SINAI — A call by President Mohammed Morsi on the Bedouin tribes of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to surrender their weapons was met with strident refusal and lots of jeering. The burgeoning security crisis the mountainous terrain continues to face made the tribesmen keener on keeping their weapons locked, loaded, and at hand. 

President Morsi made his call after the release of seven security personnel abducted on May 16 by armed militants in the northeastern corner of Sinai near the Gaza border. But that release was mainly a fruit of mediations by the heavily armed leaders of the Menaei clan, the most feared sub-family of the 70,000-member Sawarka tribe, whose authority extends over hundreds of miles between the coastal Rafah and El-Arish and all the way south to Al-Hasana in Middle Sinai.

“Are you [Morsi] going to secure Sinai if we hand over our guns?” asked Sheikh Ahmed El-Herish, the revered kingpin of the Qararsha tribe who single-handedly ordered a total blockade of the southern half of the peninsula four times since the January 2011 uprising, three times when government officials begged for his efforts to release kidnapped tourists, and once when two members of his tribe were shot dead at a police checkpoint. 

“It was the tribal firepower, authority, and self restraint that released the soldiers and the tourists without any losses. And that call reflects the crippled mentality behind those who think that surrendering guns would stabilize Sinai,” said El-Herish.