(Ha'aretz) Anshel Pfeffer - Egyptian army roadblocks are now manned by soldiers using APCs rather than police officers, but many are abandoned at night. Despite the reinforcements, 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 fear of Bedouin attacks. The reinforcements did not prevent the attacks on the natural gas pipeline to Israel, which was recently sabotaged again for the 14th time. 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, 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. In Rafah and El-Arish in Sinai, most of the election posters are of the 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.
2012-04-12 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive