This blue ribbon commission, which was set up by a decision taken by Egypt's Prime Minister (Decision 294, 2011), was headed by Egypt's past Chief Justice, Dr. Adel Qura. Its work which covered 400 pages in Arabic dealt with the events from January 25 until Mubarak's fall from power on February 11, 2011.
In this series, beginning with Part I, this blog will highlight the facts as seen by the fact-finders and neutrally reported nearly 2 years later.
The Qura Commission, while analyzing the events as testified to by hundreds of witnesses and backed up by documented of all types of visual, audio and printed material, has in effect produced a unique document. This report should be studied on a world-wide basis. Reason: It contains a careful and judicious cause and effect of why people, anywhere, revolt.
We begin with the findings into the role of social media in that historic revolution whose course is still undetermined.
The Commission analyzed the ways and means whereby the Mubarak regime, during its dying days, attempted to shut down the Internet. It said that the three cellular phone servers operating in Egypt have simultaneously cut off their service to certain provinces. That blackout was in response to orders to them from the Mubarak security services.
Social media, including Facebook and Twitter, have played a crucial role in bringing hundreds of thousands of protesters to Tahrir Square and to other public squares all over that country of nearly 90 million people. As those means of communication were cut off by governmental design, the blackout also impacted negatively on the means of communication used by the police and other components of the huge security apparatus in Mubarak's Egypt.
The result of that cut-off, while temporarily affecting the means of galvanizing the millions of Egyptians streaming into the public squares, was more devastating to the forces of the so-called "law and order." This was manifest in severing the links between various chains of command of police and Ministry of Interior chains. With the chain of hierarchy command disrupted, large police units fled from the streets, decision-making became personalized, police conduct descended into hit and miss, and responsibility for those uncoordinated actions became impossible to determine.
Testifying before the fact-finding Commission, Dr. Amre Badawi Mahmoud, the Executive Head of the National Organization for Communication Coordination, stated in Arabic:
"On January 23, 2011, the top representatives of National Security called the heads of the 3 cellular phone servers to a meeting with them. An Emergency Operations Headquarters was set up. Its role was to issue special instructions with regard to both operation and interruption of communications in accordance with the provisions of Article 67 of the Law on Communications. The reason was given as being the developing of a severe state of emergency in Egypt, affecting the core of national security. Thus service was ordered to be cut off on January 27, 2011 at 10:00 AM, and was instructed to be resumed on January 29, 2011 around 9:30 AM. As to the Internet, it was ordered to be suspended on Friday, January 28, 2011 and was resumed on February 5, 2011.
However in the case of the Internet, that interruption did not affect the special frequencies used by the Police. With public pressure mounting on the Mubarak regime to depart, the blackout was finally ended. But the fact that it was put into effect has harmed Egypt's world wide reputation as a civilized State. That is not to mention the negative effects suffered by the cellular phone servers."
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This series shall be continued subject to the exigencies of the fast developing news from Tahrir.
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