WEBVTT - Counterrevolution in Egypt 0:00:02.490 --> 0:00:08.510 Hello everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here. 0:00:08.850 --> 0:00:09.890 My name is Dana Al-Kurd. 0:00:10.430 --> 0:00:13.270 I'm a researcher of Arab and Palestinian politics and today 0:00:13.310 --> 0:00:16.669 I'm joined by Hossam Al-Hamalawi. Hossam is a journalist and 0:00:16.690 --> 0:00:19.270 socialist from Cairo who was among the organizers of the 0:00:19.270 --> 0:00:20.320 2011 protest. 0:00:21.110 --> 0:00:23.860 He's been involved in the labor movement. 0:00:23.500 --> 0:00:25.460 And the fight against police brutality in Egypt for many 0:00:25.500 --> 0:00:28.440 years and holds a PhD in political science from the Free. 0:00:28.340 --> 0:00:32.360 University of Berlin. He publishes a weekly newsletter on Egyptian politics, 0:00:32.380 --> 0:00:34.379 which I'll be linking in the show notes, and is 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:38.330 author of the new book, Counter-Revolution in Egypt, Sisi's New Republic. 0:00:38.630 --> 0:00:41.430 Hassan, thanks for joining us. Thank you, Diana, for having me. 0:00:42.010 --> 0:00:44.750 So let me start off by talking about the beginning 0:00:44.770 --> 0:00:45.210 of your book. 0:00:45.810 --> 0:00:47.610 At the beginning of your book, you talk about your 0:00:47.710 --> 0:00:53.089 own abduction and torture by state security in 2000. And 0:00:53.170 --> 0:00:55.460 then you were an organizer, as I said, of the 0:00:55.460 --> 0:01:00.190 2011 uprising. So how did living through this crisis repression 0:01:00.250 --> 0:01:03.550 on a personal level shaped the way that you studied 0:01:03.730 --> 0:01:07.899 the repression? And what can a participant see that maybe 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:10.100 an outside scholar might miss? 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:14.819 There was like a long-running tradition in academia and in journalism, 0:01:15.220 --> 0:01:19.480 which fortunately is being challenged over the past couple of 0:01:19.540 --> 0:01:24.820 decades at least. whereby this tradition tended to regard the 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:29.340 scholar or the journalist as someone who's completely separate from 0:01:29.700 --> 0:01:33.970 whatever they are studying or reporting on. They should be, 0:01:34.620 --> 0:01:41.550 between quotes, neutral, between quotes, objective. Any form of attachment 0:01:41.990 --> 0:01:46.970 or passion for any cause would be considered a conflict 0:01:47.010 --> 0:01:51.310 of interest, more or less. But I mean, a great 0:01:51.330 --> 0:01:54.350 chunk of my career, and this is also expressed in 0:01:54.390 --> 0:01:58.310 this book, I've been trying to challenge that. I consider 0:01:58.350 --> 0:02:01.370 myself a scholar activist, not just a scholar. I was 0:02:01.430 --> 0:02:05.320 also an activist journalist, not just a journalist. And in 0:02:05.380 --> 0:02:10.200 that regards, in answer to your question, my experience when 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:14.860 it comes to state repression has definitely shaped not just 0:02:15.139 --> 0:02:20.119 my intellectual trajectory, but my own personal life. After all, 0:02:20.139 --> 0:02:24.080 I'm doing this interview with you from Berlin, not from 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:28.970 my home in Cairo, which I had to leave in 0:02:28.970 --> 0:02:32.510 2015 and, you know, can't go back as long as 0:02:32.570 --> 0:02:39.649 this regime exists. My repression, which included the repeated arrests, torture, 0:02:40.530 --> 0:02:45.200 continuous threats to me and my family, exclusion from jobs, 0:02:45.620 --> 0:02:49.660 and I mean, the list is too long. have planted 0:02:49.740 --> 0:02:56.980 in me curiosity and also an existential reason to study 0:02:57.340 --> 0:03:00.799 who's repressing me, actually. I mean, we tend to talk 0:03:00.860 --> 0:03:06.299 about the state or the security apparatus. And I was 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:11.019 very much interested in putting faces and names to these 0:03:11.060 --> 0:03:14.780 kind of entities. Who's doing what when it comes to repression? 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:19.250 Who's doing the monitoring and who's doing the arrest? What's 0:03:19.290 --> 0:03:24.010 the profile of the officers who conduct these missions? Where 0:03:24.030 --> 0:03:28.470 do they come from? What's their background? What's their life trajectories? 0:03:29.450 --> 0:03:34.620 How do they justify for themselves their actions? What's their worldview? 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:39.720 And in so many ways, this curiosity has took me 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:45.770 on a very long journey to study this apparatus. also 0:03:45.890 --> 0:03:50.450 with the declared aim of dismantling it one day when 0:03:50.490 --> 0:03:52.570 we are victorious in the coming revolution. 0:03:53.610 --> 0:03:56.070 Yeah, so you really opened up kind of the black 0:03:56.130 --> 0:03:59.630 box of the security apparatus and disentangled, I think, the 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:02.900 ways in which maybe outside scholars kind of gloss over 0:04:03.420 --> 0:04:06.240 or lump different things together. And everything you're saying really 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.720 resonates with me as a Palestinian studying Palestine, like this 0:04:08.860 --> 0:04:12.040 endless suspicion of your own perspective. I'm glad that, as 0:04:12.060 --> 0:04:14.580 you said, there has been a pushback from our region 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:18.289 and from scholars and activists in other places. But on 0:04:18.330 --> 0:04:21.770 this question of like actually doing the research, you know, 0:04:21.810 --> 0:04:25.330 it must have been challenging because this regime wants to obfuscate. 0:04:26.029 --> 0:04:29.659 It wants to hide its doers. So it must have 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.240 been challenging to find sources. How did you find that information? 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:33.800 What was your methodology for the book? 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:38.930 That's a very good question. From the outside, Egypt looks 0:04:39.029 --> 0:04:44.830 like a very opaque country for very reasonable causes at 0:04:44.850 --> 0:04:46.940 the end of the day. This is a repressive regime. 0:04:47.220 --> 0:04:52.480 It's allergic to the flow of information and freedom of 0:04:52.540 --> 0:04:57.880 expression in general. Egypt is not a researcher-friendly country at all. 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:02.029 Once you mention Egypt in academia, people are always reminded 0:05:02.050 --> 0:05:06.490 that with Giulio Regini, the Italian PhD scholar who was 0:05:06.550 --> 0:05:13.690 brutally tortured and murdered in Egypt. We don't have freedom 0:05:13.750 --> 0:05:18.420 of information acts in Egypt that allows us access into 0:05:18.450 --> 0:05:22.719 the archives of this security apparatus and the military and 0:05:22.820 --> 0:05:27.460 the other institutions that belong to that sector. But you 0:05:27.500 --> 0:05:32.099 can always find your way if you decide to become innovative. 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:37.400 And I will just cite a couple of examples. First 0:05:37.540 --> 0:05:41.900 is that sometimes the best information you can get about 0:05:42.290 --> 0:05:45.850 an opaque military like the Egyptians is through their sponsors. 0:05:46.790 --> 0:05:51.210 The Egyptian military is sponsored by the U.S. In the U.S., 0:05:51.910 --> 0:05:55.310 even when it's, of course, becoming sissified in so many aspects, 0:05:56.310 --> 0:05:59.890 but still there is a room, Freedom of Information Acts 0:06:00.010 --> 0:06:03.650 and other laws that allows you access. So if you 0:06:03.690 --> 0:06:06.790 go down, after we're done with the recording, just go 0:06:06.850 --> 0:06:11.330 to the U.S. State Department website, check the FOIA section, 0:06:12.370 --> 0:06:16.810 and go back to 2011 and check Hillary Clinton's emails 0:06:17.250 --> 0:06:21.160 that have been declassified. Right. The intelligence reports in these 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:27.760 emails almost contain the SCAB generals' meetings minutes, where Hillary 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.160 is like saying... General Rouhani said this while the other 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:35.080 general replied back saying no. And it's as if she's sitting, 0:06:35.100 --> 0:06:38.080 you know, I mean, on the same meeting. But anyways, 0:06:38.170 --> 0:06:40.529 I mean, they are her proxies and clients, so she 0:06:40.570 --> 0:06:44.270 must get the information right away. So I managed to 0:06:44.310 --> 0:06:50.930 get tons of information through actually declassified U.S. documents. The 0:06:51.029 --> 0:06:56.120 second method, which I also invested some time in, Just 0:06:56.190 --> 0:06:58.710 by the fact that the military are now in the 0:06:58.790 --> 0:07:01.770 front seat, not in the back seat when it comes 0:07:01.830 --> 0:07:05.290 to ruling, and I guess we'll touch more on this later, 0:07:06.470 --> 0:07:09.290 there are tons of mics that are shoved in front 0:07:09.410 --> 0:07:13.429 of the mouths of the different generals and the different 0:07:13.490 --> 0:07:18.210 senior officials, as well as Sisi. And these guys don't 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:22.040 have any filters. They haven't received the same sophisticated training, 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:27.850 I guess, where militaries in Western quote unquote, democracies have, 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.989 where they are always in contact with the media. So 0:07:32.790 --> 0:07:38.550 the kind of garbage and so many secretive things that 0:07:38.610 --> 0:07:42.510 you actually can't believe that they are saying, it's unbelievable. 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:47.000 So just by browsing through their public statements, they are 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:51.450 spilling the beans left and right. The last thing that 0:07:51.590 --> 0:07:55.350 I will say about the sources, I once heard a 0:07:55.390 --> 0:07:59.110 story in the beginning of the 2000s or late 1990s 0:07:59.230 --> 0:08:03.730 when I was still a student. And to be honest, 0:08:03.990 --> 0:08:07.250 I have no idea if this story was, I mean, 0:08:07.270 --> 0:08:10.420 it did happen or it's just an urban myth. But 0:08:10.450 --> 0:08:12.640 when I heard it, it resonated with me and it 0:08:12.700 --> 0:08:15.620 stayed with me for years to come and inspired me. 0:08:16.790 --> 0:08:20.790 The story goes like as follows. Following the peace treaty 0:08:20.810 --> 0:08:24.700 with Israel, when the Egyptians and the Israelis were sitting, 0:08:25.140 --> 0:08:30.460 discussing joint cooperation projects. So the Israelis would, you know, 0:08:30.540 --> 0:08:34.080 propose some agricultural project, for example, and then they would 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:39.370 tell the Egyptians, and we think that Mr. Mohammed, blah, blah, blah, 0:08:39.590 --> 0:08:44.450 at this department, at your agricultural ministry, would be the 0:08:44.470 --> 0:08:47.849 most qualified to lead it. And then they would like 0:08:47.870 --> 0:08:51.550 suggest others and they would like keep on proposing names. 0:08:52.500 --> 0:08:55.840 And the Egyptians were shocked to find out that, as 0:08:55.900 --> 0:08:59.600 the story goes, that the Musad had the entire map 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:04.590 of the Egyptian bureaucracy just by monitoring the obituaries. Because, 0:09:04.610 --> 0:09:07.329 you know, obituaries, maybe the Westerners don't know this, but 0:09:07.410 --> 0:09:10.110 obituaries in the Arab world, You tend to put your 0:09:10.190 --> 0:09:14.750 entire family tree and brag about all the members, you know, 0:09:14.809 --> 0:09:15.530 of the family. 0:09:15.809 --> 0:09:17.890 This engineer and this doctor. 0:09:18.090 --> 0:09:23.480 Yeah, the entire family tree. And each one, you know, 0:09:23.530 --> 0:09:27.000 you start posting their CVs and, you know, their achievements. 0:09:27.900 --> 0:09:30.900 So actually, when I heard this, it stuck with me, 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:35.780 that story. And I applied that same methodology on like 0:09:35.820 --> 0:09:38.580 trying to track down police officers who were involved in 0:09:38.620 --> 0:09:41.300 torture in the years, like in the run up to 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:45.110 the 2011 revolution. And I used the same technique in 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:49.150 my research. So I managed to map, for example, the 0:09:49.210 --> 0:09:54.390 new administrative structure of the military intelligence through obituaries, through 0:09:54.450 --> 0:09:57.250 surfing through the obituaries and, you know, digging up names 0:09:57.330 --> 0:10:01.380 and departments and uh and things like that so yeah 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:05.420 i mean there is always a way to to maneuver i. 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:09.080 Like how the security apparatus becomes a family business uh 0:10:09.220 --> 0:10:11.380 and the military becomes a family business and i also 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:13.260 love the fact that we can use the like the 0:10:13.300 --> 0:10:17.240 structures of american empire to study its outposts so um 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:22.700 yeah that's that's uh Very clever on your part to 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:24.160 weaponize those sources. 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.040 Okay, so let's get into the argument of the book. 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:31.840 Basically, there's this idea of a counter-revolution, I think maybe. 0:10:31.660 --> 0:10:32.680 For the layman. 0:10:32.820 --> 0:10:36.059 Also, I think in some of the theoretical literature, but 0:10:36.300 --> 0:10:39.000 just generally speaking, the way that people think of counter-revolutions, 0:10:39.500 --> 0:10:42.850 we're thinking of a restoration of an old regime. But 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:48.570 your main argument is that al-Sisi didn't restore Mubarak's Egypt. 0:10:48.950 --> 0:10:53.130 Mubarak was the president prior to the 2011 uprising. But 0:10:53.210 --> 0:10:56.280 he built something fundamentally different. You call it a second republic. 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.679 So what makes this order different? And why does that 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:03.540 distinction matter for how the world should understand Egypt right now? 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:08.140 This indeed was the main argument of the book. My 0:11:08.220 --> 0:11:14.370 book was sort of an intervention in political debates that 0:11:14.470 --> 0:11:19.350 have been happening among the Egyptian dissident community. When I 0:11:19.429 --> 0:11:24.810 started this research, I'm talking here about the end of 2017, because, 0:11:24.870 --> 0:11:27.280 I mean, my book is, as you said earlier, it's 0:11:27.340 --> 0:11:31.020 my doctoral actually dissertation, which I did here in Berlin. 0:11:31.820 --> 0:11:35.620 So at the time, there were still debates about whether 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.330 this regime is a return to the Mubarak order or 0:11:39.450 --> 0:11:44.140 is it something new? Now, speaking to you in 2026, 0:11:44.140 --> 0:11:47.540 any five-year-old in Egypt would definitely, you know, would know 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:50.820 that this is something completely different. You don't need to 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:54.240 do a PhD about. But at the time, there was 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:59.849 still so much unclarity. And my argument was a victorious 0:11:59.900 --> 0:12:04.090 counter-revolution does not restore the old order simply because the 0:12:04.170 --> 0:12:07.770 old order has failed. And by failure here, Dana, I 0:12:08.010 --> 0:12:10.940 don't mean The kind of failure that you and I 0:12:10.980 --> 0:12:15.380 would think of, that the old regime was not democratic enough, 0:12:15.860 --> 0:12:21.880 the old regime did not distribute wealth in an equal fashion. No, 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:26.440 in the eyes of the counter-revolutionaries, the old regime failed 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:31.700 because it failed to repress the revolution. So the kind 0:12:31.860 --> 0:12:36.590 of victorious regimes that come out of such a counter-revolution 0:12:36.730 --> 0:12:41.089 are usually regimes that try to avoid the mistakes of 0:12:41.130 --> 0:12:46.960 the past. So the generals, for example, who led the 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:51.740 2013 military coup, they regarded Mubarak as too lenient, as 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:58.280 too weak. They completely detested the way that Hosni Mubarak, 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:03.040 between quotes, allowed those human rights NGOs to operate in 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:07.800 the country. They couldn't believe that Hosni Mubarak allowed, again, 0:13:07.860 --> 0:13:13.900 between quotes, people to denounce him in the press, for example. 0:13:14.940 --> 0:13:18.700 So this was not a restoration of the old Mubarak 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:22.790 authoritarian formula. I mean, make no mistake, I'm not nostalgic 0:13:22.830 --> 0:13:25.870 to the Mubarak days. I don't see it as a 0:13:25.910 --> 0:13:30.790 viable model. But this was not a restoration of that 0:13:31.490 --> 0:13:36.609 old authoritarian formula. Instead, Sisi built a new regime, which, 0:13:36.750 --> 0:13:38.949 by the way, he's the one who coined the phrase 0:13:38.990 --> 0:13:43.390 the new republic or the second republic. And I know 0:13:43.410 --> 0:13:47.349 many people, they like to ridicule, you know, this term 0:13:47.570 --> 0:13:52.170 for very obvious reasons. But it's actually, it's quite accurate. 0:13:52.590 --> 0:13:57.290 He contrasts the first republic, which lasted from 1953 to 0:14:00.050 --> 0:14:03.090 That's one year after the three officers' coup, when they 0:14:03.150 --> 0:14:09.130 abolished the monarchy and declared a republic, till 2013. This 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:15.660 is all of it. It included three successive regimes, Nasser, Sadat, 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:20.240 and Mubarak. Sisi lumped them all together in one lot 0:14:20.460 --> 0:14:23.580 as the first republic, and actually I'm arguing that he's right. 0:14:24.300 --> 0:14:29.540 Even when on the surface they had different inclinations, different 0:14:29.580 --> 0:14:35.340 stated goals, different international alliances. But when it comes to 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:39.900 the core of how the state machine was organized, actually, 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:43.080 they didn't differ that much. And there was some logic 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:49.860 in organizing the security apparatus, which completely changed after 2013. 0:15:00.610 --> 0:15:02.090 Let's get into that in particular. 0:15:02.190 --> 0:15:07.650 It's the fact that Abdel Nasser and Onward, they pitted 0:15:08.390 --> 0:15:10.470 different parts of the security apparatus against each other. 0:15:11.110 --> 0:15:13.110 Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not a scholar of Egypt. 0:15:13.150 --> 0:15:17.870 But my understanding is that under Mubarak's regime, they really bolstered, 0:15:18.130 --> 0:15:22.670 for example, general intelligence and things like this. So always 0:15:22.750 --> 0:15:26.840 kind of historically fragmenting different parts of the security apparatus 0:15:26.860 --> 0:15:27.930 so that they are rivals. 0:15:28.500 --> 0:15:31.360 And of course, the dictator can be the arbiter. 0:15:31.860 --> 0:15:34.360 What you're saying is, in the book especially, is that 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:38.990 Sisi unifies them for the first time. And why is 0:15:39.070 --> 0:15:42.830 that unification the key to kind of understanding not only 0:15:42.910 --> 0:15:45.570 the type of repression, but the scale? And could it 0:15:45.650 --> 0:15:48.910 have happened without the 2011 revolution? 0:15:49.410 --> 0:15:54.350 There is a vast amount of literature in political science 0:15:55.540 --> 0:16:00.460 that discuss this term. It's called the dominant perceived threat. 0:16:01.780 --> 0:16:06.070 And the arguments usually that revolves around this term is 0:16:06.130 --> 0:16:12.210 that when autocrats reach power, they usually have a dominant 0:16:12.270 --> 0:16:16.750 perceived threat. I mean, don't get me wrong, any good autocrat, 0:16:16.810 --> 0:16:19.320 if they want to stay in power for a long time, 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:23.200 they have to shield themselves from all sorts of dangers. 0:16:24.210 --> 0:16:28.200 But there is always a dominant one. And according to 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:34.080 that dominant one, they start structuring their security sector or 0:16:34.140 --> 0:16:38.420 security apparatus. So the argument also goes, and I mean, 0:16:38.460 --> 0:16:41.310 I support it, and I think it's correct and accurate, 0:16:42.270 --> 0:16:45.130 that if your dominant perceived threat is that of a 0:16:45.170 --> 0:16:49.870 military coup, then you tend to fragment your apparatus as 0:16:49.930 --> 0:16:58.140 you've just clarified. So you create multiple security institutions. And 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:00.860 I mean security here in the functional sense, like the 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:04.780 military would be a security institution. They will all have 0:17:05.300 --> 0:17:11.300 overlapping mandates, hardly any communication or information sharing between them. 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:15.260 They are always in a state of competition for resources. 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:21.790 And there isn't much horizontal channels of communication. the only 0:17:21.850 --> 0:17:26.210 channels of communication are vertical. So that, as you also 0:17:26.250 --> 0:17:30.679 clarified earlier, only the ruler would have the bird's eye 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:35.620 view of what's happening beneath them. At the same time, 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:42.330 this ruler or this autocrat would definitely take precautions against riots, 0:17:42.550 --> 0:17:48.600 against foreign invasions, against what have you, but that if 0:17:48.710 --> 0:17:52.040 the dominant perceived threat was that of a military coup, 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:57.020 they will do as we just explained. So during the 0:17:57.060 --> 0:17:59.800 First Republic, I mean, how did the First Republic start? 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.200 In case your listeners do not know, in July 1952, 0:18:04.180 --> 0:18:10.070 an eclectic group of nationalist army officers led by Colonel 0:18:10.130 --> 0:18:17.880 Gamal Abdel Nasser, they overthrew the British-backed king, And they 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:22.550 declared a republic a year later. This was a time, Dana, 0:18:22.630 --> 0:18:26.950 where coups were almost a fashionable thing to do, I mean, 0:18:26.990 --> 0:18:31.730 across the global south. These were the years of decolonization. 0:18:31.750 --> 0:18:37.610 At the time, the militaries were still regarded in a favorable, actually, 0:18:37.750 --> 0:18:42.650 kind of light by the nations that were still being formed. 0:18:43.230 --> 0:18:47.950 Many of them came from the anti-colonial fights. The military 0:18:48.030 --> 0:18:54.670 was regarded as a modernizing force professional that can get 0:18:54.710 --> 0:18:57.609 the country to go forward and catch up with the 0:18:57.650 --> 0:19:01.620 West and break dependency ties. There was all of these 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:07.500 kind of nostalgic, romanticized visions of the military. So Egypt 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:10.400 in that case was not really that unique. It was 0:19:10.460 --> 0:19:13.679 happening across our region and it was happening across the 0:19:13.700 --> 0:19:18.860 global south. So the immediate concern of these conspirators was 0:19:18.940 --> 0:19:23.959 a countercoup. It makes sense. So this was their dominant 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:30.120 perceived threat. And that's when the military intelligence colonel, Zakaria Mohideen, 0:19:30.980 --> 0:19:34.939 who was dubbed Nasser's barrier in reference to Stalin's barrier, 0:19:35.660 --> 0:19:40.810 he organized this security setup, which continued with us all 0:19:40.850 --> 0:19:46.150 the way up until 2013. whereby he fragmented the security sector. 0:19:46.930 --> 0:19:50.220 So you had the military, you had the interior ministry 0:19:50.380 --> 0:19:53.460 and its secret police, which changed its name, you know, 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:57.850 several times from al-Mabahf al-Amma to Mabahf Amn al-Dawla to 0:19:58.490 --> 0:20:02.290 then after the revolution, Al-Amn al-Watani. And he created the 0:20:02.310 --> 0:20:07.169 General Intelligence Service in 1954, or our Mukhabarat, as we 0:20:07.210 --> 0:20:10.590 call it. And by the way, it was modeled along 0:20:11.030 --> 0:20:14.010 the structure of the CIA from the start. They were 0:20:14.050 --> 0:20:17.739 very impressed, you know, with the CIA. And actually, they 0:20:17.780 --> 0:20:22.640 enjoyed good relations in order to fight communism. Because, you know, 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:25.800 many people actually don't know that initially the three officers, 0:20:26.340 --> 0:20:30.360 they didn't really express any left-leaning sympathies, but they were 0:20:30.420 --> 0:20:32.690 kind of like pushed into it in the following years. 0:20:33.470 --> 0:20:38.689 So this was the security setup. Not in their wildest 0:20:38.770 --> 0:20:42.879 dreams did they ever imagine that a revolution could happen 0:20:42.940 --> 0:20:46.700 in Egypt. I mean here a proper, like popular revolution. 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:52.320 And this is because our rulers, even when they, you know, 0:20:52.510 --> 0:20:56.230 came in the post-colonial years, they still maintained this colonial 0:20:56.310 --> 0:21:02.010 look whereby they despised their people. They saw the Egyptians 0:21:02.490 --> 0:21:08.540 as human beings without agency. They regarded the Egyptians as 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:15.830 incapable of self-organizing and that if they are let free 0:21:16.369 --> 0:21:19.630 or let loose, that they will bring the whole country together. 0:21:19.730 --> 0:21:23.469 So there always has to be some patriarchal kind of 0:21:23.790 --> 0:21:30.280 guardianship of the Egyptians. They expected few riots to happen 0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:33.780 here and there, maybe some strikes here and there. but 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:38.290 not in their wildest nightmares that they thought a revolution 0:21:38.330 --> 0:21:43.270 could happen. Comes 2011, and suddenly they are all shocked. 0:21:44.390 --> 0:21:49.170 And for two and a half years, they were panicking 0:21:49.310 --> 0:21:51.410 about the fact that, you know, the entire regime could 0:21:51.470 --> 0:21:56.310 have collapsed. So out of this trauma and paranoia comes 0:21:56.490 --> 0:22:01.050 out the counter-revolutionary regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. where the 0:22:01.170 --> 0:22:05.520 dominant perceived threat now is that of a popular revolution. 0:22:06.260 --> 0:22:09.639 And this is not, I mean, my own analysis. I mean, again, 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:15.119 Sisi does not miss a single occasion where he brings 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:16.899 up 2011 and warns of 2011 and talks about, you know, 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:25.530 the conspiracies to bring down the state. Even, you know, 0:22:25.550 --> 0:22:28.869 a few days ago, before we record this podcast, he 0:22:29.109 --> 0:22:32.429 inaugurated the octagon. If the Americans have the Pentagon, we 0:22:32.450 --> 0:22:37.540 have the octagon. And the octagon is not really to protect, 0:22:37.859 --> 0:22:40.640 you know, the head of the state and the head 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:44.680 of the army and the senior brass from, you know, 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:49.100 foreign invasions, God forbid. It's, Sisi said it. He said that, 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:53.050 you know, we're not going to repeat another 2011. which 0:22:53.109 --> 0:22:56.130 brought the whole country to a standstill. So now we're 0:22:56.190 --> 0:23:02.320 moving the brain of the state somewhere safe. What ensued 0:23:02.410 --> 0:23:06.220 was the unification of the security apparatus for the first 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:10.960 time since 1952. Don't get me wrong. I mean, they 0:23:11.060 --> 0:23:15.939 are still like three separate institutions. Friction is bound to 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:18.580 happen between them, and it does happen every now and 0:23:18.619 --> 0:23:22.929 then between them. They might have different views. But they 0:23:22.950 --> 0:23:26.850 are not in competition. They are coordinating. They are sharing information. 0:23:27.430 --> 0:23:31.170 Sometimes they even share the same structures. I mean, there 0:23:31.290 --> 0:23:34.609 are units within the Egyptian army now that officially has 0:23:34.650 --> 0:23:38.490 the police as part of it. Like Unit 888, for example. 0:23:39.230 --> 0:23:42.670 They coordinate and they do joint operations all throughout the 0:23:42.750 --> 0:23:46.970 Sinai counterinsurgency and in the war on terror between codes 0:23:47.210 --> 0:23:52.750 in the Nile Valley. And In so many ways, everyone now, 0:23:52.990 --> 0:23:57.050 they understand that the military is the apex ruler. It's 0:23:57.109 --> 0:24:00.629 on the top. But with it, its younger siblings, the 0:24:00.650 --> 0:24:04.169 Mukhabarat and the Interior Ministry, are in this kind of 0:24:04.680 --> 0:24:08.879 unholy alliance, trying to protect the state from the conspiracies 0:24:09.220 --> 0:24:12.140 of the evil Egyptian people at the end of the day. 0:24:12.980 --> 0:24:15.619 Yeah, I have so many questions. I could talk to 0:24:15.720 --> 0:24:16.380 you forever, but. 0:24:16.440 --> 0:24:16.780 Shoot me. 0:24:18.930 --> 0:24:21.109 Well, I mean, one of the questions that popped up 0:24:21.150 --> 0:24:25.110 while you were talking about is because of the emergence 0:24:25.210 --> 0:24:30.800 from decolonization and because of the wars with Israel, because 0:24:30.820 --> 0:24:33.119 of all of the history that the military, the Egyptian 0:24:33.160 --> 0:24:35.520 military has in the country. I mean, I think it's 0:24:35.660 --> 0:24:38.580 common knowledge and public opinion would back it up to 0:24:38.600 --> 0:24:43.130 some degree that Egyptian public perception has been very pro-military 0:24:43.470 --> 0:24:45.790 and every ruler has come from a military background, as 0:24:45.810 --> 0:24:50.260 you mentioned. And given that the Egyptian people have now 0:24:50.300 --> 0:24:53.280 been named the dominant threat. Do you think that that 0:24:53.340 --> 0:24:56.810 is changing public perception of the military apparatus? 0:24:57.920 --> 0:25:00.990 Let me first just go back to, I mean, even 0:25:01.070 --> 0:25:06.170 before 2011, whether Egyptians regarded the military favorably or not. 0:25:07.390 --> 0:25:10.750 There is definitely, I mean, this factor which exists almost 0:25:10.810 --> 0:25:14.010 in every country, and you're in America, so you understand 0:25:14.050 --> 0:25:17.730 this too. The military is always a core pillar of 0:25:18.130 --> 0:25:23.330 whatever nationalism or whatever nationalist ideology and patriotic ideology that 0:25:23.430 --> 0:25:27.350 exists in any country. And in the case of Egypt, 0:25:27.790 --> 0:25:32.470 the military, especially, you know, its role in the 1973 0:25:32.470 --> 0:25:37.270 war against Israel, which is always depicted in our school 0:25:37.310 --> 0:25:40.669 curriculums and in our movies and, you know, whatever culture 0:25:40.710 --> 0:25:46.900 production as a smashing victory against the Israelis. which is not, 0:25:46.960 --> 0:25:50.330 you know, I mean, completely accurate, to be fair. So 0:25:50.850 --> 0:25:55.330 there is definitely this glorification. But here is the thing, 0:25:55.750 --> 0:25:58.590 you know, those who tell me that, you know, Egyptians 0:25:58.630 --> 0:26:01.600 love the military and they regard it favorably, I always 0:26:01.640 --> 0:26:04.640 tell them, you know, when it's conscription time, do you 0:26:04.740 --> 0:26:08.380 find everyone just running to the conscription centers because they 0:26:08.400 --> 0:26:13.140 can't really wait, you know, for, The moment they put 0:26:13.240 --> 0:26:15.979 on the uniform and they get humiliated, you know, in 0:26:16.400 --> 0:26:20.370 some military factory or in some desert camp? Or do 0:26:20.470 --> 0:26:25.590 people try to find whatever excuses and fabricate whatever medical, 0:26:26.770 --> 0:26:30.950 you know, reasons in order to buy their way out 0:26:31.590 --> 0:26:35.270 of the military? You know, I honestly, like from my 0:26:35.350 --> 0:26:38.609 humble knowledge and from what I saw all throughout my 0:26:38.650 --> 0:26:42.630 life in Egypt, it's a nightmare. Everyone tries to buy 0:26:42.910 --> 0:26:48.129 their way out from the military. Now, when the military 0:26:48.150 --> 0:26:52.270 intervened in the revolution, I'll go back also a little bit. 0:26:52.890 --> 0:26:57.610 Maybe the military was not running traffic. Maybe the military 0:26:57.670 --> 0:27:02.889 was not doing the actual daily policing before 2011. So 0:27:03.760 --> 0:27:07.980 most of the hatred was directed against the police because 0:27:08.020 --> 0:27:11.110 they are the ones that, you know, that you see 0:27:11.170 --> 0:27:14.470 on a daily basis, who interact with you on a 0:27:14.490 --> 0:27:17.969 daily basis. The military, it is true that they were 0:27:18.030 --> 0:27:21.990 in their camps, but their tentacles were all over society. 0:27:22.910 --> 0:27:27.010 They had their own social clubs. As an Egyptian man, 0:27:27.250 --> 0:27:30.250 like until a certain age, I can't leave the country 0:27:30.290 --> 0:27:33.990 except with their permission. They have their own economic and 0:27:34.020 --> 0:27:39.409 business ventures. They have their own special status. So yeah, 0:27:39.530 --> 0:27:43.970 you don't see the brass daily, but they are always 0:27:44.010 --> 0:27:49.690 there somehow, but remotely. After 2011, I mean, they first 0:27:49.770 --> 0:27:54.250 deployed nationally on the streets following the collapse of the police. 0:27:55.170 --> 0:27:59.780 And in my book, I actually do go in details 0:28:00.560 --> 0:28:07.240 to clarify that not everyone welcomed their deployment initially. And 0:28:08.030 --> 0:28:12.030 with their own acknowledgement, I got statements from the military 0:28:12.050 --> 0:28:15.669 that talked about confrontations with the people as soon as 0:28:15.710 --> 0:28:19.510 they were deployed. But at the same time, there wasn't 0:28:19.690 --> 0:28:22.230 any other choice at the time in front of the 0:28:22.270 --> 0:28:26.360 people except trying to win over the conscripts and win 0:28:26.540 --> 0:28:30.679 over the military. Confronting the military at the time after 0:28:31.100 --> 0:28:34.700 a very bloody war of attrition with the police over 0:28:34.800 --> 0:28:40.930