Camels not deterred by surveillance

Press, 9 December 1976, Page 20

Camels not deterred by surveillance

By

DIAL TORGERSON,

, in the “Guardian,” London

After nine months of operation, the supervisors of the American-run surveillance system between the Egyptians and Israelis say it effectively prevents the type of war which spread through the desert in 1967 and 1973. One thing it cannot prevent, however, is the intrusion of the thirsty nomadic Bedouin. The Sinai Field Mission (S.F.M.) system was built at a first-year cost of SUS3OM to separate, safely and dispassionately, the armies of Egypt and Israel and it probably will keep tanks out of the historic Mitla and Giddi passes. But what about camels? “Our sensors pick up the sound of the tread of camels’ hooves,” an S.F.M. official said. He showed the kind of mark they make on a graph-like tape that records every footfall in key areas of the two passes. “We can tell they are camels from the speed, which is shown by the spacing of the ticks on the papers," he said. No-one is supposed to be in the 20-by-10-mile rectangle around the two passes without permission from the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), which enforces the terms of the American-sponsored Egyp t i a n-Israeli Sinai Accords of 1975. Currently the force is composed of a battalion of Ghanaian soldiers. But by the time the United Nations outfit gets to the site of the footfalls, the Bedouins usually have disappeared. Explaining the 1975 Sinai Accords to the Bedouins is

something everyone forgot. Technically they are citizens of Egypt. But the Sinai nomads, have little understanding of such matters and the Egyptians do not warn them that they are entering the world’s most closely scrutinised piece of desert. “There’s a group that’s been camped Just below the south-west corner of the zone for two days now,” said Nicolas Thorne, a United States State Department officer who is in charge of the S.F.N. “We’re watching for them. It’s the end of the dry season and they are coming up from the south, looking for water. There’s water along the old path used by the pilgrims on their way to Mecca.” He pointed on a map to Coints about six miles apart etween the parallel, east west passes. “We’ve had 30 to 40 in a week, much more than before,” he. said. United Nations headquarters in Jerusalem says that previously there only had been that many in a month. There are about 7000 Bedouins in the Sinai in 11 nomadic tribes. Most of them live along the Mediterranean coastal plain. Previously administered to by Israel, most were turned over to the care of the Egyptians when the Israelis withdrew last year from buffer zone areas. The ones wandering into S.F.M. territory are those living in the southern Sinai. Each time the S.F.M.’s three outposts report the presence of Bedouins, troops of the Ghana battalion are sent to escort them out of the crucial area. But the Ghanaians have been here only two months and do not

know desert scouting. They often lose the Bedouins in the maze of caves in the area. “We’re never happy having Bedouins here,” said Thome. “We never know who they really are. We assume they are armed.” There have been no cases of Bedouins attacking anyone. They apparently are merely following the ancient trails in search of water in a bar-

ren land. But they make the Americans on the lookout posts nervous. “We don’t know but what some might be holding a grudge against one side of the other and might want to take it out on the Americans,” an S.F.M. official explained at the lonely Giddi Pass East Station. Windows from the prefab building look down into steep-walled Giddi Pass, a

half-mile wide at the bottom, through which tanks rolled in the great armoured battles of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Two technicians at a time operate the recording devices, which monitor sensors in the pass below, on 12-hour shifts. They also have a telescope powerful enough to count the notches on a fence post at 18 miles, and an electronically enhanced “star-

light scope” which makes night seem like day. For their reassurance there is a Ghanaian United Nations platoon 100 yards away. But the post is unlikely to be the scene of another war. The Giddi and Mitla passes are the only feasible tank routes betwen the Suez Canal and the vast Sinai interior. The 1975 agreements guarantee that no one can be taken by surprise.