“Where have the police and military gone?”

That's the question Mohamed ElBaradei is asking, as a crime wave seems to be sweeping Egypt. There have been five attempted jailbreaks in Cairo in the past 2 weeks. We saw the battle between Muslims and Christians earlier this week. The grandniece of Sadat has been kidnapped. Police assigned to patrolling a soccer game vanished when a riot broke out. There was a riot in an upscale town. A policeman has been abducted. What used to be the peaceful streets of Cairo are now streets with few pedestrians as fear has come to Cairo.

Some believe that the police can no longer function as they had become indoctrinated in the old ways where they could run roughshod over the populace. Now,they retreat from confrontations. Others think the performance of the police is a stratagem to weaken the democracy.

Whatever the reason it does not bode well for the new Egypt.