[Selections from the diary of the tumultuous days of revolution, published by Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif in The Guardian, 4 February 2011]

As people look down from balconies they wave at them: "Come down from the heights / come and get your rights." People wave back. For two hours we walk the neighbourhood chanting against corruption, unemployment, sectarian division, fear. "We're your kids, we're part of you / What we're doing is for you." By the time we head to Tahrir Square, the focus of the protests, we are five thousand.

As the protests from every quarter approach Tahrir the Central Security Forces start using teargas, rubber bullets, shotguns and live ammunition. They turn the march into a battle. Much of the ammunition is marked 'made in the USA'. This is not a surprise but is noted and commented on by everybody. ...

The government has removed police and all security from the streets and neighbourhoods are policing themselves. Young people have formed neighbourhood watches and are guarding their areas. Everyone – particularly women – are talking about how much safer they feel with the police off the streets.

Today is the "million person protest" and the atmosphere in the square is brilliant. We look like people who've woken up from a spell, a nightmare. How many are we? In the square there are hundreds of thousands. Across Egypt, the military estimate 4 million out on the streets. And the watchword everywhere is "silmiyyah" (peaceable). We say to each other, how did they divide us? How did they make us think badly of our youth, of each other? We revel in the inclusiveness, the generosity, the humour that comes so easily to us. People offer each other food and drink, people chat, people pick up litter. Streetsweepers, businessmen, waiters, academics, farmers, we are all here together. There is no going back….

In the square the mood is sober, determined, indignant. The disinformation, the smears being spread by the government are hurting – perhaps more than the wounds and bruises so many people are carrying. Now I properly understand why revolutions need to seize radio and TV stations – you need to stop the other side lying about you. That this regime should dare to say that the protesters are agents of Israel, Iran and Hamas(!) beggars belief. This is what people are talking about. This, and that there's no turning back.

Box

Egypt Effect

The tidal wave of Tunisia and Egypt seems to be washing over other West Asian and North African countries as the people of these countries interpret the Tunisian and Egyptian experiences in their own ways.

Massive street protests have broken out in Bahrain, which Hillary Clinton had hailed some months earlier as a “model partner.” It is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, strategically crucial as a bulwark against Iran. Recent Wikileaks revelations showed the US Ambassador to Bahrain speaking approvingly of Bahrain’s national intelligence chief’s eagerness to forge close ties with US intelligence.

Emergency has been imposed since 1975 in this country, and people’s resentment against the Bahrain monarchy has been building up against the lack of democracy, discrimination against the Shia majority, the use of torture and repression and the lack of workers' rights. Uprisings between 1994-2001 culminated in a National Action Charter, supported by over 98% of the population in a nationwide referendum, which included some promises of social justice and democracy, lifting of emergency, and votes for women for the first time in 2002. The reforms were merely intended to contain democratic aspirations and bolster the power of the monarchy, but they did unleash forces seeking wider and deeper democratic change. Opposition groups emerged, and nationwide protests and strikes demanding democratic rights and resisting racist treatment of migrant workers have taken place many times since then, backed by Shi'ite opposition groups like the al-Wefaq, left groups like the National Democratic Action and ‘Democratic Bloc’ (formerly the Communist Party of Bahrain), as well as Arab nationalist groups.

Protests inspired by Egypt and Tunisia marked the run-up to February 14 2011, the 10th anniversary of the National Action Charter referendum. The monarchy has unleashed brutal repression, imposing emergency and injuring and killing scores of protestors, including even children and doctors tending to the injured. Weapons supplied by Britain and the US are fuelling this crackdown.

After Bahrain, blood is flowing most in Libya as Libyan forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are reported to have killed nearly 300 protestors. Gaddafi’s son has threatened a civil war and branded the protestors as drunken mobs.

Muammar Gaddafi is widely remembered as the leader demonised by the US in the 1980s for nationalising oil, much as Saddam Hussein was in later years. The US had killed an adopted daughter of Gaddafi’s in an air strike and had imposed crippling sanctions on Libya. Since 2003, however, Gaddafi’s relations with the US under Bush and Obama, as well as with European countries had improved substantially. Libya had emerged as the third biggest supplier of oil to Europe. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi is known to be close to Gaddafi.

Gaddafi’s 42-year-old regime was known to be highly repressive. Significantly, Gaddafi had condemned the Tunisia uprising, sensing perhaps its potential to ignite similar aspirations in Libya as well. Factors in the Libyan crisis include deep and historic divisions amongst tribes as well as between the regions of Tripoli and Benghazi. However, it appears that the protestors have not only taken control of Benghazi, where huge funeral processions for martyred people have turned into angry demonstrations, but protests have also reached the capital of Tripoli.

In Bahrain, the US confined itself to calls for restraint by the government as well by the protestors, while it has been cautious in its response to the repression in Libya, fearing repercussions in Libya’s neighbours Algeria and Morocco, both with governments friendly to the U.S. In Algeria, in the current wave of protests, a coalition of human rights activists, unionists, lawyers and others have been calling for an end to black laws and lifting of emergency which has been in force since 1992.

In Yemen, one of the poorest of the Arab countries, protestors have been demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for the past 32 years. Besides poverty and unemployment, the people of Yemen are also disgusted with the corruption and duplicity of their Government, which, as Wikileaks documents had revealed, had claimed US drone strikes as its own and had lied to the Yemeni Parliament about it.

As the Egypt effect spreads contagiously across the region, perhaps the only country where the US has unequivocally come out in support of the popular protests has been Iran, where Ahmedinijad is the US’ current bugbear: a comment on the opportunism and doublespeak of the US when it comes to democracy.