Egypt's revolution has been 10 years in the making

Hosni Mubarak's wall of fear began to crumble once people were able to see that others shared their desire for liberation

AN EXCELLENT COMMENT

Hossam el-Hamalawy
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 March 2011

"In the 1990s, one could only whisper Hosni Mubarak's name. Political talk or jokes were avoided in phone calls. This year, millions of Egyptians fought for 18 days against their ageing tyrant, braving the police troops firing teargas, rubber bullets and live ammunition. People in Egypt have lost their fear, but it did not happen overnight. The Egyptian revolution, rather than coming out of the blue on 25 January 2011, is a result of a process that has been brewing over the previous decade – a chain reaction to the autumn 2000 protests in solidarity with the Palestinian intifada.....

I recall the first time I heard protesters en masse chanting against the president in April 2002, during the pro-Palestinian riots around Cairo University. Battling the notorious central security forces, protesters were chanting in Arabic: "Hosni Mubarak is just like [Ariel] Sharon."

The anger was to explode on an even larger scale with the outbreak of the war on Iraq in March 2003. More than 30,000 Egyptians fought the police in downtown Cairo, briefly taking over Tahrir Square, and burning down Mubarak's billboard.....

Though scoffed at by some as only economic, the strike wave was political in essence. In April 2008, a mini revolt took place in the city of Mahalla over the price of bread. Security forces put down the uprising in two days, leaving at least three dead and hundreds detained and tortured. The scenes from what became known as the "Mahalla intifada" could have constituted a dress rehearsal for what happened in 2011.......

By October 2010, there was definitely something in the air. It became normal to bump into a strike here or there while heading to work. Civil servants heading home from the office would pass by activists holding small protests in downtown Cairo. They looked, and very occasionally reacted. But they were witnessing visual displays of daily dissent.

Tunisia then went through its own revolt, overthrew a tyrant, and, more importantly, the revolution was televised to millions of viewers in Egypt and elsewhere, largely via al-Jazeera again. This was only one of many catalysts – daily incidents of police brutality provided many others.

The uprising that started on 25 January 2011 was the result of a long process in which the wall of fear fell, bit by bit. The key to it all was that the actions on the ground were visually transmitted to the widest possible audience. Nothing aids the erosion of one's fear more than knowing there are others, somewhere else, who share the same desire for liberation – and have started taking action."