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| Habiba's last photo (posted on Facebook by Mohamed Osama) |
By Jamal Khashoggi,
Saudi Arabia’s authoritative political analyst and author, writing today for pan-Arab
al-Hayat
In front of me is a picture of Habiba Ahmed Abd
Elaziz, an ambitious young woman primed for a bright future.
She was known as a serious journalist from an early
age and was well versed in Arabic and English.
All this came to an abrupt end in Cairo last
Wednesday, when Habiba was felled by a deadly bullet at one of the entrances to
the Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp.
Search the social media for her last poignant picture
showing a militant believer sitting resolutely while being surrounded by debris
and destruction and engulfed in tear gas.
All men had gone their way while she stayed put doing
what she was asked to do.
In her right hand is a small tin bowl she was using
to bank a metal drum. Her ration is a bottle of water.
A hijab covering her head is wrapped around her
shoulders.
The gas mask she held to cover her nose and mouth did
not fend off the bullet that took her away in the springtime of life.
Who fired the bullet is immaterial.
It was most probably an Egyptian policeman or a
sniper hiding on a nearby rooftop and rejoicing at killing “the other
Egyptians” he hates and perceives as enemies.
I wouldn’t go into blaming the army, state security
and the police.
Like their Arab counterparts, that’s what they have
been training to do for decades – namely, to protect the regime and the state. Their
mantra is to secure the state at any cost.
“The regime, the state, the leader” is what Egyptian
media outlets are now trumpeting – much as they were doing on June 6, 1967. No
freedom or dignity to freedom’s enemies, not even to a co-citizen, a cousin or
schoolmate.
But I do blame, and call for holding to account, the
Muslim Brotherhood leaders for promoting the illusion of steadfastness at the
sit-ins in Nahda Square and Rabaa al-Adawiya as a means of political pressure.
They managed the sit-ins lightly and with total
disregard for the blood of believers in the cause.
Martyrdom is a duty in defense of justice, but not to
improve bargaining positions or score political gains.
Habiba and thousands of other victims were promised
total victory the next day. They say victory is an hour’s patience away. That’s
what they were promised.
They gave them the instructions: You build a berm;
you bring some water and vinegar to treat tear-gas sufferers; you, Habiba,
forewarn your brethren by banging this metal drum.
Even a 10-year-old would have expected the crackdown
on the protest camps and that casualties would be in the hundreds. Watching the
talkshows on Egypt’s official and “private” TV news channels for one hour would
have sufficed to realize the buzzword was “terror and terrorist.”
And everyone, the 10-year-old included, knew the
terrorist would be killed.
So what happened in the early hours of Black
Wednesday was not surprising. No Brotherhood leader ought to come forward and accuse
the army or police of treachery. He was told of their intent to take decisive
action.
How many times did Brotherhood leaders say, “We
should not be drawn into the (army and police’s) violence arena”? But
Brotherhood leaders were nevertheless drawn into the arena, where they lost
their trump card, namely: demands, competitiveness and politics.
The Brotherhood will henceforward be capitalizing on
its victims.
It will use thousands of casualty images showing men
and women in the springtime of life, elders with piety manifest on their faces
and veiled women to appear as the scapegoat and win the battle for public
opinion.
But it will be a losing battle. The gory images will
only elicit verbal condemnations and suppressed anger from those who lost loves
ones.
The January 25 revolution is over. Its most important
values – freedom, dignity and the right to life – have fallen by the wayside.
The majority cannot bear freedom abuses so long as their own freedom is not
stake. The majority is unmoved by the sight of martyrs when they belong to the
other side.
There is one advantage though in reviewing images of
the dead, which is accountability.
This has more to do with self-accountability than with
holding the army and police accountable.
A courageous young man from Rabaa al-Adawiya has to
come forward and declare openly, “We don’t need salutes to the martyrs or
acclaim for a couple ascending to paradise. Ours was an absurd battle that we
could have avoided.”
Let someone come forward and enumerate the
Brotherhood’s losses since holding the reins in Egypt 18 months ago.
It lost sitting at the helm after winning what it
described as a divine mandate to move forward society and the nation.
It lost a massive segment of Egyptian society.
It lost its nationalist orientation and replaced its
moderate jurisprudence by a narrow-minded one, which it cajoled for
electioneering purposes.
It lost martyrs. It lost its revolution allies. And
it lost its regional relationships.
Told by his leaders that the Brotherhood was brought
down by innumerable conspiracies, I can imagine the angry young man retorting,
“This does not absolve you of responsibility. Where was your wisdom and savoir
faire?”
I can also imagine the young man returning home last
Wednesday night. He is exhausted and bloodied. He weeps for his dead brethren.
He searches the social media for reassurances his other friends are safe.
A knock at the door frightens him. He is a wanted man
now. He does not wish to become a fugitive. He forswears violence and is aware
the leadership has lost control, or almost.
He catches a glimpse on the TV screen of a church
going up in flames. On hearing a
leader trying to justify the arson, he fumes.
And when the leader speaks of the Mubarak regime
making a comeback, the young man says out loud, “Don’t you recall state
security refusing to protect Mubarak at al-Ittihadiya Palace?”
Before going to bed after Thursday’s dawn prayers,
the young man murmurs to himself: “The revolution is not over yet. Recourse to
the people is still mandatory. There will be new and transparent elections. Political
Islam and revolutionary forces have to reconnect. A new generation has to take
the lead and look to the future, not the past.
“But accountability should come first. Those
responsible for the failure and successive losses of the battles of governance
and sit-ins have to be brought to account.
“Accountability is the sine qua non of victory.
Losers have no place in leadership.”
