Episode 1 How Facebook Changed the World: The Arab Spring

This programme contains some strong language and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

This year, a generation of young people rose up against the hated despots who ruled their countries.

Gaddafi is destroy our country, and now we can taste the freedom.

But the way these revolutions began caught the world off guard.

The weapons of the activists of the so-called Arab Spring,

weren't guns and bombs, but the internet and the mobile phone.

For the first time in history, world changing events were recorded

hour-by-hour by the man and woman on the street.

A unique, filmed record now exists

charting the downfall of tyrants in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

GUNFIRE

And exposing the unimaginable brutality

of embattled regimes in other parts of the Arab world.

I'm now heading to the region

to track down the people behind these images.

TRANSLATION: Somebody had to show the outside world what was happening.

WHISTLING AND SHOUTING

I'll pieced together the story of the revolutions through their eyes.

-TRANSLATION:

-He's abandoning his position

as President of the Republic! I ran into the street.

-TRANSLATION:

-I started to cry, I laid down,

looked up at the sky and I couldn't believe it. We all hugged each other.

CHANTING

And I'll meet the activist whose struggle is still going on.

These are the last moments of someone's life.

GUNFIRE

Few visitors to Tunisia

ever get beyond its Mediterranean beach resorts.

But as you travel south, you enter a different world -

rural, poor and largely forgotten.

150 miles south of the Tunisian capital

lies the small market town of Sidi Bouzid.

It was here, in December 2010,

that the dramatic suicide of a young fruit seller

would ignite revolution in Tunisia

and send the Arab world into turmoil.

In the past, what happened here could have been suppressed,

censored from newspapers and television.

But something of worldwide importance was about to happen.

Disenfranchised people everywhere were about to discover

that the internet revolution

had tipped the balance of power in their favour.

26-year-old Mohammad Bouazizi supported a large family,

selling fruit on the streets of Sidi Bouzid.

For years, he and his fellow fruit sellers had been tormented

by corrupt local officials who demanded backhanders at every turn.

-TRANSLATION:

-We wanted to get on with our work,

but they wouldn't let us.

They called what we did a public disorder.

-TRANSLATION:

-We had to pay bribes to get our stuff back.

And when we asked why, they would ignore us.

That's what it was like.

On Friday December 17th last year,

Mohammad Bouazizi set up his stall near the central mosque,

but he didn't have the money needed to pay the bribes to be there.

TRANSLATION: On Friday,

he went and he set up his stall to start selling his produce.

And then a police woman arrived and took everything off him.

As the tension mounted, a crowd started to gather.

She stood in front of him,

smacked him in the face, spat at him and she swore at him.

He got very upset and started crying.

And the other police officers were kicking him in the shins.

Humiliated, Mohammad headed here to the town hall

where he tried to lodge a complaint.

But it fell on deaf ears.

They didn't want to listen to him, they didn't want to open the door,

he was terribly upset and disappointed,

he'd lost his confidence, self-control, his hope.

When he left here, he went to a nearby shop

and bought a bottle of fuel. He returned here with the fuel,

chose a spot in front of the same building,

poured the fuel over himself and then set himself alight.

Horrifically injured, Mohammad was taken to hospital.

In this small, closely knit town, word travelled fast.

Bouazizi's frustration struck a chord

both here and across the Arab world.

TRANSLATION: Mohamed burned himself because he had no job,

no money and no prospects.

SHOUTING

The next day, hundreds of people gathered at the spot

where Mohammad had set himself alight.

Men and women who, like him, struggled to make ends meet

and felt their government wasn't listening to them.

Among them were two of his friends, Wissam Guidri and Bassam Chicri.

The people started shouting

and asking questions in front of the town hall.

Asking the Governor why Bouazizi had burned himself

and no-one had listened.

SHOUTING AND WHISTLING

Slowly, slowly the situation started to heat up.

THEY CHANT

Demonstrations were almost unheard of in Tunisia.

But in every protester's pocket

was a tool to show the world what happened -

a mobile phone.

'Wissam and Bassam explained to me how, that night,

'the demonstration turned into a street battle.'

-TRANSLATION:

-We started a peaceful demonstration, but the police

tried to crush us violently. We had to defend ourselves.

We started throwing stones, anything we could get our hands on.

Soon it became a confrontation.

They were throwing tear gas at us.

That night, the confrontation became a street war.

We started lighting anything we could get our hands on.

We were throwing stones and they were shooting live bullets.

GUNFIRE AND SHOUTING

But despite the rarity of the events in Sidi Bouzid,

Tunisian state television reported nothing of what was happening.

Tunisia may have been a popular holiday destination,

but under the leadership of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali,

it was also a police state, where the press was censored.

Wissam and Bassam decided to take matters into their own hands.

Somebody had to show the outside world what was happening.

As the battle intensified,

they made sure that they captured the evidence.

Police were looking for anyone filming, to arrest them.

We had people filming from the front line and from the rooftops.

They weren't professionals, but they knew how to do it.

Filming from hidden vantage points, they got shots from every angle.

SHOUTING AND WHISTLING

EXPLOSION

They knew there was one way to show the images

to people across Tunisia - Facebook.

Tunisia had two million Facebook users,

or one in five of the entire population.

While Ben Ali blocked access to political sites,

he rarely interfered with Facebook,

viewing it as purely recreational,

somewhere for people to discuss football scores and dating.

In the capital, Tunis, a young computer programmer, Slim Amamou,

spotted the extraordinary footage coming out of Sidi Bouzid.

TRANSLATION: The video I saw showed burned-out cars,

young people throwing stones.

And it was a video taken on a mobile.

One of the young people throwing stones was saying,

"Who is going to let our voice be heard?

"We are not animals, so why are we being ignored?"

THEY SPEAK IN THEIR NATIVE TONGUE

On the face of it, Slim Amamou and his friend,

computer engineer Azyz Amami,

had little in common with the fruit sellers of Sidi Bouzid.

They were university-educated,

privileged, the children of the well-to-do.

What they shared was a hatred of their president

and a frustration that they couldn't speak freely in their own country.

TRANSLATION: Ben Ali was so stupid and arrogant

that he wouldn't let anyone have a laugh about him.

When you can't have a laugh, you can't criticise.

You can't have a view, and you can't even have your own personality.

That's what made me hate him most.

Ben Ali liked to portray himself as a modern, enlightened leader,

but in reality, he was one of a cluster of dictators

controlling the Arab world,

including Hosni Mubarak in Egypt,

Muammar Gaddafi in Libya,

and Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

They rigged elections and tortured dissidents.

Ben Ali's corruption was notorious.

He enriched himself at his people's expense,

and his personal fortune was said to be more than £3.5 billion.

For more than five years,

Slim and Azyz had been writing blogs satirising the regime,

sharing their grievances with other dissident bloggers in the region.

TRANSLATION: Looking at all the dictatorships in the Arab world,

you could see it all as part of one single dictatorship.

A collective consciousness emerged via the internet

because the internet is immediate.

In fact, the Tunisian bloggers had access

to one of the most advanced internet infrastructures in the Arab world.

A quarter of homes had broadband,

90% of Tunisians a mobile phone.

In his bid to modernise the country's economy,

Ben Ali risked exposing his citizens to unwelcome outside influences.

His solution was the censorship of all political sites.

But for this tech savvy generation, censorship was no obstacle.

The beauty of the internet is that there is no single central hub,

but instead, and infinite number of pathways to communicate.

By routing messages through networks in other countries,

they were able to avoid Tunisian censorship altogether

and gain access to any forbidden site.

If they were caught posting subversive material online,

the bloggers faced detention and torture.

TRANSLATION: Fear is an enemy. You can't live when you are afraid.

As I saw it, what blocked Tunisia was this cycle of fear,

and we had to start breaking the cycle of fear.

When the activists saw the footage coming out of Sidi Bouzid,

it was the opportunity they'd been waiting for.

TRANSLATION: And for me, that really changed everything.

It was truly the trigger for direct confrontation.

Slim and Azyz posted the videos on their own Facebook pages.

It didn't take long for them to go viral.

TRANSLATION: The videos were broadcast on the internet

and social networks at lightning speed.

It was a speed that was uncontrollable.

Within days, the phone footage was picked up by the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera

and was being seen across Tunisia.

Copycat demonstrations now broke out close to Sidi Bouzid

in the southern towns of Kasserine and Medenin.

But the capital, Tunis, remained stubbornly quiet.

TRANSLATION: We said it is now or never. Tunis must be mobilised.

Sidi Bouzid, Kasserine, Medenin, which had started to move.

They must be sent the message that Tunis is with them.

That they are not alone in their struggle.

Comparatively wealthy and cosmopolitan, on the face of it,

Tunis didn't have the grievances of the poverty-stricken south.

The activists needed the support of Tunis' working men and women,

but the leaders of the national trade union, the UGTT,

were known to be government stooges.

They needed a way to reach the rank-and-file,

and so they tried a daring short cut -

hacking into the main union website and sending a message asking

its members to join them here in Muhammad Ali Square

in the centre of Tunis.

They had no idea if anyone would respond.

On the morning of the protest, anticipating trouble,

the authorities set up roadblocks in the centre of the city,

but the activists were one step ahead.

TRANSLATION: Every time I saw a policeman on a corner

I would post it on Twitter, "Be careful. Don't take that street

"because it's full of policemen.

"Take this one. I'm going to try this one."

Only when they'd got to the square did they realise the level

of their support.

TRANSLATION: Lots of those demonstrating

couldn't believe their eyes.

People who were totally enraged, people I knew,

people I didn't know, people who were demonstrating for the first time,

sobbing with all their might.

CROWD CHANTS

I took a photograph in such a way as to show how big the crowd was,

stating, "Muhammad Ali Square now.

"It's happening now. This is the place to be."

Fearing arrest, Slim had taken a precaution to make sure

the protests would be seen, even if his mobile was confiscated.

-TRANSLATION:

-I installed the software which would allow live streaming

on the internet from my phone.

Across Tunisia, people now watched live on their laptops and mobiles

as Tunis joined the revolt.

There was a point when everybody began to say, "Ben Ali, get out!"

Everybody.

And once these words were out there was no more fear,

everyone had left their fear behind.

Claiming that the protests were the work of armed gangs,

Ben Ali responded swiftly and ruthlessly.

Tear gas was soon replaced with live rounds

and unarmed protesters were shot dead.

CROWD NOISE AND GUN SHOTS

HE CRIES OUT

With his country now in chaos, Ben Ali went on a PR offensive.

He even had himself photographed with Mohamed Bouazizi,

the young fruit seller who lay dying in hospital.

No-one was impressed.

The following day, Ben Ali struck back at the internet activists.

At just after 1pm on 6th January,

Slim and Azyz were arrested and taken

to the Ministry of the Interior for interrogation.

No doubt they thought I was, I don't know,

Dr No from James Bond...

..pulling all these strings.

But it was too late.

The whole country was now in open revolt.

In the city of Douz, protesters set fire to police vehicles.

In Tunis, protesters took control of the streets

and police officers responded with live fire.

GUNFIRE

CLAPPING AND CHEERING

CHEERING AND SHOUTING

Soon, almost 150 people would be dead.

On 13th January,

Ben Ali made a last bid to win back his people.

The speech didn't have the desired effect.

Tunisians were now beyond compromise.

The next day, hundreds of thousands of people marched here

along Avenue Bourguiba, heading for the hated Ministry of the Interior.

MAN SPEAKS IN FRENCH

TRANSLATION: I got out of prison on the 13th.

The next day at 8.30am, I found myself on the street,

as I had never seen it before.

-TRANSLATION:

-We went out onto the streets and everything was on fire.

You have to understand that on 6th January, when we were arrested,

Tunisia was the same old Tunisia we'd always known.

Now, it was a completely different Tunisia. It was revolution.

Tens of thousands of Tunisians were surging up Avenue Bourguiba,

congregating outside the Ministry of the Interior

where Azyz and Slim had been prisoners just the day before.

CROWD CHANTS

TRANSLATION: I never thought I'd see so many people there.

It was my dream come true.

People demonstrating, shouting "Get out" to the whole system,

not just the president, the whole blood-sucking establishment,

saying, "Go fuck yourselves. Go to hell, we're the masters now".

Ben Ali's senior advisers could see the writing on the wall.

On 14th January, they informed him

that he was jeopardising the security and safety of the country.

That night, Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia.

TRANSLATION: Imagine that you take hold of your wrist,

that you tie a narrow piece of thread around it

so that it stops the blood from circulating,

leave it on for ten hours and then suddenly release it

and feel the blood surging through your veins...

it was like that.

There was something magnificent, it was indescribable

and at that moment, I felt like the freest man in the world.

On 15th January, an interim government was announced

pledging a transition to democracy

and an investigation into human rights abuses.

Slim Amamou, the one-time dissident blogger

was made Minister for Youth and Sport.

Ben Ali ruled over this country for 24 years,

but it took just 28 days

from the first protest in a small southern town

to the fall of the regime.

Opposition activists across the Middle-East watched in amazement

and with a growing sense of inspiration.

Could they do the same to their own equally hated dictators?

The network of online dissidents spanned the entire Arab world,

from Morocco in North Africa to Yemen in the Gulf.

But it was in Egypt that an underground army of activists

was waiting to pick up the baton of revolution.

In Cairo, political activists

watched the Tunisian revolution with awe.

For us, we were ecstatic.

We couldn't imagine that

really they managed to get rid of their president

and I think that this is a turning point to the whole Arab world.

TRANSLATION: When Tunisia erupted, we were dazzled.

It was as if the light had been switched on

and as if Tunisia had opened possibilities for us

which we didn't realise were there.

Like Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak ensured his absolute rule

by rigging elections and imprisoning opponents.

He was seen by Western governments

as pivotal to the stability of the region

and an ally against Islamic fundamentalism.

They wouldn't want to see him toppled, despite his crimes.

And with the largest military machine in the Arab world,

Mubarak would be a harder nut to crack.

For a number of years, surgeon Shadi Ghazali-Harb,

journalist Nawara Negem and other activists

had been studying the dynamics of political struggle online

and writing blogs calling for revolutionary change in Egypt.

Unlike in Tunisia, blogs in Egypt were rarely censored.

But bloggers could still be imprisoned

and even tortured for posting subversive material online.

Although risky, by encrypting their messages and using pseudonyms,

the activists still found the internet

the safest way to communicate.

Egypt was a police state

with a security apparatus to rival the Stasi.

Under emergency laws, police had virtually unlimited powers

to arrest and detain citizens without trial.

While Mubarak hobnobbed with Western leaders,

Amnesty International reported systematic torture of men, women and children,

using electric shocks and beatings.

In June 2010,

six months before Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself in Tunisia,

Egypt had had her own martyr.

Khaled Saeed, a young computer programmer,

had been brutally beaten and murdered by police

for exposing their corruption online.

They tracked him and went and just...

..got him out of an internet cafe

when he was there.

They just got him out

and kept beating him up until he died.

And secretly there were photographs taken of his body?

There was a photograph taken by his brother

when they took him to identify his body.

He took it secretly,

and it was a brutal photograph.

It is really a very moving photograph

and it spread throughout the whole world.

A Facebook page set up to honour Khaled Saeed's memory

would now become the rallying point for revolution.

Facebook had five million users in Egypt,

and news of his fate spread quickly.

TRANSLATION: Many young people sympathise with Khaled Saeed

and we always used to ask young people, how can you guarantee

that what happened to Khaled Saeed isn't going to happen to you?

Historically, the most vocal opposition to Mubarak had come

from political Islamists. Many Muslim Brotherhood leaders

had been arrested and imprisoned,

but by focusing his energy on traditional enemies,

Mubarak failed to see that a more potent political force was growing.

TRANSLATION: The problem with the old school thinking

of the Mubarak regime was that it thought that only factions

that had a pyramid structure were dangerous.

That's why it was confronting parties like the Muslim Brotherhood

and other Islamic factions, because they were traditional organisations

with a hierarchical structure.

He thought that, because the internet had no structure and leadership,

that it wasn't a threat.

Emboldened by events in Tunisia,

the activists now planned their own day of protest.

We discussed it and reached the conclusion

that we'd stop deceiving ourselves

and each one of us decided independently

that we'd go out on the streets even if we were killed.

We all reached that decision at the same time.

Using their Facebook pages,

the activists set the date for their protest -

January 25th, a public holiday in honour of the police.

What did you actually say to people?

Did you tell them, "Join us and let's march on Tahrir Square"?

Just six or seven of us decided the exact place one day before the demonstrations.

During these two weeks we tried to distribute flyers

and invite people to join as much as we can, on the Facebook,

but not very publicly in the street because, I mean, it's dangerous here.

But, unlike Tunisia, only 20% of Egyptians had access to the internet.

The activists needed to reach out to the many Cairenes who were not online.

They hatched a plan to send a viral message through the arteries of the city by taxi.

Here in Cairo, taxi-drivers love to talk to people

so we said to ourselves, how can we take advantage of that?

Activist Waleed Rashed and his friends now drew Cairo's talkative taxi drivers into their plans.

The idea was that, if we spoke directly face-to-face with a taxi driver,

he might start arguing and debating with us and this wouldn't be very useful,

but if I speak with someone from my movement using the phone in front of the taxi driver,

he'll feel he's overheard a secret and that will create some intrigue.

Then the taxi driver is bound to pass on what I've said to others about our plans for the 25th.

Word spread through Cairo on buses, in cafes and in mosques

that something big would happen in Tahrir Square on the 25th.

One week before the planned protest,

activist Asmaa Mahfouz took a brave decision.

She decided to stop hiding her identity online.

I felt maybe if people could see me,

then I could communicate what I feel better face-to-face them in writing.

And so the plea came straight from my heart and touched people directly.

My words were completely spontaneous.

Asmaa's courage in risking arrest and abuse from the security services

rallied people to her support.

People called me saying, "The security services won't arrest you.

"If they do, we'll set fire to them. We'll protect you. Don't be scared.

"We'll join you on the 25th."

The activists knew the authorities were watching their every move,

and that their online conversations were monitored.

They decided to use this to their advantage.

Whatever messages we sent, we know that they were going to the police.

So our main tactic was to announce the decoy areas.

The more areas that we announced,

we thought the more distributed the riot police would be.

-So you were trying to trick the police to be in the wrong places?

-Yes, the wrong places,

and not even the wrong places,

but try to trick them away from the big crowds.

We named many of the famous squares in Cairo.

We wanted to send the police off in different directions.

On the morning of the 25th,

the organisers headed to Tahrir Square not knowing what they would find.

CROWD CHANTS

As soon as we arrived, we saw a huge number of people,

and we'd all thought we had gone there alone.

Word of mouth had brought Cairenes from all over the city onto the street.

We were shocked when we saw the huge numbers of people with us.

We were so happy, we were crying,

because finally people had been inspired to join us.

I mean, is this a fact or a dream?

40,000 Egyptians right now in Tahrir Square. I can't believe that.

All my friends from my movement were there, and other movements.

Young men and women. We were all crying. Success!

Our dream is coming true.

Although the Muslim Brotherhood had not officially supported the protest,

many young people from the organisation

were now throwing in their lot with the protesters.

We didn't raise any Brotherhood banners or Brotherhood slogans

that are usually raised in other Brotherhood protests

because the uprising was meant to be an Egyptian uprising, not an Islamic uprising.

It was a peaceful demonstration, but the regime was rattled.

Riot police were sent in to break up the crowds.

But the protesters stood their ground.

Hosni Mubarak, get out! Get out!

As darkness fell, the police escalated their assault on the crowd

with water cannon and tear gas.

There was terrible violence committed by the security forces

on the 25th during the night.

But the surprise was that people didn't go.

People stayed with us all night.

There were demonstrations in the streets and alleys,

and the security forces were chasing us everywhere.

It wasn't until dawn that the police finally succeeded in clearing the square.

But with the Tunisian revolution fresh in their minds,

politicians in and beyond Egypt waited nervously for the next move.

The West relied on Mubarak to uphold peace with Israel,

and for his co-operation in the war on terror.

Like his predecessors in the White House,

Barack Obama had no wish to alienate him.

Obama's administration was one of the most supportive of the Mubarak regime,

more than the Bush administration.

Obama give strong support to many institutions linked to the government,

and he spoke about Mubarak as a man of peace, a man of democracy.

His stand on Mubarak made the people of Egypt angry.

How the United States responded would be critical.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been a champion of internet freedom,

encouraging digital activism around the world.

But now that US interests were at stake,

she reverted to old-style realpolitik.

Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable,

and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs

and interests of the Egyptian people.

But in struggling to read the situation in Egypt,

America had got it wrong.

The nation that claimed to be the world's biggest supporter of democracy

had instead focused on its own pragmatic interests,

and failed the first big test of the Arab Spring.

In Cairo, the young people who hungered for democracy

reacted with dismay.

Before the 25th, we felt Obama was the most important person in the world.

But as soon as Hillary said, "This is a solid regime

"and we have faith in it," we decided that America didn't exist.

We felt contempt for Obama.

The activists now planned a bigger, bolder act of defiance against their President.

They would occupy Tahrir Square.

But to do this, they would have to confront the riot police

stationed throughout the city.

Their plan was scheduled for Friday January 28th.

The night before, the organisers met in a secret location.

We had a big map of Cairo,

and how we will attack the riot police

and conquer Tahrir Square once more.

And in that meeting, that very tense meeting,

we felt that if we got caught, we would all be sentenced to death.

The activists may not have had the support of democratic governments in the West,

but they did have support from a global online network,

including the revolutionaries in Tunisia.

Advice from the Tunisians was, "Exhaust them, stay up all night,

"run and then regroup, run and then regroup, and they'll get tired."

They told us what was best to do, how to fight the tear gas,

for example, using vinegar and lemon juice on the masks.

But while the activists planned,

the authorities prepared what they hoped would be a mortal blow.

Over the last few days, the regime had watched how activists had used

the internet and mobile phones to help them

get tens of thousands of people onto the streets.

The government's reaction was simple.

It switched off the entire network,

severing all online and mobile communications.

British-based Vodafone was one of the four internet service providers

which withdrew its service,

stating that under Egyptian law, the authorities had the right

to issue such an order, and that they were obliged to comply.

On the morning of Friday January 28th,

the day planned for the protest, Egyptians woke up to find

they had been cut off from the rest of the world and from each other.

But the activists already had their plan,

and technology was no part of it.

Their strategy now was to tap into the rage of Cairo's poor,

who for years had borne the brunt of the corruption

and violence of the regime.

They headed to a poor suburb of Cairo, Imbaba.

Imbaba is a world away from the middle-class Cairo

of bloggers and internet activists.

This is a tough neighbourhood, where many people struggle to feed their families,

and few would have much knowledge of Facebook or Twitter.

But revolutions cannot be made on the internet alone.

They need people, thousands of people,

out on the streets in protest.

Imbaba was the perfect recruiting ground.

As soon as the activists arrived at Imbaba,

it was clear that Mubarak's ploy to cut off the internet

and mobile phone network had played into their hands.

People no longer had any idea what was happening, so they said,

"I don't have internet access, I don't have a phone,

"I don't have any news, so I will go out and see what is happening."

Millions went out, and this is what we wanted, that people should go out on the streets.

We started gathering people, a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, from all around Imbaba.

And they started chanting slogans about the regime.

TRANSLATION: We left Imbaba with about 30 to 40,000 protesters.

We came out of Imbaba with 100,000

and when I saw the numbers on that day,

I figured out that it would be done.

TRANSLATION: From every neighbourhood in Cairo,

everyone was marching in their tens of thousands to Tahrir Square.

But to get to the square,

the protesters would first have to cross the Nile

and there was just one main route.

They set off on foot and came here to Qasr al-Nil Bridge

across the Nile, which leads to Tahrir Square.

Waiting for them on the other side, were the riot police

with strict orders to stop the protest taking place.

And in Mubarak's Egypt, that meant, if necessary, killing them.

TRANSLATION: It was real.

They had weapons and they were shooting.

It was shoot to kill.

They were shooting like this.

It's a narrow bridge, not a very big one

and it's difficult to cross the bridge

with an army of riot police in front of you.

It's very easy for them to hit you.

TRANSLATION: The security forces finally sensed our power

and we sensed our own power. It was either us or them.

A lot of people died there and two of them died in front of my eyes.

I tried to save them but even though I'm a doctor,

there wasn't much to do.

To see someone who dies in front of you

and you feel you're responsible for getting him down

and getting him into the street, then he dies and you don't die, you survive.

You can't avoid a severe sense of guilt

that you're responsible for the death of these people.

After two hours of fighting on the bridge,

the unarmed protesters broke through the police lines.

They headed for Tahrir Square where the battle resumed.

We're taking the regime! This is a corrupt regime.

We're standing up to the regime.

TRANSLATION: When we entered the square, it was indescribable.

It was dark and there was smoke everywhere.

People were falling all over the place and banging on metal.

It was like those battles, those battles in ancient wars.

At six o'clock that evening, unable to control the demonstrators, the police withdrew from the square.

The crowds saw its chance and attacked the headquarters

of Mubarak's National Democratic Party, a hated symbol of the regime.

The army moved in a few hours later but by then, it was too late, the building was already in flames.

By the end of the night, hundreds had been killed in Cairo and other cities.

But the protesters now owned Tahrir Square, more than 200,000 of them.

Once we entered the square, I knew that we can't leave, we will never leave.

We will do whatever we can to remain in the square.

It is the biggest symbol of our freedom.

That night on Egyptian state television,

an embattled Mubarak addressed the nation.

Behind his tough rhetoric, his fear was manifest.

He promised democratic reforms.

Following the broadcast, President Obama called Mubarak on the telephone.

I just spoke to him after his speech and I told him,

he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words,

to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise.

But on Tahrir Square, Mubarak's words were greeted with contempt.

He should go. We don't like him.

As the week wore on, it was clear that nothing could stop the Egyptian people

in their determination to rid themselves of their President.

The power of the internet generation was about to prove stronger than traditional state diplomacy.

Old allegiances now began to crack.

The United States quietly encouraged President Mubarak to step aside.

The United States's message to him as a friend was,

"Your people want someone else to lead this transition

"and you really have no choice."

But the 81-year-old Mubarak wasn't listening.

He made grudging concessions, promising not to run for re-election and to amend the constitution.

In a dramatic U-turn, he tried to use the new technology to his own advantage.

The internet went back on and across the country, mobile-phone users

received patriotic text messages like this one.

"Youth of Egypt, beware of rumours and listen to the sound of reason.

"Egypt is precious, so look after her."

But the Egyptian people were unimpressed.

It wasn't just Cairo - Alexandria, Suez and Port Said were now also in open revolt.

Over 500 lay dead.

The situation was now beyond the police.

Only the mighty Egyptian army had the power to crush the revolt.

All week, army tanks had been stationed on the square.

But no-one was quite sure whose side they were on.

TRANSLATION: People started saying, "Where is the Egyptian army?

"The police are shooting us, we want the army to protect us."

I was scared. I said to them, "Imagine if the army started attacking us."

But they said to me, "No, it's not possible, the army can't attack us, the army is with us."

For decades, the army had been the most powerful institution in Egypt, widely respected by most Egyptians.

It was also bankrolled by the American government to the tune of 1.3 billion per year.

In our conversations with defence and military leaders in Egypt,

they made clear, and we encouraged them in this thinking,

that they were the strongest institution in Egyptian society

and they told us that they would not turn their guns on their people.

That was a decisive moment.

Secure in the knowledge that the US relationship with the Egyptian army remained robust,

on February 1st, Obama announced a new, hardline position.

An orderly transition must be meaningful,

it must be peaceful

and it must begin now.

Obama gave a speech, which was also transmitted -

at that time we set up a projector and a big screen in Tahrir Square

and we managed to see all the speeches live. It was very moving.

We felt that Obama was feeling what we were doing, more than our own President.

Mubarak now had his back against the wall.

He was losing the support of his army AND his powerful American ally.

In the heart of his capital, his own people were clamouring for him to go.

He was about to show just how ruthless he could be in his determination to cling to power.

President Mubarak wasn't the kind of man to allow Egypt's anarchic youth to tell him what to do.

He saw himself as the father of the nation, a man with a duty to serve.

So, on February 2nd, day nine of the protest, Mubarak fought back.

That afternoon, hundreds of armed men descended on Tahrir Square,

described on state television as loyal supporters of the government.

They were rumoured to be plain-clothes police and thugs in the pay of the regime.

TRANSLATION: Mubarak's regime started spreading chaos and terror among the people

so they would start to fear the revolution and say,

"We want Mubarak and stability, we don't want vandalism."

So vandals were released everywhere to steal, rob and terrorise the people in the streets.

There were stones being thrown in every direction.

Everyone in the square was hit. Then they went in with the camels.

It became known as the Battle of the Camels...

..but there were deadlier weapons in play.

The worst thing is that it wasn't just the stones and the sticks,

there were people, they were snipers over the buildings.

Any lingering affection the protesters might have felt for their President

died that day.

TRANSLATION: Is he prepared to set Egypt on fire and destroy everything?

He doesn't care if a civil war breaks out, as long as he stays in power?

Why does he want to stay in power so much that he is ready to destroy everything in Egypt?

During the battle, the army watched from the sidelines

as the protesters fought back against Mubarak's henchmen.

But that evening, a military officer, Major Ahmed Ali Shuman,

told crowds in Tahrir Square that he had handed in his weapon and joined the protest.

CHEERING

15 other officers followed suit.

TRANSLATION: The first time I felt safe was when I saw an army tank passing by, cheering people.

The officer driving the tank started blowing kisses to the people.

With the army now firmly on the side of the protesters, Mubarak had no further room to manoeuvre.

TRANSLATION: News arrived that he was now getting ready to leave

and looking for a dignified way to step down as President.

Finally, on February 11th, the protesters on the square

heard that the government was going to make an announcement.

TRANSLATION: I lent my head like this towards the radio and I heard,

he is abandoning his position as President of the Republic.

I began to scream.

I ran into the street.

Everyone was on their phones, there was hysterical joy in the streets.

Congratulations for all my people! Congratulations! Yes!

I heard the noise,

of course I started crying, I cannot believe it.

Fireworks everywhere,

and suddenly, the whole country was celebrating that Mubarak was gone.

Proud to be Egyptian, proud to be Egyptian!

-TRANSLATION:

-I started to cry, I lay down on the street and looked up at the sky

and I couldn't believe it, we all hugged each other.

Finally it's happened, finally it's happened.

With Mubarak and Ben Ali gone, the torch of revolution now passed

to activists in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria.

The rulers of those countries had learnt one simple lesson from Egypt and Tunisia.

If you aren't tough enough and ruthless enough, then you CAN be toppled.

The Arab revolutions were now to enter a far more violent phase.

Peaceful demonstrations would now be met with bloody military crackdowns.

As the uprising spread, the internet would become even more critical.

In the months ahead, it would be the only link with the outside world

for those still battling against the Arab world's most brutal tyrants.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd