Sorry, don't have any pics...but my wife and I were on a Mediterranean cruise earlier this year. One of the stops was Cairo, we shelled out the money to go with the herd (which was a good idea). They took all us tourists, packed us in buses and convoyed us with police car escorts to Giza and some other spots. Each bus had had a local driver, a tour guide and a dude in a suit with sunglasses. I pinged him as PSD for us dumb cattle. A couple old ladies asked him stuff and he was polite and directed them to the tour guide.
I was watching him from the back of the bus and saw he was printing, he glanced and I saw...a MP5K-PDW peaking out under his sports coat...hell fricking yeah!!!
At the end of the day by the ship I walked up to thank him, he pinged me for military and we chatted for a bit. He pulled the MP5 out, cleared it and let me play with it. It was tiny and has safe, semi and full auto. My wife was rolling her eyes at me...she muttered something about gun nuts around the world but she was glad he was there.
Anyways, he's special security...a branch of their government that's specially trained to keep terrorizers from making a international incident and reducing Egypt's tourist industry. That dude was very very professional and very nice to chat too...and he had a super cool toy.
I really really really really want one!

Good on ya for doing your 'merican duty as an ambassador for the rest of us

um... you didn't bring back no camel flu or nothin didjoo?

Those guys are no joke. They tell you dont ride the camel because they wont let you down until you pay an unGodly sum. Same thing happened to a friend from church here in TN. The PSD guy came over ruffed up the camel jockey( not derogatory thats his job) and got my friend down from the camel.

"Tourist Police" is a concept that never got traction in the US, but gets a lot of play in other nations. They know where the cash is coming from, and don't want anything the risk the revenue. A couple of places in South America it was like I had a personally assigned bodyguard. I treated them like gold and wasn't going to do anything that might cause them to sell me out to the highest bidder.

The closest we've come in the U.S. is officers who wear tabs on their uniforms identifying what languages they speak.

That's brilliant. Sounds like a great time.

http://remtek.com/arms/hk/mil/pdw/pdwrig.gif

rig like that? friggin' SWEET

Cool story, but I wonder if he could have gotten in trouble for letting you play with the gun!

Egypt is very aware of the importance of tourists to the economy... as a result the Tourist Police (ake White Mice because of their white summer uniforms) are all over the place. They guard hotels, museums and other tourist attractons.

If the beggars get to be a bother, a glance at the WM will get them cleared away muy pronto.

Some years ago I was on extended TDY in Egypt and got to know some of the security people... very interesting people... I was in a meeting with a bunch of Egyptian big wigs discussing the deployment we were going to do. THere had been a terrorist attack on some German tourists not long before.

The discussion of security was a fairly long one... and resulted in some very heated discussions in Arabic between the Army generals and the National Police bosses.

While the discussion was going on hard and heavy I asked my interperter what they were discussing... he said the question was who would be responsible for the security of the foreign troops in the exercise... and none of them want the responsibility... because President Mubarak had said if any of the "guest" troops were hurt by terrorists, he would have the head of security shot... Apparently those guys took the threat seriously... in any case there was a LOT of security.

You could pretty much tell where a security guy ranked by the pistol he carried. The average Mo carried an Egyptian made copy of the Beretta M1951. More important agents carried Glock 19s. The bosses carried SIG 225 and 228s. The Big wigs carried SIG 239s or Really nice High Powers.

I didn't see any of them with spare magazines... they carried spare ammo in folded up cigarette packages. One day one assigned to guard us in the hotel, apparently lost his spare ammo... and one of our guys found it in the back of a sofa... anyway, when we returned it the guy was sweating bullets... apparently afraid he might be shot for losing the ammo... we made a friend that night.

The mass of WM carried locally produced AK47s... but not individually issued guns... when shifts changed they just handed off the AK... not sure how reliable they would be... but there are lots of them.

All in all the Egyptian troops were very friendly... I liked them a lot... any small kindness resulted in a real friend... I used to give them cold water and soda (both ultra cheap) and they would do anything I wanted... and never had to wait in a security line

Quite an interesting deployment.

FWIW

Chuck