Egyptian military trucks loaded with light tanks line up in El-Arish ahead of an operation to restore security in northern Sinai on August 9, 2012[/caption]The situation in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is dire and someone needs to do something about it.
Last week, the Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land reissued their appeal of March 2012 calling on the international community, Israeli and Egyptian authorities “to intensify their efforts to fight the ongoing trafficking in human beings in Sinai, their abuse, humiliation, torture, rape and murder.”
Though there are a number of groups operating in the Sinai, it is the Bedouin, long neglected by the Egyptian government (approximately 90 percent are unemployed), who are perpetrating these acts, including alleged organ theft, in what have been so far successful efforts to extort large sums of money from victims’ friends and families.
Note the story published by The Guardian this past February. An African man, who was fortunate enough to reach Israel after paying a ransom, spent nine months in captivity, where he sustained severe beatings and electric shocks. Three men held with him were beat to death.
Physicians for Human Rights, an organization based in Israel, has documented the torture in Sinai of 900 refugees over an 18-month period.
The increasing numbers of Africans, mostly from Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, fleeing to Israel coincide with a 16-month security vacuum following the downfall of the Mubarak government. All groups operating in the area—takfiri jihadists, Bedouin, the Egyptian Army, Israeli intelligence and Hamas-affiliated operatives—are clearly exploiting the situation, and in the meantime, fighting with one another.
On Monday, for example, a group of armed men shot and killed a tribal leader and his son, who were returning from a conference organized by tribal leaders to condemn violence. Last Sunday, on 5 August, unidentified armed men gunned down 16 Egyptian soldiers at a military post just south of Rafah.
In addition to human trafficking, Bedouin groups, in consort with various jihadist groups, are also trafficking drugs and weapons, a racket that has gone on for nearly a decade, but has seen an upsurge of activity.
Though these latter crimes have elicited a response from the Egyptian Army, the governments on both sides of the divide (Israel and Egypt) have relied on ineffective, and, in the case of Egypt, internationally unacceptable policies to maintain border security.
The Egyptian government recently blamed the reason for its apparent incompetence in maintaining security in the Sinai on the Egypt Israel peace treaty, which resulted in the demilitarization of the Sinai in 1981. Though Israel allowed Egypt to move about 800 of its soldiers into the territory in January 2011, the Morsi government says that it’s not nearly enough. Amending the peace treaty would be difficult, however, due in part to Israel’s anxiety over a gradual amassing of Egyptian forces on its southern border.
Egypt will need to act fast if it wants to protect its sovereignty, because the statements coming from Israeli government officials these days signal their willingness to enter Sinai again and secure the area themselves.
