CAIRO – Time and again the matter of security presents itself as a priority that has to be solved because state sovereignty is drastically in danger. The critical situation is manifested in the fact that individuals as well as entire villages and groups are taking their rights into their own hands while some members of the police force are refraining from getting involved with the public. The situation assumes even more serious dimensions in Sinai, where Salafists (ultra-fundamentalist Islamists) have decided that they will replace the police in maintaining stability and justice and settling disputes. The Salafist group in Sinai has said that it would form litigation committees to work through magistrate's courts that apply Islamic law instead of the traditional customary law applied by councils of tribal elders to settle disputes in Bedouin societies. As such the Salafists would gradually be creating a state within a state until Sinai ended up as an isolated part of the nation ruled by its own laws. One of the group's founders was quoted as saying that, in the absence of a competent government, the group's justice committee would engage armed volunteers to restore rights by force if necessary. The armed clashes that took place in Sohag last week between residents of the town of Gerga and the village of Naga Oweis village triggered by a traffic accident are another aspect of the same story. Astonishingly, an angry mob from Gerga broke into the town police station to steal some 400 pieces of guns. It was only after the intervention of the armed forces that the people returned the stolen arms. Reports concerning the spread of violence and all forms of security violations indicate nothing but a crack in the police wall and inefficient government handling of this file. But more importantly these incidents sound the alarm that the state is speeding towards a perilous turn.
