Posted on 01/31/2004 12:38:10 PM PST by yonif
Muhammad, a lieutenant serving in the Jewish army, peers into the Bible-black night, matching his rival's wits against his own. Having guided the police to this spot, the Beduin tracker squats on his haunches out of sight watching two smugglers, both Beduin like himself, quietly coax an old and toothless camel across the fenceless border.
Its curly back is laden with two huge burlap sacks, each containing 70 kilos of dried marijuana. Each sack is worth the price of a new car in Israel, but for his fee, the Beduin smuggler is promised just 1,000 Egyptian pounds, about $160. For the nomads of the Sinai it is a good month's salary and strong motivation to press on.
A few dozen meters from Lt. Muhammad and his squad of Border Police, the smugglers suddenly halt and turn back. At that point, the Israeli force springs into action. The smugglers - facing years in an Israeli prison if caught - scramble away into the emptiness of the desert leaving behind their drug-laden camel on the Negev border.
"They must have received a warning on their mobile phone or detected something that spooked them. That's why they turned back," says Eli, an intelligence officer on hand for the catch.
The Israeli-Egyptian border has been a porous one for generations if not millennia. Police say it has become the main route for smuggling drugs into Israel. Hundreds of prostitutes, illegal workers, tobacco and possibly weapons are also slipped in here past lethargic Egyptian police.
The IDF's second-line reservists, focused on stopping armed infiltrators, were doing such a lousy job against smugglers that last March the state, seeing it as a national threat, decided to transfer responsibility to the Border Police. It refurbished the bases and supplied them with advanced surveillance equipment to supplement the Beduin trackers in the service of the IDF.
It is dusk at a Border Police company headquarters on the peak of Mt. Harif (1,012 meters above sea level). The vista is one of endless blue mountain ridges behind mountain ridges as if pasted in a collage.
"Don't let this beauty of the desert deceive you. This was the wild West out here," says Ch.-Supt. Avichai Cohen, commander of the company responsible for plugging the holes in the border. His force, made up of a mix of Ethiopian-born, Russian immigrant, Druse and Sabra troops, was once deployed in the Gaza Strip. Now they are responsible for a large chunk of the 242-kilometer "border of peace" where most of the smuggling takes place.
"It's a big chess game going on out here," says Cohen, who transferred here from Ramallah. "They (smugglers) know this area well. They blend in with the stones. They can sit in caves for days waiting for the right moment to move. They carry these huge batteries to recharge their mobile phones."
His own mobile phone rings, playing "Hava Nagila." He nods to no one, repeats numbers, border points and hangs up.
"Just got intelligence of a possible smuggling attempt tonight," he says with a grin.
Cohen dispatches squads for the ambush. It is a calm, slow-paced action in marked contrast to intense clashes with the Palestinians. We are on desert time. Here in the biblical wilderness ambushes and pursuits can last for days and require enormous patience, which naturally gives the Beduin the edge particularly if the Beduin smuggler is a veteran of the Israeli army.
"I'm sure they know how we operate. And may have been trackers in the IDF once themselves," says Cohen.
THE BEDUIN in the Sinai are mainly from the Azazma, Tarabin and Taualem tribes. They coordinate only with their own tribesmen in the Negev from whom they were separated by the peace treaty with Egypt when Israel withdrew from the peninsula. They either meet on the border or sneak across towards a rendezvous point, often two days walk from the frontier.
They have employed various methods to cross the border road without a trace. These include wearing spikes that leave prints like quail, or gluing the soles of shoes backwards on their own feet, to simply brushing them away with the branch of a rotem bush. They also know that Israel scans the border with radar, picking up movements. Sometimes they will twirl a branch behind them so it resembles the twitch of an antelope's tail.
Trackers on loan from the IDF lead patrols on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary - a plank of wood, orange peel, an upturned stone. They know the mountain passes. The smugglers know they know. Routine is the Achilles heel. Good intelligence and night vision helps, but they can't follow tracks.
Every night along the border is busy now trying to stem a wave of smuggling. Sometimes it is drugs. Sometimes it is tobacco to avoid customs. Two weeks ago, the company caught a group of prostitutes.
T.E. Lawrence describes the desert as "naked." Lt. Muhammad scoffs at this. He is from the al-Hawashla tribe near Dimona and gives the appearance of being tall. He is 25 and says he has been in the military since he was 17-and-a-half. He has a face that looks as if his coffee-colored skin was stretched tight over his sharp bones lending him an eerie countenance similar to the mummies in the Cairo museum.
The Beduin trackers have dark eyes, so black they are like the tinted windows of a sleek limousine - they can see out, but you can't see in.
By nature, the Muslim Beduin are black and white, not only in outlook but in belief. They are comfortable in extremes, despising doubt. Don't ask about their dual loyalties. They lie, troubling, deep within.
After their successful catch, they free the old camel to return to its herd. The sacks of marijuana are hefted onto a jeep and brought back to base to be weighed and locked up.
Lt. Muhammad cracks an embarrassed smile and confides that yes, there is competition with other trackers on how many catches they have to their record. As trackers go, tonight's catch further boosts his reputation. But there is no overmastering greed of victory.
"We call tracker in Arabic a 'gasas.' I am a gasas. This is my life," he says.
THE OFFICE of the Beduin trackers is like most other offices in IDF bases. It is their private den journalists have never before been allowed to enter. There is a worn-out vinyl couch, grey desk and metal filing cupboard. On the wall is a framed topographical map with lines and dots marking the route and site of an ambush in February 2002. Around the map are photos of dead infiltrators, dressed in white jalabeyas, a dark patch of earth under them which had swallowed their blood.
It is the first time in more than a decade of reporting on the Israeli army that I have ever seen photos of slain enemy proudly displayed on an office wall.
"We believe they were al-Qaida sent from Saudi Arabia," Muhammad says.
He relates how he and two other trackers followed their trail for seven hours into Israel. The infiltrators opened fire first, wounding Lt. Muhammad in the shoulder. They returned fire killing the three.
"We were lucky," he says.
By law, the Muslim Beduin are not subject to the draft but are encouraged to volunteer. It has become a family tradition.
"I was born in a tent," says tracker Taysir of the Abu-Abdoon tribe. "I grew up in a tin shack my father built in the hills near Beersheba. He was a tracker in the army and taught me."
Taysir, 22, could not say where he was from, possibly because it was another nameless and unrecognized village of the kind in which 70,000 Negev Beduin reside today. After his faithful service he returns on leave to a home without running water, a home where garbage is tossed over the hill, a home shared with his nine siblings.
"Most of the trackers are from the southern tribes," Taysir says. "But they don't deploy us across from our own tribesmen. At least not here."
Outside, Eli, the intelligence officer, is still miffed that the smugglers with the camel got away. He feels they were tipped off.
"There is an issue with tribal loyalty," says Eli. "Their tribes tell them to go to the army and expect them not to capture members of their own tribes."
Last month, Military Police revealed they are currently investigating allegations that Beduin soldiers were tipping off the smugglers of ambushes. In the past, senior Beduin trackers have been arrested for smuggling drugs.
"There is always going to be a black sheep in every flock," says Lt.-Col. Kassem el-Hib, commander of the IDF's tracker school. "If there is one, it doesn't mean it is everyone."
Bordering on slavery Each month, Border Police capture dozens of women being smuggled into the country from the Sinai. They are said to be prostitutes who are either sold to pimps in Israel or pay their own way for what they hope will be a better future.
Lately, the women tend to come from Uzbekistan, Georgia and Muslim countries. They are funneled from Sharm e-Sheikh or Alexandria in Egypt and kept in tents for weeks until a transfer is arranged. According to the Border Police, they are mistreated, probably raped and are given stimulants for the 20 to 40 kilometer trek they must make to cross the border.
"When we catch them, they look a mess. They are dressed in layers of filthy sweaters and are crying, crying," says one border policeman.
"They are pretty, some very pretty in fact, but some are frightfully ugly too," says another.
Beduin guides usually take them in groups of seven to 10. Sometimes, they abandon them at the border road where they wander aimlessly until patrols pick them up.
"We bring them back to the base and give them food in the mess hall and just try to be nice to them after all they have been through," says a border policeman.
Military track Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. - T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Today there are some 500 out of the estimated 175,000 Israeli Beduin currently serving in the IDF. Seventy percent of these come from the tribes in the Galilee, with the rest coming from the Negev tribes numbering about 135,000.
For many, it is a family tradition. For some it is a duty. And for others it's simply a job. Beduin soldiers serve three years earning NIS 700 a month like other Israeli combat conscripts. They are usually found in combat branches including the all-Beduin Desert Patrol deployed around the southern Gaza Strip. Trackers stay on earning relatively lucrative salaries in the professional force.
"I volunteered for the army because I live in this country and we have to give our part since we receive benefits like everyone else," says Madhat Tlaiyeh, 20, of Kufar Shibli, fresh out of tracker's school.
Earlier this month, 26 Beduin graduated from the army's Trackers' Course. The army set up the course in 1997 to formalize a doctrine and try to improve the level of trackers whose skills have declined over the generations as Beduin gave up their nomadic lifestyles for permanent dwellings.
Veteran and respected tracker, Lt.-Col. Kassem el-Hib, commands the Tracker's School. El-Hib bemoans the drop in the level of tracker abilities among today's Beduin youth.
"Not all of the Beduin coming today grew up as shepherds or lived in tents. We have to teach them the profession. Once there were great trackers who had a natural talent for it. Today, very few are like this," he says.
According to el-Hib, the best trackers are usually the most illiterate.
"Not every Beduin can be a tracker. The more educated they are, the worse trackers they are. Actually those who don't know how to read or write and find it difficult in basic training, turn out to be the best in the trackers' course," el-Hib says.
In this case, Salah Fowaz, 20, from el-Alaboun, is the perfect candidate.
"I learned till 7th grade and then was expelled," he says with a huge grin of embarrassment. "I went to vocational school with Jews and became a mechanic." Fowaz comes from a family of trackers and is proud of his service.
"When I go home to my village I wear my uniform and they treat me with respect," Fowaz says.
"We live in this country not Palestine. So we will protect this country till the end as we should."
Hudi Misri, 21, from Tuba, came to the course after serving two years as a Golani fighter, seeing action in the Jenin area.
"The guys in the unit used to say I was a tracker since I was a Beduin. So I asked to come to this course. I asked to do this course because I was born in nature and grew up with animals. I lived in a house, but we had herds and I graze them," Misri says.
"When I go back to my unit they will treat me with respect as a tracker. They don't know the things I do. I return with pride to my company."
NOTE: The IDF Spokesman handpicked the tracker graduates interviewed for this story and would not allow any from the Negev tribes to be questioned.
If only more American citizens thought this way...
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