In 2011, like most Egyptians at the time, I had little hope that Hosni Mubarak’s regime would ever end. His 30 years in power have been singled out by systematic human rights violations. His pathological concern for his own safety gave rise to a large autocratic and bureaucratic state, with little civil or political freedom. Unemployment was high. The wages were low. The business is run by Mubarak’s family and his immediate circle. The police beat, sexually abused and other forms of torture. Opposition figures have been sentenced by military courts to years in prison.
I knew that protest marches against Mubarak’s security establishment were planned when I left Egypt on January 24. I lived mostly abroad at the time, and I thought these protests would be of no significance. But what I read on TV for the next 17 days, and heard from friends, changed everything. Millions of Egyptians took to the streets and demanded change, and for the first time in many years, I began to find hope. I started dreaming of a better Egypt, and there were many like me: many who left the public domain and have now returned to Egypt to play a role in shaping its future.
On the way back, on February 13, just two days after Mubarak was ousted, everyone in the plane was full of joy. Everyone talks to each other; it was like one big family returning home together, full of hope. Passengers clapped as the pilot announced the landing and began hugging each other as it stopped. I will never forget that day.
I wanted to help build the new Egypt. I was one of the 100 people elected to form the assembly that drafted the new constitution, and I was elected to be its secretary general. I have been appointed Minister of Planning and International Cooperation. The work was varied, but there was a lot to do and no time to waste. Our goal was to build institutions that would strengthen the democratic values we believed in.
Many mistakes were made. This was inevitable after 30 years of political stagnation. And the biggest one was that politicians did not realize that they had to remove the deep state, not just the head. But my enthusiasm never faded for the next two and a half years – until the military took control again in 2013. I threw myself into every activity I could do. We sought to write a constitution suitable for post-revolutionary Egypt, one that would reflect the wishes of the people and the madness of the 1971 document, which gave the incumbent unlimited power and time in office, would take away. Nevertheless, there was great tension in the air and deep division among Egyptians.
I was in Moscow for meetings in 2013 when the Egyptian army issued its 48-hour ultimatum to the government, saying it had to ‘resolve its differences’ with protesters, who have been rallying against Mohamed Morsi’s presidency nationwide for several days. . I knew that what I heard was the first quake of a looming coup. When I flew back to Egypt on the evening of July 2, the mood was discouraged – very far from the excitement I experienced after the Mubarak revolution. The next day, the military coup was launched by General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, now the President of Egypt.
After the coup, I spoke to various delegates from the international community. We, elected politicians of Egypt, were simply told to accept the military coup. I met Catherine Ashton, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. I met William Burns, who showed up a week before Sisi’s forces killed nearly 1,000 people in Rabaa. (Burns is now the nominee to become Joe Biden’s new director of the CIA.) I have met many other international delegates. They all said the same thing: “accept reality”. John Kerry, then the US Secretary of State, said the military takeover was done in the name of democracy.
Perhaps the international community was not complicit in the coup and also not the bloodshed that followed. But it whitewashed the event, and its support for Sisi, then and now, is one of the main reasons for his government’s endurance.
Ten years from the beginning of the Arab Spring, General President Sisi, endorsed by the free world, has made Egypt virtually uninhabitable. There are more than 60,000 political prisoners. Mass trials and death sentences – also for children – are becoming more common. There is torture, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings. There is no free expression, no political space. Women are regularly targeted. Do we have to “accept” this reality? After all, Mubarak’s Egypt looks like heaven to many people.
The country is united in the belief that if the international community was not responsible for the overthrow of President Morsi, then it is now complicit in the assassination, torture and large-scale abolition of rights that characterize Sisi’s regime. It must accept the role it played to allow it. It must know that even if it chooses to look away, the Egyptian people will never ever forget what was allowed to happen.
With the benefit of hindsight, everyone now knows that supporting the 2013 military coup was a mistake. What we especially needed then was to unite as a nation to restore democracy in Egypt, regardless of the political difference. Before anything else, we had to tackle the democratic path together to the poor. And we have not.
But the hope we all had on the night of February 11, 2011, when Mubarak was forced to retire, remains. It may seem small, but it is there, beneath the surface, in the hearts of the Egyptian people. If an opportunity is given, it will be announced one day, and I believe the day will come soon. The desire for freedom is strong. It can never be extinguished. This is what history has always told us.