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TOPIC: egypt

In The News

Morocco’s Rescue Race, Kim Express, “Lucky” NZ Climber

👋 Khulumkha!*

Welcome to Monday, where rescuers race to find survivors after Friday’s devastating earthquake in Morocco, Kim Jong-un is reportedly on a train to Russia, and a climber in New Zealand escapes unscathed from a dramatic 600-meter fall. Meanwhile, Simonetta Sciandivasci in Italian daily La Stampa pinpoints Gen-Z’s own version of “Big Brother”: location sharing.

[*Kokborok, India and Bangladesh]

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"The Mine Of The Dead": Inside Egypt's Desert Gold War

There is a long history of mining in Egypt that goes back thousands of years, but has largely been dormant over the past century. But it's picking up now, with troubling ramifications.

ASWAN – Standing at any point in the deserts of Aswan and looking out across the vast expanse of sand that stretches out toward the horizon in all directions, the vastness, the seeming emptiness, it is hard to imagine that this is the staging ground of a slow brewing war.

But in the last few years, the Eastern Desert has become a warzone.

Warplanes conduct reconnaissance missions. There are ambushes along desert roads, raids, military trials, the deaths of security forces, men toting guns on social media to tout their strength.

But this isn’t a war of ideology or a political struggle over the fallout of revolution and counter-revolution. No. The frontier lands of Aswan are the site of a different conflict: a gold war.

“Gold is like fish, and the desert is like the sea,” says an informal miner in Aswan, describing their work to Mada Masr. And the fishermen are many, from smugglers and local tribesmen to groups of Egyptian laborers, migrants and miners.

Estimates put the reserves of the Sukari mine, one of the biggest mines in the Eastern Desert, at around six million ounces of gold alone. The price of a single ounce of gold in Egypt is now over $1,900.

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Moscow Drone Attacks, Palestinians Flee, L.A. Supermoon

👋 નમસ્તે*

Welcome to Tuesday, where Russia reports drone attacks on Moscow as Putin takes part in his first international event since the Wagner mutiny, thousands of Palestinians are fleeing the Jenin refugee camp, and enter Threads, Meta’s response to Twitter. Meanwhile, German daily Die Welt gets exclusive access to the production floor of the armament Rheinmetall factory, which is running at Cold War levels to supply Ukrainian forces.

[*Namaste - Gujarati, India]

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This Happened — July 3: Egyptian Military Coup

On this day 10 years ago, a military coup led to the overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. The coup was orchestrated by the Egyptian military, led by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who later became the President of Egypt.

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Migrant Lives
Georg Altrogge, Maike Backhaus, Lennart Pfahler, Tim Röhn, Antonio Sempere

Death Trap At Sea — An Exclusive Investigation Of The Migrant Tragedy In Greek Waters

Hundreds of people died when a boat carrying migrants capsized on its way to Europe. Eyewitnesses raise serious accusations: were Greek officials to blame for the disaster? And what role does the "smuggling mafia" play? Die Welt reconstructs the events of the tragedy.

PYLOS — The drama began on the morning of Friday, June 9, 2023. From the Libyan port of Tobruk, Muhammad Nadeem called his nephew, Zohaib Shamraiz, who answered the phone from Barcelona. Shamraiz, 21, has been living there since he left his homeland of Pakistan six years ago.

The uncle wanted to go to Europe, too. But now, about to board a blue-hulled fishing boat that should take him to Italy in the next few hours, he has doubts. Muhammad Nadeem tells his nephew that far too many people wanted to get on the boat. He also tells him about a mafia that will probably force him to board anyway. These men had knives and guns, they threatened him.

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This Happened

This Happened — June 10: The Six-Day War Ends

On this day in 1967, the Six-Day War came to an end, as Israel faced off against its Arab neighbors, including Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Hannelore Crolly, Ricarda Breyton

Belarus May Be Pushing Migrants Into The EU Again — This Time With Russian Help

In 2021, Belarus strongman Lukashenko triggered a migration crisis when he actively drove asylum seekers to the EU. According to the German government, those numbers are on the rise again.

-Analysis-

BERLIN — In the nine months between July 2022 and March 2023 alone, Germany's Federal Police registered 8,687 people who entered Germany undocumented after a Belarus connection. This has emerged from the Ministry of the Interior's response to an inquiry by MP Andrea Lindholz, deputy chair of the Christian Social Union (CSU) parliamentary group, which was made available to Die Welt.

The migration pressure on the Belarus route — which was now supposedly closed after a huge crisis in 2021 that saw Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko threatening to "flood" the EU with drugs and migrants — has thus increased significantly again.

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"Apparently, about half of the people who enter the EU illegally every month via the German-Polish border enter the EU via Belarus," Lindholz told Die Welt. In an autocratic state like this, border crossings on this scale are certainly no coincidence, she said. "It is obvious that these illegal entries are part of a strategy to destabilize the EU."

In addition to flexible controls at the border with Poland, stationary ones are also needed, said Lindholz. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser should agree on a concrete roadmap with Poland "on how to significantly reduce illegal entries into Germany." Lindholz also called on the German government to revoke landing permits for airlines that facilitate illegal migration via Russia and Belarus.

The Belarus route had already caused concern throughout the EU in 2021. At that time, sometimes highly dramatic scenes took place at the border with Poland. Thousands of migrants tried to enter the EU undocumented — many of them transported there by soldiers or border guards of Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko. Poland even feared an attempt to break through the border en masse.

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Geopolitics
Justine Babin

Sudan's Humanitarian Crisis Is Forcing Refugees To Cross Into Egypt

More than 14,000 Sudanese people have already crossed the border into neighboring Egypt to flee the conflict in their country. On arrival, they say there are chaotic scenes.

ASWAN — In a makeshift tent, as Nubian music buzzes in the background, Aïda Hussein prepares some “jabana." She sells this spiced coffee for a small sum to her compatriots, exhausted after their days-long ordeal escaping the violent battles that have shaken Sudan for more than two weeks.

The clashes between Abdel Fattah Al Burhan’s armed forces and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have already killed more than 528 people and injured 4,599, according to official reports. The generals shared power following a coup in October of 2021. Egypt supports the Sudanese armed forces, despite not having officially positioned themselves in relation to the conflict.

Fighting continues despite a ceasefire. "The scale and speed at which events are unfolding in Sudan (are) unprecedented," the United Nations said in a statement on Sunday, before sending their chief of humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, to the region.

While most of the 75,000 people who fled according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) are internally displaced, some were able to take refuge abroad. According to the Egyptian authorities, more than 14,000 Sudanese nationals crossed into Egypt last week.

They arrived through one of two border crossings. Some 20,000 people have also taken refuge in Chad, very close to western Darfur. Another 6,000 have taken refuge in the Central African Republic, while others have gone to Ethiopia.

One of the first drop-off points for refugees is Karkar’s bus station. It is a three-hour drive from the border and around 30 kilometers south of the touristic city of Aswan. New arrivals describe a chaotic reception, a situation they did not expect from a combat-free zone.

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This Happened

This Happened - March 26: Israel-Egypt Peace

Signed on this day in 1979, the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was a historic agreement, formally ending the state of war between the two nations and established diplomatic and economic relations.

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This Happened

This Happened - January 25: The Egyptian Revolution Begins

After the revolution in Tunisia, anti-regime protests spread to Egypt, sparking two weeks of deadly clashes.

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In The News
Bertrand Hauger, Laure Gautherin, Sophia Constantino

Kherson Pullout, Biden’s “Good Day,” Art Auction Record

👋 Bonjour!*

Welcome to Thursday, where Russia gives up the key city of Kherson, Biden basks in the U.S. midterms and a late Microsoft billionaire’s art auction pulls in $1.5 billion. We also take a closer look at how Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian coastal resort, has been reinvented (again) to host world leaders for the COP27, and it’s come at the expense of the local ecosystem.

[*French]

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Green
Mohamed Ezz and Nada Arafat

Sharm El-Sheikh, What's Lurking Behind COP27 Shine

The Egyptian coastal resort has been reinvented (again) to host world leaders for the COP27, as it aims to cast a climate-financing-hungry Egypt in a favorable light. But the cosmetic changes hide years of harm to the region's ecosystem.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH — Amgad* arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh about 40 years ago, driven by curiosity like many other Egyptian youths at the time to explore this corner of Sinai, newly returned to Egypt in the wake of the 1973 war after a 15 years of Israeli occupation.

What Amgad found was a small Bedouin village sheltered within an immaculate landscape: to the east, the Gulf of Aqaba, teeming with marine creatures and jeweled with coral reefs; to the south, two Egyptian islands — now transferred to Saudi Arabia — that separated Sinai from Saudi Arabia; to the west, valleys and mountains, part of the Great Rift Valley, traversed by the Bedouin tribes who have settled in the area for centuries.

The coastline is home to 200 unique species of coral, 500 species of marine vegetation and various species of fish and marine animals, part of the Egyptian barrier reefs that marine ecology professor Mahmoud Hassan Hanafy tells Mada Masr are among the last sanctuaries for this type of marine life in the world, having demonstrated unique resilience to climate change. Onshore ecosystems also serve to protect marine life, he notes.

If, however, you’re among the thousands converging on the city this month to attend COP27, four decades separate you from the site of natural beauty that Amgad first laid eyes on.

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