Egypt's Continuing Revolution: Month 13, Week 2, Day 3.

Today marks the first Friday since the downfall of Mohamed Morsi. Friday is of course the holy day in Islam and marks the start of the weekend in Egypt. Therefore it has traditionally been the big day of protest and today has been expected to be bigger than most.

Supporters of the revolution have been gathering in their millions in Cairo's Tahrir Square. In part this has been to celebrate their success and in part to maintain the pressure for a swift return to democratic, civilian rule. Unfortunately many of them are also gathering because they feel safer there in the large crowd then they do in their homes amid marauding bands of Morsi supporters looking for revenge. Supporters of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have gathered in their thousands in the Nasr city area of Cairo calling for the immediate reinstatement of Morsi and the flawed constitution they tricked the nation into supporting by convincing them that a "No" vote in the referendum would be a vote in favour of Chris Brown. These conflicting protests are being repeated on a smaller scale across the nation starting with Egypt's second city Alexandria.

The day's security challenges though started with a series of attacks against army/police posts in the Sinai Peninsula. One Egyptian soldier was killed and at least two others injured when rocket propelled grenades were fired at checkpoints guarding El-Arish airport close to the border with Gaza. Later a police intelligence headquarters was attacked close to the Rafah crossing. Egyptian helicopter gunships returned fire and Egypt has closed the Rafah crossing as a result.

Ever since the 1972 war with Israel the Egyptian military proper has been prevented from operating fully within the Sinai Peninsula. As a result the area has largely become the domain of Bedouin tribesmen who periodically fight each other over land and smuggling routes. Therefore it is possible that these attacks were simply smugglers attempting to distract the security forces in order to make sure their latest shipment got through. However it is much more likely that these were co-ordinated attacks by Islamist militants intended to provoke the Egyptian military. The idea being that the military would then take out its frustrations on the Muslim Brotherhood demonstration in Nasr city allowing the Brotherhood to portray themselves as the persecuted victims of a military coup.

Fortunately the Egyptian military were having none of it and not only did they not move in to break up the Nasr city protest they actually pulled back their troops and armoured vehicles allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to march through Cairo. Unfortunately the Brotherhood decided to march straight to the Presidential Palace and are currently attempting to storm the Republican Guard barracks. This has provided the Muslim Brotherhood with the confrontation they desperately crave with the elite Republican Guard doing what they do best - frighting back.

As far as I can tell these soldiers are acting with maximum restraint first politely asking the Brotherhood to leave before firing tear gas when they refused. There have also been some reports of shotguns being used and live ammunition being fired. However I should point out that the way that the Egyptian military fire tear gas grenades is from a device fitted to the muzzle of the standard AK-47 rifle. Therefore the sound of rifle fire and the presence of spent cartridges does not necessarily mean that the army are using live ammunition against the Brotherhood.

I will be keeping an eye on how things progress throughout the evening. However if the Brotherhood does not disperse of it's own accord the military will have to consider using baton charges backed by armoured vehicles to break the crowd into smaller sections and then force the sections back to Nasr city where they can be safely contained.

14:55 on 5/7/13.

Edited at around 18:40 on 5/7/13 to add: Initially I wasn't going to sully my blog with this but since then I have decided that it is relevant.

Literally moments after posting the above the Officer In Charge (OIC) of my case known by the codeword "Sarastro" telephoned my father. My father immediately transferred the call over to me and after his usual round on unwarranted demands Sarastro confirmed that he had in fact been in possession of my contact number this whole time. He went on to confirm that the telephone number I'd been leaving messages for him on was indeed valid.

After becoming quite obstructive Sarastro was then informed, in person of the case reference numbers that not only demonstrate that I have committed no criminal offence but also that my accusers are actively engaged in very serious criminal activity. These were the case references that Sarastro was desperate to avoid having put to him at interview last Friday (28/6/12) - they are explained more fully in my "I Dunno I Can't Even Get Arrested These Days." from that date. After continuing to be both hostile and obstructive Sarastro was informed that he has to check those case references and I will be calling to confirm his progress on Monday (8/7/13). If he does not have the correct answer for me by that point I will have to very seriously consider having him arrested for attempting to pervert the course of justice by way of obstruction.

Personally I think that Sarastro read this blog post and then decided he could try to improve his chances of promotion by disrupting my involvement in the situation in Egypt by provoking another stressful round of argument between my father and I. Either that or he's planning to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia.

None of that though explains the mistake I made above. That was caused by a confused and developing situation, the language barrier and UK news channels really considering the situation in Egypt to be too hot to handle.

The Muslim Brotherhood did not in fact march from Nasr city to the Presidential Palace and attack the Republican Guard barracks there. Instead the marched directly to the Republican Guard's own headquarters where Morsi is said to be held. To my mind this is even more provocative because if they were marching to the Presidential Palace they could argue they were simply trying to protest somewhere they were more likely to be seen and heard. However by marching directly on the Republican Guard HQ the Brotherhood's actions seemed more like an attempt to free Morsi by force. This is something that is simply unacceptable to any well-trained, professional security force.

The elite Republican Guards on duty shouted clear warnings for the Brotherhood to stop. The Brotherhood ignored those warnings and continued to advance on the troops positions. The soldiers then did what they are trained to do and opened fire with live ammunition killing I believe three confirmed. This period of live fire went on for around five minutes before it was stopped by officers on the ground and the guardsmen then proceeded to use only teargas fired from their AK-47's using blank ammunition.

This is exactly the type of confrontation the Brotherhood intended to provoke in the hope it would trigger off a wave of similar violence across the nation. There is some evidence they've achieved this with reports of violence coming in from Alexandria. However in Cairo interim President Mansour announced that both houses of the Egyptian Parliament have been dissolved. This prompted the Brotherhood to march on the state-TV building where they are staging a sit-in protest while the army attempt to keep them away from Tahrir Square.

In the meantime there are initial reports of two further police officers being shot and killed in El-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula. If confirmed this does really raise the question of;

"What type of weapon do they have to use and how many people do they have to kill before the Muslim Brotherhood's actions become considered an attempt at a military coup?"

Edited at around 22:25 on 5/7/13 in an effort to go for the longest post ever:

The only coverage I getting at the moment of the situation in Egypt is from the capital Cairo and frankly there's enough of a story going on there. As a result I am not really aware of what is going on across the country. However the last update I got from the Egyptian health ministry puts the death toll at 10 with 318 wounded nationally. I don't have further information about the circumstances of those deaths and at this point I'd prefer to see the health ministry concentrating of keeping people alive rather than giving me hourly updates.

I do know as fact that 3 of those deaths occurred at the Republican Guard HQ as mentioned above. The state-TV channel is also reporting that at least 2 people were killed outside their HQ as part of the Muslim Brotherhood protest. As always exact details are hard to come by amid the chaos but it appears to be a repeat of the incident at the Republican Guard HQ. That is to say the Muslim Brotherhood heard that interim President Mansour was within the building so attempted to storm the building to either kidnap or kill the President. Having a sworn duty to prevent this from happening the soldiers on the ground issued warnings and when those warnings were ignored opened fire with less-lethal shotguns. The Brotherhood are of course outraged but this but frankly I'm confused as to what they thought would happen if they tried attacking trained and armed soldiers? Fortunately having been watching Al-Jazeera English I get the distinct impression that the Muslim Brotherhood have been ordered to return to the their Nasr city barracks overnight.

As I was writing my above update there was a pitched battle taking place on the October 6th bridge between Morsi supporters, supporters of the revolution and people who were just out for a ruck. Possibly because one of their reporters was on the bridge CNN started to panic massively and spent a good hour demanding to know why the army/police weren't trying to intervene. The Muslim Brotherhood of course were busily telling everybody that the army weren't getting involved because they had put non-uniformed agent provocateurs in to commit acts of violence in order to justify a crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood. Personally I don't believe that story at all but after intense pressure from CNN the police did eventually move in to clear the bridge driving both parties back to either Tahrir Square or Nasr city. Later a CNN team had their camera confiscated by an army officer who was clearly not impressed with their intervention.

The initial lack of army/police on the October 6th bridge is something I will try and look at in more detail tomorrow. However it did remind me of an incident in which all of the European Union's (EU) anti-Islam groups such as the English Defence League (EDL) travelled to the Netherlands for a big protest/riot. Obviously all of the EU's anti-racist groups such as Unite Against Fascism (UAF) also travelled to the Netherlands to stage a counter-protest/riot. The Dutch police simply marched both groups to a local sports field, set-up a medical tent and let them get on with it. This has since been cited across the EU as the model to follow in dealing with this type of EDL/UAF protest/riot. It seems a particularly good model for the Egyptian military to follow during this interim period at least. After all the incidents at the Republican Guard HQ and the state TV HQ show what happens when soldiers and protesters meet. I think it also underlines how much the Egyptian military really don't want to get involved in the running of the country and instead what to hand over to a democratic government as quickly as possible.

However from what I've seen so far this does present a particular problem for the protesters in Tahrir Square because they seem the most likely to be attacked. My advice to both camps though would be to establish a perimeter and devise a way to passively defend that perimeter. The people within that perimeter should then look out for each. For Tahrir Square especially that means anyone engaging in sexual assaults or other negative behaviour is immediately escorted outside of the perimeter and left to take their chances on the outside.