After Sunday's plans to open Tahrir to traffic for Ramadan, some diehard protesters remained in the square and kept it blocked. In response, the trifecta of the army, the police and central security hit the square around 2:15pm today and opened it by force. They rolled in with tanks, trucks and riot gear, destroyed all the makeshift barriers, the stages, the tents, the signs and made a general mess of the square. They arrested a few dozen protesters and onlookers, but most of the crowd welcomed their arrival, chanting "the people want to clear the square." It was a tense few moments while the police and even ordinary people violently dismantled the nation-building festival that Tahrir had become. The square opened to traffic, including much horn honking, traffic and even a car crash. Security forces remained in the square for the rest of the day, and traffic was still flowing during the middle of the night.
I leave Cairo in the morning for a few weeks, and I'm worried about what the city and the country will look like when I return in September. Clearly, not everyone in Egypt supports what was going on in Tahrir, but the discussions taking place there were undeniably important to Egypt's political future. And the demands that the sit-in achieved, though maybe small, were important steps and constant reminders that the system must change. How will the protesters respond to today's acts of violence which felt distinctly pre-revolutionary? Will Ramadan break the revolution's momentum? Or will the protesters come back stronger in September, or will they organize in a different, possibly more effective, way to achieve their goals?
Time will tell. Until then, Ramadan Tantawi.
