Sometimes not identifying people is a precondition for me being allowed to photograph them. Such was the case with a group of Bedouin arms smugglers in the Sinai peninsula. I actually was tagging along with Abigail Hauslohner, TIME's stringer in Cairo. She wrote about Bedouins who smuggle goods and humans across Egypt's borders with Gaza and Israel. To read her two stories, click here ("Egypt's New Challenge: Sinai's Restive Bedouins") and here ("North Sinai: Security Challenges and Ethnic Tensions").
Saturday, Feb 05, 2011
(From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)
By Matt Bradley in El Arish, Egypt, and Joshua Mitnick in Nitzanei Sinai, Israel
Israeli officials are nervously watching events in Egypt's sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula, worried that a power vacuum in Cairo and the withdrawal of police forces will embolden the Bedouin tribes who help smuggle weapons to Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
In a sign of the rising tensions, Bedouin in the northern Sinai on Friday used rocket-propelled grenades to attack the headquarters of Egypt's state security in El Arish, a town close to Egypt's border crossing into Gaza, according to witnesses.
Israel's fear is that with Egypt's police having all but disappeared from the peninsula ~ after police were asked to step down nationwide on Jan. 28, to make way for the army to restore order amid mass demonstrations ~ the Bedouin will be free to resume weapons smuggling operations into Gaza, bolstering Hamas and threatening Israeli security.
The isolated Sinai Bedouin ~ who number in the hundreds of thousands ~ have long felt mistreated by Egyptian authorities, complaining about heavy-handed treatment by the police and about being excluded from the Sinai Peninsula's recent economic windfall from tourism and mineral resources.
Now, some Bedouins say they have been arming themselves to prevent police from returning to the peninsula.
"The Bedouin need freedom. They need respect. The Bedouin are not hungry for food, they are hungry for honor," said Mosa Delhi, a Bedouin leader.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week agreed to let Egypt deploy 800 additional troops to the Sinai, to replace the police and stabilize the area, though the two countries' peace accords stipulate the peninsula should be demilitarized.
The mayor of the Israeli city of Eilat, which borders Egypt, and a parliament member from the governing coalition expressed concern this week that a security vacuum would let Bedouins help larger numbers of African migrant workers infiltrate the Israeli border.
In Sinai, most Bedouin ~ a largely nomadic ethnic group that live in desert regions across the Middle East ~ are herders and ranchers. They tend to resist national loyalties, choosing instead to hew to tribal alliances and family connections.
Some members of the group have taken to smuggling, and now dominate the trade across the border to the Gaza Strip, largely through tunnels under the border. Bedouins smuggle food, medicine, farm animals and vehicles, in addition to weapons and workers.
Israel placed Gaza under a partial blockade in 2007, and Egyptian security forces that are permitted in the Sinai under the accords have managed to limit arms smuggling. But now, "there is concern that the emergence of a weak regime in Cairo will enable the Bedouins to do what they want," said Dan Schueftan, director of national security studies at Haifa University.
Some Bedouins say they are now more focused on defending their territory. Mr. Delhi, the Bedouin leader, said some weapons smuggling is now moving in reverse ~ from Gaza into Egypt ~ as the Bedouin rearm in case Egyptian police try to return to the peninsula. He said the Bedouin have imported machine guns and bullets since the political unrest began last week.
Mr. Delhi's assertion is difficult to verify. He said the price of an AK-47 on the Sinai doubled from about $1,000 two weeks ago to over $2,000. "We want members from every tribe to organize with the army and not allow the police to come again in Bedouin places," he said.
Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar denied reports of stepped-up activity in the tunnels underneath the Gaza-Sinai border.
Friday's attack on the state security building is the latest in steadily rising tide of violence on the peninsula. Earlier in the week, Mohammed Abu Ras, the leader of a Bedouin tribe who enjoyed friendly relations with the Egyptian forces, was gunned down outside a meeting between tribal leaders and Egyptian army generals, in a vendetta killing that fed fears of rising conflict.
Sinai Bedouins are also widely suspected of having bombed a natural-gas pipeline that connects Egypt with Jordan and Syria in June. That attack followed a series of violent confrontations with police.
This week, at the Egyptian side of the border crossing into the Gaza Strip, a military detachment patrolled the area. The crossing remained closed.
On the Israeli side of the border with Egypt, 30 miles southeast of El Arish at Nitzanei Sinai, Israeli soldiers said they have been on heightened alert since the Egyptian police withdrew.
Menachm Zafrir, a former civilian security liaison at the border farming cooperative at Nitzanei Sinai, said he has noticed in the past week that Egyptian border forces are no longer facing toward Israel. They have turned around toward Sinai, he said, "to make sure the Bedouin don't slaughter them."
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Richard Boudreaux and Charles Levinson contributed to this article.
Photographs and commentary by Holly Pickett
It's always pretty challenging to photograph people who can't actually be photographed.
One of the smugglers cleans his Glock pistol.
The Glock was overwhelmingly the chosen sidearm
for the smugglers we hung out with.
One of the smugglers' wives.
Me trying to be creative with the whole I-have-photograph-you-but-can't-photograph-you thing.
The Egyptian National soccer team pulled out a win over Algeria,
and, in a show of their power, the smugglers rode through the village
of Sheikh Ziyad, leading the parade of honking vehicles.
One of the smugglers got a bit carried away and fired his weapon into the air.
We did a lot of driving around the desert aimlessly.
We kept hoping they'd show us an arms shipment
or take us to a group of Somalis in a safe house,
waiting to be smuggled across the border.
But, they didn't. Instead we saw an Israeli border post
in the middle of the Sinai desert.
Then the smugglers took us to see one of the poor Bedouin families
living in the middle of nowhere.
This woman's father was lying behind her and too ill to stand.
Here we are again, whisked away to the desert to visit more Bedouin families.
Quite beautiful out in the desert.
Sabeha. She doesn't know how old she is, but thinks she's 50 or 60.
A sandstorm colored the air the next day.
It really does feel like the end of the earth.
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