Al Jazeera reports: Not much is known about their organisation, but their presence is an accepted fact of Egyptian society. Most of them lack formal military training, or any training at all.

These are the Ultras, a group whose battle, usually reserved for the football stadium, has moved to the front line in the fight between anti-military protesters and government security forces in Egypt.

Often characterised as hooligans, the Ultras have been blamed for violence at football matches and are prone to clashes with police forces.

Even so, the membership in the group is a hard-won badge of honour for the young men gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

“It’s a way of life. You don’t just become one. You aren’t converted. You have to be an Ultra from within,” said Ahmed, a Cairo native and Ultra member who only agreed to an interview if his real name and appearance were not revealed.

The Ultras are notoriously media shy, even “anti-media”, according to Ahmed. He said they prefer to keep their identities secret, presumably to avoid unwanted police attention.

Ahmed is perched on the edge of a low stone wall, just to the south of Tahrir Square.

He and his fellow Ultras have pitched a number of tents there for their prolonged sit-in, along with thousands of other protesters demanding an end to military rule in the country.

Like many of the tents in the area, the Ultras’ lodgings are reinforced against the biting November wind with layers of blankets.

Their camp is set apart, however, by hastily sketched graffiti on the tents that proclaims their beliefs for those who know the code.

“A-C-A-B,” Ahmed said, reading aloud the red etchings on the outside of his tent. “All cops are bastards,” he explained.

According to Ahmed, the abbreviation is a motto for Ultras clubs around the world.

The phrase has particular meaning in Egypt, a country in which the police force is viewed with distrust and even outright loathing.

“Police are paid every month to serve us and help us and protect us, not to oppress us,” he said.

“I’m supposed to know when I go to a cop about a threat or harassment that I will get help, but that never used to happen. They should know they are here to serve us.”

It is sentiments such as this that brought hundreds of Ultras to central Cairo on November 19, the day Egyptian riot police entered Tahrir to forcibly disperse a sit-in by relatives of victims killed during the country’s January uprising.

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports: During ongoing anti-military protests that erupted last week, a clear divide has emerged between the Gandhis and the Gueveras, in other words, the thousands who chant and march peaceably in Tahrir Square and the hundreds who throw rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails in downtown Cairo’s side streets.

“We’re fighting the police because they are thugs,” 17-year-old Mohamed Karam said at the time, as he prepared to launch a Molotov cocktail at the “thugs” down the street. “The thuggery of the Central Security Forces (CSF) is the same as it was during the days of Mubarak. In fact, they might have grown more repressive since the revolution,” he added. In the background, dozens of Karam’s comrades chanted, “The police are thugs!”

This sentiment was common among frontline fighters.

“The authorities are calling us thugs on state-owned radio and TV, but in reality it is the police who are thugs,” Ahmed Atwa, a 29-year-old street vendor, said. He pulled down the neck of his shirt to reveal a large scar on his left shoulder. “This is from the police officer and his soldiers who tortured me in the Helwan police station in 2001.”

Most — though certainly not all — of the Gueveras are like Karam and Atwa, working class or unemployed men in their teens or twenties from some of Cairo’s poorest neighborhoods who say they haven’t yet finished their educations.

Karam, a high-school dropout, participated in the 18-day uprising against then-President Hosni Mubarak. He said he returned to the streets on 19 October “because I saw how the Central Security Forces brutally assaulted the peaceful protesters camped in Tahrir Square on Saturday. It’s my duty to protect these people — and to teach the police a lesson.”

Another street fighter, who called himself “Hamdy Molotov,” clenched a petrol bomb in his hand. Like Karam, “Molotov” is unemployed.

“The police and army, acting on the orders of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, instigated these clashes by attacking peaceful protesters in the square,” he screamed over the din of the battle.

Referring to 19 October, when the most recent clashes began, “Molotov” said, “On Saturday the police attacked the families of those martyred in the revolution, along with wounded and disabled revolutionaries camping in the square. Have the police not done enough harm already?”

“Yesterday the Central Security Forces and the military police dragged the corpses of protesters they had killed and piled them up in a garbage heap,” the 23-year-old revolutionary said. “This is against the basic tenets of Islam and Christianity. Not even the Zionists commit such barbaric crimes.”

“We cannot accept such crimes from the police or the army. Our revolution was meant to put an end Mubarak’s corruption and to end police brutality,” the street fighter added. “Our revolution started on 25 January, which was Egyptian Police Day, and this is why we must make sure that the police do not resort to their old ways. This is why we are fighting.”

A Documentary project in Cairo, Egypt by Lillie Paquette: Months before the momentous uprising in Egypt, many talked of a revolution – but no one knew when that day would come.

What we see in the 75 minute film are the highs and lows of the passionate leaders who toiled for years before seeing success from their sacrifice. It is an account of their struggle against extraordinary odds to remove an uncompromising authoritarian regime determined to stay in power.

“We Are Egypt” is the story behind the story of the Arab Spring.

This documentary goes beyond the headlines and highlights years of mounting political resentment against the ruling regime. The film follows the efforts of democracy activists and the political opposition as they used Facebook and Twitter to organize and express themselves in increasingly outspoken ways, even at great personal risk.

RESPONSE TO THE FILM

When Mubarak was ousted in early 2010, filmmaker Lillie Paquette began receiving invitations from universities across the US to screen a draft of the film, which has gained wide acclaim as the “backstory” to the Egyptian Revolution.

“To most of the world, the protests in Egypt looked like a spontaneous uprising. But according to filmmaker Lillie Paquette, it was actually the culmination of years of methodical organizing. We meet her and get a behind-the-scenes view of the buildup to a revolution.” — The Current, CBC

The film has been screened, in some cases multiple times at various universities including: George Washington, NYU, Columbia, Harvard, Northeastern, Tufts, Yale, Stanford, Virginia Tech, UMASS Lowell, and Georgetown. It has also been screened at various community centers and at the 2011 Boston Palestine Film Festival.

Audience response and participation has been outstanding, and Paquette has reworked the draft to include valuable suggestions for improvement and understanding by students, professors, filmmakers, authors, activists, journalists, and policy-makers.

“Not only has Paquette interviewed practically everybody who matters (no small feat), she does so in a way that communicates their personalities, their hopes, and their not insignificant senses of humor. … ‘We Are Egypt’ is not just a film about the raw materials of revolution, it is a film about the soul of a long suffering country yearning to throw off the yoke of an aging autocrat and take its place among democratic nations.” — Professor Tarek Masoud, Harvard University

A CALL FOR FUNDING

Paquette is now seeking financial contributions for post-production and distribution from individuals who have watched and shared their suggestions, as well as from others who look forward to seeing this film out there for a wider audience.

The plan is to make “We are Egypt” ready for global distribution by mid-January 2012 in order to help mark the one-year anniversary since the Egyptian Revolution, which began on January 25, 2011.

The timing of this film’s release is important for Egyptians and global communities alike.

For Egyptian citizens striving to rebuild their country and keep the Revolution alive, “We are Egypt” will help remind them of the steps that brought them to where they are now, which may serve as an encouragement to keep forging ahead in facing and overcoming new challenges on their path to democratic reform in Egypt.

The film will also be valuable for global communities who watched the Egyptian Revolution unfold in the news with bated breath. It will show how the events in January and February 2011 came as a result of years of activism and struggle against the regime.

The story also explores the history of U.S.-Egypt relations and why the U.S. has provided more than 30 years of political, economic, and military support to the dictatorship. It examines the more recent U.S. democracy promotion agenda for the Middle East, and addresses what the implications for the undergoing political changes in Egypt are for U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East region.

“We are Egypt” is a valuable history piece, and will be especially significant as communities worldwide join Egyptian citizens in celebrating the first anniversary since the toppling of their dictator and the ensuing “Arab Spring.”

This film is a reminder of the immense struggle that led to these moments in history. It is a reminder of the challenges still facing Egyptian people today.

Tony Karon writes: The message of the historic Egyptian election, which began Monday with huge crowds turning out to vote in the protest-scarred cities of Cairo and Alexandra, is a simple one: Egypt’s immediate political future will not be written in Tahrir Square, or by the revolutionaries who last week lost 40 of their comrades to violence by the security forces. But nor will the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the junta that eased out former President Hosni Mubarak in February, be able to sustain its claim to a monopoly on decision making over the transition process. By creating a democratically elected assembly — no matter how flawed by SCAF’s arcane election laws, and how limited its mandate may be according to the junta’s plan — the election process, which may take months to complete, creates a political voice whose legitimacy to speak for Egyptians trumps that of both SCAF and Tahrir Square. And that could profoundly change the power game in the coming months.

“Egypt is not Tahrir Square,” a SCAF spokesman warned last week, vowing that the elections would go ahead despite calls from the revolutionaries that they be postponed, and that the junta immediately cede power to a civilian “government of national salvation” acceptable to the parties on the Square. The revolutionaries had even offered the job of Prime Minister to Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei, the Nobel Laureate former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and liberal presidential candidate, who had reportedly accepted and vowed to drop his presidential bid in order to take the job.

But Tahrir Square had no real job to offer, outside of the fevered political imagination stoked by the protesters’ brave and bloody battle to hold their ground, with each new casualty deepening the protesters’ sense of their own legitimacy and claim to write their country’s future. The brutal reality, however, was that most of Cairo had stayed on the sidelines for last week’s “second revolution,” and huge numbers of Cairenes turned out to participate enthusiastically in an election widely dismissed by those on the Square as irrelevant or counterproductive.

The election turnout, alone, challenges last week’s picture of Egypt’s future being decided in the outcome of a Tahrir Square vs. SCAF showdown, each claiming popular legitimacy for its own claim to direct the post-Mubarak transition. The military claimed to represent a “silent majority” and vowed not to yield to a “slogan chanting crowd.” Those leading the Tahrir demonstrations demanded the ouster of the junta, which has essentially maintained the repressive autocratic foundation of Mubarak’s regime, insisting that power be handed to a civilian government selected from opposition political forces, and that “now is not the time for elections.”

But there were other options on offer: Last week’s protests, in fact, began as a far larger, peaceful demonstration called by the Muslim Brotherhood against the junta’s plans to entrench their own power over any new elected government. A far smaller group — led by secular liberal groups competing with both SCAF and the Brotherhood to shape the post-Mubarak agenda — remained behind to reoccupy the Square, and press their demands for a handover to a handpicked civilian government. It was the authorities’ decision to violently evict this group that touched off the latest wave of clashes.

The Muslim Brotherhood came under fierce criticism from liberal groups for failing to support the renewed occupation of Tahrir Square, with even many members of the organization questioning the leadership’s reluctance to more forcefully challenge the junta’s violent crackdown. Liberal groups accused the Brotherhood of “opportunism” for insisting that the elections go ahead, largely because it is widely expected that the Islamist movement’s Freedom and Justice Party will be the big winner at the polls. But, of course, the Brotherhood could make the same complaint against the liberals’ demand to postpone a poll in which they’re likely to be marginalized: most of the liberal parties lack a clear political identity, much less the grassroots presence and organizational machinery that the Brotherhood has built in working class communities despite decades of repression.