Traditionally Arab nomadic pastoralist groups that made their living by raising camel and other livestock, many Bedouins who have settled in Egypt today have, within the last 100 years, been forced to become sedentary, seasonal farmers or to find jobs.[1]
Most Egyptian Bedouins practice Sunni Islam and speak dozens of Bedouin dialects of Arabic, though some communities in southeastern Egypt speak a dialect of Beja, an Afro-Asiatic language, called Rotana.[2]
Demography
Estimations of Egypt’s Bedouin population vary – only recently were the Bedouins counted separately from the larger Egyptian population by the CIA World Factbook, which in 2007 counts Bedouins, Berbers, Nubians and Bejas as representing one percent of Egypt’s population, or about 800,000.[3] According to CNN, it’s not clear how many Bedouins live in the Sinai; estimates range from fewer than a 100,000 to several times that many.[4] Civil Society magazine, published in Egypt by the Ibn Khaldun Center, estimates that 80,000 Bedouins are currently living in the Sinai Peninsula.[5]
Geographic Distribution
Egypt’s Bedouins mostly live in the Sinai Peninsula, but also populate the Eastern and Western Deserts, and more recently, urban centers. Bedouin communities also exist in the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Palestine, Israel, Syria and Jordan.[6]
Historic Hardship
Egypt’s three deserts – the Sinai and the Western and Eastern Deserts – were administered independently and separately from the Nile Valley and the Delta from the mid-19th to mid-20th century; the Bedouin there were excluded from the Egyptian army –a major vehicle for upward mobility – and denied national identification cards until they were brought back into the army as Egyptian citizens in 1947.[7]
From the 1940s to the 1970s, Bedouins experienced a shift from a nomadic toward a settled lifestyle, from livestock to agricultural production.[8] Individuals have been allowed to claim “squatter’s rights” to desert tracks, but their legal ownership of the land is not recognized, and government efforts during the 1970s and 1980s towards the goals of urban development and tourism in desert regions often led the government to “reclaim” the land.[9]
Bedouins in Egypt and elsewhere have lost much of their traditional lifestyle and have been marginalized by emerging states in the Middle East, which have tried to take over their lands and force them to settle in order to conform to projects of modernity and border control. More recently, Bedouins who happen to live in areas that are considered strategic or economically viable, such as tourist areas or oil wells, have again been removed from these areas by their governments.[10]
Ongoing Hardship
Under government pressure, Egypt’s Bedouin population continues to look for viable land and work.[11] According to Civil Society, the Bedouins living in the Sinai are one of the poorest, most marginalized, and underrepresented ethnic minority groups in Egypt.[12] While some are capitalizing on the tourism boom, others face absolute deprivation – lack of development and rampant unemployment are chief complaints.[13] In an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, Abou Salem, a Bedouin living in a squalid camp near el-Arish, said that “no one is working.”[14]
In southeastern Egypt, many Bedouins are suffering from drought and loss of grazing land for their herds.[15] As their herds continue to grow smaller, charcoaling has become increasingly important, as has work in the camel market, where men earn less than six dollars a week.[16] Two years ago, the World Food Program began agricultural projects to offer an alternative to life in the desert, but the program is encountering numerous problems, including a language barrier, as the tribes in this region do not speak Arabic.[17]
The Egyptian government is also known to confront the Bedouin population with its abusive security forces in an attempt to violently squelch the possibility of future Sinai resort town bombings and to limit trafficking.[18] Bedouin tribes in the Sinai are assumed to participate in the trafficking of women, weapons and drugs, including cannabis, heroin and opium, to and from Eastern Europe, Israel and North Africa.[19]
“The government is really trying to shunt off the responsibility here [for Egypt’s ills, including the Sinai bombings and rampant poverty] and scapegoat a social group that is really living not so much as a way of life anymore as much as they are living as a culture, as a symbol of a way of life that used to be but really no longer is.”[20]
