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But of course, most of our attention has been on the revolution in Egypt, which today finally resulted in the resignation of the 30-year dictator Hosni Mubarak from power and his leaving Cairo and turning the government over, at least temporarily, to a special military council.
And now I'd like to welcome our first guest on the show.
His name is Ahmed Elassie.
And I've been interviewing, the last couple of days, an inter-press service reporter on my other radio show named Adam Morrow, who's been really great, and he gave me Ahmed's number and said he's not just a journalist, or he's not a journalist, he's an actual active member of the million-plus protest movement in Egypt that has now, at this point, successfully overthrown their dictator.
And so now I'd like to welcome Ahmed to the show so I can ask you a bunch of questions.
Ahmed, how are you doing tonight?
Good.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Very happy to have you on here.
Congratulations to you.
And tell everybody else that there are a lot of people here in America and around the world who are very happy for you guys and your incredible victory over Hosni Mubarak there.
Thank you very much.
We are very, very proud and very happy.
We've been waiting, a lot of us for this day, for almost all our lives.
And it's a lot of people, I mean, I myself was just, you know, in tears with joy when I first heard, and it happened to have come during our prayer that we were holding, and it was a very moving moment.
Now, can you tell us a little bit about, you know, your background, how it is that you are in Egypt now, why it is that you sound so much like an American, and maybe tell us a little bit about the background of your role in this uprising over the last three weeks, and then maybe we can get back to a little bit more of the bigger picture stuff.
Sure.
Well, both my parents were in the 70s movement.
My mother was a dual national.
Her mother was from West Virginia, and she's a physician.
She works in the United States currently.
And my father is Egyptian, and they both actually met through the students' movement in the 70s that was sort of against the Sadat era and the Sadat regime, which they were both actually, I think, met through.
It's a long sort of standing.
I mean, Egypt has been in a sort of the same, I guess a lot of the Middle East has been in the same sort of dictatorial regime.
And I myself spent quite some time, almost my entire childhood in the United States and decided, and I married from the United States and decided to move here 10 years ago.
So I've been living in Egypt for the past 10 years.
And I decided to join in my sister, who also was pretty much, you know, we both grew up in the States.
She married an Egyptian who is also an activist.
And he was a big part of the organizing effort.
And it was just a magnificent thing to be a part of.
And have you been participating from the beginning of the last three weeks here?
Yes, sir.
At the very beginning, I didn't actually go to the streets the first few days for several reasons.
My wife, she does not, she's from Minnesota.
I mean, she doesn't look.
Sure, hey, you got your priorities.
That's all right.
But, I mean, there were some pretty scary days there, though, right?
Where the secret police were out in force with knives and guns.
And this wasn't, the activists in the street, as we've all seen from Al Jazeera's live stream, have been peaceful.
But that doesn't mean that the state has been peaceful in treating you all with respect this whole time.
Yeah, absolutely not.
As a matter of fact, the first few days, that's exactly what I focused on.
I was mainly in the, I was down in the street.
And we had, like, knives and guns, or not, but, you know, weapons of our own.
But, I mean, Egyptians are not allowed to carry guns, so only police officers had those.
And, of course, those were the bad guys, unfortunately.
Well, reports are the United Nations estimates, so far at least, that 300 people were killed.
And I'm not sure if you have other sources or know, but The Guardian this morning is reporting widespread kidnapping and torture by the army as well.
Well, for sure, they've been deliberately playing down the amount of wounded and killed.
As a matter of fact, I just saw two reports.
One of them is of a 13-year-old boy who was shot with six bullets.
And his father was in Qasr al-Ain hospital trying to get a document that would, you know, say that.
And they wouldn't give it to him because, in fear that it would be used to document the fact that it was more than the 300 claimed by the Ministry of Health.
So, I mean, there were a lot of bodies that were actually held by the government so that, you know, people wouldn't take them in a funeral.
Because, you know, they were fearing, you know, that it would actually get people enraged, which rightfully so.
You know, they committed brutal acts of murder and thuggery.
And they even, they claimed that they would make these constant claims that, like, you know, protesters, they let, you know, they burnt down all the police stations.
They let out all the murderers and they let out all the criminals and gave them weapons.
And those were just, I mean, bold-faced lies.
And it was proven, you know, in several cases that, like, where people actually turned themselves in.
And they were like, listen, the police actually gave us weapons and asked us to cause mayhem in the streets to sort of teach us.
To have an excuse to clamp down, yeah.
All right, well, everyone, it's Ahmed Elassi here on Anti-War Radio on KPFK.
He's an Egyptian-American living in Cairo or in Egypt for the last ten years anyway.
He's in the internet security business as, you know, a typical professional and took part in this massive uprising.
Has taken part over the last few weeks, this uprising that has succeeded in overthrowing the so-called presidency of Hosni Mubarak.
And now, Ahmed, I talked on my other radio show earlier today with a writer, regular writer for Anti-War.com, a former CIA and DIA officer named Phil Giraldi.
And he said that he had sources inside Egypt who were telling him that between Mubarak's refusal last night to resign and his acceptance and leaving town today, that what made the difference was that he had sent word to the army to to find out at the lower levels.
If we ask the army to fire on the protesters, will they do it?
And he got back nothing but negative, negative, negative in response from the lower level divisions of the army.
And that was when he finally knew that the game was up and he had to leave town.
Do you know anything about that?
Can you confirm any part of that narrative from your end?
Well, I can't necessarily.
I mean, it makes sense to me because but I mean, I can't confirm for sure that they're actual.
But, you know, that all of them, for example, would would make such statements.
However, though, judging from the people that the vibe of the actual officers, lower ranking and mid ranking officers that were on the scene in Tahrir Square, I would find it profoundly difficult.
I would assume that it would be just just very, very difficult for them to to make take such a drastic measure.
Well, and mostly because you guys in the movement stayed so peaceful the whole time.
It's you know, it would be hard to justify, as you said, they try to provoke you all into violent reactions so that well, like Hillary Clinton.
They could call for nonviolent action on both sides and pretend that there's moral equivalence between the civilians protesting in the street and the police state that they're trying to overthrow.
And and in this case, you guys just beat them.
You had them on the moral case for the whole world to see for three weeks in a row.
And but let me get to this, because I think this is the all important question right now.
Is whether the movement that you're a part of here, this massive uprising that has overthrown the dictator of Egypt.
Are you going to settle for Omar Suleiman, the torturer, to replace him?
Or what exactly are y'all's demands?
Are we to expect the people to now go home now that Mubarak is gone?
Or is everyone committed to seeing this thing through to the end?
Absolutely not on Suleiman.
Suleiman is a complete and utter failure at every task that he has officially taken on.
Whether it be negotiating peace deals between various parties or whether it's even as a torture.
His torture methods led to false information that led to the U.S. going into Iraq.
And that was absolutely, he's a yes man.
And that is, and he's, you know, a failure at every official task that he has taken on.
So and people are very well aware of that.
Every single person.
Whether they're even literate or, you know, Egypt has a very high illiteracy rate.
But even those people are quite aware of what's going on.
I've found...
But are they going to stay?
There are a million something people, maybe more than that, in the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and across Egypt this week.
Is it going to be the same next week?
Now that Mubarak is, of course, you know, the lightning rod.
It would be like, you know, if we somehow could have got rid of George W. Bush.
A lot of people would have been mollified even if the Republicans had stayed, if you understand what I mean.
Well, I believe that there is a great sense of awareness.
And as you know, the National Democratic Party, the NDP, has been basically the thug, the mafia that has been running this country.
From the smallest local city council to the very top of the leadership.
And it has been completely corrupt.
It is corrupt to the core.
And what we are all calling for is a serious, real change in the way things are being run.
And a lot of people feared that there would be, you know, that this would be too drastic of a change.
And you might have collapse.
You might have chaos.
But I think that we have prevailed as a people.
You know, they have actually tried to ensue chaos purposefully.
The regime did, by letting out thugs, by letting out...
And I think people showed their true colors.
People showed that they, you know, no terrorist act has been committed.
There were actually, you know, the Christians were guarding Muslims while they were praying.
And vice versa, Muslims were guarding Christian churches and places of worship.
There was, you know, virtually no crime that was committed for, you know, for the past two weeks.
Which is, you know, the biggest, like, proof that I think that we could...that we provided to the entire world that, you know, people are genuinely, you know, good natured.
And it's, you know, this state apparatus that was in, you know, mostly responsible for a lot of the animosity between people.
Because, I mean, it was a divide and rule sort of mentality that this regime ruled by.
Well, I got to tell you, you know, I've been watching this thing obviously from pretty far away.
But on the Al Jazeera English live feed here for a few weeks now.
And it's just been absolutely incredible to see.
It's the most beautiful thing today, watching the celebration after Suleiman announced that Mubarak would be leaving town.
And I got to tell you, at least it looks from here like you guys have all the momentum on your side.
These people are going to have to, you know, accede to your demands.
And so I hope that you guys can, you know, coalesce around some people who mean well as far as, you know, ambitious people do.
And, you know, see what you can do to really secure this liberty that you've won for yourselves.
It's absolutely beautiful to see.
And there are billions of people all around the world who are with you this week, Ahmed.
Thank you very much.
And we're very happy and thankful to God that we are here.
All right, everybody.
That is Ahmed Elassie.
He's a local Internet professional in Egypt.
An American Egyptian or an Egyptian American, I guess is how you would say it.
Been living over there in Egypt for the last ten years and has been taking part with, as he said, his sister and his brother-in-law in their successful overthrow of a dictator.
The death of a state right in front of our eyes.
