like many of my countrymen. I regularly read the opinions of the most daring opposition columnists, such as Ibrahim Eissa and Fahmy Howaidy. I closely followed the Muslim Brotherhood’s website to remain up-to-date with their news. At most, from time to time I initiated political satire of my own, anonymously circulating jokes on the Internet.

One of my jokes, in 2003, was an image satirically depicting President Mubarak’s Hotmail in-box. The unread e-mail included a message from President George Bush with the subject line “Mubarak, how can I be president for life?” Another e-mail, from his son Gamal, asked if he could inherit the presidency as Bashar al-Assad had; another was a Swiss bank statement declaring the president’s balance to be $35 million. The trash icon in this design carried the title “The People’s Demands.” This image spread like wildfire, but I carefully kept from claiming credit.

I expressed my opinion of the regime only to friends and family, and they always warned that I was asking for trouble. When the debates got heated and I was eventually asked, “So what’s the alternative?” I could only say, “Any alternative would be better than this regime.” Most people did not find this answer convincing.

The absence of alternatives was a key part of the oppressor’s master plan. Any popular figure who surfaced, presenting the remote possibility of an alternative to Mubarak’s iron rule, was swiftly denounced, defamed, or eliminated. It had happened to the former minister of defense, Mohamed Abu Ghazala, former prime minister Kamal al-Ganzoury, and the former minister of foreign affairs, Amr Moussa. A lot of Egyptians thought that these men had been forced to resign from their posts and retreat from public life because of their popularity on the street. I couldn’t agree more; Mubarak was so paranoid that anyone he perceived as competent became a threat to him.

We all craved an alternative. We needed a savior, and we were ready to pour our hopes onto any reasonable candidate. Finally, two years after the April 6 movement began, Egyptian activists believed they had found one.

Mohamed Mostafa ElBaradei, the former chief of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is a patriotic Egyptian who had worked in politics since he received his law degree in 1962. ElBaradei showed great skill as a diplomat. His diplomatic career began in 1964 in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with postings at the United Nations in New York and in Geneva. He rose to become special assistant to the foreign minister in 1974. He earned a law degree from New York University and then returned to the foreign ministry until 1984, when he became a legal adviser to the IAEA. In 1997 he became its director-general. ElBaradei and the IAEA received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 in recognition of efforts to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world.

Here was a man whom the Egyptian regime could neither eliminate nor easily tarnish. At first the regime tried to embrace him. State media hailed Dr. ElBaradei as a source of national pride. He was granted the highest state honor, the Order of the Nile, by President Mubarak in 2006. As the fourth Egyptian ever to win a Nobel Prize, he was lionized on the street.

In 2009, as his third term as director-general of the IAEA was nearing an end and he prepared to return home, ElBaradei told Egyptian newspapers that he was unhappy with the way Egypt was governed. He focused his criticism on the lack of democracy and the low levels of public health and education. Not surprisingly, he disappeared from our state-owned media.

Nonetheless, his popularity could not be easily snuffed out, thanks in part to Internet activists. A university student by the name of Mahmoud al-Hetta decided to start a Facebook group called “ElBaradei President of Egypt 2011.” ElBaradei had been asked by CNN if he would run for office, and he had replied that it was premature to answer such a question. That indefinite reply left the door open, and young Egyptians began mobilizing support for him.

Many of the young people aspiring for real change in Egypt joined the Facebook group. Finally we had an answer to the question “If we don’t vote for Hosni Mubarak, who will we vote for?” Tens of thousands of users joined the Facebook group, and among them I recognized many personal friends who hitherto, like myself, had never been involved in politics. We all saw a glimmer of hope for reforming Egypt. Mahmoud al-Hetta and others used spontaneous online methods to invite ElBaradei to nominate himself for president. Shortly thereafter, the group’s popularity crossed the 100,000-member mark and ElBaradei announced his desire to play an active role in Egypt’s movement for change. His wish was for Egypt to reclaim its historic status and become a true democracy, not just a nominal one.

The Egyptian regime was taken by surprise and lost its balance. Instantly the powers-that-were launched a defamation campaign. The man who most represented our national pride was suddenly subject to a series of false accusations. In record time he was depicted as an ally of the United States, with a Western agenda, and even portrayed as the main reason for the United States’ war on Iraq, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis (ElBaradei is known for his opposition to the war on Iraq and his attempts to contain crises through diplomatic means rather than bloodshed). He was said to be a glutton for power; after three terms at the IAEA he now wanted to rule Egypt. Proponents of the regime claimed that he lacked political experience. They even started a rumor that he held Austrian citizenship (since he had lived in Vienna for many years). The absurdity reached its peak when the chief editor of the nation’s largest newspaper claimed that ElBaradei had been a failure as a schoolboy and that his grades were the worst in his class during one of his elementary school years.

The Facebook group was undaunted by these transparently absurd charges. The poet Abdel Rahman Youssef emerged as the campaign manager for the movement created by the group in an effort to try to venture out into the field. In December 2009 the independent newspaper Al-Shorouk published a long interview with ElBaradei, two months before his planned return from the IAEA. Over a span of three days, he told the reporter about his ambitions for change in his country.

The highlight of that interview was ElBaradei’s conviction that change was inevitable in Egypt. He added that he refused to run for president in a sham election, if the regime was to exploit lifeless political parties again to project Mubarak as the country’s only option. ElBaradei’s refusal to grant legitimacy to the regime was his first confrontational step. Yet the constitutional amendments that he urged as necessary before he could run for president were perceived as farfetched by most people.

As the political scene in Egypt was changing, so was my personal life. Ilka was getting very frustrated with life in Egypt. She found it impossible to drive in Cairo’s jungle of a traffic system and simply could not adapt to the pollution. She struggled with Arabic as well, and had trouble managing day-to-day activities. For these reasons, among many others, she was not happy living in Egypt, even after seven years of residency there, and my regular absence from home only served to reinforce her feelings of alienation. At the same time, Google’s Middle East team was beginning to centralize in the UAE, and it was gradually becoming more convenient for my career to move there. When I consulted Ilka, she was strongly in favor of a move. I was quite hesitant, as I preferred to stay in Egypt, yet it was becoming clear to me that this would be a selfish thing to do. Finally, in January 2010, I relocated to Google’s office in Dubai, but fortunately the nature of my work would take me to Cairo on a regular basis. Ilka was thrilled to be in Dubai, and I must say that I enjoyed it as well, although my heart remained in Egypt.

I continued to follow the heated debates back home closely. I accessed the Facebook group on a daily basis to read the discussions, but I was not yet actively involved.

Dr. ElBaradei’s return to Egypt was scheduled for February 2010. Many of the country’s political forces organized a reception for him at the airport, in the form of a few hundred activists who were willing to face the consequences of publicly opposing the regime. Several Egyptian public figures joined them, including the veteran TV presenter Hamdy Kandil, whose show had been taken off the air because of his outspoken criticism of the regime. What was new, alongside the old opposition guard, was the presence of many young people who ventured out for the first time in support of change.

I was still not ready to make a public statement by attending. I had a lot to lose. My employer, Google, was a dream company voted often to be the world’s best employer. I was responsible for Ilka, Isra, and my son, Adam, who had been born in 2008. I also believed, despite my optimistic outlook, that change in Egypt was a difficult challenge that would take time. But so as not to miss out on the chance to be an active part of the movement, I finally decided to leverage my media, marketing, and Internet experience to help develop what later became Dr. ElBaradei’s official Facebook page. My aim was to establish an ongoing communication channel between him and his supporters.

Personally, I have always hated hailing individuals as saviors, and I do not believe in magical solutions. What I do believe is that real change entails a change of policies and methods, not a mere substitution of leaders and individuals. Egypt’s salvation, in my opinion, would never come at the hands of a benevolent dictator. I might not have agreed with Dr. ElBaradei on every single issue, yet I did not hesitate to support him as a presidential candidate. My enthusiasm was for the idea rather than the person, but the only way back then was to support an idea through a person. The regime resembled a wall of steel. It had to be weakened little by little. Egyptians needed to be offered alternatives.

The thing I admired most about ElBaradei was his self-perception. He asserted repeatedly that he was not a savior and that the Egyptian people needed to save themselves. He put himself forward as only a tool in support of the cause. To me, he was a professional, well educated, someone who could speak to the ambitions of Egypt’s youth.

As an experienced Internet user, I knew that a Facebook page was much more effective in spreading information than a Facebook group. As soon as someone “likes” a page, Facebook considers the person and the page to be “friends.” So if the “admin” of the page writes a post on the “wall,” it appears on the walls of the page’s fans. This is how ideas can spread like viruses. A particular post can appear on the users’ walls to be viewed thousands, or even millions, of times. In the case of groups, however, users have to access the group to remain updated; no information is pushed out to them.

So I created a page in February, days before ElBaradei’s arrival, and I began its promotional marketing campaign. The number of fans who “liked” the page exponentially increased because of the sheer number of ElBaradei enthusiasts. I updated the page with excerpts from ElBaradei’s interviews, and I highlighted his vision for reform in Egypt as well as his emphasis on the country’s need for true democracy.

A few days after creating the page, I figured that I needed a co-admin. The nature of my work for Google required me to travel a lot, and I didn’t want the page to be dependent on my personal schedule. I noticed that one of the people on my Facebook friends list was also quite excited about ElBaradei. I had never met AbdelRahman Mansour in person, but we had been virtual friends since August 2009. AbdelRahman was a twenty-four-year-old undergraduate finishing his last year of journalism study at Mansoura University, 120 kilometers away from Cairo. His activism began when he started blogging about Egypt’s political situation. He had covered the rigging of the 2005 elections, among other crucial events at the time. I found his status updates on Facebook and Twitter to be thought-provoking. At one point, when I sent out an open invitation to all my friends to join the page, I received a message from AbdelRahman asking if I was the admin behind it. He instantly became an appropriate choice for a co-admin. On the one hand, I admired his enthusiasm and intellect, and on the other hand, he had now become one of the very few people who either knew or suspected that I had founded ElBaradei’s Facebook page. Without hesitation, AbdelRahman accepted my offer. That day would mark the beginning of a virtual working relationship that still continues today.

Naturally, it took some time to build mutual trust and understanding. Many times I would send private messages asking AbdelRahman to remove content that he posted on the page, and we would occasionally have heated discussions about such matters. Whenever push came to shove, however, I had the final say. The golden rule was to ask ourselves the following question: “Would Mohamed ElBaradei write this post himself?” This made our decision-making process much easier.

Soon after his arrival, ElBaradei met with key opposition figures. Immediately following the meeting, we were surprised to receive an announcement of the establishment of a newly formed body called the National Association for Change. The idea was to bring together everyone known to oppose the Egyptian regime. Members included the former presidential candidate Ayman Nour; the media veteran Hamdy Kandil; Dr. Mohamed Ghoneim; some leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Muhamed el-Beltagy, a former MP; some political parties, like the Democratic Front, Al-Karama, and Al-Wasat parties; the Revolutionary Socialists; Egyptian Women for Change; the April 6 Youth Movement, and others. The association’s first action was to release a statement entitled “Together for Change,” or what was also known as “ElBaradei’s Seven Demands for Change”:

1 Terminating the state of emergency

2 Granting complete supervision of elections to the judiciary

3 Granting domestic and international civil society the right to monitor the elections

4 Granting equal time in the media for all candidates running for office

5 Granting expatriate Egyptians the right and ability to vote

6 Guaranteeing the right to run for president without arbitrary restrictions, and setting a two-term limit

7 Voting with the national identity card.

It was an ambitious list. It meant freeing the press; it would enfranchise eight million expatriate Egyptians; and it would help create an independent judiciary, among other spectacular achievements. The seventh demand was crucial for fair elections. The standard voting practice in Egypt was that voters were issued “electoral cards” in their respective districts. The card was required at the polling station for a voter to cast his or her vote. Since rigging was significant and consistent, most Egyptians were disinclined to obtain a card. In turn, that made rigging even easier. As a popular joke put it, we were so proud of our democracy that we even let deceased people cast votes. To demand that voting require only a national identity card was to demand free and fair elections.

The great thing about these demands was that the majority of opposition forces agreed to and supported them. Even the regime found it difficult to argue publicly against most of the seven demands. Dr. ElBaradei’s idea to issue this statement as a petition was a great one. It was an excellent new tool of pressure, and it increased the possibilities that the regime might compromise.