“The sky was filled with rocks. The
fighting around me was so terrible we could smell the blood.” With these
words Robert Fisk describes the dramatic events in Tahrir Square, where
the forces of the Revolution met the counterrevolution head-on. All day
and all through the night, a ferocious battle raged in the Square and
the surrounding streets.

The revolution in Egypt is reaching a
critical point. The old state power is collapsing under the hammer blows
of the masses but revolution is a struggle of living forces. The old
regime does not intend to surrender without a fight. The
counterrevolutionary forces are going onto the offensive. There is
ferocious fighting on the streets of Cairo between pro- and anti-Mubarak
elements.

The
whole of Egypt is now in a precarious balance. That same precariousness
applies to the role of the armed forces, the sole remaining fulcrum of
the regime. On paper it is a formidable force, as solid as the
aforementioned pyramid. But armies are composed of human beings, and are
subject to the same pressures as any other social stratum or
institution.