Читать книгу Revolution 2.0 - Wael Ghonim - Страница 11

I’M NOT INTO POLITICS.” I used to say this all the time, reflexively, whenever the subject came up. It was a popular stance, shared by most Egyptians. It was the result of a deeply rooted culture of fear. Anyone who dared meddle in politics, in opposition to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), took a risk, with little hope of reaping any return. Most of us shied away, believing that we could not do anything to change the status quo.

The truth is, however, Egyptians have always expressed political opinions, but only passively. We complain about education, health care, the economy, unemployment, police brutality, bribery, and corruption, but that is as far as we once dared to go. Few would point fingers at the officials responsible, while most kept such thoughts to themselves.

Egyptians who grew up in the fifties and sixties endured the worst repression in our modern history, including arrests, torture, military trials, and other forms of oppression. Most of them chose safety over activism. Informers were so deeply planted that many Egyptians were afraid to discuss politics in public. This generation raised their children first and foremost to fear politics and State Security. Sometimes it seemed to me that we feared the wrath of the secret police more than we feared death itself.

Egyptians practically never chose a president. The dynasty of Mohamed Ali, who is regarded as the founder of modern Egypt, ruled for almost 150 years until the revolution of July 23, 1952 (in a sense, Mohamed Ali himself was installed by popular demand, when a group of prominent Egyptians insisted in 1805 that the former governor, Ahmad Khurshid Pasha, step down). From 1952 on, the military made all key decisions. The army officers who led a military coup against the ruling monarchy chose Mohamed Naguib as Egypt’s first president, transforming the nation into a republic. Two years later the Revolutionary Command Council forced him to step down, and they kept him under house arrest for the short remainder of his life. According to Naguib, this happened because he had planned to hand over control of the country to civilian leadership.

Naguib was succeeded by the extremely charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser, best known for his pan-Arab nationalism. He was highly esteemed by Egyptians, although a lot of his actions actually planted the seeds of repression and autocracy. Under Nasser, democracy meant referendums on his popularity in which people voted either yes or no, and he somehow always garnered 99.9 percent of the vote. Egyptians joked about tracking down the 0.1 percent that opposed his rule.

Nasser’s vice president, Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat, became president when Nasser passed away in 1970, with no help from any electoral process. A referendum confirmed him as president soon after; he received 90 percent of the votes. The same scenario occurred when Sadat appointed Mohamed Hosni Mubarak as vice president. When Sadat was assassinated in 1981, Mubarak took over. Potemkin referendums continued to provide a façade of legitimacy. The percentage of “yes” votes changed slightly over time but always remained in the 90 range:

Gamal Abdel Nasser	1956	99.990%
Anwar al-Sadat	1970	90.040%
Anwar al-Sadat	1976	99.939%
Hosni Mubarak	1981	98.460%
Hosni Mubarak	1987	97.120%
Hosni Mubarak	1993	94.910%
Hosni Mubarak	1999	93.790%

Mubarak ruled for five terms, each of which lasted six years. His best terms were the first and second, when he released political prisoners arrested by Sadat and promised widespread reforms. He vowed to fight corruption. He also pledged not to rule for more than two terms, as the constitution required. Many political analysts believe that Mubarak did not start out as a corrupt man. But Lord Acton’s rule prevailed: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Mubarak, like the presidents before him, held almost all the reins of power in the nation. There was a parliament to issue laws and in theory to divide power with the executive, but in practice the members were kept closely dependent on the regime. Their loyalty was maintained through what came to be called the “chain of interests”: privileges and benefits were showered on any parliament member from the ruling NDP. From land to loans to immunity from arrest to (most important) influence — these members were among the country’s movers and shakers — a chain of corruption bound them tightly to the regime.

Councils in each governorate of Egypt were selected in the same manner. Known as the Local Popular Councils, they were responsible for services and policies in their respective governorates. The fortunate members who were loyal to the NDP were akin to Communist Party members in the Soviet Union: they received special privileges unavailable to others.

Little by little these privileges eroded the rule of law. The higher up in the chain you were, the less restricted you were by the law. We suffered chronic inefficiencies because of widespread bribery and corruption. The system eroded the Egyptian character. We lost our self-confidence. The phrase “There’s no hope” became customary, especially among young Egyptians. For too many of us, dreams of an apartment, a marriage, and a decent life faded. Out of hopelessness came anger. We were ripe for revolution, even when we were terrified by the idea.

When Mubarak broke his promise of a two-term presidency in 1993, state media — the only media at the time with any effective reach — portrayed him as the epitome of wisdom, the only hope for the nation. The pharaoh’s favorite cloak, “stability,” was the primary argument advanced by the official press. The president was presented as the only viable alternative to chaos. As the ancient proverb put it, “The people you know are better than the ones you don’t.”

At the turn of the millennium, and after Mubarak had had four presidential terms, the first son, Gamal Mubarak, began — cautiously — to dip his toes into political waters. Rumors were floated to test reactions to the possibility that Mubarak Junior would become president. In nearby Syria, Bashar al-Assad had succeeded his father. Why not the same for the Mubarak dynasty?

Throughout Mubarak’s reign, the most enduring and influential opposition came from the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), formed in 1928. The Brotherhood’s popularity was regularly presented to the West as a scarecrow whenever Mubarak was under pressure to reform and democratize the regime. Members of the Brotherhood were widely arrested, subjected to military tribunals, and vilified in the press.

The regime played a typical tyrant’s game. It needed a bogeyman, so it both repressed and enabled the Brotherhood. Yet after years of obsession with its chosen enemy, the Mubarak regime may have become complacent about other threats. In 2004 a group of opposition activists founded the Egyptian Movement for Change, otherwise known as Kefaya, which means “enough” in Arabic. Kefaya opposed the renewal of Mubarak’s presidency for a fifth term and also rejected the attempt to transfer power to his son. The movement’s motto became “No to renewal, no to the inherited presidency.” Members of Kefaya were diverse, including dissidents, intellectuals, journalists, Internet bloggers, university students, and artists. It was the first group to openly and explicitly express opposition to Mubarak’s presidency as well as to his son’s potential candidacy. Its first major protest against the regime was on December 12, 2004 (though many of the protesters knew one another from earlier gatherings to protest Israeli strikes on the Gaza strip and the U.S. invasion of Iraq).

The regime did not crack down on Kefaya as hard as it had on the Muslim Brotherhood. The security masterminds could not imagine such a movement mobilizing significant popular support, since many of its members were intellectuals, whose discourse is not usually appealing to the masses. And the regime was right — Kefaya never achieved a broad following. Yet just by exhibiting the courage to protest, Kefaya helped tear down a psychological barrier. And by criticizing Mubarak openly — the group’s famous chant became “Down, down, Hosni Mubarak” — Kefaya members were certainly brave pioneers.

Kefaya’s courage, however, meant very little to Mubarak Junior. Gamal Mubarak was born in 1963 and graduated from high school in 1980, the year I was born. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business at the American University in Cairo. A few years later he left Egypt to work for the Bank of America in London. With a few colleagues, Mubarak then left Bank of America to set up a London-based private equity fund. Upon his return to Egypt in 1998, his political ambitions started to become more obvious, and he joined his father’s party in 2000. As the son of the pharaoh, he rapidly became a key person in the party, which he wanted to restructure and reposition. He was promoted to lead the party’s Policies Committee, the most important division of the NDP. In addition, he became the deputy secretary-general. He was the youngest man of any consequence in an aging party.

In 2004, a new cabinet composed of Mubarak Junior’s close allies was sworn in. It came to be called the businessmen’s government, because most of the ministers were rich businessmen. Mubarak nevertheless left the regime’s main pillars intact. The ministers of defense and interior affairs and the head of intelligence remained in their positions. Many Egyptians hoping for real change, including myself, were still pleased to see younger faces in government positions. The new prime minister, Ahmed Nazif, had a solid background in technology. Yet it was clear that the regime intended to groom Gamal Mubarak as the nation’s next president.

When Gamal Mubarak appeared on the Egyptian scene, I thought it was an opportunity to empower the younger generation and get rid of the old mentality that had been dragging us into the dark for ages. He seemed like a progressive person who appreciated experience and understood the youth culture better than the dinosaurs around his aging dad. The new campaigns for the party seemed to indicate a real desire for change, but later it became obvious that this was purely cosmetic — a change in the campaign but not in the product itself. Corruption was deeply rooted within the NDP, and it seems that Gamal Mubarak agreed to play by the same rules as everyone else.

The following year, 2005, owing to pressure from the international community, parliamentary elections were held under the supervision of the judiciary for the first time. Gamal Mubarak’s influence was growing. He had announced reforms within the ruling party (as head of the Policies Committee). The new cabinet was made up of his own men, not his father’s, and the party was coming under his control.

Yet the election’s first and second phases (out of three, in different locations) dealt a strong blow to the NDP. The Muslim Brotherhood gained seventy-seven seats, bringing them and other opposition groups close to having a third of Parliament’s members. If that proportion continued in the third phase, the opposition would have an effective veto over legislation. The message was clear, and alarming: many Egyptians hated the NDP and would vote for anyone who stood up to its political monopoly. In those first two phases, the state police were nowhere near as aggressive as they had been in previous elections.

In phase three, however, the regime showed its true face, blatantly rigging the results. Hundreds of polling stations were shut, and when voters protested, they were handled aggressively. The international community hardly protested, after witnessing the result of fair elections, since the West was wary of the Muslim Brotherhood, whom many regarded as extremists. More than nine people died during phase three, and the Brotherhood won only eleven seats. The result left the MB as the only strong opposition force in Parliament, with 20 percent of the seats. Despite the fact that official NDP candidates won fewer than 40 percent of the seats, the party ended up with 72 percent representation, since many independent candidates joined the party after winning, either because they desired the personal riches associated with each loyal seat or because they were too afraid to decline, or both. It was very clear that the party needed a monopolizing majority to pass any legislation without having to negotiate with any opposition groups in the country. When the emergency state was up for its biennial renewal, the party wanted at all costs to avoid a vote against it. The regime’s chief tool of oppression could not be placed at risk.

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.

To collect signatures in significant numbers, the movement turned to the Internet. The petition was published online, and citizens just needed to enter their name, address, and national ID number to sign. The organizers also helped people overcome their fear by publishing the initial hundred signees, who were public figures willing to use their authentic personal information.

Fear overcame me on the first and second days of the petition. But then I entered all my personal information and signed. I was citizen number 368 to do so. My fear turned into excitement when I realized I was beginning a new phase: I now publicly opposed the regime. I had no doubt that State Security downloaded the list of signees regularly, particularly since it contained everyone’s full name, yet I was excited to be part of the growing crowd.

I was keen to meet Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, and I tried to schedule a meeting with him during my first trip back home. I sent an e-mail to the Egyptian actor Khaled Abol Naga, whom I had first met at a Google event that we organized for Orphans Day in April 2009. I had seen him endorse ElBaradei on YouTube. I explained that I wished to augment ElBaradei’s efforts with my Internet abilities. Abol Naga’s response came instantly, providing the e-mail address for Ali ElBaradei, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei’s brother.

I e-mailed Ali ElBaradei, introducing myself and explaining that I managed the ElBaradei Facebook page. He did not know about the page, yet he welcomed any kind of cooperation and promised to set up an appointment with Dr. ElBaradei when I was next in Cairo.

At the same time I e-mailed Mahmoud al-Hetta, who managed the “ElBaradei President of Egypt 2011” group. We spoke on Skype when I was in Dubai and discussed how we could cooperate. I was amazed at how brave this young man was, as were the other activists who used their real names on the Internet. Yet I advised him to hide his name, as Facebook enables you to do, for the sake of the campaign’s sustainability. There was no need to publish names where State Security might see them, I said. It was a brief call, and we agreed to meet up as soon as I was in Cairo.

A couple of weeks later, on my way to meeting Mahmoud, I was paranoid. I remained afraid of State Security. When I arrived at the local café on a small side street where we had agreed to meet, I glanced left and right before I joined both Mahmoud and Abdel Rahman Youssef, the campaign manager for the movement on the ground. The poet sensed my apprehension and tried to reassure me. He argued that our work was for a just cause, and that accordingly we had nothing to hide or be afraid of. I was not convinced, and I argued back that secrecy could never harm us and might even prove beneficial to our battle for democracy at a later point in time. I also requested that both of them keep my identity concealed. We discussed the importance of breaking the psychological barrier of fear and how to campaign for the petition with the seven demands. Signees had barely reached 10,000 at the time, a number that fell significantly below our expectations. Although no clear action plan was born out of our meeting, I was nevertheless thrilled to see such zeal and enthusiasm for the cause.

On April 11, I finally had a chance to meet with Dr. ElBaradei himself. His brother informed me by e-mail of the appointment, mentioning that others would also attend. I asked him if I could invite two other people to join us; he didn’t mind. AbdelRahman Mansour couldn’t make it, as he was out of the country, so I called two other friends who were equally devoted to helping to change Egypt: an engineer, Mostafa Abu Gamra, who owns a technology company that works in content development, and Dr. Hazem Abdel Azim, a senior government official working at the Ministry of Communications. I was quite excited to meet the man whom I had been independently campaigning for.

ElBaradei lives in a villa in one of the private residential compounds on the Cairo–Alexandria Desert Road. I planned to take a taxi, to avoid any potential trouble of being recognized by State Security informants via my car’s license plates. Dr. Abdel Azim, however, decided to drive and offered me a ride. ElBaradei was a prominent Egyptian figure and there should be no problem visiting him, he assured me. We met Mostafa Abu Gamra on the way, and the three of us headed off. The guards at the compound’s gates let us in without any problem.

The villa was beautifully furnished and decorated, yet it was not extravagant in any way. Some of Dr. ElBaradei’s critics claimed he lived a lavish suburban life disconnected from that of ordinary Egyptians. They had portrayed his home as a palace or fortress, with high fences, but this was not the case.

ElBaradei received us in person. Everything he said lived up to my expectations. I was worried that this might change once I offered some criticism; people’s true faces appear under criticism, not under praise. He stood among a group of his guests, which included two young film directors, some senior businessmen, and other prominent figures.

Everyone was involved in a heated debate. ElBaradei was an excellent listener, and it never felt like he was leading the discussion. On the contrary, he seemed to be seriously learning from the opinions of others — just the type of leader I felt Egyptians needed. Then I offered my criticism: I suggested that he needed to speak in a language closer to the hearts of mainstream Egyptians. The jargon of elitist intellectuals would not help our quest for popular support.

I also mentioned ElBaradei’s recently initiated Twitter account. It was new at the time, but he already had 10,000 followers. It took very little time for him to become the most followed Egyptian on Twitter. I suggested that he sometimes seemed too rushed in his posts. Some of his tweets did not sit well with activists and newspaper readers (newspapers regularly published his tweets). His great quality, if you asked me, was that he refused to be considered a savior. He believed in the nation’s youth and in their ability to bring change. I recommended that he tweet about that more frequently. Young Egyptians needed to regain their self-confidence before they could take action.

I also criticized his travels outside of Egypt during these difficult times. Many others viewed this as his worst error. Regardless of the fact that he actually had many scheduled commitments abroad, ElBaradei’s frequent travels hurt the perceived effectiveness of the campaign and gave his opponents a chance to taint him as a tool of the West, or a self-promoter who ignored his homeland.

Everyone had something to say. The two directors, Amr Salama and Mohamed Diab, thought that the seven-demands petition was inviting trouble for ElBaradei. Making it a priority and making the signees’ information publicly available at a time when dissident Egyptians were not yet ready to go public was not right, they claimed. They had a point: a vast gulf separated the total number of potential supporters and the actual signees up to that day.

On that question, however, I defended Dr. ElBaradei’s vision. I found the statement to be an excellent manifestation of the snowball effect. The daily increase in signatures, I believed, made people hopeful. It also prompted community discussions about the statement’s seven demands, adding pressure on the government to implement them.

It was a fruitful meeting that left me both optimistic and energized. I took a picture with ElBaradei and made it the profile image on my Facebook page. The caption under it said, “I am Wael Ghonim. I declare my support of Dr. ElBaradei.” The meeting had helped me partially break my own barrier of fear.

Next I created a Google e-mail group called “ElBaradei” to enable key supporters to communicate effectively. It was a closed group that could be joined only with permission from one of the moderators. I began adding people whom I knew and trusted to the group. Ali ElBaradei forwarded the e-mail addresses of his brother’s other supporters, those whom he thought would add value to the group. Discussions proliferated through this e-mail group, but fieldwork remained limited.

On ElBaradei’s Facebook fan page, both AbdelRahman and I tried hard to improve his public image in spite of the government’s vicious defamation campaigns. We searched through state press archives available online and extracted articles that praised ElBaradei’s efforts. These articles made the recent defamation look absurd: how could a “despised traitor” be a celebrated hero abroad? I found many pictures of ElBaradei with such world leaders as the American president, the French president, the German chancellor, the king of Saudi Arabia, and others. I deliberately published them to stress the fact that ElBaradei was not simply an “apolitical scientist,” as his detractors sought to portray him. AbdelRahman even translated and posted the full transcript of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in which ElBaradei affirmed his loyalty and allegiance to both his country and his faith.

The core accusation of the smear campaign was that ElBaradei was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, having misled the United States into believing that Saddam Hussein secretly harbored weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We were adamant about proving this to be a blatant lie. I found an online video of the UN Security Council meeting at which ElBaradei presented his report asserting that Iraq was free of any weapons of mass destruction. The report demanded more time for inspections and rejected the military intervention proposed by the United States. I added Arabic subtitles to the video and published it, hoping it would show ElBaradei’s innocence regarding allegations that he had somehow facilitated the U.S. war on Iraq.

On April 6, 2010, less than three months later, the number of members of Mohamed ElBaradei’s page exceeded 100,000. The April 6 Youth Movement also attempted to celebrate its anniversary on that day by organizing a demonstration, but the attempt failed. The security forces were watchful and well prepared.

Online, AbdelRahman and I were restrained. After all, we were writing on behalf of Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei. Our language was formal. We rarely posted our personal opinions, and we were convinced that the page had to present him in a formal light. Most contributors thought that Dr. ElBaradei was personally managing the page. The experience taught me a lot. I had never before managed a Facebook page.

On April 15, I received an encouraging message from Dr. ElBaradei himself, sent through his son. He wrote: “Spent some time browsing the fanpage today. It is wonderful. Many thanks for a very creative and professional job. Keep it up.” I replied, thanking him for the support and telling him that it meant a lot to me. I cc’ed AbdelRahman Mansour in the e-mail thread and introduced him as the page’s second admin, who deserved as much recognition as I did for all his efforts.

One of the important activities I initiated on the ElBaradei page was the use of opinion polls to make decisions. Despite the fact that Internet polls are far from scientific, they still offer a good means for testing trends of opinion. Besides, in Egypt, offline opinion polls, carried out through actual interviews, were possible only with a permit from the Ministry of Interior. Needless to say, the ministry had no interest in helping political activists gather information from the public.

I located a good polling site that supported Arabic and subscribed to its services. The first poll I developed aimed to measure the page members’ level of satisfaction with Egypt’s status quo and to explore why many of them had not signed the seven-demands petition. More than 15,000 participants completed the questionnaire. I aggregated and analyzed the results, then sent a message to the e-mail group as well as to Dr. ElBaradei with many recommendations to help increase public support for the petition.

After I provided these comments, Dr. ElBaradei invited me to meet a group of young men who had been working to promote the petition. First I met Dr. Mostafa al-Nagar, who had succeeded Abdel Rahman Youssef as the general coordinator of the “ElBaradei President of Egypt 2011” campaign. Mostafa came across as a sincere person who had a real desire for change. We became good virtual friends. We chatted online frequently about current events, encouraging each other and sharing disappointments. Mostafa was a dentist and political activist of my age who was quite dynamic, and State Security used the emergency law to arrest and detain him for his political dissidence on more than one occasion. He certainly had an abundance of street smarts, and I was admittedly lacking in that department.

We constantly argued about the role of the Internet in the process of change. He believed that the Internet was a virtual world with limited impact on reality, while I found it to be the key vehicle to bringing forth the first spark of change. The Internet is not a virtual world inhabited by avatars. It is a means of communication that offers people in the physical world a method to organize, act, and promote ideas and awareness. The Internet was going to change politics in Egypt, I wrote on Facebook and Twitter, and the 2011 elections would not be similar to those in 2005.

I will never forget the cynical remarks I received in response. A friend joked that the Egyptian regime would change the Internet before the Internet managed to change anything. Many actually believed that the regime would censor the Internet if it represented any sort of threat. Egypt would follow the Saudi Arabian example, they thought, where accessible websites are strictly controlled and citizens are unable to visit antigovernment sources. I did not agree. The Egyptian regime needed to be seen as a progressive, welcoming country to the outside world. Its economy depended in part on tourism, and the regime cared deeply about its global reputation.

Things were moving quite slowly with Dr. ElBaradei’s campaign, and most of my recommendations were not implemented. My frustration increased, particularly as the rate of new signatures dropped. Yet I separated my personal feelings from the Facebook page. There I tried to spread hope. Both AbdelRahman and I followed all of ElBaradei’s news stories and his field campaigns. We published photos of his campaign visits to places like Old Cairo and Fayoum, and we continued to write his opinions and track the number of signatures on the statement as well as expose the political situation in the country. Many comments on the page demanded that Dr. ElBaradei take more practical steps on the ground and not limit himself to Facebook and Twitter.

One of the decisive moments for me was meeting Dr. El-Mostafa Hegazy, who owns a strategic consulting firm, in his office. He invited me, Dr. Hazem Abdel Azim, and other activists to talk about change in Egypt. He was against the idea that political change should be personified or reduced to a single person’s campaign for presidency. His opinion was that it was critical at this phase to focus on change as a goal in and of itself. He wanted to establish the notion that Egyptians owned their country. It would inspire resistance to injustice and corruption across the board. I remember this meeting vividly. I was arguing that promoting ElBaradei was in essence promoting change. But I also agreed with Dr. Hegazy’s opinion — before ever meeting him — that positioning ElBaradei as a savior might end up hurting the real cause. After the meeting, the words “This country is our country!” rang loudly in my ears, and they continue to do so to this very day. I wanted every other Egyptian to shout them out as loudly as they could.

A few days later we received an e-mail, in English, from Dr. Abdel Azim apologizing for not being able to continue with the political campaign for change.

Dear All,

I am very sorry to inform you that I will not be able to be engaged in any political activity related to our hope for change. My position is extremely sensitive as a senior government official.

Although this is known from the beginning, but there was a miscalculation from my side. I was having a very firm position in the last weeks that I would like to continue in this initiative, and I can and willing to resign from my job any time to be free, and actually I prepared the resignation.

Yet the equation was not that simple and my issue was very highly escalated to the extent that I heard signs of real threats of different sorts, on my well-being and on my family.

It was sad to see Dr. Abdel Azim renouncing the efforts to bring about change in Egypt, but none of us could really blame him. We knew that these threats were very serious. Witnessing this firsthand only amplified my conviction that it was very important to work anonymously as much as possible. I kept contact with Dr. Abdel Azim, and occasionally we would chat online and share our thoughts on current events.

Meanwhile, my frustration at the campaign’s pace mounted, and I finally decided to send a message to Dr. ElBaradei through his brother. I expressed dissatisfaction with the progress of his campaign and my hope that he would move faster. The movement for change needed to be more flexible and dynamic. He had greatly raised our aspirations, but now we were hungry for actual change on the ground. I expressed my astonishment that we did not meet regularly and that our communication was limited to messaging through his brother. I mentioned that I spent long hours every day promoting his ideas online and that I thought it would be fruitful if I spent at least an hour a week with him, discussing the campaign’s strategy. He responded one day later via e-mail, again through his brother. He said he understood my feelings and explained that we were living under exceptional conditions. He was doing everything he could, in spite of the legal restrictions and media assaults he regularly faced. At the time there was no legal framework for our work together, and therefore he preferred to keep our communications indirect. I saw his point, but I believed that the regime could harm us if it wanted to, without the need for legal justifications. Later I settled for meeting Ali ElBaradei in person to deliver my point of view more thoroughly.

When we met, Ali ElBaradei defended his brother. After all, Dr. ElBaradei had stated from the start that he was not a savior. We, the young people, must work harder to collect signatures for the petition, Ali argued. Although the meeting added no tangible dimension to my overall strategy, I once again felt partially relieved after expressing my opinion.

My performance at Google declined significantly during this period, but my manager was still happy. Before I got busy with ElBaradei’s Facebook page, I would sometimes spend up to fifteen consecutive hours a day finishing a project, or finalizing a marketing plan for a new product, or simply brainstorming with fellow employees on new ideas for the region. Understandably, my quarterly performance reports at Google always stated that I needed to improve my work-life balance.

Yet my wife was incredibly supportive. From the very beginning, she had known that she was marrying a workaholic who was addicted to living online. Occasionally she would remind me that I needed to give more time and attention to my family. I tried from time to time to improve, but I must admit that no matter how hard I tried, I would always relapse.

The state’s campaign to control ElBaradei’s growing popularity became fierce. Security authorities had previously issued orders that banned ElBaradei from appearing on Egyptian media. Now private television channels that had previously besieged him for interviews also kept their distance. Coverage in the print media was not as bad as on television, but ElBaradei’s news was now featured a lot less than before. Public opinion fell victim to this campaign, particularly as ElBaradei did not make a habit of refuting baseless allegations. Many Egyptians didn’t know about the media ban. The only remaining outlet was the Internet. The Twitter account was his favorite channel on which to vent, even though his follow count did not compare to the number of followers of traditional media outlets.

As the situation reached this dire point, I got an idea, inspired by a popular Google product that had been utilized by election campaigns in other parts of the world. Google Moderator is a tool that gives the user the ability to solicit questions from an unlimited number of other users and subsequently to rank these questions based on popularity votes so that they can be answered accordingly. What a cool way to democratize feedback!

I presented the concept of Google Moderator to Ali ElBaradei and explained what it could mean for the campaign. Using this service to hold an event would reach a vast number of Internet users, the majority of whom would be young people whom the NDP had never communicated with in any genuine way. Dr. ElBaradei welcomed the idea and said he was ready to implement it as soon as he came back from a trip abroad.

The initiative was announced on his Facebook page in mid-May 2010. It was called “Ask ElBaradei.” The number of fans on the page had now reached 150,000, of whom more than 2,700 participated. They posted 1,300 questions that received about 60,000 votes. It was an astonishing outpouring. Ironically and in contrast, Gamal Mubarak’s team had initiated an Internet dialogue shortly before this and asked interested people to send their questions before attending the event. Of course, it was all scripted in advance and the questions were carefully selected.

I wondered what would happen if President Mubarak were to receive questions from Internet users. Would his aides be able to accept clear and direct questions without the usual politicking and deception? The answer was obvious.

The questions for Dr. ElBaradei were profound. Many of the questions that received the highest number of votes revealed anxiety about the follow-up to the signature-collecting campaign. The most important questions were: How will the signatures collected be useful? What is Plan B, if the regime refuses nonviolent change after we collect a large number of signatures? How can we reach rural parts of Egypt to spread awareness about change? Will you take Egypt toward secular governance? What is your position on the second article of the constitution, which states clearly that the Islamic Sharia is the nation’s main source of legislation? What are the priorities of your presidential agenda? Finally, Do you eat kushari? (Kushari, made of rice, lentils, and pasta, is a very affordable and popular daily meal for many Egyptians.) It was clear that many people simply needed reassurance that ElBaradei was “one of us.”

Together with other coordinators of ElBaradei’s campaign, we filtered the questions and began searching for an interviewer who would address these questions to Dr. ElBaradei. Our search was not easy. Everyone we asked refused to play this role; some attributed it to personal reasons or prior commitments, and others said they were afraid of the consequences. In the end, we decided that the campaign’s own Mostafa al-Nagar should be the interviewer. The interview was viewed by more than 100,000 online users.

Dr. ElBaradei tried to remain optimistic in his responses. Instead of appearing frustrated at the limited number of signatures and blaming people’s passive attitudes, he spoke about proactivity and the importance of joining forces for the sake of Egypt’s future. The man was inspiring in his presentation of a better tomorrow. The regime cannot resist the people’s demands for long, he said.

Dr. ElBaradei was blessed with optimism. Every time things seemed dark, he beamed with hope and asserted that change was coming. One famous opposition journalist, known for his sarcasm, commented, “He must know something that we do not.” And it turned out that he obviously did.

ElBaradei had it right all along: we did not need a savior; we had to do this ourselves.