On the Arab Street, Rage Is Contagious

Such is the extent of political repression in Egypt that when tens of thousands of people took to the streets to decry the 29-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, nobody was more surprised than the protesters themselves. “I didn’t expect this many people,” said businessman Ahmed Osama as he took in the crowds bearing antigovernment posters and chanting anti-Mubarak slogans in Cairo’s central Midan Tahrir, or Liberation Square. Even Zeinab Khalifa, an artist who has spent much of her adult life campaigning for political reform, was astonished by the turnout. “This is the biggest protest I’ve seen in this era,” she said.

The protesters flooded Cairo’s streets on Jan. 25, dubbed the Day of Wrath by opposition groups. They shut down major thoroughfares and clashed with phalanxes of riot police. Demonstrations also broke out in other cities across the country, most violently in Suez, where three protesters died in confrontations with security forces. The Mubarak government tried to head off more unrest the following day by deploying riot police, troop carriers and police trucks equipped with water cannons at obvious locations for protests. But demonstrations broke out anyway, with fierce clashes erupting between young, mostly male protesters and police.

(See TIME’s exclusive photos of the Battle for Tahrir Square.)

Over the past five years, the Mubarak regime has pursued an economic-growth plan of rapid liberalization, promising to deliver jobs and modernity in the process. Increasingly, however, Egyptians complain that unemployment is higher than ever, that the cost of living has risen while wages have stayed the same and that government corruption and repression have come to permeate all aspects of society.

The demonstrations alarmed the Obama Administration, which regards Mubarak as an important ally in Middle East peace negotiations and the fight against Islamic extremism, but they transfixed Arab audiences who, for the second time in a month, watched on TV and YouTube as a popular uprising took on an authoritarian regime. The success of Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, which ended the 23-year rule of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 15, inspired smaller uprisings from Algeria to Yemen, but the drama unfolding in the streets of the most populous Arab nation was of a higher magnitude. “This means that the region’s so-called stability was an illusion,” says Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center. “These regimes are not, in fact, stable and are going to fall — if not now, then later.”

(See more about Tunisia’s new government post-revolution.)

Other Arab autocrats, already shaken by Ben Ali’s ouster, have sought to placate their angry populations by cutting the prices of food and fuel and promising jobs and handouts. Now they will take their cue from Mubarak. If he is able to extinguish the protests by brute force, expect others to follow suit. But if the protesters force their ruler into making major political concessions, it will be hard for other Arab states to deny the same to their people. And if Mubarak goes the way of Ben Ali, expect panic in presidential palaces from Algiers to Sana’a.

At the end of two days of protests, there was no indication that Mubarak was packing his bags. Nor were the protesters in any mood to back down. “I think the Egyptian people are alive, and they are inspired by the Tunisian revolution,” said Osama, the Cairo businessman. “I think this is just the beginning.”

Spontaneous Combustion

Like the Jasmine revolution, the protests in Egypt began abruptly, with many participants spurred by online postings on social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. (The government was able to block Twitter feeds for much of the afternoon and evening of Jan. 25, and it blocked Facebook access the next day. But it was too late: the wrath was already in the streets.) And just as in Tunisia, most of the protesters were apolitical. “I’m not part of any group or party,” said Khalifa, the artist. “We’ve all just had enough.”

The government tried to pin the blame on an old bogeyman: the Muslim Brotherhood. But it’s an allegation that participating groups call bogus. Shadi Taha, a member of the liberal Tomorrow Party, says most protesters were first timers. “We used to call them the silent majority — the majority that is not involved in politics, who have never been involved in politics and who definitely are not involved in the Muslim Brotherhood.”

See how the Egyptian uprising is changing the Brotherhood.

That’s not to say Egypt’s long-suffering opposition groups stayed entirely on the sidelines: prominent opposition figures could be seen marching with the crowds. But it was the newbies who made the greatest impact, and you could tell from the concerns they voiced. They were not demanding political freedoms — although they gamely joined the chants for those too — but protesting the parlous state of the economy. Ahmed Khairi, a public-health worker demonstrating in Tahrir Square, listed his laments: “Gas in Egypt has gotten so expensive. People can’t afford health insurance. There are people here because they can’t find jobs or get married.”

Economic frustration has been a common thread in the street protests that have rippled through the Arab world since Tunisia. The other common complaint: corruption. “We came here for a reason, to tell Mubarak that we don’t want his corrupt regime,” said Ahmed Mosaad, a translator, as he marched through the working-class Cairo neighborhood of Shubra.

(See how democracy can work in the Middle East.)

The government tried to distance the protests from those elsewhere in the Arab world. When several Egyptians followed the example of the Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation sparked the Jasmine Revolution, the copycats were dismissed by Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif as people with “personal problems.” On Jan. 26, after the first day of protests, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement claiming that the “open environment of freedom of expression” and a police commitment to protecting demonstrators were a “notable contrast to recent situations in the region.”

It’s true that the initial police reaction to the demonstrations was markedly different from prior practice. Typically, cops respond to protests by encircling demonstrators with shields and batons, restricting their movement and numbers. But early on Jan. 25, police allowed the crowds to course through the capital, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood and even pushing through police cordons when they formed. “People are expressing their feelings,” said a police captain in Shubra with a shrug when asked about the new restrained stance. “People want freedom.” But as the crowd turned and pushed toward another line of shields, he added a warning note: “We can contain them at any time.”

(See video of the violent struggle for Tahrir Square.)

By sunset, the police were losing patience as the thousands who had convened at different Cairo landmarks throughout the day made their way toward Liberation Square in the heart of downtown. Police pounded on their shields in a show of aggression and then moved in with truncheons. As tear-gas shells exploded in their midst, protesters rushed the police, then retreated. (Two policemen have been killed so far in the violence.)

The protesters’ ranks were bolstered by hundreds more who flowed into the square from nearby bridges and side streets as the light grew dim. “Tomorrow, Egypt will follow Tunisia’s path,” the crowd chanted. “Get out, Mubarak! Saudi Arabia is waiting for you,” others yelled, referring to Ben Ali’s country of refuge. At one point, demonstrators threw tear-gas canisters back at police, forcing some of them to retreat a few blocks. The turnaround brought more youth into the fray. Mustafa Mohamed Nufal, a 13-year-old with gas-induced tears streaming down his face, was defiant. “Not everyone is afraid,” he said. He meant the protesters. There were plenty of frightened people in the presidential palaces of the Arab world.

See TIME’s special report “The Middle East in Revolt.”

See TIME’s best pictures of 2010.