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Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world and has often been its leader. But in January 2011, the spark of  revolution in Tunisia seemed to set fire to decades worth of smoldering grievances against the heavyhanded rule of Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets calling for Mr. Mubarak to step down, defying bans and curfews. It was by far the most serious challenge to the regime in memory.

Within days of the protests' start, Mr. Mubarak had called the army into the streets, and on Jan. 28th he ordered his government to resign. But he did not offer to step down himself and instead emphasized the need for stability.

The change in the cabinet did not slow the protests, and the decision to call out the military was weakened, as on Jan. 29th troops and demonstrators fraternized and called for the president himself to resign. Mr. Mubarak named the head of military intelligence, Omar Suleiman, as his new vice president. State media said the country’s new prime minister would be the air force chief, Ahmed Shafik.

Mr. Mubarak has been in office since the assassination of Anwar el-Sadat on Oct. 16, 1981. Until the recent unrest, he had successfully negotiated complicated issues of regional security, solidified a relationship with Washington, maintained cool but correct ties with Israel and sharply suppressed Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism -- along with dissent in general.

While Mr. Mubarak's regime had become increasingly unpopular, the public long seemed mired in apathy. For years the main opposition to Mr. Mubarak's rule appeared to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was officially banned but still commanded significant support. In 2010, speculation rose as to whether Mr. Mubarak, who underwent gall bladder surgery that year and appeared increasingly frail, would run in the 2011 elections or seek to install his son Gamal as a successor. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a Nobel laureate, publicly challenged Mr. Mubarak’s autocratic rule, but Mr. Mubarak's political machine steamrolled its way to its regular lopsided victory in a parliamentary vote.

Then with the energizing factor of the Tunisian revolution, long pent-up anger erupted across Egypt. On Jan. 25th, thousands of protesters, mobilized largely on the Internet and energized by the revolution that ousted Tunisia's dictator, occupied one of the city’s most famous squares for hours, beating back attempts to dislodge them by police officers wielding tear gas and water cannons.

The following day the government outlawed public gatherings and said any protesters would face “immediate” arrest. But organizers using social networking sites urged a second day of street protests, and the government order was quickly violated in the capital and elsewhere, although by smaller groups of protesters.

Two days later, on Friday, tens of thousands of demonstrators poured from mosques after noon prayers, clashing with police who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. Mr. Mubarak appeared on television late that night and ordered his government to resign, but did not offer to step down himself. He backed his security forces’ attempts to contain the surging unrest, saying that while he was “on the side of freedom,” his job was to protect the nation from chaos.

The president also imposed an overnight curfew nationwide, but demonstrators defied the order, remaining in the streets of the capital, setting fire to police cars and burning the ruling party headquarters to the ground. As smoke from the fires blanketed one of the city’s main streets along the Nile, crowds rushed the Interior Ministry and state television headquarters, but the military moved into the buildings to establish control. Protesters also tried to attack the American Embassy.

In Washington, the Obama administration raised the pressure on Mr. Mubarak, saying Egypt’s $1.5 billion aid package would be reviewed if peaceful protests were dealt with harshly. President Obama called Mr. Mubarak and then, in his own television appearance, urged him to take “concrete steps” toward the political and economic reform that the stalwart American ally had repeatedly failed to deliver.

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Egyptian security officials said they had placed the most prominent opposition figures, including Mr. ElBaradei, under house arrest and Mr. Mubarak called out the army to reinforce the police, who were struggled to contain crowds that set the ruling party's headquarters ablaze. The protests had grown increasingly violent as demonstrators clashed with police who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons.

The government had placed blame for the protests on the Muslim Brotherhood, but interviews with protesters suggested that the unrest reflected a spreading unease with Mr. Mubarak on issues from the perpetual extension of an emergency law that allows arrests without charge, to his presiding over a stagnant bureaucracy that citizens say is incapable of handling even basic responsibilities.

Background

Egypt is a heavyweight in Middle East diplomacy, in part because of its peace treaty with Israel, and as a key ally of the United States. The country, often the fulcrum on which currents in the region turn, also has one of the largest and most sophisticated security forces in the Middle East.

Across the Middle East, attention seemed focused on Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, after weeks of protests in Tunisia in January 2011 toppled that country's president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled abruptly into exile. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, the most influential Arab satellite channels, broadcast nonstop coverage of the demonstrations in Cairo.

But the anger fueling the largest street protests ever to challenge President Mubarak's nearly three decades in power is not new. It has been seething beneath the surface for many years, exploding at times, but never before in such widespread, sustained fury.

The grievances are economic, social, historic and deeply personal. Egyptians often speak of their dignity, which many said has been wounded by Mr. Mubarak’s monopoly on power, his iron-fisted approach to security, and corruption that has been allowed to fester.

Even government allies and insiders have been quick to acknowledge that the protesters have legitimate grievances that need to be addressed.

In the last few years, Egypt has struggled through a seemingly endless series of crises and setbacks.The sinking of a ferry left 1,000 mostly poor Egyptians lost at sea, an uncontrollable fire gutted the historic Parliament building, terrorists attacked Sinai resorts, labor strikes affected nearly every sector of the work force and sectarian-tinged violence erupted.

And in nearly every case, the state addressed the issue as a security matter, deploying the police, detaining suspects, dispersing crowds. That was also true in 2010, even as evidence mounted of growing tension between Egypt’s Muslim majority and a Christian minority that includes about 10 percent of the approximately 80 million Egyptians.

Egyptian Protests

Nearly every day in 2010, workers of nearly every sector staged protests, chanting demands outside Parliament during daylight and laying out bedrolls along the pavement at night. The government and its allies have been unable to silence the workers, who are angry about a range of issues, including low salaries. From 2004 to 2008 alone, about 1.7 million workers have engaged in 1,900 strikes and other forms of protest, demanding everything from wage increases to job security in state-owned industries that were privatized.

But it was not until the Tunisians ousted their longtime ruler, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, that these separate grievances came together in sudden popular protests in Cairo and around the country.

After they began, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which had remained formally aloof from the earlier protests, seemed to be seeking to align itself with the youthful and apparently secular demonstrators, saying it would support the "Day of Rage'' called for on Jan. 28. But it was unclear what role the Brotherhood had played in the protests that followed, which seemed to be spearheaded by angry young people and to include a cross-section of Egyptians. Even some of the capital’s smartest neighborhoods such as Zamalek and Maddi were caught up in the turmoil.

At least six young Egyptians have set themselves on fire in recent weeks, in an imitation of the self-immolation that set off the Tunisian unrest. Egypt has forbidden gas stations to sell to people not in cars and placed security agents wielding fire extinguishers outside government offices.

Egypt's leaders seem to have concluded that Mr. Ben Ali's chief mistake was to appear conciliatory, thereby encouraging protesters to keep going until he was gone. So while the new protests were rocking Egypt with a new, nonideological force, Mr. Mubarak and his allies have not veered from a playbook they have followed through nearly three decades of one-party rule.

As always, the government has responded to the unrest primarily as a security issue, largely ignoring, or dismissing, the core demands of those who have taken to the street.

The Egyptian leadership, long accustomed to an apolitical and largely apathetic public, remains convinced that Egypt is going through the sort of convulsion it has experienced — and survived — before.

The leaders see in the protest an experience similar to the events of 1977, when Anwar el-Sadat, then the president, announced plans to end subsidies of basic food items, setting off 36 hours of rioting across the country. They see a repeat of the threat the government faced from Islamic militants in the 1990s, which it violently suppressed. And so the leaders have fallen back on a familiar strategy, deploying security forces, blaming the Islamists and defining their critics as driven by economic, not political, concerns.

Security

Egypt’s police bureaucracy reaches into virtually every aspect of public life here, and changing its ways is no easy task, everyone concedes.

Police officers direct traffic and investigate murders, but also monitor elections and issue birth and death certificates and passports. Every day, 60,000 Egyptians visit police stations, according to the Interior Ministry. In a large, impoverished nation, the services the police provide give them wide — and, critics say, unchecked — power.

The Egyptian police have a long and notorious track record of torture and cruelty to average citizens. One case that drew widespread international condemnation involved a cellphone video of the police sodomizing a driver with a broomstick. In June 2010, Alexandria erupted in protests over the fatal beating by police of beating Khaled Said, 28. The authorities said he died choking on a clump of marijuana, until a photograph emerged of his bloodied face. In December 2010, a suspect being questioned in connection with a bombing was beaten to death while in police custody.

Abuse is often perpetrated by undercover plainclothes officers like the ones who confronted Mr. Said, and either ordered or allowed by their superiors, the head investigators who sit in every precinct.

The government denies there is any widespread abuse and frequently blames rogue officers for episodes of brutality. Even so, for the past 10 years, officers from the police academy have attended a human rights program organized by the United Nations and the Interior Ministry.

Emergency Law

The death of Mr. Said in Alexandria in 2010 became a rallying point for advocates of reform and human rights workers who say that police abuse is rampant and made possible by a three-decade-old emergency law.

The government has maintained what it calls an Emergency Law, passed first in 1981 to combat terrorism after former President Anwar el-Sadat was assassinated. The law allows police to arrest people without charge, detain prisoners indefinitely, limit freedom of expression and assembly, and maintain a special security court. In 2010, the government promised that it would only use the law to combat terrorism and drug trafficking, but terrorism was defined so broadly as to render that promise largely meaningless, according to human rights activists and political prisoners.