Essam Sharaf has stepped up as a new caretaker prime minister, and is empowered to select a new cabinet. See Harman's posts HERE and HERE. This is fantastic news, the best evidence yet those in the Army who would serve the people have the upper hand.
One of my Egyptian friends told me this week that the guy standing behind Suleiman during his resignation speech was actually Egyptian army Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Shari, who had been empowered to arrest Suleiman if he veered from the speech. Apparently Mubarak had changed his speech while it was running live, and the reason Shari looks so incredibly grim in the photo was the the possibility that there might be an attempted counterrevolution during the speech. He really risked the threat of people loyal to Mubarak or Suleiman trying to kill him, and this was a reasonable concern after Mubarak's truculent speech the night before. The more of the story that emerges, the more you appreciate how the revolution required all of these people like Shari to do the right thing in the face of their own possible death. It really amazes me.
Also according ot my friend, the other big rumor going around Cairo is that Mubarak actually did order a Tienenman but that the troops on the ground mutineed. My friend had family members in Tahir Square who told her that there was this incredibly strange moment when all of the tank commanders simultaneously took off their helmets as if they contained hornets, some of them throwing the helmets away from themselves. Supposedly, they have walkie talkies in their helmets and the order had come all the way from Mubarak to massacre the protesters.
I just tried to verify this on-line, and it turns out that Robert Fisk of the Independent claimed that this did in fact happen:
the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters.
Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.
That Mubarak ordered this (if he did) is not the amazing thing. The amazing thing to me again is that all of these people made incredibly dangerous moral choices. I don't know; I have to say that I continue to feel much better about my species after seeing what it is capable of in Egypt.
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