Stratfor and Samia Gamal

Reva Bhalla was in Cairo this Sunday when the Copts rioted the Maspero district. This Stratfor article gives his impressions of what he saw that day, and then discusses the Egyptian military's role as the caretakes of the Egyptian government prior to any elections.

Bhalla was at his hotel when he first got work of the Maspero demonstration. Soon afterwards he heard the coptic demonstrations were spiraling out of control so he decided to go to Maspero to see hwat was happening.

As he crossed the October 6 Bridge he saw army units rushing to the scene, as well as groups of Muslim men armed with clubs also headed there.

When he arrived at the site of the riot it appeared that groups of Muslim men were able to move through the army lines, but eventually reinforcements arrived and the army began to attempt to separate the two groups. None the less, there were scenes of violence during the time he was there.

Bhalla ends the article by discussing the Egyptian military's role in post-Murabak Egypt. They've tried to position themselves as neutral arbiters who preserve order, but that image of neutrality is increasingly being challenged. The fact that shots were fired at them during the riots, regardless of which faction instigated the gunfire, is a sign of just how much that aura of neutrality has eroded.

This is further complicated by the fact that the Egyptian military no doubt plans to allow elections only if they result in a toothless civilian government with the military still holding the real reigns of power. How far they would leave the situation deteriorate before the cancelled elections is a question that remains to be answered.

With the article being focused on Egypt belly dancers naturally came to mind as its Hot Stratfor babe choice. So, with a minor assist from Google, I rummaged through my vast reservoir of knowledge concerning famous Egyptian belly dancers and selected Samia Gamal for the honor of being the article's Hot Stratfor Babe.

Ms Gamal started her career with Cairo's most illustrious belly dancing group and eventually moved on to film. She had a very active career and ended up being named "The National Dancer of Egypt" by King Farouk.

As a bonus, after the article I've included a clip of her from the film Don't Tell Anyone of her undulating away as she belly dances in an Egyptian nightclub.


GEOPOLITICAL JOURNEY: RIOTS IN CAIRO
By Reva Bhalla, October 11, 2011

The last time I visited Cairo, prior to the ouster of then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a feeling of helplessness pervaded the streets. Young Egyptian men spent the hot afternoons in shisha cafes complaining about not being able to get married because there were no jobs available. Members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood would shuffle from apartment to apartment in the poorer districts of Cairo trying to dodge arrest while stressing to me in the privacy of their offices that patience was their best weapon against the regime. The Brotherhood, Egypt's largest Islamist organization, could be seen in places where the government was glaringly absent in providing basic services, consciously using these small openings to build up support among the populace in anticipation of the day that a power vacuum would emerge in Cairo for them to fill. Meanwhile the Copts, comprising some 10 percent of Egypt's 83 million people, stuck tightly together, proudly brandishing the crosses tattooed on their inner wrists in solidarity against their Muslim countrymen. Each of these fault lines was plainly visible to any outsider willing to venture beyond the many five-star hotels dotting Cairo's Nile Corniche or the expatriate-filled island of Zamalek, but any prediction on when these would rupture was obscured by the omnipresence and effectiveness of the Egyptian security apparatus.

When I returned to Cairo the weekend of Oct. 9, I caught a firsthand glimpse of the rupture. The feeling of helplessness on the streets that I had witnessed a short time before had been replaced with an aggressive sense of self-entitlement. Scores of political groupings, spread across a wide spectrum of ideologies with wildly different agendas, are desperately clinging to an expectation that elections, scheduled to begin in November, will compensate them for their sacrifices. Many groups also believe that they now have history on their side and the momentum to challenge any obstacles in their way -- including Egypt's still-powerful security apparatus. The sectarian rioting that broke out Oct. 9 was a display of how those assumptions are grinding against reality.

The Sunday Riots

Click to enlarge

Sunday, Oct. 9, began calmly in Cairo. Though Egyptian opposition forces are growing more vocal in their discontent with Egypt's interim military government, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the main demonstrations have been taking place a few hours after Friday prayers -- and declining in size with each passing week. People spent Sunday afternoon going about their daily business as remnants of previous demonstrations lay strewn on the sidewalks. I noticed graffiti spray-painted on the walls encircling Tahrir Square that depicted SCAF leader Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi with lines struck across his face. The top-selling items for Tahrir Square sidewalk vendors were Arab Spring memorabilia, from flags to armbands to anti-Mubarak stickers. Frustrated merchants meanwhile looked on from their empty shops, visibly hurting from the drastic reduction in tourist traffic since the demonstrations began in January.

A friend was scheduled to pick me up from my hotel near Tahrir Square on Sunday evening, but he called to tell me he would be late because of a major traffic jam on the October 6 Bridge between my hotel and the Maspero district, northwest of Tahrir Square. I received another call 20 minutes later telling me that Coptic demonstrations at the state television and radio station in Maspero had spiraled out of control and that elements within the demonstration had begun firing at soldiers patrolling the area.

This was highly unusual. While Copts have organized several demonstrations at the Maspero station to express their frustration at the state for allegedly ignoring increasing attacks on their churches, these have been mostly nonviolent. Most alarming, however, was that  elements within the demonstrations were targeting army soldiers. It is still unknown whether the armed perpetrators were Copts themselves or elements of some other faction, but the incident escalated a routine Coptic demonstration into full-scale sectarian riots.

I left my hotel and headed for Maspero.

As I made my way out to the October 6 Bridge, at least a dozen armored personnel carriers and buses full of soldiers whizzed past me toward Maspero. By then, word had spread near Tahrir Square that riots had broken out, prompting mostly young men to come out to the square, gather their friends, hang Egyptian flags from the trees and prepare for the unrest to make it to the city center. I convinced a taxi driver to get me close to Maspero and saw, from a mile away, flames and smoke emanating from cars and armored vehicles that demonstrators had set ablaze. As I neared the crowd, scores of mostly young Muslim men pushed their way past me carrying large wooden sticks and whatever rudimentary weapons they could fashion out of household kitchen items. Walking in groups of three or more with a confident swagger, they told everyone along the way that Copts were killing Muslims and soldiers and called on others to take revenge. The reality at this point did not matter; the mere perception that Copts were killing soldiers and Muslims was all that was needed for Muslim mobs to rally. While this was happening, state media was broadcasting messages portraying the Copts as the main perpetrators. [continued after the jump]