Talk:Sinai Peninsula

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Page scope

Sinai Peninsula is the cannabis growing region of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, drawn on the South Sinai and North Sinai governorates. It covers the cannabis grown there and the farms reported destroyed since the 1990s. Egypt's history of cannabis and its law are treated at Egypt.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why the Sinai Peninsula is a growing region

The United States Department of State's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report of March 1995 places Egypt's cannabis and opium growing in "remote areas of the Sinai region and along the Nile River in southern Egypt", and reports seven million cannabis plants destroyed in the Sinai region in 1994.
Army, border-guard and police statements reported in the Egyptian press name places in South Sinai: the Wadi Feiran area (Masrawy, 20 March 2014), the Sihet Sedra valley at Abu Redeis (Egypt Independent, 18 May 2017), a mountain area of the Abu Redeis police district (Mobtada, 9 July 2020) and "the mountain areas of South Sinai" (Bawabat al-Ahram, 19 June 2022). An army statement of January 2018 reports cannabis farms destroyed in operations in central Sinai (Egypt Independent, 16 January 2018).
Tom Dale's report from the South Sinai mountains (Vice, 10 January 2014) describes Bedouin drug farming there, with a summer cannabis harvest.
No source names a tract within the peninsula larger than one wadi or one police district. Wadi Feiran and Abu Redeis each rest on one or two statements, so they are given in the article as places where farms were reported, not as growing areas.

How the border is drawn

The border is a proxy drawn on two whole governorates, South Sinai (OpenStreetMap relation 3060793) and North Sinai (3060792), not on accession points. Statoids gives their areas as 33,140 km² and 27,574 km²; Encyclopædia Britannica gives the peninsula as about 61,000 km². Land east of the Suez Canal that belongs to other governorates is not part of the region.
The farms reported lie in South and central Sinai. North Sinai is part of the border because the region is drawn on whole governorates; of the sources cited, only Masrawy (2014) mentions a place in North Sinai, the smuggling tunnels at Rafah.
Since October 2026 the map line leaves out the sea that the governorates' boundaries take in (open water on ESA WorldCover 2021) and nothing else; about 56,600 km² are inside it. Bare and sparse ground is not taken out: the farms reported lie in wadis of the mountains, and the land-cover map puts most of those mountains, Wadi Feiran among them, in its bare or sparse class, so cutting it would leave out every place the sources name.
The infobox point (28.75, 33.60) lies in Wadi Feiran, where the farms of 2014 were reported.

Growing status

The status is Active: press reports of cannabis farms destroyed in South Sinai run from 2014 to 2022 (Masrawy 2014, Egypt Independent 2017 and 2018, Mobtada 2020, Bawabat al-Ahram 2022). No source says that growing has stopped. The reports are of eradication, which does not by itself show whether growing continues after a given year.

Sources

International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (1995) is cited from the plain-text copy kept by the Almashriq archive of the American University of Beirut. It is a report of the United States Department of State's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs; the copy has no page breaks, and its contents list puts the Egypt chapter at p. 417.
Masrawy (20 March 2014) reports an armed forces statement. It gives 124 farms of poppy and bango in the Wadi Feiran area, 70 feddans in all, and 56 farms of poppy and bango in an area it calls وادى سعال العطشان; that second wadi is not otherwise identified, so the article does not name it. The figures cover poppy and bango together.
Egypt Independent (18 May 2017 and 16 January 2018) publishes edited English translations of Al-Masry Al-Youm. The 2018 statement places the operation in central Sinai; its sentence on the six cannabis farms does not name a place of its own.
Mobtada (9 July 2020) reports a police campaign of the South Sinai security directorate in the Abu Redeis police district.
Bawabat al-Ahram (19 June 2022) reports a border-guard statement. Besides the 145 feddans of bango it gives 59 feddans of what it calls "hydro" (هيدرو); the statement does not say what plant that is, so the article does not use the figure.
Dale (Vice, 10 January 2014) is mainly about opium. The estimate that opium and marijuana production had doubled since 2010 and employed some 45 per cent of South Sinai's Bedouin men is that of Mohammed Khedr, coordinator of the South Sinai Community Foundation; the article gives it as his.
Ahram Online (26 September 2012) is a Reuters report. The statement on growing since 2011 is General Adel Rifaat's, the head of security in Suez.
Encyclopædia Britannica, "Sinai Peninsula", is the source for the peninsula's area, bounds, relief and two governorates.
Statoids (Gwillim Law, "Governorates of Egypt") is the source for the governorate areas given above; it does not say where its area figures come from.

Not used

Egypt Today (19 February 2018) lists bango and marijuana farms destroyed during the army's operation of February 2018 in Sinai, without placing any of them.
Overt Defense (3 August 2021) repeats an armed forces statement of 842 farms of bango and "hydro" plants and 1,114 farms of cannabis destroyed in South Sinai. It is a defence news site reporting the statement at second hand; the article relies on the Egyptian press for the same kind of statement.
A seed company sells a line it calls "Egypt Sinai"; the listing gives no place or date of collection.

Open questions

Whether Wadi Feiran, or the uplands round Abu Redeis, should be treated as a growing area of its own.
Whether any source places cannabis growing in North Sinai rather than trade across it.