عمر عفيفي يخادع الأمريكيين بأن عدد أتباعه من المتظاهرين أكثر من الإخوان المسلمين فهل يصدقونه !!!!!
Ex-Egyptian Cop Living in Northern Virginia Works for Revolution
Updated: Thursday, 03 Feb 2011, 3:35 PM EST
Published : Wednesday, 02 Feb 2011, 6:33 PM EST
FALLS CHURCH, Va. - Three years ago, a burly, chain-smoking Egyptian cop named Omar Afifi wrote a book giving advice to his countrymen on how to avoid police brutality. The book's title translated roughly as "So You Don't Get Hit on the Back of Your Neck." Now, granted asylum in the U.S. and living in northern Virginia, Afifi is again advising his countrymen -- this time on how to succeed in what he calls the Jan. 25 Revolution.
Afifi was active on the Internet and elsewhere in organizing the first Jan. 25 protests that rocked the administration of President Hosni Mubarak. Affi's YouTube videos, which recorded more than 100,000 views and were passed covertly by Egyptians from cell phone to cell phone, called for massive demonstrations on that day and offered guidance on how to foil security forces.
In particular, Afifi has worked closely with the youth movements on the ground to organize the protests in a way that would defeat security, especially in the earliest days when people had no idea how many Egyptians would take to the streets or how security forces would react.
Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, which analyzes Middle Eastern politics, described Afifi's role as significant. He said Afifi "basically fired the first shot" when, on Jan. 14, in the wake of a popular revolt in Tunisia, Afifi released those YouTube videos calling for massive protests in Egypt on Jan. 25. Those protests were the biggest Egypt had seen in years and set the stage for the wave of demonstrations that on Wednesday prompted Mubarak to say he will not seek another term as president. Laith Kubba, a senior director at the National Endowment for Democracy, where Afifi recently completed a fellowship, said Afifi's credibility was established with the Egyptian public when he wrote his book, which was banned in Egypt and forced Afifi to leave the country. "He does have insights into how the machine works. He is connected ... and he's good with the media," Kubba said.
Afifi put his connections to use in helping the various youth movements plan their protests. Rather than gathering in downtown or in public squares, Afifi advised protesters to gather first in the small, poor neighborhoods surrounding downtown Cairo. Police, he knew from experience, would be reluctant to take aggressive action against protesters in the residential neighborhood for fear of the backlash it would create. Afifi also counseled people to avoid signs or messages touting specific political parties, ideologies or religious views. He said only the Egyptian flag should be displayed. And he urged focus on bread-and-butter concerns such as jobs, housing and food prices -- issues that unite common Egyptians.
He says he's not particularly concerned that the Muslim Brotherhood will usurp the revolution -- he eschews the word "protest."
"I have more people than the Muslim Brotherhood has," Afifi said, arguing that average Egyptians' concerns about government are secular in nature and that the Mubarak regime overstated the Brotherhood's influence for years to keep it alive as a bogeyman for the West.
Chants for democracy, he said, were also forbidden. That's because the word itself is associated with America and that doesn't help, given the U.S. government's 30-year support of the Mubarak regime. Afifi set up a command center of sorts in his sparsely furnished apartment, using multiple computers and cellphones to reach his contacts in Egypt and monitor events. He records his videos from his apartment, an Egyptian flag in the background covering up bare walls. Afifi said he hasn't particularly enjoyed his life in the United States the last two years -- he is essentially broke, he said, unable to scrape together payment to fix a painful wisdom tooth. He appears to subsist largely on cigarettes and coffee, and chafes at Internet rumors that he has become a millionaire in the U.S. He lives a few miles outside the nation's capital in a modest, high-rise apartment in Falls Church, home to a sizable portion of the region's Arab and Muslim population. But Afifi's plan is to return to Egypt, he says, as soon as he can do so without getting shot by authorities. For his part, Afifi is confident the revolution will succeed. He continues to work the phones and record videos that he disseminates through social media networks and through cellphones. But as the revolution grows, it takes a life of its own, as became clear on Wednesday as protests turned violent.
"I think it has bypassed all of the initial organizers," Kubba said. "It has taken a life of its own."
