Security forces dispersed dozens of protesters chanting against the government in the Ain Shams Cairo neighbourhood of Alf Maskan, according to state-media reports.
Marches also took place in several neighbourhoods across Cairo, and outside of Cairo in Qaliubiya. There have been unconfirmed reports of injuries and arrests.
Earlier this week, the Anti-Coup Alliance, which is composed of the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups that support ousted president Mohamed Morsi, announced a week of protests entitled “our strength is in our unity”.
The Muslim Brotherhood released a statement on its official website on Thursday calling for “unity in revolutionary action”, in remembrance of the third anniversary of the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes, in which security forces killed dozens of protesters.
Tens of protesters were arrested on Wednesday during the Mohamed Mahmoud anniversary, while police arrested Mohamed Ali Beshr, a leading member of the Anti-Coup Alliance on Thursday.
The alliance rejects Egypt’s current government and considers its rise to power to have been a coup. The group has repeatedly condemned violence.
Small-scale demonstrations have been taking place on an almost weekly basis since 14 August 2013, when security forces dispersed and killed hundreds of people protesting Morsi’s ouster.
The militant group Ajnad Misr issued a statement claiming responsibility for a bomb attack on security forces stationed outside of Helwan University. The homemade bomb had exploded amid the security forces on Thursday, leaving no injuries.
In the statement the group condemned the presence of “criminal” security forces around the university. “The heroes successfully penetrated [the security forces’] rows, despite their stringent precautions, their constant shifts in places, their daily searches, and all other guarding measures.”
Ajnar Misr is a shadowy group that has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in and around greater Cairo since the ousting of Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, including a bombing outside Cairo University on 22 October. The United Arab Emirates recently placed the group on its list of terrorist organisations.
Security forces have maintained a presence outside many universities across Egypt since the beginning of the new academic year to prevent possible demonstrations and protests.
Within the “1952” – or “army” – family, power is transferred from president to president when the regime arrives at a crisis. For this reason, a new president must confront the causes that led to the crisis without sacrificing the constants of the regime. In other words, the new president must be seen to redraw political and economic lines, while simultaneously maintaining the regime’s constants, so that it appears to political and social forces which do not belong to the ruling class that new constants have been formed.
In general, when the new president, just by virtue of the fact that he is new, takes power, there is an immediate air of optimism. What is also striking is that, at the beginning of his rule, the president becomes more open to political and social forces for two reasons: on the one hand, he is searching for a way out of the crisis that the former regime experienced, and on the other hand he is also searching for something to crystallise his popularity and strengthen his role and position.
In order to succeed in handling the reins, the new president may allow for the overthrow of the ruling junta or group, and this process is closely related to the process of altering some tendencies, as it also relates to the president’s ability to build a new junta.
Sometimes the president makes significant and potentially dangerous changes which are necessary for the interest of the ruling class and its strategic choices. This is what happened in Sadat’s case, who bore the burden of making significant changes to economic and political trends in the interest of the ruling class at the time, most notably the launch of Infitah policies and the visit to Jerusalem. Perhaps Sadat is similar to McCarthy in this way, who the American ruling class charged with severing the bonds of the Soviet-American alliance during the Cold War. The American ruling class viewed what McCarthy did as necessary and urgent and all evidence and logic affirmed that he did not act on his own accord.
On the other hand, at other times, the president’s role is not as much to alter tendencies as it is to give the impression that a change has taken place, and that this change is within the limits of what is possible. He also seeks to give the appearance that what remains unchanged is not his responsibility, as it was inherited from his predecessor.
This softens the situation, as the new president is understood not to be directly responsible for what persists from his predecessor’s rule. This is what happened in Mubarak’s case, where many of his supporters felt as though he was not responsible for peace with Israel nor the Infitah, and that Mubarak, to these supporters, was forced to continue along the same path imposed on him by Sadat. He did so reluctantly in their eyes, in the best possible way that would inflict the least possible damage.
The severity of necessary changes that must be taken by the president on the one hand and the extent to which the popularity of the junta that he inherited from his predecessor on the other are what determine the method through which the president will deal with this junta. As a result, it was not a coincidence that Sadat toppled Nasser’s junta through attempting to appear obedient and portray himself as one of their own. In reality, he was preparing to pounce, which he did during the 15 May coup, and Mubarak later deposed Sadat’s junta leisurely through containment tactics and partial changes rather than a full-on clash.
Now, what about Sisi? How does he work to crystallise his presence and take hold of the reins?
Sisi came directly from the army to the presidential palace and within the army itself he only enjoyed membership in the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces for a few years. In 2010 he took command of military intelligence and before that was the leader of the northern military region after leading the mechanised infantry division. Al-Sisi, compared to the presidents that preceded him, did not have a significant opportunity to develop political and administrative abilities inside or outside the army.
On the other hand, as opposed to the previous presidents during the first days of their power, Al-Sisi did not work to increase his popularity among the people, because, unlike them, he already achieved the height of popularity after leading the army against the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a reason why he is not making efforts to communicate with political parties and entities.
Also, contrary to his predecessors, Al-Sisi was not obliged to solve the issues that led to the fall of the previous regimes . Does this mean that Al-Sisi is not trying to make some changes to the tendencies of Mubarak’s regime?
There are other strains within the ruling class which dislike the 1952 family inheritance system for other reasons that pertain to corruption, administrative sluggishness, a deterioration of government performance, economic policy – forming a long list of reasons that means, from their perspective, that reforms must be enacted.
Popular momentum came to an unprecedented peak during the second week of February 2011 with demands triggering concern across the ruling class, including those who desired reform. This pushed them all to unite around the idea of Mubarak’s ouster and an inheritance scenario. The leadership of this ruling class and its figures began calling for an end to the revolution phase and instead requesting that the work begin. In this way we can say that Al-Sisi arrived to power after the Mubarak regime crisis was solved, a crisis that ended simply by toppling his regime.
The pressing questions now are: Will Mubarak’s ouster and an elimination of the Muslim Brotherhood threat prove sufficient for Al-Sisi? Will he preserve Mubarak’s junta, or get rid of them, and how? What is this junta’s capacity to remain?
Farid Zahran is a publisher and writer. He is the co-founder of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party
Security forces arrested Muslim Brotherhood affiliate Mohamed Ali Beshr Thursday morning, the Brotherhood announced on their official website.
Beshr was the Minister of Development when Hesham Kandil was Prime Minister in 2013, and is currently a leading figure in the Islamist Anti-Coup Alliance.
The Anti-Coup Alliance released a statement denouncing the arrest. “The arrest of Mohamed Ali Beshr is no doubt a loss for the Egyptian political scene, but it will not affect the alliance’s decisions and [we] will insist on ending the bloody coup.”
There is no official statement about Beshr’s involvement in negotiations with the state about the Brotherhood’s re-admission into the state, but unofficial negotiations had been ongoing, said Ali Bakr, a political science specialist who works at the Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Political Studies.
Bakr stated that there are two explanations to Beshr’s arrest.
“Some researchers believe that the state arrested Beshr because of his call for violence on the 28 November. Others see that this arrest is a message to the Brotherhood, telling that if they will negotiate with the state they must do it on the state’s own terms,” Bakr said.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights also released a statement Thursday calling for Beshr’s immediate release.
“Calling for a peaceful protest is not a crime, and Beshr is a figure that rejects violence,” the EOHR statement read.
In a statement released on Wednesday, before Beshr’s arrested, the alliance stated that it is continuing the “revolutionary path” in remembrance of the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes.
CHI Academy provides free training to hair care professionals- (Photo Courtesy of CHI Academy)
All her life, Samia Selim loved to dress people’s hair, even within her family. After obtaining her degree in science, she followed her passion and started a hairdressing salon instead of starting a lab.
Selim is one of over 4,000 hairstyling professionals who participated in CHI Academy’s programme. The academy, which was first launched in 2007 by Systems Egypt, attempts to empower professionals in the hairstyling field through free training.
Training sessions in the academy cover a wide range of topics in the field of hair care such as healthy treatment, styling and colouring, as well as other skills, such as sales skills and communication skills a stylist needs to work with his client.
“I was trying to learn more because it’s a responsibility,” Selim said, “I can’t work with a client without training.”
As a part of Systems Egypt’s strategy that considers both the clients and the hair care professionals’ health, the company does not only exclude harmful chemicals from its products. It also works on promoting healthy approaches to hairstyling, said Gehan Sadek, the director of Human Resources and Training at Systems Egypt.
During their work, hairdressers are subjected to harmful chemicals including ammonia and formaldehyde. Exposure to these chemicals could lead to health problems ranging from skin rash, eye irritation and difficulty in breathing to cancer or loss of sight, according to the US Occupational Safety & Health Administration.
One participant in the academy, Reda Mohammed Ali, suffers from sinusitis and allergies, and has faced a lot of trouble working with chemicals. Unlike Selim, Ali has worked as a professional hairdresser since she was a teenager, but health problems almost made her quit the only job she had.
“Sometimes I could not breathe,” she said, “I used to bleed from my nose.”
Yassa Abdel Messiah, who is passionate about hair colouring and has worked in the field since he was 13, was told that he cannot do his job anymore because his health was in danger. Abdel Messiah, who is allergic to ammonia, had stopped working for a month after his hands became swollen and blistered.
“My career was in jeopardy,” he said.
The academy also includes Salon owners, who join hair stylists in their search for healthy hairstyling approaches.
After serving in the Peace Corps for 18 years, Inas Qodsy, one of the academy trainers, decided to open her own hair salon. Despite her passion for hair styling, Qodsy hated dyes, she said.
“I hated them for their harms,” she said, “I did henna instead.”
Out of respect to her technicians and clients, Qodsy was first introduced to CHI during her search for “safe products.”
“I am a client before being a salon owner,” she said, “CHI also helps raise the social status of hair dressers.”
Protests at Al-Azhar Girl University resulted in clashes and arrests, said Students Against the Coup (SAC) spokesmanYousef Moslem.
Security forces used birdshot and tear gas to disperse the protestors, Moslem claimed.
SAC had announced marches embarking from universities on Wednesday to coincide with the third anniversary of the 2011 Mohamed Mahmoud clashes, according to a statement by the group on Tuesday.
There were other student protests inside Cairo University and at Ain Shams University.
Moslem said that there were no marches to Mohamed Mahmoud Street in downtown Cairo. This street was the site of deadly clashes between protesters and security forces that started on 19 November 2011 and lasted for five days.
During the clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street three years ago, police fired teargas, birdshot, rubber bullets, and live ammunition at unarmed protesters claiming they were preventing them from attacking the Ministry of Interior. The ministry’s headquarters are close to the site of clashes, on a street that is parallel to Mohamed Mahmoud.
Hundreds of people were injured in the 2011 clashes, including dozens who suffered critical eye injuries.
Protesters other than the SAC flocked to downtown to commemorate the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes, and were subsequently dispersed with tear gas by security forces. Dozens of protesters were arrested, according to a Ministry of Interior source.
Several eyewitnesses said undercover agents wearing Guy Fawkes masks mixed with the protesters and started to randomly arrest them.
Wealthy Gulf states have invited Jordan and Morocco to compete in future Gulf Cups as part of a bid to strengthen their fragile six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at a time that they have at best papered over deep rifts within the group.
The invitation follows an earlier stalled attempt to persuade Jordan and Morocco, the Arab world’s only two non-Gulf monarchies, to join the GCC, which groups Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Oman. The GCC had hoped that inclusion of Jordan and Kuwait would help stymie calls for change and fortify Arab monarchies against popular revolts. Jordanians already populate the rank and file of the military and security forces in some of the smaller Gulf states.
The GCC’s football diplomacy came as an extraordinary GCC summit in Riyadh earlier this week paved the way for the return of the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE to Doha in advance of the group’s annual summit in Doha in early December. Saudi Arabia and its closest GCC allies had withdrawn their ambassadors in protest against Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood which they asserted involved alleged Qatari interference in the three countries’ domestic affairs.
Yet, even football is not exempt from differences among Gulf states. Former Bahrain Football Association president, Sheikh Isa bin Rashid Al Khalifa, a member of the island’s minority Sunni Muslim ruling family, said he was opposed to including Jordan or Morocco in the Gulf Cup. Sheikh Isa said the bi-annual Gulf Cup should remain a Gulf affair to ensure that others did not demand also demand the right to compete in the tournament.
The Riyadh agreement to return the ambassadors formally put an end to the worst rift among Gulf states since the founding of the GCC some 33 years ago. The rulers’ statement announcing the return of the ambassadors was replete with the region’s usual rhetoric, suggesting that Qatar had made few, if any, real concessions to cement reconciliation. Arab commentators stressed the importance of Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani kissing Saudi King Abdullah on the cheeks. Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, an Emirati professor, hailed in one breath the Riyadh decision and the ongoing Gulf Cup in the Saudi capital as a day to be proud of.
Professor Abdullah, days before the summit, however suggested on Twitter that Qatar wasn’t buckling under. Instead, the decision to nevertheless paper over the differences appears to be driven by concern that a further deepening of the rift could threaten the GCC as such as well as fear of the rise of jihadism in the form of the Islamic State, the group that has seized control of a swath of Syria and Iraq.
To drive the point home, the UAE published on the eve of the Riyadh summit a list of 83 groups in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States that it had banned and/or considered terrorists. The list included the Brotherhood as well as a host of groups associated with it. The move reflected the extent of the UAE’s opposition to political Islam that stands in stark contrast to Qatar’s support of various Islamist groups which dates back to the late 1960s and early 1970s when Qatar became independent.
The UAE move was in line with last year’s banning of the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation by Saudi Arabia and Egypt whose military toppled the country’s first and only democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, a Brother, in a military coup.
In a gesture towards its detractors, Qatar several weeks ago asked seven leaders of the Brotherhood to leave the Gulf state. The move was largely symbolic. The seven Brothers retained their residence permits and some of their families remain resident in Qatar.
The outcome of the debate about the football invitation extended to Jordan and Morocco will serve as one more indicator of the balance of power in the Gulf where Saudi Arabia, the largest of the region’s states, is widely seen as the behemoth.
The limits of Saudi regional power have however been laid bare by various Gulf states. The return of the ambassadors to Doha without major Qatari concessions in effect highlighted the inability of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which has long seen Qatar as a subversive force in the region, to impose their will on the idiosyncratic Gulf state.
Bahrain, where Saudi troops have been based since 2011 when they helped the island state’s regime brutally suppress a popular revolt, has been hesitant to crack down on the Brotherhood. Bahraini rulers fear that a crackdown on the Brothers could undermine the support in its minority Sunni power base. Oman’s close relations with Iran helped it facilitate talks to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis that are strongly opposed by the Saudis. Oman late last year warned that it would resist any Saudi-backed effort to militarise cooperation among Gulf states.
The Gulf’s football diplomacy ironically highlights contradictions in Saudi and UAE efforts to ring fence the region against calls for change sparked by the various popular Arab revolts in 2011. In contrast to Gulf leaders, Moroccan King Mohammed VI was one of the few Arab leaders who succeeded in taking the wind out of anti-government protests by initiating constitutional changes that appeared to involve greater participation and transparency but effectively did little to curtail his power.
King Mohammed did so in part by co-opting rather than excluding the Islamists, the exact opposite of policies advocated by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Moroccan government is headed by Justice and Development Party (PJD) leader Abdelilah Benkirane, who recently recognised the limitations of his power. “I am tired, I am starting to forget a number of things,” Benkirane said. Earlier the prime minister described himself as an employee rather than the leader of what he termed the king’s government.
Moroccan activists note that the king’s endorsement of an Islamist-led government has not stopped the UAE from forging close ties to the North African state with Mohammed declaring that he would in times of need come to the Emirates’ assistance no matter what that would entail. The UAE moreover has made significant investments in Morocco.
Saudi and UAE assertiveness against the Brotherhood and other Islamists has sparked criticism not only among democracy activists, liberals, and Islamists but also within the country’s elite. Professor Abdullah, a well-connected Emirati intellectual, appeared to question unqualified UAE support for Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, the region’s crackdown on its critics, and UAE support for the US-led military coalition against the Islamic State in various tweets in recent weeks.
Other Emiratis suggest privately that the UAE is making itself vulnerable as a result of its newly found assertiveness as well as through its reportedly generous financial support for an Islamist movement headed by Fethullalh Gulen, a self-exiled Turkish imam who is locked into a bitter struggle with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
A litmus test of the degree to which Gulf leaders have truly set aside their differences will be how many and which of the leaders attend next month’s GCC summit in Doha, as well as whether the UAE and Bahrain reverse their decision to boycott the 2015 World Men’s Handball Championship scheduled to be hosted by Qatar in January.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with the same title
Witnesses said undercover agents with Guy Fawkes masks were arresting protesters (Photo Public Domain)
At least 30 demonstrators were arrested during the anniversary of Mohamed Mahmoud clashes on Wednesday, said a source from the Ministry of Interior.
The number of arrests is on the rise, the source said. The ministry’s press office said that the demonstrators violated the Protest Law and caused traffic. “Security forces dealt with them,” the offical said.
An eyewitness told Daily News Egypt that a protest of approximately 50 to 100 people in Mohamed Mahmoud Street in central Cairo was dispersed by police using tear gas.
Police also arrested demonstrators in the surrounding streets, where several other small protests came together.
In Al-Bustan, near Talaat Harb Square, undercover security forces wearing Guy Fawkes masks infiltrated a protest and suddenly started detaining people, according to the same eyewitness.
Further accounts from witnesses confirmed that police forces were on alert and carried out random arrests throughout downtown Cairo. According to legal activist Nazly Hussein, 56 people are detained at Abdeen police station.
Blogger Ahmed Ibrahim said that 500 armed police forces and four armoured vehicles accompanying the security director of Cairo arrived in Talaat Harb Square. “They proudly showed weapons high in the air. The scene was worse than during the Mubarak era,” Ibrahim said. There were already six or seven police vehicles and one military vehicle present in the square, besides “detectives” in civil clothes
“Thugs known by their name” were present in Tahrir Square, said Ramy Ghanem, another witness.
Police forces and officers with different ranks were also witnessed in the area surrounding the Press Syndicate. Several political parties and movements including Al-Dostour Party, the Revolutionary Socialist and the Misr Al-Qawia Party had scheduled to hold a press conference inside the syndicate, followed by a vigil on the stairs outside the syndicate. Plans were cancelled after the clashes and arrests took place.
The 6 April Youth Movement Democratic Front said Wednesday that it cancelled plans to protest in Mohamed Mahmoud Street.
Omar Farid, Chairman of PepsiCo Middle East and North Africa Photo courtesy of PepsiCo
PepsiCo sales reached EGP 7.1bn from August 2013-August 2014, with the company injecting $600m in investments into Egypt over the past three years. Of this, $270m of which were supplied last year. The company is working to expand in the near future according to Omar Farid, Chairman of PepsiCo Middle East and North Africa, who sat down to an interview with Daily News Egypt.
You told Daily News Egypt that your investments did not stop despite the difficult circumstances experienced by Egypt during recent years. What do you mean by this?
Of course…PepsiCo is betting on an economic recovery in Egypt in the near future as a result of reform measures taken by the government, which all will lead to economic growth.
We met with President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb as well as a group of ministers concerned with economic affairs when American companies visited Egypt last week.
What were the results of your meeting with the president, prime minister, and other ministers?
This is a very important question. Egypt’s political leadership and ministers emphasised that there was a strong movement toward reconsidering a significant number of laws pertaining to investment, which incentivises companies operating in Egypt to expand, generate more capital, and attract other companies to the market.
Of course, the economic circumstances which Egypt is now experiencing are difficult, but we have great confidence that they will be overcome.
The nation recently increased prices for petrol and electricity. How did this influence PepsiCo’s operation costs?
The state increasing energy and petroleum product prices formed a necessary step for the Egyptian economy, which is undergoing various crises at present, and PepsiCo understands this.
The move did influence our company as operation costs went up, and we are working very hard to ensure that these increases do not affect company sales.
Does the company intend to adopt renewable energy in its factories?
Energy is essential to investment in Egypt, and PepsiCo will work to study this subject and light its storage using new and renewable energy.
Are you afraid of your competitors, knowing your sales and growth rates on the Egyptian market?
No, but I can tell you that PepsiCo is at the forefront of companies operating in Egypt in the field of soft drinks, juices, and salty snacks.[c1]
Marketing experts have described your 2014 campaign as late, albeit successful. What are your plans for next year?
Thank God I can say that our campaign was fantastic. We used consumers’ opinions on their favourite flavour to guide production.
Consumers are partners in PepsiCo’s success, and we are committed to carrying out their wishes and requests.
As for marketing plans for the coming year, we hope to carry out many campaigns.
We have 11 factories in various areas across Egypt and 47 distribution centres. Our fleet is comprised of 2,000 vehicles that serve 260,000 retail outlets.
We are working to establish a network in all Egypt’s governorates and regions, which will ensure sales growth.
Is all PepsiCo production in Egypt consumed in Egypt, or is a portion exported to other markets?
The bulk of production is consumed in Egypt but the company exports some products like chips to Libya and Algeria.
How has worker performance developed?
This is a long story. We have 10,500 direct workers and 20,000 indirect workers, and worker evaluations are continuous. I invite you to visit our factories and talk to the workers.
I worked in the company for 32 years, and I call on all workers to be diligent in their work, which will allow our company to succeed and progress continuously.
PepsiCo contributes to local development – what are your most important projects in this field?
PepsiCo works to develop local communities in poor areas in particular, and as such we have implemented a learning-for-food programme which 175,000 individuals benefit from.
We have another regular programme in schools, which works to encourage sports in schools, and PepsiCo is proud to say that Egyptian football star Mohamed Salah was discovered through the programme.
Egyptian activist and lawyer Mahienour El-Massry (Photo from Free Mahienour)
Human rights lawyer and activist Mahienour El-Massry and three others were released, hours after their arrest on Wednesday, according to Free Mahienour Facebook page.
El-Massry was arrested along with lawyer Mohamed Ramadan and two others.
The four detainees were held in El-Raml police station in Alexandria, according to legal activist Nazly Hussein.
According to the Free Mahienour Facebook page, El-Massry and the others were arrested in the Stanley Bridge area under the allegation that they were protesting, while they were not involved in “any form of demonstration”.
The page further asks not to protest in front of the police station, “in accordance with the wishes of Mahienour and the lawyers”.
El-Massry had been released from prison by the end of September, after an Alexandria Court accepted her appeal against a six-month prison sentence.
She was initially sentenced to two years in prison and fined EGP 50,000 alongside eight others for violating the Protest Law, after being arrested while participating in a protest in solidarity with torture victim Khaled Said on 2 December 2013.
Wednesday marks the third anniversary of the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes in 2011 when dozens died and hundreds injured during clashes with security forces in downtown Cairo.
