Tahrir Square: The Smell of Tear Gas in the Morning

The pictures and video coming from Tahrir Square last night and today seem eerily familiar. Egyptian demonstrators have squared off against the police in central Cairo for the past 18 or so hours. This is not totally unexpected. No one I know, Egyptian or other serious observers of post-Mubarak politics, believe that the political situation in Egypt will settle down anytime soon. There is just too much at stake and too many groups with equities in the future of Egypt for it to be any other way. That said, political contestation need not be violent and in fact, since the uprising, political violence has been relatively isolated. If the clashes are not totally unexpected (my friend Mahmoud Salem, known almost universally by his twitter handle “Sandmonkey” warned of potential instability and violence last week when I visited him in Zamalek), why they are happening still requires explanation.

To my mind, there are four reasons why, once again, Tahrir Square is a zone of confrontation:

The struggle for Egypt continues….