Alaco

21.04.2016 | Bridge Building in the Middle East

Egypt and Saudi Arabia are planning to build a bridge across the Red Sea in order to bolster their economic prospects and reinforce the Saudi-led Sunni bloc.

It’s an ambitious project, which will face monumental challenges.  Bridges linking Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been proposed in the past but have never got off the ground.  This one looks more likely to go ahead because there seems to be the political will to make it happen.

The bridge, announced by King Salman on a much heralded visit to Cairo just over a week ago, would go a long way to address the precarious state of affairs in both countries.  The Egyptians are facing major economic problems from years and years of political upheaval, massive unemployment and overpopulation.  The Saudis are under huge pressure from plummeting oil prices, acknowledging that they need to start diversifying their economy.

For Egypt, a bridge would be a boon for the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians working in the kingdom and other Gulf States, whose remittances represent a significant proportion of Egypt’s national income.  It could also open up Sinai tourism – severely affected by instability and sporadic attacks by the region’s Islamic groups – to wealthy Saudi visitors, who would give the region a much-needed boost.  Both countries would benefit greatly from an increase in trade as the bridge is likely to strengthen commercial ties between Africa and Asia.  This could prove particularly advantageous for Saudi Arabia as it seeks to wean itself off oil, providing newly developed industries with access to African markets. 

But the project is as much a metaphorical bridge as a physical one, reinforcing the Sunni bloc in the Middle East amid signs of growing Shia assertiveness in the region.  Saudi Arabia and several of its Gulf allies were at a loss as to how to deal with Egypt during Mohamed Morsi’s brief but divisive rule.  His Muslim Brotherhood’s religious doctrines challenged those of the Wahhabi clerical establishment in the Arabian Peninsula and linked the Brotherhood to groups opposed to the Al Saud.  The Saudi Royal family would have breathed a big sigh of relief when Morsi was overthrown, and they are now keen to consolidate links between the kingdom and the new Egypt under President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, who is firmly in the Saudi-led Sunni camp.

Significantly, Israel appears to have given its consent to the bridge project because its defence establishment has an interest in a strengthened and emboldened Saudi bloc as a counterweight to Iran and Shia ambitions in the region, particularly in Lebanon.  As part of the project, Egypt has returned two islands in the Straits of Tiran to Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh would have sought to reassure the Israelis that the move would not compromise Israel’s access to the waterway, which serves its southern port of Eilat. That represents a tacit Saudi acknowledgement of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and an undertaking not to upset it.

Many questions remain over the construction of bridge.  There’s been no word of its projected cost, who will pay for it, where it will be built and the likely timescales.  In all probability, it will take years to complete.  But its announcement provides an intriguing insight into the economic and political dynamic in the region.