Can an army famous for abuse really install democracy?

[unhappycamper]

Pictures of martyrs killed in the uprising in Egypt line a street in Tahrir Square


Can an army famous for abuse really install democracy?
By Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, February 11, 2011

CAIRO — Before dawn on Feb. 4, Ramy Salah, a 33-year-old writer and poet, was stopped by a civilian patrol, one of many that sprang up during the popular revolt in this capital. He had anti-government pamphlets in his bag, and the patrol turned him over to the Egyptian army, beginning what he says was a 48-hour saga of detention and torture.

Military police officers beat him with fists and batons until his nose bled, Salah said. The next day, he said, he was tied to a wall, whipped with a belt buckle, stripped naked and shocked so badly with an electroshock device that a week later his left arm remained numb.

Salah's story is part of what human rights groups describe as a pattern of prisoner abuse by the U.S.-backed Egyptian military, which has taken control of the country after President Hosni Mubarak resigned Friday.

The Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces pledged Friday to ensure free elections and constitutional reforms, not to punish demonstrators and to defend "the legitimate demands of the people" who took to the streets for 18 days to force Mubarak from power.

Behind the scenes, however, soldiers and military police are said to be carrying out the same kinds of arbitrary arrests and torture of which Egyptian police have long been accused. Prisoners and human rights groups say that the army — deployed on Egyptian streets for the first time in 25 years after police vanished following clashes with protesters Jan. 28 — is continuing a tradition of government-sanctioned violence that was one of the key sparks of the uprising.

[Solly Mack]

1. k/r

[TexasProgresive]

2. The fate of Egypt rests on the Junior officers and NCOs

It was them that forced the hands of the military and Mubarak. They threatened to remove their uniforms and join the protesters. This was truly a grassroots movement- no astroturf here.

The big worry in any revolution is that some minor group will find a way to put themselves in control. This is never good.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Are the Military Police

Army or CSF ?

[Robb]

4. K&R.