Eyes in the desert: Gandhi in the desert of Sinai

By Alganesh Fessaha

In the past five years thirty thousand people, mostly young, have been kidnapped and enslaved. Among them an estimated ten thousand people have been killed and an unknown number have suffered unspeakable torture and sexual abuse. Although largely ignored the chronicles of death camps in the Sinai desert never seem to find an ending. In the dark caves, in the house basements turned into prisons, mankind demonstrates an atavistic cruelty, caused by greed, racial and religious hatred.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edizioni SUI
• Release date: Jul 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9788899055127

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Introduction

In the past five years thirty thousand people, mostly young, have been kidnapped and enslaved. Among them an estimated ten thousand people have been killed and an unknown number have suffered unspeakable torture and sexual abuse. Although largely ignored the chronicles of death camps in the Sinai desert never seem to find an ending. In the dark caves, in the house basements turned into prisons, mankind demonstrates an atavistic cruelty, caused by greed, racial and religious hatred. Currently in the Sinai and along the ancient route that connects it to the Sudan and Sahel a new mafia has restored the slave trade by making the traffic of human beings’ more efficient: they employ a sophisticated criminal process requiring money transfer payments and mobile phones to extort ransom from the victims’ relatives. The network mechanism is not yet completely clear. A UN report says that one of this century’s worst human trafficking episodes is taking place now in the Biblical desert of Sinai. It started in 2008 in the Mediterranean Sea following Italian authorities’ refusals to accept refugees, who were then returned to the shores of Libya. This led traffickers to propose to the constant stream of refugees – mostly from Eritrea, but also from Ethiopia, Sudan, Mali, and Chad -- an alternative route to reach the West by passing through Israel.

The trafficking up to Sinai has always been organized by Rashaidas’ clan, a nomadic tribe of the desert that inhabits between the Sudan and Eritrea, as well as by Bedouins. In the desert, refugees pass into the hands of Egyptian Bedouins to be transported to the northern border with Israel.

In 2008, some clan members from the two ethnic groups came to an agreement to establish kidnapping chains that would provide a more lucrative business. First the refugees pay the Rashaida men to be smuggled from May Ayni camp in Ethiopia, from Shegarab in Sudan or from Kartoum, then they are handed over to Bedouin bandits, belonging to an organized criminal group, which then hold them hostage. After the peace treaty of 1979 between Egypt and Israel, Sinai became a lawless territory, where Cairo Security Forces can enter