Egypt used to be seen as a dull newspaper posting, with journalists complaining, over the empties at the Greek Club in Alexandria or a coffee at Simonds in Cairo, that nothing ever happened. Then, five years ago, crowds began to appear in the street, demanding some of the things we in the west take for granted: an opportunity to change the government, a right to representation, the accountability of the police, an impartial judiciary. 25 January 2011 is usually held to be the start of the public protests that climaxed, on 11 February, with the departure of Hosni and Suzanne Mubarak and their sons from the presidential palace. Jack Shenker covered those 18 days and its aftermath for the Guardian.
The limitations of much of the press coverage led, inevitably, to a dangerous oversimplification in which Mubarak was bad and the Tahrir Square crowds were good (except for those men raping women in the square), with Barack Obama speaking for us all when he said: “Egyptians have inspired us… they have changed the world”. The Egyptian army was good because it did nothing to stop the protesters (unlike the central security forces), but it became bad when it helped to create the post‑Mubarak regime.
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