The police have launched a comprehensive plan to stop a flourishing massive car smuggling traffic from the Western Desert, which has become the main border crossing between war-torn Libya and the Egyptian cities of el-Salloum and Mersa Matrouh, security sources said on Thursday. For the police, the sources added, it is a difficult mission to stop car smuggling, which has picked up momentum because of the political turmoil in Libya and the harsh nature of the Western Desert. They said the first leg for the smuggled cars ending up in el-Salloum, Mersa Matrouh and finally the port city of Alexandria is an elaborate network of routes that pass through the barren Western Desert. The border police are trying to stop the cars flow before they reach their final destination in Alexandria — by intercepting smugglers in the desert, which is difficult to control because of its huge size and lack of modern surveillance equipment. A security source, who asked not to be identified, said it was impossible to say how many shipments of smuggled cars have sneaked through the desert. "But it is fair to say that the cars the police have seized are only a tiny fraction. The police acknowledge that for each car shipment they catch, others get into Egypt through the desert and reach their final destination in Alexandria, where they are sold at relatively cheap prices," the source said, according to the Cairo evening newspaper Al-Messa. Police in Alexandria say that a smuggled American-made Hammer is sold for LE150,000, whereas its actual market price may exceed LE2 million. "A smuggled Japanese Lancer is sold for LE45,000, whereas its price is double this amount," a police officer said, according to the Cairo evening newsaper, Al-Messa. "These car smugglers are destroying the Egyptian economy. Out of every smuggled car, they take money from the State coffers," he said. Although the police have clamped down on smaller smuggling routes, they acknowledge the Western Desert is a problem because the forces are under-equipped, he lamented. "Protecting a land border is very difficult," he said, demanding that police should be provided by helicopters and sophisticated surveillance systems. He called the smuggling efforts "relentless" and said the police are constantly scouring the known desert routes in search of smugglers, declining to say whether any car busts have taken place recently.
