Alright y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio.
I'm happy to welcome Ahmed Elassi back to the show.
He's on the phone from Cairo, Egypt right now.
How are you doing today?
I'm good.
How you doing Scott?
I'm doing great.
Really appreciate you joining us.
Yeah, no problem.
Alright, so I hear you were in Tahrir Square earlier today.
Let's start off with the good news and the bad news.
Sure.
Well, the good news is that recently there's been a cabinet reshuffle that a lot of people feel is, you know, well on the right path.
There was the new Prime Minister and he basically, a lot of people feel that he's the right choice.
And one of his like most recent appointments was the Foreign Minister.
And he had a lot of good, like a lot of people were really happy with the appointments he made, including the Foreign Minister that he chose, Mr.
Nabil Alavi, which was his most recent.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the new Prime Minister and the new Foreign Minister?
Sure.
The new Foreign Minister, I believe is a former UN diplomat and he's basically, he was one of the people that were in Tahrir Square previously and has spoken out against the regime from before and is well-respected amongst most of the people that were in Tahrir Square.
And he feels that there needs to be a major rethinking of Egypt's foreign policy, specifically towards the blockade of Gaza.
And like I said, I mean he seems to have popular support and also the new Prime Minister.
I believe he was the Minister of Transportation from the year 2004 till the year 2006 and he was removed by the Mubarak regime, also well-respected.
By a lot of people and people generally approve of him.
And it seems, I think they just had their very first ministerial or cabinet meeting today.
I don't know specifically what came out of it.
There are no formal like press releases or decisions that were released, but you know, a lot of people seem to be happy about it.
And for Tahrir Square, while I was over there, there are roaming gangs of thugs that were like beating up people that were doing the sit-ins in Tahrir Square.
Well, you know, we have a headline on Antiwar.com right now, Muslim Christian clashes in Cairo leave 11 dead.
Right, right.
And that's in response to the burning of a church.
Tell us about that.
Sure.
There was, I believe, I don't have like definitive proof, but the word on the street is that it is a retaliation from state security.
As you well know, that the state security offices were basically raided by citizens and the army and they found like tons of like secret files and dossiers on people as well as like actual torture chambers and like, you know, four-story dungeons.
I mean, kind of stuff you would imagine would be like only seen in the movies.
It was like horrific stuff and they actually filmed some of it and some of the footage has been on the internet and as well as on Al Jazeera and other news networks.
And basically it just showed the like lavish quarters of the officers that would do this torturing and lots of shredded paper everywhere.
A lot of citizens actually seized a lot of documents and were basically releasing them.
The army made statements asking people like in on mobile phone messages and stuff asking people to turn in these documents and basically from my understanding, it's some of the documents were actually released online actually, you know, a good bit of them and there were other counter moves that were saying basically if you find illegitimate like, you know, because I think that the state security apparatus was actually monitoring a lot of innocent people and they were saying, you know, if you see any of that, it should just be destroyed.
It shouldn't be in the hands of the government.
You know, there's just no reason for that.
However, though, I really don't know what to make of it.
I don't know what to make of the whole situation as far as that goes, but the army did call for every state officer to turn himself in and that they would be considered, you know.
The army called for the internal security services to basically give themselves up to dissolve and surrender themselves.
Correct.
And this is a specific branch of the Ministry of Interior.
It is not all law enforcement.
It is an apparatus referred to as an owner and it's basically like a internal, like the equivalent of the federal investigation, I guess, in the United States and they used to do a lot of wiretaps of like ordinary citizens for no reason, things like that.
And that's what like a lot of like people were asking for it to be destroyed.
Anyways, I think the church burning was most likely like a retaliation for that.
That's the word on the street.
Anyway, well, I'm not sure if you're aware of this in the local media there, but there's a piece at Reason Hit and Run's blog, Egyptian State Security Archives yield evidence of false flag attacks and that includes apparently a document describing a plot by a man named El Adly and Gamal Mubarak to get back at one of Gamal's business rivals and have a partial English translation of the document there from BankOfAmericaSuck.com.
I like that.
And so yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people suspected that it was Mubarak that was behind that Alexandria bombing that was in December, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And by the way, there have been several local papers that have published detailed things about, you know, descriptions of what exactly happened.
I think it was early on as far as like before Mubarak even stepped down, El Adly, who's actually the former Minister of Interior, he was appointed in 1997.
So he was like in charge for, you know, 13 some years and basically he did not deny the charges of orchestrating the Alexandria bombing at first, but he said that it was handed down to him from Mubarak himself.
And he said that details of which is available in a room, a secret room, which is located underneath the headquarters of the NDP or the National Democratic Party.
And it's basically a room that contained a lot of recordings of all officials during the Mubarak era.
And all these officials would be secretly recorded, only four people knew about it.
And that was Adly, who was the minister, and Mubarak, his son, and Fethullah Sharif, who was the head of the NDP, had a really prominent position in it.
And basically he said that the documents inside this room would exonerate him from, you know, not exonerate him, but it would prove that he was ordered to do it.
Anyways, so that goes to this deliberate division amongst people, you know, turning Muslims against the Christians and vice versa.
And, you know, there were a lot of people, like I said, that would attest to, you know, the regime being behind us from before.
So they're trying to do it again, basically.
And, you know, to some effect, I mean, they have succeeded, but there are a lot of people that know the source of this and know that it is not, you know, a Muslim-Christian thing, but rather state security apparatus is just trying to sow seeds of division.
Well, and that can really backfire, too, and solidify the opposition to them for that very reason, that they would do such things to try to divide you.
And from what I hear right now in front of the state television building, I hear that some Muslims have already joined in with the Christians in their protest in front of the television building.
But I'm not absolutely 100% on that.
I mean, it wasn't reported on any station or anything.
Really quick, I'd like to also mention that the Ministry of Finance was literally on fire today.
It was set ablaze, just as a lot of places that contained a lot of documents that would be used as evidence are being systematically hunted down and are, you know, and burnt and destroyed, just as we saw with state security.
And before when I spoke with you last time, I believe I was telling you that the Ministry of Interior itself had a bunch of files that were burnt, specifically felony evidence rooms were completely set ablaze.
And also the Mogamma, which is in Tahrir, it is a government building that usually houses like a lot of things, everything from like, you know, immigration and passport information to like some army stuff to evidence used in trials and things like that, specifically things that like have to do with evidence rooms were burnt completely.
And we all know like, you know, who had access to that at the time, that was like a week and a half ago.
And moving on to Tahrir today, also I was there like up until like 5 o'clock and or actually like 4.30 and it was just starting to get violent.
There were gangs of thugs around Tahrir that were basically beating in, beating people that were trying to get in and they were starting to close in.
They had like weapons, you know, knives to switchblades, things like that.
And they were like, I guess trucks of, I mean that that was a rumor.
I didn't see that.
I mean, I don't know if it would, it's hearsay is what I'm saying.
I can't like substantiate it, but there were trucks that were brought in filled with rocks like for these people, like truckloads of rocks so that they would like.
Do you have any indication who they were?
I can't tell, but there were several that were caught by the people.
I unfortunately, I was trying to get like the, they're also, I'll mention it, but I mean, when people were caught, they weren't some of, a lot of them weren't carrying IDs.
How convenient.
And they were just turned into the army.
Later on.
I hear the army started using tear gas on these thugs and then eventually just arrested everybody, including the people that were still doing sit-ins in the middle of Tahir Square and it's been completely evacuated of people and curfew was moved up after it was, it's been for the past few weeks at midnight, starting at midnight, going all the way to 6 a.m.
Now, it got moved to 9 p.m.
What exists in Tahir Square as far as, you know, volunteer security services and what have you, after weeks of this, you guys have got to have some people who are basically volunteer security there, right?
Doing something?
Sure, at nighttime, that's exactly what we would do.
We would have like a lot of people.
I myself had had my own tent that a lot of, you know, you know, friends and people that I know were using and we would basically rope it around and we would have like people standing as security in all of the areas that we left as entrances.
However, though, what you can't really control it during the daytime and that's when things get a little weird because I mean it is open for traffic, it is open for people to walk in freely and it gets a little hectic and crazy and that's where you get a lot of like news media will come and film and suddenly you'll get these people that will pop up that weren't there before and they'll have their own opinions, obviously sent in either by state security or remnants of the regime which, you know, are trying to just like say things like, oh, you know, these people aren't really helping us.
I think everybody should just go home now.
It's, you know, these people just like sitting here, things like that.
I mean, it's crazy.
Another point is there are a lot of sit-ins in universities.
I think there was a sort of a hesitation from the government to let schools resume in fear of exactly that massive university sit-ins and historically it's been, you know, any sort of like massive demonstration has always come out of universities.
So naturally they've always had state security apparatus headquarters almost, you know, not headquarters, but like big offices inside the university itself.
Lots of police and central police which are, you know, basically riot police.
So you have like three different types of Ministry of Interior representation inside every single university.
So that was one of the biggest, you know, things that they were sort of protesting against.
Another thing was basically the fact that they have all of the headmasters and the heads of departments.
All of these things were completely state-controlled and they were like appointed and obviously, you know, if you tow the government line that you get a position.
If you don't, you obviously don't get a position.
So a lot of these sit-ins are basically in protest of that, which by the way, it ultimately means you get like, you know, a puppet that will reiterate whatever the regime wants and most likely will give, you know, not the greatest level of education, obviously.
So basically the three major universities that have had these sit-ins are a few universities, Ayn Shams University, and of course the biggest one, Cairo University.
And they've managed to achieve one of their goals, which is to remove all Ministry of Interior people, all the departments altogether.
However, they were replaced with civilian, you know, university graduates that were appointed as the security with I think very little training.
So I've been speaking to people there and there's a lot of infiltration from obviously state security people and a lot of the kids that were arrested and beaten and charged with, you know, falsified crimes and such, recognized officers that had done so in plain clothes actually in there.
Now with universities, you can't necessarily go into the university without having a university ID, whether you're a student or a part of the faculty.
All right.
Now, I want to get back a minute to the success and as you said at the beginning of the show, you didn't seem to disagree.
So many people are pretty happy about the new prime minister and the new foreign minister and I'll go ahead and assume because we've talked about this in the past anyway, that this is because of the continuing pressure by the protesters, by the hundreds of thousands in the streets, particularly every Friday, reminding the permanent military state there in Egypt that the regime changed on the civilian side and the internal police side that you really meant it and that you're going to get it.
And I wonder if there's a new protest scheduled for this Friday after prayers and whether y'all are going to be able to keep up this pressure for the long term to make sure that you continue to get what you want.
Absolutely, Scott.
I mean, we are definitely planning on having another big one this Friday and you know, we've lost the fear factor.
So, I mean, at the same time, it's just sort of a tough balance because I mean, you know, a part of what their accusations are is that we're stopping the, you know, the country's progress and what have you.
Although that is, you know, a day, a national day off and not a lot of people actually work on Fridays, kind of equivalent to your Sundays in the Western world, but which, you know, doesn't detract from any work effort that people might be doing.
So we will be keeping up the pressure as far as that goes and I'd like to remind everybody that also, I mean that the actual 19 ministers remain the same, six were changed and out of those six, I mean the most prominent, of course, is the prime minister who was Ahmad Shafiq, who was appointed by Mubarak.
He was also, I believe, a childhood friend of Mubarak.
Now, is there a specific list of demands about the rest of the cabinet, etc., what you want to become of the internal police, that kind of thing?
Well, I mean that the most important four, I believe, have been changed and those, and the very, the most important two to be very specific are the prime minister, which was replaced and the prime minister can select his cabinet.
So that was most important and that is Assam Sharaf, and like I said, he was the former transportation minister from 04 up until 06.
There were a couple of scandalous things that actually happened on his watch, but the thing is though, I mean, basically there was a ferry that would ferry people from Saudi Arabia to the Sinai and it was very poorly maintained.
It was a privately owned enterprise and basically it sunk because there wasn't enough regulation and the guy was removed immediately.
Same thing, there was also a train crash that happened on his watch, but also again because of poor regulations, which a lot of times, I mean, ministers are, unfortunately, it's like, you know, back in the Mubarak era, they weren't necessarily given free reign to set their own policies.
Well, how close is this guy to the best you're going to get, do you think?
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people seem to be, and the fact that he was removed before he could actually take any action and the guy that he, I forget the name of the person that he was replaced with as transportation minister, but he basically made the guy get off scot-free, the guy, the owner of the ferry, and no action was taken, no disciplinary actions were taken against any of the people in charge of the train as well.
So basically, he was taken out of his position so that he would not take proper disciplinary action towards those who are responsible.
Well, you think he was put in this position now because he'll be necessarily weak because of these prior scandals?
I don't know, but he was, it seems that he was taken out before he can actually do his job before, and he was also bound by the, you know, the rest of the cabinet, which I believe was still the Nazif cabinet, Ahmad Nazif, who was the former, you know, before January 25th, Ahmad Nazif was the prime minister and he was the former ICT minister of information communication technology, and that guy was bad news.
So basically, the way that it is right now, a lot of people have high hopes for Mr.
Aslam Shadoff.
All right, now tell us very quickly again about how people can find out about your upcoming march to Gaza.
Well, it's, we just came back from that and...
Oh no, I'm sorry about that.
I thought it was coming up still.
We didn't have like a big march.
It was, we decided to scale it down a bit to a select delegates of people from various nationalities, and we were a total of 12, 9 of which actually got through.
Two of us didn't have IDs.
We honestly did not expect to be let in, but the army and like the army intelligence and all these guys were super awesome and they were like really good about like everything.
They even like provided us with protection and stuff like that throughout the entire thing on the way back because I mean there are weird things going on.
And basically, we accomplished two really major things.
Is that for the first time, you know, a group of delegates or you know, any group actually makes it into the Gaza Strip without having a time location of any kind because usually they say, okay, you can go in, but you have like, you know, 24 hours or 48 hours and you have to return.
We honestly didn't stay for that long.
We basically, and the second accomplishment was that we brought in a symbolic one bag of cement and that bag of cement really is a very, very big thing because, you know, while we were there our main purpose was to see all the devastation and destruction that was caused by cast lead.
We basically went and toured all of the destroyed residential units and that's, you know, 5,000 residential units that were completely destroyed and decimated.
And about 50,000 residential units that were actually partially destroyed.
So, I mean, that's a lot and currently we also visited people that were living in tents and it was, you know, for two years living in these tents.
It was a very, you know, nice, cool summer, you know, like it was like a nice 70 degrees and it was like a nice breeze and inside the tent it felt like a sweltering 90 degrees and it was very humid.
And basically we took pictures of the devastation and the current living conditions of people in Gaza.
And it was very, very sad.
We also met with the Samooni family.
Where can people see those pictures?
Are they online?
We're currently working on getting them online, but it's stuff that I've never seen before and I've been watching this quite carefully on the news media and I just never, ever imagined it would be this horrible.
And we met with the members of the Samooni family, the, you know, the live members of the Samooni family, 29 of which were, you know, died during Operation Cast Lead, a lot of which were actual children, you know, with like several bullet wounds in their chest.
It was absolutely horrific and dozens injured from just one family and it was just a very, very sad thing to see.
So, I mean, and you still have these people, you know, they've been living out in the middle of tents and they can't rebuild obviously without having cement and it's just a horrific sight to see and the, you know, the type of conditions that people have to live under, you know, these tents.
I mean, I hear like, you know, when it rains, which apparently it does because it is a coastal area and it does quite often, like the rain seeps right through the tents.
They, you know, it's a very, very tough living condition, extremely tough living condition.
And basically the only really good thing that we thought of this is that on our second day there, we only stayed for like two days basically and, you know, on our way back before we actually left the strip, we heard that, you know, the new Egypt foreign minister had basically made a very similar statement to what we were making.
You know, we had, we were basically saying that Egypt is not a bound to any international law or regional or international treaty to keep the borders closed for goods and services.
But in fact, it would be actually violating international law by not providing humanitarian aid to those needs, whether it be in war, even in wartime, you are bound by international treaties to actually or Egypt is bound by international treaties to provide assistance and, you know, humanitarian aid to people in need.
And it's just, you know, shameful that it's not.
And basically that's almost word for word what Mr.
Nabil El-Arabi had said in a recent statement.
Now, could you have made this trip before the fall of Hosni Mubarak?
Absolutely not.
So to what degree then has the border actually been opened up?
Can people, residents of Gaza come into Egypt or only one way?
How much trade?
How many people?
Zero trade as it is right now.
It is a crossing that is open only for passengers to pass through and it is absolutely forbidden for any goods or services to go through and basically it is, there is no law or treaty or anything like that.
Like I said, that prohibits that from happening and they are letting in.
I think it is open for a very limited time and it is also open for, you know, a one-way like into the people that were stranded outside of it are being let in.
And they're also letting in humanitarian cases and it's like an on individual basis only and you have to like give very good reason as to why you're actually traveling.
In our case, they made an exception which I'm, you know, very grateful for and I think like, you know, the mission was, you know, a great success in which that it was a symbolic gesture that they allowed in and that was the very first cement bag that ever entered legally into the strip and they're actually being, you know, they're USAID and EU have actually set 5.2 billion dollars that were pledged by, you know, the USAID and EU for reconstruction of the strip.
However, it comes with a stipulation that basically it cannot, you know, they said you cannot use cement that has been smuggled through tunnels and for this money, it has to come through a legal, through legal means which is like a sort of a cash 22, you know, it's like here, you know, we're going to give you all of this humanitarian aid, but it comes with, you know, a price that, you know, your government has to recognize Israel and basically right now is an open-air prison for 1.8 million people and it's, you know, horrific condition for any human being to be living under and we're hoping that that will change, you know, we're hoping that with the appointment of Mr. Latavi, it will be different and especially in light of the recent statements he's just made about the, you know, the unjust conditions that Egypt is forcing the strip under and I think that should be changing soon.
Yeah, well, it sounds like the beginning of it at least and good for you for being one of the first to go and breach that barrier.
I think that's heroic.
All right, everybody, that is Ahmed Alassi.
He's an activist in Cairo.
Thanks very much for your time again.
