Smuggling in the Interior
| Date | 01 July 1940 |
| Author | Thomas W. Russell Pasha |
| Published date | 01 July 1940 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X4001300306 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Smuggling in the Interior
By EL
LEWA
SIR
THOMAS
W.
RUSSELL
PASHA
Commandant,
Cairo City Police
THE annual report for 1939 of the Central Narcotic Intelli-
gence Bureau of the Egyptian Government contains an
interesting account of the latest method of smuggling nar-
cotics into Egypt from Syria and Palestine.
There
is a very
large annual import of camels into Egypt from neighbouring
camel-producing countries, such as the Sudan, Syria and
Palestine, the majority being destined for the slaughterhouses
of the big cities for conversion into beef. Camels coming from
Palestine have to pass the Customs and go through Quarantine
at Kantara on the Suez Canal, and some
30,000
camels a year
pass through this station alone.
The
Frontiers Administration, who police the Sinai
Peninsula, are always on the look-out for the smuggling into
Egypt of hashish and opium, the first of which is grown
surreptitiously in large quantities in Syria and the latter in
Eastern Anatolia. With an efficient intelligence system and a
natural keenness on the part of their Sudanese Arab troopers,
the Frontiers Administration are able to reduce to a minimum
any attempts at wholesale running of contraband by car or
camel across the Sinai deserts, and the smugglers of Palestine
have to exercise the greatest ingenuity in disguising their goods
if they wish to evade the eagle eyes and keen noses of the
patrols.
Until recently the first prize for tricks (actually it took
the form of five years imprisonment) was unanimously
awarded to some Arabs who thought out the following ruse:
RECIPE
"Take one camel with a thick woolly coat, shave
away an oblong patch of hair on the flank,
just
below the
300
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