The Bedouin People Who Blur the Boundaries of Egyptian Identity
An Indigenous North African Minority Near the Libyan Border Has Often Been Treated Like Foreigners
In November 1940, a group of Bedouins from Egypt’s Western Desert region sent an unusual petition to the Egyptian government. The petition arrived at a time of great turmoil in the country. Just five months before, German commander Erwin Rommel had launched a military campaign across the Libyan and Egyptian Sahara that would last three years, earning him his infamous nickname, “Desert Fox.”
It wasn’t the Axis’s invasion of their ancestral homeland that concerned these Bedouins, however, but rather their mistreatment by their own government. With the outbreak of the war, …
