In the time honored tradition of dictators who have reached the end of their rope, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has decided to crack down on the demonstrations that have brought his regime to its knees.

Rather than use his army or uniformed police to do the dirty work, Mubarak has instituted a jobs program for thugs. He has hired several hundred – perhaps thousands – of bully boys to mix with pro-Mubarak demonstrators and beat the opposition senseless while being given free rein by the army to cavort through the streets tossing Molotov cocktails into the thickest concentration of protesters.

I guess that’s one way to address unemployment.

And from our “Only in Egypt” file, the street bullies used a novel method of, er, debating the anti-Mubarak forces. A company of light horse rode into Tahrir Square wielding clubs and sticks, beating and whipping the opposition while their mounts tried to do their part by trampling bystanders. Joining the war horses were battle camels – the one hump variety – whose ungainly gait might have been humorous but whose size and disregard for the lives and health of anyone who got in their way was decidedly not.

This Charge of the Rent-a-Thugs was not the high point of the day. As the battle raged during the afternoon, the pro-Mubarak forces began to lob dozens and dozens of Molotov cocktails into the opposition. Numerous fires were started and there were an unknown number of casualties. All the while, the army stood passively by, watching with apparent disinterest.

CNN is reporting that the pro-Mubarak demonstrators have been bought as well. Apparently, government workers couldn’t pick up their end of the month paychecks unless they went down to the square to protest awhile. Judging by the sour looks on the faces of many, they didn’t much appreciate having to brave tear gas and the stray incendiary device in order to feed their families. It didn’t put them in the best of moods, which I’m sure was part of the psychology of the gambit.

The Guardian live blog of today’s events includes this description of what sounds like a quasi-military operation, as the thugs and pro-Mubarak demonstrators worked to surround the opposition protesters and then attacked them:

They came into the square and we blocked them peacefully, forming a human line and peacefully pushing them back . A number of thugs had infiltrated behind our human line and all of a sudden 70 people from behind us started running towards us from behind the line and started throwing rocks and stones and picking up pieces of wood from their side. This was the signal for other ‘Pro-Mubarak’ side to start responding by throwing rocks. Our people retreated, they came forward – the point of stopping was where the army tanks were [next to the Egyptian Museum] and as we came forward people started throwing stones at us from the side of those tanks. This is significant because the only way you can get there is with the permission of the army.

Stone throwing was happening – then suddenly someone gets up on the tank shouting “People, stop stop stop, we can’t behave like this! ‘ – and immediately another guy comes straight up holding a picture of Mubarak and the tank is swarmed with Mubarak supporters as if they’re trying to stop violence! That was clearly a photo op. Once that photo opportunity had happened the ‘Mubarak Protesters’ got down from top of the tanks all of a sudden.

Sounds like a perfectly spontaneous outpouring of love and devotion for Mubarak, eh?

We’ve seen this tactic a dozen times in the last few decades. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has perfected it. Other banana republic dictators are experts at it. Mix the hired thugs in with less-violently-inclined government workers or others who benefit from the regime’s largess and all the deaths and injuries are blamed on the riots, not on a coordinated campaign by the regime to terrorize the opposition. The tactic has the advantage of keeping the army and police hands clean, which blunts international condemnation and might even fool a few naive citizens that it’s actually the opposition who is the cause of the violence.

None of this is likely to work in Egypt. The people don’t care who starts the violence at this point. And judging by how the opposition reacted to the thugs and their tactics, if it is war they want, it is war they are going to get.