Egyptians take advice from victims of East Germany's Stasi on state security files

Herbert Ziehm responded to an invitation from Egyptian activists to tell them how Germany went about disbanding a vast, hated security network that, with 100,000 staff and 200,000 informants, was similar in size to Egypt¿s secret police.

Egyptians search an office in the state security agency building in Nasr City, Cairo.

As one of the demonstrators who forced their way into the headquarters of East Germany's state security service on January 15, 1990 to stop files being destroyed, Herbert Ziehm understands the challenges now facing Egypt's pro-democracy movement.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall he helped set up the government agency in charge of managing the 140 kilometres of documents compiled by the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi. As a result, Mr Ziehm's agency has played a major role in helping Germany to come to terms with its communist past.

Two decades after the wall came down and Germany is now helping Egypt's reformists in dismantling the feared internal security service after protesters stormed its headquarters in Cairo last month when rumours spread that agents were burning records.

Germany went through a similar experience with the Stasi, which had spent four decades snooping on the East German population, jailing dissidents and effectively operating a shoot-to-kill policy on defectors trying to flee to the West.

Mr Ziehm responded to an invitation from Egyptian activists last month and spent three days in Cairo telling them how Germany went about disbanding a vast, hated security network that with 100,000 staff and 200,000 informants was similar in size to Egypt's secret police.

"Of course the Egyptian situation is far more difficult than what Germany went through because there's no second Egypt with which it can unify," Mr Ziehm said in a telephone interview. He said even Germany, with its well-established democratic system from the west, took two years to decide what to do with the Stasi legacy of the east.

"Egypt at the moment is like Germany in January 1990 - it's still unclear what's going to happen," said Mr Ziehm, who has also advised authorities in former eastern European communist states.

He urged Egypt's reformists to resist political pressure to destroy the files. He also recommended that they study the precise workings of the security apparatus so that they can ascertain where the most important records are located. And he said they should seek a broad consensus on the future management of the archives and on putting the security services under democratic control.

"The most important thing is to secure the archives and to avoid any rash decisions to destroy them," Mr Ziehm said. "I remember how we were constantly told there were more important things to do, such as democratic and civil reform, and that it would be better just to burn all these archives and look to the future.

"But the problem is that even if you get rid of the documents, you can't delete the knowledge in the minds of the former secret service agents. We saw it happen in Poland, where people spread rumours about politicians having had links with the secret services, and there were no documents left to disprove those rumours.

"At the time, people in other countries laughed at the slightly bureaucratic way we Germans went about things, but we have been able to check many accusations with the help of the archive, and many people in the political sphere were able to refute accusations that they collaborated with the Stasi."

But the archives also exposed countless spies and informants. Germans have been able to apply for access to their personal Stasi files, and have found out who snooped on them. It has been a painful process. There have been cases were people discovered their neighbours, colleagues and even spouses had been informing on them.

The transparency has given the hundreds of thousands of victims of the regime a sense of justice, and thereby enhanced faith in the new democracy.

The protesters who stormed the heavily guarded spying agency in a suburb of Cairo last month were eventually driven out by the military, which has agreed to preserve the files.

The head of the agency has been arrested and is facing investigation for ordering the killing of demonstrators during the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down in February. Another 47 of its personnel were detained on suspicion of destroying documents.

Egypt's new government has promised to put an end to the role the state security agency played in people's lives, and to restrict its powers to fighting terrorism and espionage. But it has not dissolved the agency, and reformists fear that its remnants pose a threat to the revolution.

Across the Middle East, security forces are seen as one of the major obstacles to the transparent government for which protesters are demonstrating.

Mr Ziehm said that unlike the Egyptian reformists, he and his fellow activists had been able to remain inside the Stasi headquarters in Berlin all those years ago, which enabled them to keep the archives intact.

"The first files we held in our hands were the least important, but we didn't realise that until much later," he said. "It's essential to get an exact understanding of how the system worked so that you can find out where the information is.

"I didn't have the impression that the young activists in Egypt knew how big the apparatus was or where its various locations were. Not all of its 100,000 staff can have been in Cairo."

The co-operation is set to continue. Mr Ziehm said Egyptian journalists and representatives of the pro-democracy movement will visit Berlin in the coming weeks for a fact-finding tour of his agency.

While the road ahead remains unclear and difficult, the activists had the enthusiasm and drive to succeed, said Mr Ziehm said.

"Visiting Egypt made me more optimistic. Many young people came to my lectures and I found the desire for change was almost palpable. It was great to see how optimistically people are looking to the future."