Kidnapping of U.S. tourists is latest blow for Egypt

The abduction of two American women and their Egyptian guide at gunpoint along a major highway in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula Friday is the latest blow to the country’s crucial tourism industry, already in tatters as violence escalates a year after the revolution that ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak.



The two tourists, who were reportedly released into army custody hours after their capture, were among a group of five people traveling from Saint Catherine’s monastery in central Sinai to the popular resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh when a vehicle carrying men with machine guns stopped their small bus, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

Local officials told the Associated Press the attackers were Bedouin tribesmen who resist government control and have been blamed for several attacks in recent months as tensions intensify between them and authorities they accuse of discrimination and of ignoring their plight.

In late January, a French tourist was killed and two others injured after a group of masked gunmen robbed a currency exchange shop and exchanged fire with security forces in Sharm El-Sheikh.

Also last month, Bedouin seized 50 German and British tourists whose bus accidentally crossed a roadblock they had set up as a protest against the governor of South Sinai. Those tourists, who were also on a trip to the monastery, were released a few hours later. And four armed men also attacked a hotel in an Egyptian Red Sea resort popular with Israeli tourists before fleeing when police returned fire.

“The Bedouin are among the many marginalised groups in Egypt pressing for their rights since the revolution began last year,” Elijah Zarwan, a Cairo-based political analyst, told London’s Guardian.

“There’s long been a security vacuum in the Sinai and now on top of that you have a more generalised security vacuum throughout Egypt. It’s no wonder that the Bedouins, who are often well-armed, feel emboldened to press for their rights more forcefully.”

Egypt has faced a surge in crime since the uprising, which uprooted a police state that kept tight control over the population of 85 million. Protesters accuse the police and the military council that has assumed power of negligence.

On Friday, a demonstrator and an army officer were reported dead in Cairo as rock-throwing protesters fought riot police through clouds of teargas near Egypt’s Interior Ministry. It was the second day of clashes triggered by the deaths Wednesday of 74 people at a soccer match in the Mediterranean city of Port Said, in the country’s deadliest incident since the revolution.

Tourism Minister Mounir Abdel-Nour said last month that the number of tourists who came to Egypt in 2011 dropped to 9.8 million from 14.7 million the previous year. Revenues for the year clocked in at $8.8 billion compared to $12.5 billion in 2010.


http://www.theinset.com/2012/02/kidnapping-tourists-latest-blow/