In Pictures

In Pictures: Egypt’s troubled Sinai peninsula

The Sinai has become more volatile since Egypt’s revolution – the result, many say, of years of government neglect.

Bedouins are not officially allowed to own land, serve in the army or police, or profit from local tourism. Many locals cannot claim ownership of the ancestral lands their families and tribes have been using for centuries.

By

Mosa'ab Elshamy

27 Dec 2012

Since the Egyptian uprising in 2011, the Sinai peninsula – a vast land of mountains and deserts – has become increasingly volatile. The new government inherited a legacy of lawlessness caused by 30 years of neglect, marginalisation and hostility between the Bedouins native to the region and the state.

The rise of attacks against army checkpoints and police stations have spurred calls for more development in the region, which many see as a possible solution to the unrest.

A father and his son inspect a damaged train station in Sinai. Armed groups looted and destroyed the train station in the city of Baluza in 2001. Since 2008 there has been no train transport to or from Sinai.

Advertisement

A now-deserted police checkpoint in north Sinai is one of many that has been attacked by armed Bedouins with heavy weaponry.

Hassan Al Akhrasi, an influential leader of the Akharsah tribes, was an ex-member of the local committee in Baluza, where many Bedouins feel marginalised and ignored. They complain they do not gain from government investment and economic development.

Construction of a resort on Morgana beach in northern Sinai was underway before it was halted by a former governor during the Mubarak era. He was said to have cancelled the project to protect a tycoon whose own resorts might have been negatively affected by the competition.

A natural gas pipeline running through the Sinai has been targeted more than a dozen times since the 2011 uprising. Bedouins who oppose the peace treaty and export of gas to Israel have attacked the pipeline, which starts in the building pictured above and extends hundreds of kilometres through the desert.

More weapons have reportedly been flowing into Sinai, mostly coming from Libya. Weapons also arrived through the tunnels connecting Egypt and Gaza, and some have also been smuggled from Israel.

Advertisement

A child inspects a destroyed security building in Rafah, which was targeted by armed groups during the uprising. The Mubarak government(***)s iron-fist policy in Sinai alienated Bedouins and resulted in violent attacks on state buildings during the uprising.

In the town of Muqata(***)a, buildings show damage from shelling and gunfire. The town is said to be a hotbed of hard-line groups who clashed with the army during Operation Eagle, launched after 16 Egyptian soldiers were killed in August.

The church in Rafah was targeted by gunmen during the uprising, and has since been abandoned without repairs ever having been made.

Hateful messages were written on the walls of the church, the only one in the city.

Human Rights Watch has released a report about a trafficking network in Sinai that has victimised hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sub-Saharan asylum seekers and migrants, most of them Eritreans. The traffickers imprison their victims in Sinai until their relatives pay tens of thousands of dollars for their release.

In the border town of Rafah, goods and people smuggling to Gaza has thrived for years using the subterranean tunnels burrowed beneath the border. Just a few hundred metres away from the besieged strip, Rafah lives almost exclusively on the tunnels(***) economic activity, a more-or-less open secret.

More from Gallery

Most Read