The Sinai Bedouin have a long tradition of smuggling hashish into Egypt. During colonial times the route followed the Mediterranean coast, until the militarization of El-Arish and the Canal Zone compelled smugglers to seek new routes across the interior. When this also became militarized due to war with Israel, they switched their attention to the mountains of South Sinai and the Aqaba coast. Under Israeli rule their activities were tolerated so long as the dope was bound for Egypt, but the emergence of an Israeli market caused a clampdown in the 1970s, at a time when hash supplies from Lebanon were drying up.

 

Meanwhile, however, foreign hippies were flocking to Sinai and asking the Bedouin for grass (using the Indian term ganja, from which bango, the Egyptian word for marijuana, derives). Thus was planted the seed of a local cultivation industry, which really got going once Sinai was returned to Egypt and its police chief took a hand in the business for a decade. Today, Sinai is one of Egypt's main sources of bango, as cultivators can't be prosecuted owing to a loophole in the Camp David Accords - unlike dealers, who risk long-term imprisonment or even hanging, and rely on bribery to get off the hook. But the police must make some arrests, so it's rather like an auction where the lowest bidders are cast as scapegoats. This applies equally to foreigners - especially those who bring heroin or ecstasy to sell in Dahab.

As an indication of how much marijuana is grown in Sinai, the authorities burned 28 million kilos in 1997 - imagine how much escaped seizure