still brewing

We’re now just short of 6 A.M. in Cairo, and it’s still dark. There are two fire trucks parked in front of the Algerian Embassy now, but that’s apparently just for insurance: the trucks aren’t doing anything yet, and the drivers aren’t even inside them anymore. They must have come while I was in here typing the last few entries.

Weird chants are coming from the backside of my building, and by listening out the back window I can tell that the mob is now on the backstreets of Zamalek, not far from here. They’re just as loud and angry at 6 AM as they were 8 hours ago.

When I posted last week that I’d never seen anything like this, Graeme Wood reminded me that there were huge street protests against the Iraq War. True, but what I was thinking of was location. During my time in Egypt there have been any number of massive protests down in Tahrir Square in the city center, where the American University main campus used to be until last year.

Zamalek, however, has been immune until now. It’s a leafy residential neighborhood where protests generally wouldn’t occur anyway. But more importantly, it is one of the main embassy districts, and I’ve always been told that the police seal off Zamalek during times of unrest for precisely that reason (since we’re on an island in the Nile, in principle we can be sealed off from the rest of the city just by blocking 5 or 6 bridges).

But this is definitely the only time in my experience, and perhaps the only time in the history of the city, that Zamalek has been ground zero for unrest. There’s no other reason why it ever would be except for cases like this one, where anger is focused on one particular embassy.

precedents

In response to my earlier question as to whether there are any precedents for this sort of thing, Cameron writes:

“Well, many people might point to the famous “Football War” between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969 (during the qualification for Mexico ’70).

But that was a case of a long simmering border dispute that turned into a shooting war over football – football was not the real issue.

I don’t know of another case where two countries with no other reason for diplomatic hostilities ended up at odds over football.

But if there are any such cases, I suspect they’re in Africa – as this one is.”

out-of-control ugly

Really, this is out of control.

What woke me up at 5:15 were weird smashing sounds. I ran out onto the balcony and saw that, somehow, an angry mob had sneaked up behind the police cordon and was stoning the Algerian Embassy and trying to kick in the gate.

The soldiers seemed to be out of position, a block down the street, but immediately they came running back up toward the Embassy again and chased away the crowd, which unsurprisingly seemed to be made up entirely of hotheaded young males.

But the crowd is still nearby: I can hear them. They must have been doing this all night long. Unfortunately we have hit the weekend now, which means that these people have a good block of free time ahead of them to keep at it.

There are still hundreds of soldiers nearby. It still looks every bit like martial law on my street, and I may have difficulty leaving home at all today.