CAIRO – He was working on a construction site, where land was being prepared for the state’s Sinai development plan. The young man was killed in Wefaq village, in the south of Egyptian Rafah, on Sunday by an improvised explosive device (IED).
In a world where we are surrounded by conflict and war, in this latest tragedy we are reminded that once a war has ended, there is still much to be done before we can call it over.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
The incident was not the first of its kind. Just a week earlier, an IED detonated in an agricultural plot in the Kharouba village in western Sheikh Zuwayed, killing two children and injuring six.
Local and medical sources who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity said that one of the wounded children had their leg amputated and was in critical condition. The other five children, members of the Sawarka tribe’s Kuz family, were displaced from Sheikh Zuwayed during the government’s eight-year “war on terror” in North Sinai.
Returning to home villages
The war finally came to an end in 2022, and tribes who were mobilized under the supervision of the Armed Forces to eliminate remnants of the Islamic State-affiliated Province of Sinai militant group began to return to the villages from which they were displaced by the conflict in waves.
Villagers were exposed to IEDs the militants had left behind
But in many cases, they returned to villages still laced with IEDs from the war years, without the support needed to identify or dismantle the dangerous explosives awaiting them. Explosive devices have killed 15 people, including 12 children, since January 2022, and injured 28 others, 20 of whom were children, according to local and medical sources in North Sinai.
Starting 2014, Province of Sinai militants planted hundreds of IEDs along main roads and around their encampment sites within the villages during their war against state security forces, killing dozens of Armed Forces and police personnel, as well as civilians. Members of the militant group were also killed in the process of planting the explosives.
The aftermath
Members of some of Sinai’s eastern tribes, namely the Roumailat, Sawarka and Tarabin tribes, were mobilized under the supervision of the Armed Forces against the Province of Sinai in late 2021, allowing some to return to their homes in Sheikh Zuwayed and Rafah: the promised reward for agreeing to bear arms alongside the military.
Residents found their old homes completely destroyed, farmlands dry, with key infrastructure like electricity poles and water wells damaged. Where authorities did not provide reconstruction, residents took it upon themselves to rebuild their villages.
And return was also dangerous, as villagers were exposed to IEDs the militants had left behind. A young person from Zuhayr village tells Mada Masr on condition of anonymity that a Sawarka tribe member, Mohamed Mansour al-Awaida, was responsible for clearing mines in Zuhayr. Awaida worked alongside the Armed Forces as part of a group supervised by the Jura battalion, and specialized in detecting and dismantling explosives until he was killed dismantling an IED in the nearby village of Muqataa.
Searching for explosives
Awaida wasn’t an exception. In general, the Armed Forces and their engineering crews had a limited role in defusing explosive devices. Young people from the tribes, acting as part of various armed groups led by tribal elders, were tasked instead with the often-fatal mission.
The source adds that after Awaida had scanned Zuhayr, residents returned, plowing its fields with tractors to redouble their search for any remaining explosives. Despite their caution, a few IEDs slipped through the net, killing two children in the village.
The same resident says that if anyone in Zuhayr found an explosive device, they would notify the Union of Sinai Tribes to send someone to either detonate or dismantle it. Another youth from Zuhayr tells Mada Masr that he used to collect war remnants, including mines, artillery shells, and unexploded missiles, near a makeshift hut he built next to the remains of his house from before the war.
Collecting landmines
“Whenever I collect some, I call the union or the battalion, and they come to remove them. They would come in a pickup truck to carry the items and drive away,” the source explains.
Footage shared on the Union of Sinai Tribes’ social media page shows its members dismantling explosive devices they have extracted from beneath the sand. Other posts detail fatalities among union fighters while dismantling or searching for IEDs.
I don’t want us to lose anyone else.
Repatriation to previous conflict sites was slow at first, but after two years, calls for the full, promised right of return gained momentum among the Sawarka and Roumailat tribes.
At the same time, the state began to express concern about IEDs in areas from which tribes members had been displaced, suggesting that it was dangerous for people to return. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi directed the Armed Forces Engineering Authority to clear out explosive devices from military operation zones in North Sinai in early 2023. While inspecting equipment for the state initiative to develop and reconstruct Sinai, the president turned to the head of the engineering authority, Major General Ahmed al-Azzazi, to say, “I don’t want us to lose anyone else, even if it takes a month or two to achieve 100% clearance, to prevent any further incidents.”
Premature returns
Later in the year, Major General Mohamed Rabie, commander of the Second Field Army, convened an extensive meeting in Rafah’s Mahdia village, attended by dozens of people from the Sawarka and Roumailat tribes. Rabie said that allowing residents to return to the villages in 2021 was a mistake, adding that the step was rushed as the villages weren’t cleared of explosive devices left behind by the Province of Sinai. Mada Masr obtained a recording of the meeting, in which Rabie stated, “I made a mistake because I did not do what I was supposed to do. We rushed to bring people back to the villages south of Sheikh Zuwayed, like Abu al-Araj, and we had the media film it to send a message to terrorism that we had defeated it.”
Rabie said nine children were killed by explosive devices shortly after return was allowed in 2021. He said that since the 2023 presidential directive to clear operation zones, 7,500 landmines were discovered in Sheikh Zuwayed and Rafah, and seven soldiers were injured during search and clearance operations.
Rabie presented a map of areas being cleared of devices to facilitate residents’ return. The political leadership’s directives, he said, were to “take your time, clear the land, and give us the thumbs-up.”
Failures of the military
Engineering units from the armed forces were in fact sweeping areas in Rafah in particular, dismantling devices found there, local sources tell Mada Masr. The sources say they later discovered that the cleared areas had been paved over and transformed into roads as part of the network being constructed by the Armed Forces in eastern North Sinai.
Tribal leaders demanding the right of return were arrested
But the military had not cleared the villages to which residents had returned, nor any other villages.
Four months after the Second Field Army commander’s meeting, tribal leaders demanding the right of return were arrested, and discussions about IEDs and clearing and securing villages ceased among officials.
Explosions, however, continued to claim the lives of children and civilians. Three separate IEDs have detonated in villages over the past year. The first killed a child and injured his sister and cousin while they were playing in a farm in Toffaha village, south of Bir al-Abd. In another incident in the Jarada village in western Sheikh Zuwayed, a child lost his foot, while another was injured and the camel he was riding was killed in the Um Shihan village south of Arish.
False promises
A similar pattern had plagued the return of former residents of western North Sinai, in the Green Triangle in Bir al-Abd, and the villages of Qatiya, Aqtiya, Ganayin and Merih. After the Province of Sinai was expelled from the area, residents returned and found their villages transformed into minefields, which caused civilian casualties, mainly among women and children. A source from one of the villages told Mada Masr at the time that the military had trained some civilians to detect and dismantle the scattered explosive devices.
Just as in the east, residents were assured by the Armed Forces and tribal elders at the time that their villages had been cleared, particularly of explosive devices, but returned to find the assurances were fatally empty, sources previously told Mada Masr.
Before entering the villages, the Armed Forces had gathered residents of each sub village and showed them examples of explosive devices and objects, instructing them to report any suspicious items to the relevant authorities immediately, according to a resident who attended one of the presentations.
A warning given too late
Residents of Zuhayr and Kharouba tell Mada Masr that once the presentation was over, the Armed Forces’ involvement was over, with the armed tribal groups taking on the primary role in dealing with explosive devices.
We are not trained, nor do we have experience
A youth from the Gharaa sub village in Kharouba tells Mada Masr that the Union of Sinai Tribes was responsible for sweeping and detecting explosive devices in his village, saying he took part in the effort due to his good relations with union members.
“We are not trained, nor do we have experience,” he says. “None of us dismantles anything. Our task is to mark them, and when we collect five or six devices, we call the union to come and dismantle them.”
In a footage published by the union in August, a woman is seen requesting that a union patrol sweep her house for devices. The accompanying post details that they had “swept the house and its surroundings, and dismantled some devices prepared for detonation within the house.”
The union repeatedly warned villagers, most recently in February, to exercise caution with suspicious objects. Children should be monitored while playing, the union advised.
Regardless, the fatalities continued. Speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, a doctor recounts that a seven-year-old girl was transferred to the Arish General Hospital in May 2023 following an IED explosion. The incident caused injuries that led to amputations for both the seven-year-old and her sister, while their sibling was killed. The doctor says the seven-year-old told him, “My sister found a canister, she kept moving and hitting it, and suddenly it exploded.”
