Excerpt
The Egyptian government intensified efforts to crush a fresh wave of protests on Wednesday, banning public gatherings, detaining hundreds of people and sending police officers to scatter protesters who defied the ban and demanded an end to the government of President Hosni Mubarak.
The skirmishes started early in the afternoon, and soon, small fires illuminated large clashes under an overpass. Riot police officers using batons, tear gas and rubber-coated bullets cleared busy avenues; other officers set upon fleeing protesters, beating them with bamboo staves.
Egypt has an extensive and widely feared security apparatus, and it deployed its might in an effort to crush the protests. But it was not clear whether the security forces were succeeding in intimidating protesters or rather inciting them to further defiance.
In contrast to the thousands who marched through Cairo and other cities on Tuesday, the groups of protesters were relatively small. Armored troop carriers rumbled throughout Cairo’s downtown on Wednesday to the thud of tear-gas guns. There were signs that the crackdown was being carefully calibrated, with security forces using their cudgels and sometimes throwing rocks, rather than opening fire.
But again and again, despite the efforts of the police, the protesters in Cairo regrouped and at one point even forced security officers, sitting in the safety of two troop carriers, to retreat.
"Egypt’s Young Seize Role of Key Opposition to Mubarak" by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and MICHAEL SLACKMAN, New York Times 1/26/2011
Excerpt
For decades, Egypt’s authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, played a clever game with his political opponents.
He tolerated a tiny and toothless opposition of liberal intellectuals whose vain electoral campaigns created the facade of a democratic process. And he demonized the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood as a group of violent extremists who posed a threat that he used to justify his police state.
But this enduring and, many here say, all too comfortable relationship was upended this week by the emergence of an unpredictable third force, the leaderless tens of thousands of young Egyptians who turned out to demand an end to Mr. Mubarak’s 30-year rule.
Now the older opponents are rushing to catch up.
“It was the young people who took the initiative and set the date and decided to go,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Wednesday with some surprise during a telephone interview from his office in Vienna, shortly before rushing home to Cairo to join the revolt.
Dr. ElBaradei, a Nobel prize winner, has been the public face of an effort to reinvigorate and unite Egypt’s fractious and ineffective opposition since he plunged into his home country’s politics nearly a year ago, and he said the youth movement had accomplished that on its own. “Young people are impatient,” he said. “Frankly, I didn’t think the people were ready.”
"Thousands in Yemen Protest Against the Government" by NADA BAKRI and J. DAVID GOODMAN, New York Times 1/27/2011
Excerpt
Yemen, one of the Middle East’s most impoverished countries and a haven for Al Qaeda militants, became the latest Arab state to see mass protests, as thousands of Yemenis took to the streets in the capital and other regions demand a change in government.
But in contrast to demonstrations in Egypt this week and the month of protests that brought down the government in Tunisia, the Yemen marches appeared to be carefully organized and mostly peaceful, and there were no immediate reports of clashes. Predictably, the protests were most aggressive in the restive south.
In Sana, at least 10,000 protesters led by opposition members and youths activists gathered at Sana University and around 6,000 more elsewhere, according to local news reports. Some groups carried banners and wore headbands and sashes that were color-coordinated by opposition party.
The government responded by sending a large number of security forces into the streets, said Nasser Arabyee, a Yemeni journalist in Sana reached by phone.
“There are very strict security measures, antiriot forces,” he said, adding that security forces for the moment were closely monitoring the gatherings in the capital.
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