Tahrir Square, Cairo

Eighteen days that ended a thirty-year rule

The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 began on 25 January 2011 with protests across Egypt timed to coincide with National Police Day.

The protests were organised primarily through Facebook by the April 6 Youth Movement, a loose coalition of activists named after a failed 2008 textile workers' strike, plus the "We Are All Khaled Said" Facebook page run by Wael Ghonim — a Google marketing manager in Dubai who had created the page after the police killing of 28-year-old Alexandrian Khaled Said in June 2010.

The Cairo demonstration of 25 January, originally expected to draw a few thousand, drew approximately 50 000 people to Tahrir Square.

Over the next 18 days the protests grew to perhaps a million people on some days. President Hosni Mubarak — in power since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in October 1981, thirty years earlier — resigned on 11 February 2011.

The square as physical occupation

The protesters' tactical innovation was the continuous physical occupation of Tahrir Square — Liberation Square — in central Cairo, across the Nile from downtown, adjacent to the Egyptian Museum and the headquarters of the National Democratic Party (Mubarak's ruling party).

The protest camp was occupied 24 hours a day from late January through 11 February.

It included field hospitals, food distribution centres, makeshift latrines, a stage and sound system for speeches and musical performances, and improvised media tents where journalists could file copy.

The Egyptian military, which had refused early orders to clear the square, ringed the demonstrators with tanks but did not intervene. The NDP headquarters was burned on 28 January in the most destructive single incident of the protest. Its blackened concrete skeleton stood adjacent to the square for the next three years until it was demolished.

"I am not going to leave"

Mubarak gave three televised addresses during the eighteen days.

The first, on 28 January, dismissed the cabinet and announced reforms. The second, on 1 February, declared he would not seek re-election in the upcoming September elections — he intended to "die on Egyptian soil" but would not stand again.

The third address on 10 February was widely expected to be a resignation announcement. Instead Mubarak announced he was transferring "presidential powers" to Vice President Omar Suleiman but remaining as head of state. The crowd in Tahrir Square, which had been watching on a large outdoor screen, reacted with fury.

The following day, 11 February, the army announced Mubarak had left Cairo for his home at Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea. Suleiman read the resignation statement on state television at 18:03 local time.

The Tahrir Square crowd erupted in what was, briefly, one of the most joyful mass moments of recent history.

Why the revolution failed

The Egyptian Revolution did not end as the protesters expected.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces under Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi assumed power and held it for sixteen months before democratic elections in June 2012 produced a Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi.

Morsi was overthrown by the army on 3 July 2013 in a coup d'état led by Defence Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. El-Sisi has been President of Egypt continuously since June 2014.

Egyptian political freedom under his rule is more restricted than under Mubarak. Tens of thousands of political prisoners. Severely restricted press. Banned opposition parties. Tahrir Square has been redesigned with heavy security infrastructure to prevent any future occupation.

The revolution's specific demand — democratic elections — was formally satisfied. Its underlying demand — the end of authoritarian rule — was not.