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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and joining me on the line is Ahmadi Lassi.
You might remember we talked with him a week or so ago, two weeks ago now, about the revolution in Egypt.
Adam Morrow, the reporter from Interpress Service, hooked us up and he's an Egyptian-American who's been living, I guess, raised here and then has been living back in Egypt for the last 10 years.
And through, I think you said, Ahmad, your sister and your brother-in-law, you've been drawn into this anti-government extremism and was part of that crowd, part of that wonderful, peaceful mob that overthrew the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak just a couple of weeks back, huh?
Yes, and I'm very proud to have been a part of it.
Yeah, well, hey, I'm proud of you and I don't even know you, but still I'm proud of that whole thing.
I think it's absolutely beautiful.
It's like watching the wall come down when I was a kid and the liberation of Eastern Europe to me is what it looks like.
And so how goes the revolution?
You're now two weeks out from the existence of the Mubarak regime in Egypt.
Well, I'd like to remind everyone that the regime is very well still in place.
I mean, it has not gone anywhere.
We have just merely...
He's gone on vacation is all.
Pretty much.
And as a matter of fact, the prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, who was appointed by Mubarak as an attempt to sort of get people to settle down and to go back home, he fired the majority of the ministers and he did a reshuffling of the ministries and hired a new prime minister who is actually one of his friends from the Army or rather the Air Force, because he was an Air Force man.
And he used to previously run the Civil Air Aviation Department or Ministry.
And now this guy actually had a Freudian slip of the tongue four days ago on state television and said that he's going to get the approval of the president on some of the changes that they are going to be doing.
And then quickly reverted back into saying, I meant the council of the higher council of armed forces, which was actually very indicative of what a lot of almost everyone here suspected, which is that he's still in very close communication with the supposedly ex-president and might very well be still taking orders from him.
And we're all, you know, from day one, we've been asking for the same demands, you know, all the people that have gone out, which is not any particular organization, but rather the entirety of the Egyptian public.
And our demands have been firm.
We've wanted a complete removal of the current regime, not just the figurehead, not, you know, any temporary solutions.
And this is, they've been trying to sort of pacify us and trickle these changes and still remaining there.
The NDP party, which was the ruling party, National Democratic Party, which is just a bunch of thugs.
It's like a glorified mafia or organized crime network.
And these people have been stealing, you know, the wealth of the nation.
And they've only taken a few of them and have started to try them or have hearings for their trial.
And a lot of the, you know, the biggest crooks that were known to almost every single Egyptian are still running loose and capable of actually, you know, taking their money and properly getting rid of it or, you know, like attempts of changing like bank accounts or getting this money that does not belong to them in the first place.
Have been made.
And, you know, very likely they're getting this stuff out of the country, which is a very big no-no.
And at the same time, we still have the same corrupt structure.
The ministry is pretty much unchanged.
You know, the head of the ministry, which is Ahad Shafi, and you have a bunch of other people who were appointed that were Yemeni people.
And it's still pretty much unchanged.
You have a very superficial changes that have been made, like they dissolved Parliament, the two houses of Parliament, which is Meglis Eshab and Meglis Ashura.
And they also agreed to put a hold on the constitution, not completely cancel it.
Now, Egypt's constitution, as it is now, gives almost complete and full power to the president, which is a dictatorial or rather oligarchical system because, you know, the dictatorship is, especially here, is not just one person running it.
It's rather a figurehead with a bunch of thieves behind him that are running the show.
Right.
So here's the thing.
I mean, hold it right there for a second.
First of all, it's anti-war.
I'm talking with Ahmad Elassi.
He's part of the revolution there in Egypt and giving us a pretty grim update on the progress of things.
And I guess what you're getting to really here is that the military dictatorship had this civilian face of Mubarak on the front of it, but it still is basically almost the entire state.
It's a huge part of the state and for that matter, a huge part of the economy there.
It's very entrenched.
And you're saying it's not even really clear that Mubarak has been really gotten rid of permanently here.
And certainly it's not clear.
It's not the case.
It's not going to be the case that the military's and its role in the state is going to be, you know, greatly scaled back.
But I guess that really is the fight, right, to try to create a civilian government that I guess the military will accept, but that will eventually be able to take control of that military and scale down its role in the rest of the society.
Right.
Yes.
I mean, more or less.
I mean, it's not necessarily military that's ruling because I mean, the military here in Egypt is greatly respected by the people.
However, though, it is the leadership in the military that is a bit questionable.
Right.
The generals.
That's what I mean.
Correct.
Yeah.
Correct.
And these people, I mean, we trust that our our army mid ranking officers will not fire on us.
However, though, the that's not for lack of trying from the upper echelon.
And these people, unfortunately, are, I mean, not loyal.
As far as I can tell.
I mean, my personal opinion is that their loyalty is questionable.
And they do get 1.5 billion a year.
That is, you know, from the US as in a form of aid, according to the because of the signing of the Camp David Peace Accord.
And they spent on plenty of sophisticated weapons.
All they could ever need.
I mean, I really don't know the intricacies of that.
However, though, I do know that there the top level people have that there are strange things going on.
And it is not them that have been ruling the actual country.
It has been the Ministry of Interior.
And their budget, their annual budget has been like 20 million, sorry, 20 billion Egyptian pounds, I believe, annual, which is far, far greater than the budget of the army.
The army also has 450,000 active duty soldiers.
And you have 1.8 million personnel under the Ministry of Interior.
All right, well, hold it right there.
We'll be right back, everybody with Ahmad Elassi on the line from Cairo, Egypt, giving us an update on the revolution there.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Ahmad Elassi.
He is a revolutionary in Egypt on the phone from Cairo right now talking about the troubles, the uphill battle that the people of Egypt face in seeing this revolution through to the end.
And, well, where were we?
Ahmad, go ahead.
I was discussing the fact that just shedding some light on who was, you know, who was running the country before.
And, right, you're separating out the Interior Ministry, the secret police and all that kind of control from the external military, which is basically just conscripts and your friends and neighbors in there, the very ones who refuse to fire on your massive protests.
Absolutely.
And I'd like to also remind you just a few news blips.
I mean, you must have heard that yesterday the Ministry of Interior actually was torched a bit.
And there was there was absolutely no protest by civilians that was taking place over there.
It was police officers that were protesting.
And they actually burnt a lot of evidence that was around there.
And I don't know how they're going to try and spin that.
But just to put things in perspective, I mean, think about it.
It's like over two times, over actually three times the amount of soldiers that are used to protect your homeland are actually being used to persecute your homeland.
And that is quite significant in itself.
And it tells and of course, the budget that, you know, the budget difference between the armies and the Ministry of Interior, which, by the way, it has central security under it.
And it also has state security, which are two we one of our demands is that state security needs to just go away, along with our version of the Patriot Act.
Those things are absolutely no good, because as it currently stands, no person can have a job, either in the private sector or the public sector that is of any significance without having their approval or stamp of approval on it.
And that in itself is because of the emergency law, which is very close to the American Patriot Act.
Now, let me stop you right there.
Just to go back to that specific incident, you're saying that the local cops, not any protesters, but the local cops torch the interior ministry in a town where this is in Cairo, and it is the major centralized building of the ministry.
And the cops were holding their own protests, but it was all police officers and lower and mid ranking police officers that that were protesting.
And suddenly, the building started going up in flames and cars in front of it went up in flames.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, tell me this amount.
Is it true that the rising cost of food has a great deal to do with this unrest across the Middle East, and particularly in Egypt?
Sure.
I mean, it does definitely play a big part of it, you know, especially since Egypt was one of the very few countries all around the world that had a steadily rising GDP.
I think last year, it was almost a 5.5% rise in the GDP, yet people never got any of that trickle down to them.
The average person here did not get any of that to trickle down to them.
As a matter of fact, they experienced the exact opposite, which is commodities went up in price, food went up in price, and salaries stayed the same.
And already, people were getting, you know, living off of less than $5 a day, which is actually, that is the average, you know, there are some that even make do with $2.
So that is also a significant part of the whole situation.
So you have people who live on these very small incomes, and then all of a sudden $2 is only worth $1, and now they're pushed completely into the margin.
Absolutely.
And some of the people that were participating in the uprising were, you know, if they didn't work a day, they just did not eat that day.
It was a very sad thing to witness.
And at the same time, it was, you know, it put things in perspective for a lot of us, you know, a lot of us that actually, you know, could afford to go, you know, a few days without working, so that you could participate in such an event.
And, you know, to see someone that is out there that knows that they are not going to be getting food for the day, because they chose to to participate, it was very moving.
And it, you know, the people started sharing their food, of course, as you know, and it was a very nice atmosphere that is still continuing to this day.
I was just actually, I just came back from Tahrir Square, and people are planning on continuing what they had before.
Last week, there were estimated 3 to 5 million just in Tahrir Square alone.
And today, Alexandria and Tahrir, you have huge, huge amounts of people that are actually planning on doing sit-ins again.
Well, now I saw on Al Jazeera today, Ahmad, some footage from Tahrir Square, and it looked like it was pretty packed.
How does it compare to last week in terms of turnout?
Sure, it was a little bit like, I mean, I was there since about 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock a.m. this morning, and it was sort of, people were trickling in still.
By the time I left, it looked pretty packed.
I had to walk a long way, but I would estimate personally, like, probably no less than 2 million by the time I had left.
So that's a pretty good number, and a lot of them are planning on staying.
I saw a few people bringing in tents and covers and sleeping bags and such.
Well, that's what it's going to take for sure.
I mean, you guys are really going to have to keep the pressure up if what you really are demanding is a rule of law instead of just a rule of this, you know, corrupt establishment.
It's a big row to hoe, but I think you guys can do it.
I mean, watching millions of people come out for weeks and weeks and weeks on end and refusing to, you know, be mollified by this or that promise, or in fact just refusing to be tired out and continuing to show up until the day was won, you'll have a major victory, you know, under your belt, and I hope that that really has reinforced the idea in everyone that they really can get it done, that they're not going to get tired of this, that they're going to keep going.
Absolutely.
I think it has nullified their fear strategies that they've always implanted in us, and people became fearless.
And at the same time, we haven't seen any sort of like violent acts or any such thing take place.
Sure, traffic has been a bit ridiculous, but that's because, you know, most of the, a lot of areas, you know, major traffic areas are still blocked off by tanks in the street, and there is still a curfew, and if that curfew was lifted, I think it would alleviate a lot of the traffic issues.
Now talk to me about the border with the Gaza Strip, because there was a headline yesterday that came across that said they're going to start letting across 300 people a day.
That looks like a start.
That was the military's decision, and was that based on pressure from y'all?
Well, I mean, I don't know if it was directly from us.
However, though, they started opening it a few days after we started our project, after we started sending out press releases to a lot of media outlets, and started speaking to a lot of groups.
We've got a lot of people that are really excited about this, because we feel as Egyptians that we were personally responsible, you know, in the blockade that took place, because without the Rafah border, which is the border between Egypt, the only border crossing that is shared by both Egypt and the Gaza Strip, which is direct, that has been closed off and it is not because of any regional or international treaty that it has been closed off.
It was closed off because Mubarak was, you know, playing ball with them, or a direct agent for the Israelis.
So what are y'all going to do about it now?
We plan on a peaceful march, on March the 4th, and we are going to go and demand that the border be opened up permanently for people, medical goods, foodstuffs, and rebuild.
All right, is there a website where you're organizing, real quick?
Absolutely, it's www.tahrir4gaza.net.
All right, thanks very much.
