Frontières et dynamiques frontalières contemporaines de l’Égypte (2011-2019)

Abstract

This article outlines the situation of border stress in Egypt since the revolutionary moment of 2011. Since 2013, the return to power by the army has led to a repressive management of border tensions. On one side, the Egyptian Western desert has become a military front invested by armed groups coming from Libya. On the other side, the border with Gaza has been hardening since 2007, constraining human movement but creating a flourishing informal economy through cross-border tunnels which were partially destroyed or flooded by the Egyptian army in 2016. In the South, the revival of Nubian activism since 2011 has resulted in peaceful marches claiming for the right to return to ancestral lands. But, several activists from this ethno-linguistic group divided between Egypt and Sudan have been arrested. The second part of this article addresses the Halayeb and Chalatine border dispute between Egypt and Sudan, highlighting the asset that the border embodies for the local tribes of Bedouin culture and for the Egyptian policy of national integration. The article concludes with a description of the Sinai Peninsula in terms of border space. State authority is contested in the north, where a war has been going on since 2011. In this context, cross-border military cooperation has been strengthened with the Israeli state, which in 2014 completed a security barrier along the border with Egypt.