From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Sat Aug 02 2008 - 16:21:37 EDT
The Red Sea - Can it really be bridged?
Jul 31st 2008 | DJIBOUTI AND DUBAI
>From The Economist print edition
A fantastic plan to span the Red Sea's troubled waters is raising
eyebrows
ONE OF Osama bin Laden's many half-brothers, Tarek bin Laden, this week
signed a deal with tiny Djibouti which may-or may not-mark the start of
one of the world's boldest engineering projects. Djibouti's president,
Ismael Omar Guelleh, promised Mr bin Laden 500 sq km (193 sq miles) of
land to start building Noor City, the first of a hundred "Cities of
Light" the vast Saudi Binladen Group plans around the world. "A hope for
all humanity, the first environmental city of the 21st century," gushed
the promotional video at the signing. The audience, mostly American
military contractors near retirement age, clapped enthusiastically.
Engineers elsewhere say the scheme is a fantasy.
Mr bin Laden, his sons, and their front man, Muhammad Ahmed al-Ahmed, a
Saudi former shipping executive, say they have already invested
"hundreds of millions of dollars" in a plan to build cities on either
side of the Bab al-Mandib (Gate of Tears) strait at the foot of the Red
Sea. Construction is supposed to begin next year, after the terms of
sovereignty for the tax-free metropolises have been agreed. By 2025,
says Mr Ahmed, Djibouti's Noor City will have 2.5m people and its Yemeni
twin 4.5m. Several million jobs will be created. An airport serving both
cities will, he says, attract 100m passengers a year. A 29km bridge
across the strait will connect Arabia and Africa by road, rail and
pipelines, its towers among the tallest on earth. The cost? A mere $200
billion or so.
Yet oddly, aside from Djibouti's, no African government officials were
to be seen, no architect, no technical adviser to explain how the cities
could run on renewable energy, and barely an engineer. None of the Noor
City delegation noted that blazing hot Djibouti, with 800,000 people, is
already acutely short of water and imports nearly all its food, that
150,000 of its people are "facing imminent starvation", according to the
UN's World Food Programme, and that millions more are famished in
next-door Ethiopia. Mr Ahmed also brushed aside any worry about
instability in Yemen, where an al-Qaeda suicide bombing on July 26th
targeted the country's police. Yet at the last moment Yemen's government
refused visas to journalists travelling with Mr bin Laden.
Mr Ahmed has worked for DynCorp, an American military contractor. So had
one of the project's main managers, Michel Vachon, before moving to L3
Communications, a contractor often employed by the American government.
Another manager, Dean Kershaw, spent 29 years in America's forces; some
others had served in the Bush administration. Armed American
special-forces veterans now apparently employed as security guards by L3
chaperoned journalists. All part of an American plan to help secure the
Suez shipping lane or to strengthen the hand of friendly forces in
Yemen? "Absolutely not," said Mr Kershaw. "The [American] government has
vetted us, but they're not behind us."
Whatever the reality, the presence of arms manufacturers in the
consortium, including Allied Defense Systems and Lockheed Martin, will
fuel conspiracy theories among Arabs. Mr Ahmed says investors in
Djibouti's Noor City have the chance to "be part of modern humanity" by
creating the "financial, educational, and medical hub of Africa".
Africans may wonder why the hub is not being built in a bit of Africa
where more Africans live and which has food and water.
Unlike the Gulf States, which financed most of their development from
oil revenue, Djibouti and Yemen are too poor to provide more than
scrubland. Mr Ahmed says his firm will finance a new railway through
Yemen to connect the new cities with Dubai. He is vaguer about Africa,
where a motorway and railway would have to be built to Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia's capital, and on to Kenya's Nairobi and Sudan's Khartoum, if
it is really to help perk up the continent's economy.
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