Anatomy of a Protest: In Cairo, One Camp Is Soon Two

Yet, chants like "People of Egypt, join us!" usually turn out just dozens, who are far outnumbered by riot police drawn from Egypt's poorest and least educated people. Even before the protest began, the officers stood shoulder to shoulder, backed up by water cannons and enough trucks to snarl traffic along Ramsis Street.

"They'll permit protests here and there, and plenty of yelling, if we can call it that, but they still do as they want to do," said Mohammed Habib, a Muslim Brotherhood leader. "Yell as you like, and we'll do what we want.' "

That sense of resignation spans the opposition movement, divided as it is between religious and secular forces -- leftists, Trotskyists, Arab nationalists and liberals. The question some ask themselves: So the lines were crossed, but where did we end up?

"Crisis is looming," said Mohammed Sayed Said, a leader of Kifaya. "The big issue that we failed to resolve -- I wouldn't call it apathy -- but obviously passivity on the part of the public is amply clear. We communicated the message, we expressed the need, but that's far from saying people support Kifaya and engage in the struggle in any real numbers."

George Ishaq, another opposition leader, blamed the passivity on more than five decades of authoritarianism -- what he called "monotone speech by one party, one government, one person" that has dominated the media since the monarchy was toppled in 1952.

"Give me the television for 24 hours, and I will change Egypt completely," he said in an interview.

For its part, the Brotherhood worries that protests like Wednesday's might perpetuate the government's hold on power, offering an example of tolerance and dissent, even as Mubarak remains in control.

"It uses them to improve its image and clean its face in front of the world," Habib said.

The protest was touch and go from the start. It was called by the Brotherhood for last week at Abdin Palace in downtown Cairo, then delayed when the Kifaya movement organized its own demonstration there. This week, the Brotherhood moved it to the Lawyers' Syndicate. Kifaya leaders were angry that the Brotherhood failed to turn out numbers for their protest last week. They decided not to formally support Wednesday's gathering. Both sides try to keep decorum -- their refrain is that alliance is necessary for change -- but suspicion reigns.

Founded in 1928 as an underground movement, the Brotherhood, which formally renounced violence in the 1970s, stands as the single most powerful opposition group on the Egyptian scene today, despite withering crackdowns by the government. It has turned out hundreds of thousands of supporters for funerals of its leaders, and its decision to take a more aggressive stand in confronting the government was hailed by other groups as a potentially decisive turn for the fledgling opposition.

Secular activists were reassured by a new emphasis in its language: less talk about Islamic law and more about democracy. At the Brotherhood's office along the Nile, a caption under a photo of a demonstration reads, "Freedom is the way to real political reform."

But speculation is rife that the Brotherhood is less interested in wholesale change and more interested in striking a deal with the government, under which it would be recognized formally (it remains technically banned) and perhaps brought into a coalition.