Libyan Weapons in the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza while Obama Fiddles

The Washington Post ran an article today about arms from Libya making their way into the Sinai Peninsula by way of Egypt and flooding the black market there.

Leila Fadel, the reporter, whose sources are former Egyptian military officials and arms traders in the Sinai, wrote : “Egyptian security officials have intercepted surface-to-air missiles, most of them shoulder-launched, on the road to Sinai and in the smuggling tunnels connecting Egypt to the Gaza Strip since Moammar Gaddafi fell from power in Libya in August, a military official in Cairo said. Arms traders said the weapons available on Sinai’s clandestine market include rockets and antiaircraft guns.”

Obviously, the January revolution in Egypt made access to the Sinai easier and if we add the revolution in Libya and the reported massive caches of Qadhafi weapons still unaccounted for despite UN efforts to track them down, the result is not surprising.

But, having shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles available in the very unstable Sinai and Gaza Strip areas raises the instability level several notches. It also threatens internal populated areas in Israel, which are on Gaza’s borders.

Israeli aircraft and helicopters patrol theses areas. Surface-to-air missile capability in the hands of Hamas, as former Egyptian military experts told Fadel, exist today and put Israeli forces in yet another set of unpredictably dangerous circumstances. But, so far, Hamas- directed Palestinian fighters have not used such weapons against Israeli targets.

Egypt has sent 20,000 troops into the Sinai to intercept and confiscate weapons with some success, including the capture of Russian-made heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles. But, Sinai is populated by Bedouin tribes who do not want to comply with Egyptian orders to surrender weapons or register them. According to Fadel, the Bedouins say they are uneasy about their own safety and have bought missiles to protect their families. Right. It would help to remember that these Bedouins' main cash business is smuggling contraband of all sorts into Gaza in contravention of yet other UN resolutions.   

As yet, there is no serious al-Qaida or Islamist presence in the Sinai but there are groups who occasionally attack tourists and distribute Islamist pamphlets, according to sources Fadel talked with.

This expansion of the Gaza-Palestinian-Israeli conflict makes the region’s tinderbox even more likely to catch fire. American and UN diplomats are working with Egypt to halt the arms trafficking, forbidden in the Sinai and Gaza Strip by UN resolutions, but it will not be an easy matter to seal the borders between Libya and Egypt and the Sinai now that the Egyptian army has other problems to cope with after the January revolution. 

Just one more item for the Republican presidential hopefuls to try to find an answer for...so far, Mr. Obama has settled for speeches and lateral attacks on Israeli positions vis-à-vis Palestine and Hamas. I hope the GOP can come up with something a little more helpful.