Egypt's army fills Sinai, but business runs as usual
Cairo has reinforced troop levels in the peninsula, but they are few and far between, and smuggling continues apace.
By Anshel Pfeffer
Published 01:43 12.04.12 Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/egypt-s-army-fills-sinai-but-business-runs-as-usual-1.423872
Sinai, EGYPT - A bearded Bedouin approached a cab on the main street of
Rafah, in Egypt. Right next to the taxi, at either end of the narrow street,
were two armored personnel carriers and a squad of Egyptian army soldiers in
full combat gear.
"Do you want to go over them, or under?" he asked with a smile, but totally
serious. The starting price was 1,000 Egyptian pounds, but you can bargain.
At the height of the biggest military operation ever against terror in
northern Sinai, the main business of the area's Bedouin - cross-border
smuggling into Israel or the Gaza Strip via tunnels or holes in the fence -
continues apace.
The army roadblocks begin before Sinai on the road from Port Said to the big
bridge over the Suez Canal. The checkpoints are permanent, but now they are
manned by soldiers using APCs rather than police officers, and they have
been reinforced with piles of sandbags. But the regular emplacements along a
stretch of nearly 200 kilometers, from the canal to the outskirts of
El-Arish, are abandoned at night. Despite the military operation and the
reinforcements, which according to Israeli sources add up to seven
battalions beyond the deployment levels specified in the Camp David
treaties, the Egyptian army does not dare position isolated soldiers along
the main road of northern Sinai out of fears of Bedouin attacks.
Israel gave its approval to increasing Egyptian deployment levels in
northeastern Sinai several times last year, to improve border security, but
that improvement is not evident. In any case the forces are not deployed in
southern Sinai, the area from which Israel believes the most recent Grad
rocket fired at Eilat was launched. The reinforcements did not prevent the
attacks on the natural gas pipeline to Israel, which was recently sabotaged
again - the 14th time since early 2011.
Only two kilometers before El-Arish are there once again APCs with heavy
machine guns, sandbags and soldiers - very close to the gas station that was
burned to the ground by Bedouin a few weeks ago. From there, inside El-Arish
and every few kilometers until Rafah and the border crossing, there are more
and more heavily protected roadblocks, with soldiers keeping close to their
armored vehicles and the machine guns on the roof. At first sight, the
military operation looks impressive, as more soldiers and APCs move in from
their bases in western Sinai, near the Suez Canal. These bases were built on
the remnants of Israel's Bar-Lev Line built after the Six-Day War. But it is
obvious very quickly that the reinforcements are just sitting in place. The
new battalions were placed only along the main road. They do not conduct
patrols along it, do not leave the road to search in El-Arish or Rafah and
certainly do not come anywhere near the Bedouin camps near the mountainous
regions south of the coastal plain.
The quality of the Egyptian troops is also not the best. In the events where
the army was called to intervene during the revolt against former President
Hosni Mubarak last year, the units deployed were elite units of professional
veterans equipped with the finest American armor. But the battalions sent to
Sinai are filled with inexperienced, raw recruits, and their armored
vehicles are almost all old Soviet wrecks. Few officers are visible.
In my previous visits to northern Sinai, three and seven years ago, you
couldn't cross the road without running into hundreds of police and
Mukhabarat secret police operatives who flooded the region. Now there is no
sign of them. Egyptian law enforcement authorities are nowhere to be seen
near the border, except for a handful of police officers near the Rafah
border crossing into the Gaza Strip.
This week, maybe because of the operation, the border crossing was closed.
All along the road from El-Arish semitrailers packed with sacks of cement
were parked, waiting for the crossing to open - or an opportunity to reach
one of the tunnel openings. The soldiers did not even check the identity
cards of the drivers or their bills of lading. They merely slowed down and
glanced at the occupants. Out of fears of attack the soldiers stood all day
in the blazing sun wearing their helmets. Between shifts they stayed in
tents set up along the sides of the armored cars, which have their own
colorful sun umbrellas.
Many of the armored vehicles were not in northern Sinai but outside the
bases in the depths of the peninsula, to protect the guards against Bedouin
attacks. The Multinational Force and Observers in Sinai, who are responsible
for monitoring the Camp David Accords, have found themselves trapped inside
their bases and have not been patrolling the region.
The main road into central Sinai is closed to tourists and abandoned. People
on the road have been abducted or at the very least robbed by Bedouin, said
a driver who used to ferry tourists from Cairo to the region. There are no
tourists in the area anyway, and only the hotels at Taba just next to the
Israeli border have tourists. Almost all the resorts are empty, and
construction has been halted on all tourism projects.
For years it is clear there has been a mass exodus from Rafah and El-Arish,
along with a lack of interest on the part of the central government in Cairo
in investing in the area, which has few tourist attractions.
But the smuggling and transfer of goods into Gaza have brought a sort of
economic spurt. On top of basements concealing tunnel openings owners have
built fancy homes, and a significant portion of the building materials
coming through to the Gaza Strip, both above and below ground, have been
siphoned off for the new construction. There is even a new Kentucky Fried
Chicken restaurant in El-Arish. Most of the residents of Rafah and El-Arish
are Palestinians or Egyptians from elsewhere in the country. The Bedouin can
be identified by their vehicles. They drive new Japanese cars on the roads
and SUVs off the roads, to their encampments and to smuggle goods and people
across the border into Israel.
The corruption is best evidenced by the condition of the roads. The members
of the road repair crews are most often found sleeping along the main roads,
and even the roads that were improved in the past two years are already
shot. Someone simply sent the asphalt somewhere else.
Egypt's revolution is incomplete, as the lack of security in Sinai
illustrates. Campaign posters from the recent parliamentary election and the
presidential election at the end of the month are more scarce in Sinai.
Whereas in other Egyptian cities every wall is covered with a variety of
election posters, in Rafah and El-Arish most are of the charismatic Salafist
preacher Hazem Abu-Ismail. His bearded face jumps out from walls in towns
where all the women are covered from head to foot - and the image of other
candidates is absent.
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