In a remote outpost in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Ibrahim Abu-Sefira watches a mountainous skyline of jagged rock, ears tuned to the twilight silence, listening for any signs a fragile peace may be disturbed.
An elder from the Bedouin Tayaha tribe, he has seen armies, both Egyptian and Israeli, pass through this vast desert. Now the area is the center of a yearslong, bloody conflict between the Egyptian military and a local affiliate of the Islamic State group.
In a switch from the past, the military has begun arming Bedouin tribesmen like Abu-Sefira and having them patrol in operations against the IS militants deep in the peninsula’s interior, where their local knowledge gives them an advantage, Abu-Sefira and other Bedouin say.