This (Arabic) study is one of the most accurate and detailed reports, I’ve come across, on the evolution of the Egyptian Interior Ministry’s Central Security Forces:
في-دهاليز-الأمن-المركزيUPDATE: I was honored to speak with the author of the study, in a Zoom meeting.
Following the Obour Central Security Forces conscripts mutiny (which was put down by the intervention of the army, together with concessions and promises offered), now around 300 soldiers and corporals at the neighboring 6th of October City police camp, assigned with guarding private and public banks, businesses and facilities, have gone on mutiny too, over pay.
The civil servants at the Interior ministry too are on strike, over pensions, pay and abusive treatment as civilians on the hands of the police officers. These civil servants’ strike is happening, following a national strike by the police corporals, over pay, work conditions, ill treatment by the officers. The corporals were also demanding an end to military tribunals in the police force.
Workers at eight factories owned by the interior ministry, producing consumer goods for officers, have also gone on strike over contracts.
Make no mistake, Mubarak’s interior ministry is still alive and well. We smashed it on the Friday of Anger and dealt some strong blows to it, including the March 2011 raids against SS offices. We’ve smacked the pigs’ asses on several occasions including the mini uprising in November 2011. But still, the Central Security Forces, SS (or what’s now called National Security Sector) and most of the repression machine is intact, and moreover is now receiving the direct help of the army’s military police and intelligence services.
As we continue to organize and fight against the interior ministry, in an effort to dissolve it and replace it with a different form of policing, such strikes and mutinies by the conscripts, corporals and civil servants should be supported by the revolutionary forces to create more fractures in this repression machine.
Central Security Forces in Obour are now on mutiny, following the the death of one of their colleagues, reportedly tortured by an officer. The conscripts have stormed the gates of their camp, and cut the Cairo – Ismailia road. In the video above, they are even chanting a famous UWK anti-police song!
There are reports also that army units have been sent to crush the mutiny, but I can’t confirm any, though it’s expected.
This is not the first time such mutiny occurs following the outbreak of the revolution. Several mutinies occurred on the Friday of Anger 28 January 2011. On the following day, the guy next to me in Muhammad Mahmoud Street while marching on the interior ministry was a CSF conscript who escaped from his camp and joined the protesters. Repeated mutinies were reported in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere over the course of the following months, over ill treatment from the officers, long working hours, bad food.
The CSF is the interior ministry’s army, and its central arm in crushing street dissent. Those conscripts are poorly paid, poorly fed, tortured, and made to do the state’s most dirty job. The last time they went on a full scale mutiny was in 1986, crushed brutally by Mubarak who sent in the army.
Even if Tantawi manages to crush this rebellion and prevent it from spreading, the objective conditions for another 1986-style mass scale mutiny are still there. Those new waves of conscripts are not just the sons of poor peasants and workers, who have no love for their officers, but also we are going through a revolution in case you forgot. And those new conscripts have seen it, and could well have participated in it prior to their conscription.
The interior ministry will not be able to restructure its CSF. There is not the political will; the current police generals who belong to Habib el-Adly’s clique are more than happy to see the status of their army of slaves remains unchanged. SCAF’s generals too would love to see Mubarak’s CSF revived in full force and take charge of crushing protests instead of having to involve the military police.
I wholeheartedly support the CSF mutiny, and I have no doubt that we will be seeing similar acts in the army barracks in the future.