CAIRO - One of the many problems that can't wait till the election of a new president to be resolved is the smuggling of weapons into the country across different borders, especially the Libyan border. Police keep stopping vehicles stuffed with weapons on the nation's highways, which shows that something must be urgently done to secure the borders. At the same time, neighbouring countries have a big responsibility to curb the smuggling of weapons from their territories into Egypt; one thing they can do to stop these dirty operations that threaten the country's stability is to post more soldiers to guard the borders. One of the main missions of the armed forces is to guard the country's borders and prevent drugs and weapons being smuggled in. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, in charge of the country since Mubarak's downfall, should be doing its best to prevent such smuggling. In the early days of the revolution, a huge number of weapons were stolen from police stations and prisons, whose doors the former regime flung open, so the prisoners could escape and cause chaos, in order to punish the people for their revolution. This cunning, nasty scheme proved successful and society was plunged into terrible insecurity, from which the economy is still reeling, while the flow of tourists to the country has fallen to a trickle. But now the Ministry of the Interior is making serious efforts to arrest the criminals and confiscate the stolen weapons. The Director of Criminal Investigation, General Ahmed Helmi Azab, told the People's Assembly's Defence and National Security Committee that about 18,000 fugitives from justice have been arrested in police raids, while around 6,000 of the 16,000 weapons stolen from the Ministry during the revolution have been recovered. Many criminals use guns these days and this is a big challenge for security men who cannot match the firepower they employ in their raids on banks and when they steal people's cars and rob their homes. While the Ministry of the Interior is intensifying its efforts to retrieve the stolen weapons, the armed forces should be doing its best to prevent other weapons being smuggled across the borders into the country.
