La foule sur les chars, applaudie par les tankistes

La foule sur les chars, applaudie par les tankistes

Comme on le sait, lorsque Robert Fisk est en reportage quelque part et qu’il fait les gros titres de son journal, The Independent, c’est qu’il se passe quelque chose d’important. Fisk est donc en Egypte, plus précisément juché sur un char de l’armée égyptienne, lequel char est couvert de graffitis anti-Moubarak en guise de camouflage. La foule est elle-même sur les chars, encouragée et accueillie par les tankistes.

Fisk nous donne des détails, ce 30 janvier 2011 dans The Independent, sur cette évolution capitale de la situation égyptienne. L’armée, venue pour renforcer la police contre les émeutiers, se retrouve souvent aux côtés des seconds et, dans certains cas, les défend contre les tirs de la police.

«The Egyptian tanks, the delirious protesters sitting atop them, the flags, the 40,000 protesters weeping and crying and cheering in Freedom Square and praying around them, the Muslim Brotherhood official sitting amid the tank passengers. Should this be compared to the liberation of Bucharest? Climbing on to an American-made battle tank myself, I could only remember those wonderful films of the liberation of Paris. A few hundred metres away, Hosni Mubarak's black-uniformed security police were still firing at demonstrators near the interior ministry. It was a wild, historical victory celebration, Mubarak's own tanks freeing his capital from his own dictatorship.

»In the pantomime world of Mubarak himself – and of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Washington – the man who still claims to be president of Egypt swore in the most preposterous choice of vice-president in an attempt to soften the fury of the protesters – Omar Suleiman, Egypt's chief negotiator with Israel and his senior intelligence officer, a 75-year-old with years of visits to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and four heart attacks to his credit. How this elderly apparatchik might be expected to deal with the anger and joy of liberation of 80 million Egyptians is beyond imagination. When I told the demonstrators on the tank around me the news of Suleiman's appointment, they burst into laughter.

»Their crews, in battledress and smiling and in some cases clapping their hands, made no attempt to wipe off the graffiti that the crowds had spray-painted on their tanks. “Mubarak Out – Get Out”, and “Your regime is over, Mubarak” have now been plastered on almost every Egyptian tank on the streets of Cairo. On one of the tanks circling Freedom Square was a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Beltagi. Earlier, I had walked beside a convoy of tanks near the suburb of Garden City as crowds scrambled on to the machines to hand oranges to the crews, applauding them as Egyptian patriots. However crazed Mubarak's choice of vice-president and his gradual appointment of a powerless new government of cronies, the streets of Cairo proved what the United States and EU leaders have simply failed to grasp. It is over… […]

»“The crowds are very pro-army. I filmed an amazing moment when a charismatic one-star general addressed the public and spoke of the importance of maintaining public order. People kept shouting, are you with or against Mubarak? He answered that his mission is making sure the looting stops, and that the issue of who governs is the people's decision, not the army's, and that government should be civilian.” Issandr El Amrani, Blogging as “The Arabist”…»

(Paul Woodward, le 29 janvier 2011 sur War in Context, donne un compte-rendu sur cet aspect de la situation qu’est le comportement de l’armée égyptienne, avec d’autres références.)

Pendant ce temps, les experts évaluent les possibilités que l’armée égyptienne joue un rôle favorable aux insurgés. Ces possibilités sont minces, selon les experts, tandis qu’ils disaient, il y a une semaine encore, que le régime Moubarak n’avait rien à craindre des troubles annoncées, dont ils ajoutaient (les experts) qu’il y avait de fortes possibilités pour qu’ils n’aient pas lieu.

De Foreign Policy, du 28 janvier 2011…

«Then there is Egypt's military, which takes in about 260 times as much U.S. military aid – an incredible $1.3 billion annually. That money means that, in many ways, the armed forces rule Egypt, says analyst Daniel Brumberg at the U.S. Institute for Peace. Mubarak, himself a former Air Force commander, has deftly used American taxpayers' dollars to underpin not just the military but his entire government. Egyptian generals are a privileged elite, enjoying weekends and retirements in breezy villas by the sea. They make clear that they expect a say in who rules the Arab world's most populous country once Mubarak leaves the scene. Keeping the U.S. military aid flowing dominates Mubarak's foreign policy, defined first and foremost in the region by its cold peace with Israel. After all, the annual influx of U.S. military aid ranks up there with tourism and Suez Canal tolls as Egypt's main sources of revenue.

»So what will Egypt's military do should security forces start wholesale firing on Egyptian protestors, who are now pressing the largest-ever popular demands for an end to Mubarak's three decades in power? Only Egypt's commanders can know the answer. But what's clear is that the odds of the Egyptian military joining in a popular revolt are far more unlikely in Egypt than they were, in hindsight, in Tunisia.

»If it came down to chaos in Egypt, with police and the people battling in the streets, the country's military probably would step in, retired Egyptian Gen. Mohammed Kadry Said told me by phone from Cairo before Friday's dramatic events. But not to save the people – to save the buildings. Dealing with the people “is the mission of the interior minister,” Said told me. “If the situation deteriorates, I think of course like any country maybe the army will interfere, not to help the people in the streets, but to secure sensitive places” such as government offices and security installations.

»In the past, many Egyptian officials, and some Egyptian commanders, have declared publicly that the military would move by force if needed to keep Egypt's outlawed opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, from ever coming to power. Said played down the role of Islamists in the country's protests, saying that they were mostly “normal people.” And under the constitution, the retired general said, “the role of the military is to secure the country, whatever the threats from inside or outside. I imagine that the Egyptian military will continue doing the same role.”

»The only question late Friday was just how Egypt defined a threat to national security – and how far the army was prepared to go to thwart it. […]

»…Despite the growing pressure from their people, however, the Arab world's dictators will find it difficult to break their addiction to armed rule, says Kristina Kausch, a researcher at the Spanish-based FRIDE think-tank who has worked here in Tunisia since 2004. In “the other Arab autocracies, the regime and the military live off each other,” Kausch told me. “They don't need the Tunisia lesson. For the other regimes, keeping the militaries happy has been a central pillar of survival.”»

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