Egypt starts cracking down on journalists, human rights workers

The Mubarak regime has begun to act more forcefully to shore up its power after days of protests pushed it to the brink of collapse.  Security forces have begun arresting and intimidating bloggers, journalists, and human rights activists in an attempt to reimpose order in the wake of street fighting:

The Egyptian government broadened its crackdown on Thursday to the international news media and human rights workers, in an apparent effort to remove witnesses to the battle with antigovernment protesters.

With fighting between anti- and pro-government forces escalating throughout the day, armed supporters of President Hosni Mubarak attacked foreign journalists, punching them and smashing their equipment. Men who protesters said were plainclothes police officers shut down news media outlets that had been operating in buildings overlooking Tahrir Square.

An informal center set up by human rights workers in the square was seized, and a group of journalists was stopped in their car near the square by a gang of men with knives and briefly turned over to the military police, ostensibly for their protection. Two reporters working for The New York Times were released on Thursday after being detained overnight in Cairo.

Two Washington Post staffers were among two dozen journalists detained by the Interior Ministry Thursday morning, the paper reported.

The concerted effort to remove journalists lent a sense of foreboding to events in the square, where battles continued between the protesters and the Mubarak supporters, who human rights workers and protesters say are being paid and organized by the government. People bringing food, water and medicine to the protesters in the square were being stopped by Mubarak supporters, who confiscated what they had and threw some of it into the Nile.

Foreboding is right.  The regime apparently feels a little more sanguine about their ability to control events on the streets.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t have directed their efforts at international journalists who have been waiting for precisely this development.  Three days ago, Mubarak didn’t dare try it.

What changed?  It seems that the army has decided to throw its lot in with Mubarak, at least in the short term.  Over the last couple of days, they have stood by while pro-Mubarak “stability forces” began violently confronting protesters in the streets.  According to this report from the New York Times, the army is at least cooperating with the effort to intimidate journalists into leaving Tahrir Square and curtailing reports from the scene.  That sounds like preparation for a larger effort to clear the streets — one that will be messy, perhaps the Tiananmen Square moment many predicted would eventually come.

If so, this move will put Barack Obama and the White House in a very uncomfortable position.  They have spent the last few days dropping thinly-veiled demands for Mubarak to resign.  If Mubarak survives this with the army’s assistance, will Obama cut off aid to Egypt — even if that means risking the end of diplomatic relations with Israel, which would certainly help Mubarak shore up his domestic support?  Or does Obama continue that aid and risk losing the Egyptian people, who will certainly blame the US for continuing to prop up Mubarak, even if Mubarak leaves in September as promised?

These are the choices that came from getting out in front of events in Cairo with demands for Mubarak’s abdication.  If he survives, Obama has painted us into a corner.