Egypt Feature: The Rise and Fall of the 6 April Youth Movement? (Fadel)

Leila Fadel writes for The Washington Post:

Members of a youth movement that spearheaded the protests that forced President Hosni Mubarak from power face an uphill battle as they try to recapture the public’s support ahead of the Jan. 25 anniversary of the start of Egypt’s revolution.

Now their target is Egypt’s military council, which retains strong public backing. Liberals have fared poorly in the country’s parliamentary elections, outshone by Islamist candidates who appear likely to claim three times as many seats.

The April 6 youth movement has shrunk in stature against a backdrop of economic woes and instability, including months of clashes between security forces and demonstrators that have disrupted daily life. Although the group once had near-heroic status, its troubles have been compounded by the ruling military’s success in portraying the group as agents of a foreign-backed insurrection.

Together with other youth groups and activists, the group is trying to organize mass protests Jan. 25 to demand the immediate transfer of power from the military to the newly elected parliament, which is expected to be seated soon.

But although leaders of the group say its ranks have swelled over the past year — to 20,000 members from a base of 3,000 — they acknowledge that the organization’s reputation has been diminished in the eyes of many Egyptians, a fate they blame on the military and its supporters.

“They destroyed our reputations. This is more dangerous than detention or arrest,” Ahmed Maher, the leader of the movement, said of the military leaders. “They have the most powerful weapon of all: the media.”

In July, the military issued a statement accusing the April 6 group of “driving a wedge between the army and the people.” A member of the military council accused the group of getting illicit training in Serbia, and last week four members of a splinter group of the organization were arrested and released on bail after distributing fliers critical of the military council.

“Now, anyone who creates any problem, people accuse them of being April 6,” said Engy Hamdy, a leading member of the movement.

The April 6 group soared to prominence after helping to orchestrate the protests that led to Mubarak’s ouster. Poll results released in April by the Pew Research Center found that 38 percent of Egyptians regarded the organization as a favorable agent of change, ahead of the Muslim Brotherhood and trailing only Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the military council, and Amr Moussa, the former foreign minister who became a popular opposition figure.

But the group has chosen since to focus on street activism. There have been no recent opinion polls to gauge its popularity, but the recent multi-phase parliamentary elections suggested that its support has faded badly, with only 2 percent of seats projected to go to the Revolution Continues party, the faction most similar to the April 6 organization.