From Our Global Correspondents: Egypt Update

An Egyptian on the ground in Egypt shares with us his perspective on recent events:

The Situation in the last two weeks was foggy and unclear but we see that the opinions are divided into four or five groups. The group who started the movement is huge in number and mainly young in age in their twenties and their main demands are: jobs with reasonable salaries, major political changes heading to real democracy and they are against Mubarak and want him to leave right now.

The second group which is also a very big group are faithful to Mubarak because they see him as a War hero, and an accomplisher of stability in spite of all the instability that is in the Arab World and Africa.

The third group who are Politicians and leaders of the small political parties and the brethren Muslims who are trying to take advantage of what is happening and push the ruling party away saying that they must step down “now” . The last group is the ruling party who agreed about 95% of the requests of the first party except the stepping down of Mubarak.

It is difficult to see the end of the tunnel now, it is even difficult to know what will happen tomorrow. People all over Cairo have been very unsecure for more than two weeks now so they made defense groups to protect their homes round the clock . The police could not handle the protests from the beginning so they disappeared to try to regain the trust of the people again.

Cairo has been under curfew for 18 hours daily but it is beginning to decrease from today. Markets and banks did not work for 12 days. The Military controls everything. Thirty thousand prisoners escaped from 8 prisons and spread all over the country. More than 3000 were arrested and many gave themselves up.