9 April 2010. Army attacks protesters during the night.

I’ve been feeling like I did on the 29th of January, the day after the Friday of rage. ‘Panic’ is the closest description I can find. I am hyperventilating as I read the emails, the testimonies, the news, the pictures, the videos.

Panic because, after all the confusion we’ve been pushing through in the past months and a half, things are suddenly getting clearer. And it’s confirming what I had suspected since the very beginning.

The Egyptian army, coordinating with the Central Security (the 'amn markazy', a branch of the police) have, 2 hours before dawn, attacked the peaceful protestors camped in Tahrir square. They fired live ammunition at them. More than 70 were wounded and at least two were killed.

I guess the day we found illegal surveillance files at the State Security headquarters, the army found the SS playbook. Pre-dawn attacks; bogus charges (‘breaking curfew’? Seriously?); completely trumped charges (‘thuggery’); and torture.

Eye-witnesses describe how the army has return to the camp to ‘set up the scene’ for what would be their version of the events; that they were dealing with an unruly bunch of thugs who had to be handled.

Where does that leave us? Well I reckon an increasing number of people will find it more difficult to trust the army, whose attacks can be understood in light of the pressure that has been building against them.

After a series of Friday demonstrations that had carnivalesque airs, the past two demonstrations - Friday April 1st and April 8th were among the largest, but more importantly the most focused on a set of demands - largely to have the figureheads of the previous regime indicted.

The People Demand Retribution.

People - the People - are beginning to get their act together and DEMAND concrete actions from an army that it is feeling, rightly, that people’s patience is running thin.

In this context then, I view the latest attack - far from the first, mind you - as the army’s warning to protestors. A stretching of muscles, if you will. ‘We are being nice to you but we can be otherwise’.

But it’s a dangerous game the army is playing. True, we turned to the army to stand on our side in the face of Mubarak and his police. The army knows that we have no one to turn to now.

But to ourselves. And there’s no saying how this will end.