Cairo

Doomsayers are already warning that we're seeing a remake of Iran's Islamic revolution in Cairo. And on the surface, there are certainly parallels. Then, as now, a popular uprising caused the United States to nudge a longtime ally, and autocratic leader, toward the exit. And then, as now, the White House searched for a way to hold the country together. In Iran's 1979 version, Islamic radicals were waiting in the wings and installed a virulently anti-American religious dictatorship.

CAIRO - At least 11 people were killed Wednesday when unknown attackers armed with guns and firebombs clashed with protesters near Egypt's Defense Ministry in an escalation of violence highlighting political divisions that threaten the country ahead of this month's presidential election. Assailants stormed about 500 demonstrators at dawn, many of them supporters of Hazem Salah abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist preacher recently disqualified from the presidential race. Police did not intervene for hours, and authorities said as many as 200 people were wounded in the nation's worst violence in months.

When popular protests broke out in Tunisia, prompting the president to flee the country, some observers predicted a domino effect that would upend other authoritarian Arab regimes. Demonstrations in Egypt have made prophets of those prognosticators ? but only up to a point. Startling as the images of crowds in Cairo may be, the regime of President Hosni Mubarak is better armed and more entrenched than that in Tunisia. Nor, despite superficial similarities, is Egypt analogous to Iran in 1979, when Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was toppled by a revolt that eventually turned the country into an Islamic theocracy.

CAIRO - When filmmaker and Egyptian democracy activist Amr Salama watched Hosni Mubarak's regime collapse in 2011, he couldn't have been more heartened. Salama had been making films for years and had found himself hamstrung by the government's censorship board. This was finally the opportunity he'd been waiting for. So shortly after the regime fell, Salama resubmitted a script that had been rejected under Mubarak - one whose story centered on tension between Cairo's majority Muslim population and its Coptic Christian minority.

History is lurching in the Middle East, perhaps forward, possibly backward. Consequently, some see the newly minted revolution in Tunisia and the unfolding one in Egypt (and possibly Yemen, Jordan and elsewhere) as hopeful news, and others as worrisome. Color me hopeful. Obviously, things can ? and probably will ? get worse before they get better. In one or more countries, we could have a replay of the Iranian revolution, in which justified popular discontent with an authoritarian ruler was exploited by Islamists who ultimately imposed an even crueler brand of tyranny.

It was a simple, yet unsettling, question. "Is your passport American?" "Yes." "They've lost it." "Can they find it?" "God willing." The guard at the Saudi Embassy in Cairo said nothing else and wandered away. Behind thick glass, two men in the visa department -- one on his knees, the other hunched in a chair -- dumped out basket upon basket of passports that floated on the floor like a green sea around them. They were searching for a fleck of blue. Passports were tossed and scattered, a life-size, briskly shaken snow globe with ominous consequences.

Past the wild dogs and poor boys selling charred corn and party hats, the road turns to dirt and stone and dips toward an ancient riverbed the colors of butterscotch and bone. Fossils underfoot, foxes on the ridges, this is Cairo at the edge of the Eastern Desert, where the canyon cuts the sky and the smiling man in the entrance hut writes in a ledger and listens to chants from the Koran on his radio. " Assalam alaikum ." "Peace be upon you, too." My brother. The city falls away, standing distant, a ragged sentinel in the smog.

"Magdi, Magdi," the kid yells, running in off the street. A bottle of water flies up to the loft and Magdi Ali catches it and shouts thanks. The child disappears through the sawdust and back into the sunlight. Ali scrapes his planer, pale curls weightless as snow tumble around his sandals, his glue pot simmers on a stove. He tightens strings of copper and silk until the pluck-pling of ancient music rises from his worn hands and drifts out the door. A single note. Then it vanishes.

By Ned Parker and Laura King, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers CAIRO -- Clashes flared for a second day Thursday between opponents and supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, spilling out of the central Cairo square occupied by antigovernment demonstrators and deepening the chaos gripping Egypt. The army acted decisively for the first time to try to separate the two sides, planting tanks and soldiers in the no-man's land between what have become enemy lines. In the early afternoon, as helicopters circled overhead, the fighting was scattered and less intense than the previous day. Confrontations were confined mainly to the periphery of Tahrir Square and the backstreets of the adjoining district, with relative calm in much the sprawling plaza itself.

Gunfire erupted in downtown Cairo again Thursday afternoon when anti-government protesters broke out of their barricades on the edge of Tahrir Square. It was the second day of violent clashes between opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. A few dozen army soldiers fired over the protestors' heads in an attempt to push them back. But pro- and anti-government protestors are well aware that the army has pledged not to use force, rendering the small number of soldiers on the ground ineffectual, reduced at times to trying to wave protesters away.

CAIRO — They trundle like a lost parade, rolling metal cylinders through the dust beneath the broken cliffs rising above the City of the Dead. Mothers in sandaled feet hurry girls along to buy cheap propane cooking gas. Boys haul cylinders on slanted motorcycles, others balance them on their heads or fasten them to donkeys. The cylinders multiply, bobbing in the fortuneless air, which fills with ping and clatter and the angry whispers of waiting. "I have five sons. My husband is dead.

CAIRO - The ragged effigy of a fallen leader dangles from a lamppost over the remnants of a dying revolution. Those left from the uprising that swelled through Tahrir Square last year and brought down Hosni Mubarak live in tents, harassed and cursed, but mostly forgotten. TV cameras no longer perch on balconies; the great banners have been spooled away. The slogans of rebellion have been pressed onto T-shirts, and tourists, their expressions saying they somehow expected more, take pictures, trying to summon the images that captivated the world those many months ago. But the joy has turned sullen, and the nation has slipped back to the burdens of life while these defiant few still hunker with their placards and rage.

The criminal trial of 16 American pro-democracy workers opened in Cairo on Sunday as U.S. and Egyptian diplomats attempted to resolve a deepening crisis between longtime allies that have grown increasingly estranged since the uprisings that have swept the Arab world in the last year. The politically charged case, punctuated by bruising rhetoric on both sides, is a sign of Washington's ebbing influence in the region and a test of Egypt's ruling military council's ability to finesse an end to a drama that could result in the curtailment of $1.3 billion in annual U.S. military aid. Contradictory signals from the Egyptian government and perceived U.S. arrogance have hampered a resolution.

The headlines reflect a previously unknown cruelty: a woman gunned down in a rich Cairo neighborhood, a rash of carjackings, a deadly soccer riot, a stream of smuggled arms that have given muscle to criminal gangs once easily outgunned by police. The revolution that inspired this country one year ago has set loose a menacing air that Egyptians find unfamiliar. Bristling beneath the political battle for power against the ruling generals is an insecurity over crime and a bitterness that has darkened Egypt's congenial nature.

As 16 U.S. citizens await trial in Egypt for accepting foreign financing to promote democracy, for the first time in more than 30 years there is a serious debate in Washington about whether to end the $1.3-billion annual military assistance to Cairo. There's no debate in Egypt, however. More than 70% of Egyptians, according to a recent Gallup poll, no longer want U.S. funding. By deciding to prosecute Americans, post-Mubarak Egypt has intentionally provoked a bilateral crisis. But the legal assault on U.S.-funded nongovernmental organizations and personnel is merely a symptom of a larger, more serious problem.

Relations between Washington and Cairo plummeted further when Egypt's military-controlled government announced that 19 Americans working for pro-democracy groups, including the son of a Cabinet official, would be ordered to stand trial on licensing and financial charges. The provocative decision Sunday by investigating judges comes as the U.S. has threatened to suspend $1.3 billion in annual aid to Egypt's military. It highlights the widening divide between Washington and one of its closest allies over democratic reforms at a time of sweeping political upheaval across North Africa and the Middle East.

The coffins came down the hill in an intermittent procession Thursday as families focused their rage on police and military forces for not preventing a soccer riot that left 74 people dead and heightened the lawlessness threatening Egypt's unfinished revolution. Mothers wept and fathers railed as coffins were carried one by one from the morgue in Cairo. Sisters fainted and brothers, some with their own wounds bandaged, turned their heads as names were called and bodies, many wrapped in sheets, were collected and driven over a rutted road toward cemeteries across the city.

First a deafening cheer erupted and echoed to the minarets. Then protesters leaped in the air, kissed strangers, banged on barricades like steel drums, and fell to their knees in prayer. A dozen burly men saluted the Egyptian flag and sang the national anthem, tears streaming down their faces. Soon fireworks lighted the sky, veiled women ululated from balconies, men danced atop burned out vehicles, and grinning soldiers stuck flags in their rifles. Cars honked in joyful processions along the Nile, impromptu parades clogged the streets, and songs of freedom filled the night air. "Egypt is free," the revelers chanted.

  Young men wearing surgical masks and hurling stones rushed police barricades Friday against the pop-pop of tear gas rounds that spread white smoke like a gauze over the street as other protesters retreated with the injured draped in their arms. A new band of men waving flags and splotching their faces with yeast to cut the sting of gas made their run toward the barricades and black-clad riot police in front of the Interior Ministry. Surge and retreat has become a dangerous dance of revolt, full of fury but unable, so far, to break the grip of the nation's military rulers.