Sinai’s Bedouin run amok in post‑Mubarak Egypt

Article 3. Foreign Policy Sinai’s Bedouin run amok in post- Mubarak Egypt Mohamed Fadel Fahmy AUGUST 24, 2011 -- The landscape of Egypt's lawless North Sinai governorate is punctuated by the bullet-riddled, torched police station of Sheikh Zuweid, a densely populated town roughly nine miles from the Gaza border. It is just one of the security buildings that has fallen victim to the long-running clashes between the military and the Bedouin tribes of the region, clashes that have only escalated since Egypt's revolution. Hosni Mubarak's regime branded the Bedouin, a largely nomadic and clan-based people, as outlaws who threatened Egyptian sovereignty. As his rule collapsed in February, and afterward, the Bedouins sought retribution against the security services that long oppressed them, attempting to carve out a degree of autonomy in the region. The unrest has turned into an economic headache for Egypt's new military rulers: The pipeline that supplies AQ percent of Israel's natural gas has been bombed five times since the revolution, halting the country's natural gas exports. But more importantly, Sinai has become a breeding ground for Islamist extremism and violence that -- barring a dramatic improvement in relations between the Bedouins and the central government in Cairo -- threatens Egypt and the region at large. Sinai's lawlessness recently sparked an international incident: On Aug. 18, gunmen carried out a string of attacks in southern Israel that left eight Israelis dead. The Israeli government, which claimed that the attackers were militants from the Gaza Strip who had crossed into Israel through the porous Sinai border, retaliated by launching attacks in both Gaza and Egypt. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024602