Abdo al-Riwish flips a traffic officer off while swerving his cab around a wrong turn. He slashes through traffic, speeding diagonally across the street, and turns down an alley, smiling in satisfaction.
“They’re all bastards,” the 26-year-old, known to his parents as Mohamed Adel Abdallah, says, an unprovoked statement referring to Egyptian police. “People will tell you the lower-ranking ones are innocent and helpless. But the reality is, if they’re not corrupt, it’s only because they haven’t been given the opportunity.”
“They should stay off the streets. We’re doing fine without them.”
While, in these difficult times, optimism may be a virtue, al-Riwish’s carefree beliefs place him firmly among the minority regarding an increasingly distressing phenomenon.
Midway through the “Day of Anger,” as 28 January has come to be known, police forces suddenly and mysteriously retreated, leaving the country virtually lawless. For most Egyptians, it was the first of several sleepless nights, as the widely watched state TV broadcasts disseminated rumors of mass looting and thuggery, prompting civilians to take to the streets with makeshift weapons in a desperate bid to protect their homes and families.
Paranoia gripped the population, and instead of containing it, the crumbling government acted out an aggressive campaign of fear-mongering to validate its claims that a full-scale revolution would fuel chaos. Packs of armed state officers in civilian clothes terrorized numerous neighborhoods, acting under direct orders. This reporter recalls contacting the emergency hotline repeatedly announced on television, only to be told that security forces were currently unavailable because “girls are being raped in front of their families in Masaken Sheraton.”
Despite the challenging circumstances, citizens managed to band together long enough to ward off the “inevitable” descent into chaos forecast by the regime. But, as Egyptians struggle to restore normalcy, the ongoing absence of the law has proven to be somewhat of an obstacle.
“Nobody feels secure anymore,” 42-year-old Radwan Ageeb says as he slaps his palms in frustration. “There’s no safety, no trust, and the life we used to know no longer exists.”
Ageeb has had a hard time finding comfort in the face of spiraling uncertainty, prohibiting his two daughters from going to school out of concern for their safety, and only occasionally tending to his electronic appliance store. His anxiety only increased with the breakout of gang warfare in his neighborhood, Shubra, last week, resulting in destroyed property, and several deaths.
The battle lines were drawn due to “some nonsense about a girl getting hit on, or groped,” Ageeb claims, shrugging. “But that’s just the point. There’s no lid to keep things from boiling over now, no ceiling to stop people from acting out on whatever misguided instincts they have…The police may have been corrupt and inconsequential to the process of ensuring justice, but at the very least, their presence kept people in check.”
According to Ageeb, the reality of the situation is irrelevant. “The idea of the police, the simple notion of it, was all that kept people from descending into animals,” he says.
These fears are by no means exclusive to Ageeb, or even the residents of Shubra.
“People are getting attacked,” claims 32-year-old Ahmed Amin, describing the situation not only in the al-Talbeya neighborhood of Haram where he lives, but as seen throughout Cairo while on duty as a paramedic.
“A few of my colleagues have found bodies on the streets,” he says, while explaining that most of what he has seen are “casualties of neighborhood fights, usually stemming from arguments on property, or pre-existing tensions–generally, reasons that don’t justify the violence perpetrated for their sake.”
The lack of law enforcement, Amin contends, has emboldened many, to the extent that criminals no longer feel the need to deny their actions.
“There’s nobody to hold them responsible, there’s no risk of punishment,” he claims. Just a few hours before this reporter spoke with him, Amin says he had received a distressing call from his wife. A female neighbor had reportedly been kidnapped in broad daylight, her husband severely beaten and left for dead. According to Amin, this is not the first such horrific report to send shockwaves through Talbeya.
“The longer this [absence] goes on,” he says, “the worse things will get, and the more difficult they’ll be to fix.”
Amin points out, in accordance with various alarming news reports, “the smaller governorates are a mess,” and seemingly completely entrenched in chaos, with gangs of thugs taking over entire residential buildings, and any remaining government facilities being systematically torched.
The current situation may be slightly more contained in the capital, but the future remains uncertain.
“Egypt has always felt like a relatively safe country, but now that’s changing,” claims Nagla Rizk, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at the American University in Egypt.“ The previous Minister of Interior [Mahmoud Wagdy] held his post for a little over a month. What did he do in that time to restore people’s trust in the police? What did he do to improve the situation, and the debilitating trust crisis between the people and the authorities? Nothing.”
Rizk is understandably concerned about the lack of security, especially after her son was recently held at knife-point by a cab driver who took his phone, and some money.
“I never thought twice about getting into cabs; safety was never an issue,” says 15-year-old Hatem. “Even recently, with all the stories and reports of muggings and attacks, it still didn’t feel like there was any real danger. I would even respond to those reports by saying it was just a few bad apples, and nothing really serious.”
Hatem recalls the incident, describing the driver’s erratic behavior. “He kept rolling his windows up and down, and making unnecessary detours. He told me he had a knife, and that he had swallowed some pills.”
Eventually, the driver pulled out a knife, one “the size of my arm,” Hatem claims, and demanded the teenager hand over his phone, and money. “He then told me to get out of the cab, and that he never wanted to see me again.”
For a while, Hatem unsuccessfully attempted to track down the cab driver with assistance from two strangers on a motorcycle, who let him use their phone and, later, took him home. The incident has left him shaken, and his mother outraged.
“As a parent, of course I’m angry,” says Rizk. “As a citizen, I demand an explanation. Why was nothing done about this? Why have things been allowed to deteriorate to this extent?”
Rizk is also deeply concerned about the repercussions of such a crisis.
“For my part, I would advise avoiding taxi cabs altogether, even though I’m fully aware of the negative economic consequences that might bring,” she says, sighing. “But personal safety is more of a priority now.”
The repercussions that Rizk is truly worried about, though, fall along the lines of people attributing this behavior to the revolution.
“We should never blame such incidents on the revolution–this is a direct result of the previous regime’s failures,” she says. “These perpetrators are nothing but the cancerous cells remaining from an inefficient regime that spawned a failed police force, and this is one of the things which the revolution was aiming to fix, not perpetuate.”
If it takes time, Rizk claims, it’s only because “you can’t cure cancer overnight.”
Property disputes are also on a disturbing rise, as, in the absence of any legal authority, land-ownership is most clearly determined by the amount, and collective strength, of the thugs hired to claim it.
“Right now, anyone who wants to do anything, anyone who wants to claim anything–there’s nobody to stop them,” says Iman Khalid Eyada, a doctor of pediatrics at Cairo University.
Eyada speaks from personal experience. Her building in Maadi is currently suffering a particularly tyrannical resident, intent on incorporating the sidewalk into his private garden. The issue, Eyada claims, was already settled in a 2010 court case which ended with the police arriving, and demanding the removal of the property-grabbing resident’s illegal fences. Following the revolution, and the fall of the regime, the resident has aggressively renewed his efforts, fueling heated altercations between the building’s occupants.
The belligerent resident has repeatedly harassed and threatened his neighbors with violence, and as Eyada claims, “has even hired thugs to sit under the building and intimidate us.”
“He has also repeatedly insulted the women of the building, and regularly moves around with a group of ten to 15 young men and thugs,” she says.
In desperation, the building’s occupants hired a security guard and constructed a booth for him right outside the building. The resident had the booth thrown into the middle of the street.
It perhaps comes as no surprise that the resident was an assistant to the former Minister of Housing.
Meanwhile, reports of thugs attacking public schools continue to float around, gaining credibility, and keeping parents on edge, and children at home. The fact that these baffling reports–why would thugs want to intimidate grade-school students?–remain largely unconfirmed brings little reassurance. Whether true or not, the reports have left parents cautious and scared, which–considering the government’s well-known reliance on fear tactics–may be the point.
As the security void continues to test the integrity of an entire population, police officers have been making a slow, and somewhat muted comeback–albeit in extremely small numbers. Perhaps contributing to the delay of a considerable deployment are the strong feelings of resentment shared by a significant amount of Egyptians. Whether residual anger at the toppled regime and its long list of crimes currently surfacing, or a more specific fury directed at officers who followed orders to terrorize and murder civilians, the outcome is the same: tensions are still rife between the people and the police.
As a result, a recent demonstration held by police officers attempting reconciliation saw the public respond with verbal, and in some cases, physical assaults. A few days later, a policeman was attacked by an infuriated crowd, after opening fire during an altercation with a minibus driver.
Nonetheless, newly instated Minister of Interior Mansour al-Essawi announced on Monday the nation’s police officers would resume their posts within a week–news that came as a relief to most Egyptians, despite whatever feelings of anti-authority hostility they may still harbor.
Unsurprisingly, al-Essawi saw the need to formally request civilians to “cease attacks on police, so that they can do their jobs with renewed confidence.”
At this point, it seems a growing number of Egyptians are endorsing al-Essawi’s request.
“Security before justice. What’s the point of putting people on trial if you won’t feel any safer with them behind bars?” Shubra resident Ageeb asks.
Ageeb insists the wisest course of action is to re-establish order, reintroduce police forces, and determine where responsible lies later on.
“Retribution comes with justice, and that only comes within the framework of a secure and civil state,” he says. Otherwise, according to Ageeb, “nothing means anything.”
As always, there will be detractors, those who are either still too angry to accept the role of authority which the police, by definition, must assume, or those who wish to perpetuate the current state of lawlessness for their own personal gain. When getting out of al-Riwish’s cab, this reporter was asked by the young driver if he was in need of any drugs.
“Hashish, weed, cocaine,” he offered with a smile. “Whatever you want, we have it,” he said pointing a few blocks down the street, where he claimed to live. “Drop by whenever you want–it’s an open market now.”
