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Poppies Replace Tourists in Egypt's Sinai Desert
(Christian Science Monitor) Gert Van Langendonck - Egypt's unrest has led to a sharp slump in tourism in southern Sinai, where resorts that cater to foreigners line the Red Sea coast. Bedouins who made a living from tourism have turned to illegal opium production, risking the death penalty if caught. Poppy cultivation began in Sinai in the early 1990s. Until then, opium had been smuggled from Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, before the Syrian Army - then occupying Lebanon - began cracking down. Egypt's 2011 revolution chased police off the streets, creating a security vacuum in which drug seizures dropped to almost nothing.