She was a keen footballer until the day she kicked what she thought was a tin can. Who then is to blame for the maiming of 11-year-old Mawa? Mawa's father firmly blames the British for his daughter's injuryĪlready this year there have been four serious injuries and one fatality.Īnd with legal action and demands for compensation in the offing, no country is prepared to accept responsibility for owning or laying the unexploded ordnance. The Allied and Axis forces are long gone from North Africa but their lethal legacy remains - millions of rusting landmines, bombs, mortars and artillery shells lying in wait for the unwary shepherds and their children. Today however, Egyptian Bedouin are not merely onlookers but reluctant combatants in a battle against death and injury in their ancestral lands. In 1942, their descendants were still grazing animals, this time in the Sahara, as they witnessed the massed armies of Montgomery and Rommel fight out the pivotal World War II battle of El Alamein. In 331 BC, the Bedouin were ringside, tending their camels, sheep and goats, as Alexander the Great mustered his men in the sands of Mesopotamia - modern-day Iraq - and conquered half of Persia. The battle of El Alamein was a turning point in World War II but the unexploded munitions it left behind continue to kill and maim the local population, as Christian Fraser reports from Egypt.Īs spectators of desert warfare, Arab Bedouins have always had the front-row seats.įor thousands of years they have watched vast armies wage war on the harshest of battlefields. The featureless desert landscape conceals the deadly remains of war
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