In Cairo, violence flares between gangs and Islamists. In Alexandria, discontent grows as the country's politicians lose their way ahead of elections. And over them all looms the shadow of an army far from ready to give up power
Egyptian protesters forced back by water cannon during a march on the defence ministry in Cairo on Friday. Photograph: Ahmed Gomaa/AP
There is a narrow footbridge overlooking the entrance to the ministry of defence in the Abbasiya district of Cairo. On Friday afternoon, this crowded bridge provided the best view of the frontline in the latest round of violent clashes between the army and demonstrators who suspect the country's ruling generals of wanting to hold on to power.
On one side of a ring of barbed wire, soldiers hurled bricks and fired tear gas. Below the bridge, the protesters facing the soldiers threw their own missiles, while others removed the injured on motorbikes or carried them limp on their shoulders, some insensible, others spattered in blood.
I bumped into Hazem Abdel Rahman, a young protester, drenched in sweat, holding his injured arm. "I came here this morning and everything was peaceful. People linked arms to keep the crowd back from the ministry of defence. But then after Friday prayers people came who we did not know and infiltrated our demonstration and started throwing stones," he said.
Others say the trouble started after some protesters were grabbed by the soldiers trying to cross the wire. A few minutes after I spoke to Hazem, the first sound of live gunfire rang out, driving the protesters back in panic. I ran, but found myself trapped between two groups of soldiers, forced to climb several walls and cross a railway line to escape, only to be confronted by an angry group of supporters of the military.
"You are a spy," one shouted, attempting to drag me away for questioning, prevented in his efforts by the intervention of other residents. Other journalists covering events in Abbasiya in the last few days have not been so fortunate. Eighteen have been arrested or injured, including one who reportedly had an ear cut off during an attack.
Egypt's long-awaited presidential elections – the first round of which begins on 23 May – appear to be unravelling amid rising violence and protest. By the end of Friday, two people were dead, including a soldier; hundreds had been injured or arrested; and a curfew had been imposed by the army in the area where the violence was worst.
Once again, the most significant faultline of the protests – one that threatens to overshadow the election campaign – has been the growing rift between the generals and the political parties who would replace them when – or rather if – the army relinquishes power, as it has promised to do, on 30 June.
Some of those out protesting on Friday have special reason to despise them. In Tahrir Square a few hours before the violent dispersal of the protest in Abbasiya, I had met Mohammed Atta, a 45-year-old tour guide. He had been in Abbasiya on Wednesday and witnessed the baltagiya – well-organised gangs of armed thugs – attack a sit-in dominated by ultra-conservative Salafi Muslims and supported by revolutionaries, outside the defence ministry. That day at least 11 people died, many shot in the head at close quarters.
I encountered Atta attending a protest in the square called by the Muslim Brotherhood to protest at those killings. "I was in the middle of the street [in Abbasiya] when they came in from one end," Atta recalled. "I saw them come out from where the police were."
Atta fled, chased by 12 men. He left behind him the body of his murdered friend, Atif al-Gohary, a 41-year-old chef. "He went over to talk to them, to ask them to be peaceful," he recalled. Instead, al-Gohary was shot in the chest and his face was stamped in.
"He was like a brother to me. He taught me about revolution. On 25 January last year when I came here to Tahrir Square at the beginning of the revolution, I was afraid to go beyond the police lines. But he called me down to join him and told me not to be afraid."
Atta had come to Tahrir Square on Friday to participate in the millioneya– the million-man protest organised by the Muslim Brotherhood and other parties to call on Egypt's military council, which has ruled since the fall of dictator Hosni Mubarak more than a year ago, to keep its promise and stand down.
But if the Brotherhood had hoped to pack the square that became the symbol of the resistance to both the Mubarak regime and military rule, they were to be disappointed, despite bussing in supporters from hundreds of miles away. The Brotherhood, once regarded as Egypt's most organised and potent political force, has begun to wane.
As the election nears, Egypt's fragile transition to democracy is slipping into turmoil. It is not just the killings, or the repetition of the generals' heated denials – on Thursday they insisted that they had nothing to do with the bloodshed, had no preference for who should be president, and had no desire to cling to power. It is that the process that was supposed to deliver a transition to democracy appears to have been undermined at almost every turn by Egypt's de facto rulers, creating a growing sense of disillusionment, not only with the army, but with parties such as the Brotherhood.
Candidates have been disqualified, including the Brotherhood's own first choice, Khairat al-Shater, and Hazem Abu Ismail, the ultra-conservative whose supporters were gunned down and stabbed to death in Abbasiya on Wednesday. There have been rumours of postponements to the elections, sourced to the army; complaints to the electoral commission against the candidates who remain; and dishonest reporting of events by a state media still dominated by those once loyal to the old regime.
For those like Atta, who describes himself as an "independent revolutionary" but who joined the Brotherhood's protest last week, the aim of the generals has been to turn the different parties who have participated in the revolution against each other.
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