DAHAB, Egypt: The Bedouin of the Sinai Peninsula felt the shadow of suspicion fall across their tight-knit community on Tuesday after bombs killed 24 people in the tourist resort of Dahab on the eastern coast. At the Bedouin-run Mirage Village hotel in Dahab, not far from the scene of Monday s bombings, manager Atef Salem counted off practical reasons why he believed fellow Bedouin would not have carried out the attacks. Tourism is the main livelihood for the south Sinai Bedouin and by community tradition they must welcome guests, he said, between taking condolence calls and arranging rooms and transport for customers. But Salem and other Bedouin working in Dahab s tourist industry said they still feared they would be the scapegoats for the bombings. I expect this, Salem said. They blame us because Sinai is known as a place where Bedouin live and know every single mountain and valley. They believe no one can get across the desert in Sinai to the tourist areas except the Bedouin. The Bedouin, especially in the less touristy northern peninsula, have borne the brunt of the heavy-handed Egyptian police response to the previous attacks. Thousands of them spent long periods in detention without charge. Their families say police, desperate for information about the mysterious bombers, beat and tortured them. Prominent Egyptian sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim said Bedouins may be disproportionately targeted in any ensuing security sweep, which would fuel resentment against the state. Police have formally detained at least 30 people, all Egyptians, in connection with the bombings. But police said around 70 local Bedouin had also been pulled in for questioning. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, which bore the hallmarks of two previous coordinated attacks in the region that killed around 100 people and that the government attributed to a group of local militants. Security-wise, they (the government) usually over-react. They will, I expect, crack down in a wholesale manner that will alienate Sinai residents even more, Ibrahim said. They usually suspect the Bedouin. They treat them as if they don t have loyalty. Partly it is stupidity and partly lack of sensitivity. The mindset is that every time anything happens, the Bedouin are over-charged. The Sinai Bedouin are a community distinct from the Nile Valley people who have come in large numbers since Egypt recovered the territory under a 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Those from the Nile Valley dominate the police, government and the large investments in the tourist industry. The Bedouin, traditionally nomads but now mostly settled, have a tradition of lawlessness and ignoring the state. Sinai s lucrative marijuana trade is based on Bedouin producers. The Bedouin in Dahab say they mostly escaped the sweeps that followed the previous bombings, which they said seemed to affect other Bedouin from further north. The northerners are under much more suspicion than we are. They have no economic interests here, said tour guide Faraj Salem, a southerner. The northerners have fewer connections to tourism and are more dependent on agriculture and trade. Some of the Bedouin appeared unconvinced by reports that Bedouin from north Sinai were behind the attacks, but stopped short of ruling out their involvement entirely. It could happen, said Saleh Hussein, a northern Bedouin who has worked in Dahab s tourist industry for 12 years and helps to manage a beach campsite. Bedouin are not all good ... But Bedouin are the ones who live here, so normally if something happens . [the authorities] will blame whoever is around. Reuters
