U.S.-funded program fails to stop Gaza tunnels

updated 6:24 p.m. ET Jan. 7, 2009

RAFAH, Egypt - Angry at Hamas' ability to fire rockets at Israel, the United States last year allocated $23 million to help train Egyptian officials to stop the smuggling into Gaza through tunnels at a border plagued by crisis and corruption.

Months later, there is little noticeable effect: Smuggling has continued at a robust pace, allowing Hamas militants in Gaza to gain rockets to shoot at Israeli citizens. Israel's military says about 300 tunnels ran under the Gaza-Egypt border before its military offensive began Dec. 27. Since then, Israel has bombed dozens of them.

The story of the U.S.-funded program and its lack of impact on the problem is a cautionary tale of how hard it has been to control Gaza's border with Egypt — at a time when patrolling that frontier and stopping the weapons flow are once again hot issues as mediators seek a cease-fire in Gaza.

Previous attempts to close the tunnels have largely failed, partly because of the mutual mistrust between Israel and Egypt and partly because of Egypt's inability to rein in corruption and alleviate poverty in the Sinai. The region near Gaza is home to tens of thousands of mostly disaffected Bedouin. Many of these nomads earn their living through smuggling.

No crossing ahead
Some critics say Egypt has never undertaken a truly robust effort because it hopes to use the issue to gain something it wants in turn: the right to deploy troops at the Sinai border, which was denied under the 1979 Camp David Accords. Egyptian officials also have been leery of making the border with Gaza truly normal and functioning, fearing an influx of Palestinian militancy into Egypt.

President George W. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, would not point fingers when asked Tuesday whether Egypt had done enough to stop the smuggling of rockets.

"Preventing them is very hard because Hamas clearly wants them, and countries like Iran and Syria clearly want to supply them," he said. More work also needs to be done to interdict the weapons that come from supplying nations before they get to the tunnels leading into Gaza, he said.

One former Egyptian security official who now advises the government on security issues said U.S. money alone would not stop smuggling. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

U.S. officials, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has helped train Egyptian border guards, and the Defense Department, which implements U.S. foreign military assistance programs, refused to give details of how and when the $23 million was spent.

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo confirmed that the U.S. is working with Egypt and said the Corps of Engineers was sharing its expertise. The embassy would provide no further details, describing the program as led by Egypt. The Ministry of Defense declined to comment immediately on the issue.

In the past, Egypt has said Palestinians in Gaza must do more to solve the problem.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit stressed that the tunnels were not a new problem, but he denied that weapons were being smuggled.

"The tunnels have always been there. We have been trying to control them. But the tunnels are there because the crossings are closed and there is a siege and there is starvation," he told Al-Arabiya television earlier this week. "Those who say they are being used to smuggle weapons and equipment are deluded. Weapons are coming through the sea."

Underground smuggling
An Egyptian security official at the border would say only that five U.S. Army engineers arrived at the frontier in the fall — about nine months after the money was allocated by the U.S. — and stayed for a month to train Egyptian guards to use high-tech radar that can detect tunnels by locating cavities underground.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, insisted the effort boosted Egypt's ability to detect more tunnels in recent months, but would not elaborate.

Israeli military and Shin Bet security officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with defense establishment rules, say Egypt began deploying the U.S. equipment — including a form of ground-penetrating radar — only about three months ago.

The U.S.-Egypt tunnel program had its birth in American and Israeli frustration at the rocket firing by Hamas since the Palestinian militant group seized control of Gaza in 2007.

For the first time, Congress moved in late 2007 to put conditions on the $2 billion in aid, most of it military assistance, that Washington gives annually to Egypt — the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel.

Congress voted to withhold $100 million until Egypt, among other things, stopped the flow of weapons through the tunnels.

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