Civilians watch over neighborhoods in Egypt chaos
CAIRO – When Egypt’s police melted from the streets of Cairo this weekend, the people stepped in.
Civilians armed with knives, axes, golf clubs, firebombs, metal bars and makeshift spears watched over many neighborhoods in the sprawling capital of 18 million this weekend, defending their families and homes against widespread looting and lawlessness.
The thugs had exploited the chaos created by the largest anti-government protests in decades and the military failed to fill the vacuum left by police.
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Mohammed Gafaar, a 34-year old salesman in the Nasr City area, said his neighborhood watch organized soon after the night curfew went into force at 4 p.m. They did it at the behest of residents, who appealed for protection of their property, sending out the call from the local mosque.
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Akram al-Sharif, a 33-year old Cairo resident who lives in one of the affluent compounds in the city’s west at the edge of the desert, said locals hired twenty bedouins with guns, and organized into groups to protect the five gates of the compound.
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On Saturday, the tens of thousands of police who normally patrol the streets vanished. Security officials, asked why they disappeared, said that remained unclear. But the police, who are hated by many, may have been seen as just fanning the flames.
Throughout the day, shops and malls were ransacked and burned, and residents of affluent neighborhoods began reporting burglaries by gangs of thugs roaming the streets with knives and guns. By mid-afternoon, shopowners and residents were boarding up their stores and houses.
Gangs of armed men attacked jails, sending thousands of inmates into the unpoliced streets.
As night fell, the neighborhood watches took up where the police left off.
In the affluent neighborhood of Zamalek, where many foreigners live and embassies are located, groups of young men, some as large as 40 people, set up barricades on every street entrance to the island in the middle of the Nile.
In other neighborhoods, residents wore arm bands to identify each other and prevent infiltrators from coming into their midst. In Zamalek, a handwritten announcement hanging on a street window asked people to register their names for neighborhood defense committees.
Watch groups armed themselves with a makeshift arsenal of shovels, baseball bats, whips, and the occasional shotgun. Young men organized themselves into shifts, and locals brought tea and other snacks.
“We have these firebombs, just in case,” said Amm Saleh, the doorman of a building in Zamalek. “Some of these thugs are armed with knives and guns, so we have to be able to defend ourselves,” he added, showing off a line of kerosene-filled bottles with paper wicks ready for action.
Neighborhood guardians set up metal barricades and stopped cars, questioning them about their destinations and street addresses and sometimes searching them. With many roads blocked, drivers went the wrong way on largely empty one-way streets to get around.
Long after midnight, gunshots rang out on a scenic street along the Nile, near the Indian embassy and the Algerian ambassador’s residence. One youth said the neighborhood watch confronted the passengers of a car, one with a firearm, and persuaded them to leave.
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