Egypt's Generals Want a New Canal

General Kamel el-Wazeer, the head of the Egyptian military’s Engineering Authority, recently stood on the banks of what he hopes will be a second lane of the Suez Canal. “The entirety of Egypt and the whole world” will benefit from this project, he said, speaking to a small group of journalists on Aug. 19 outside the city of Ismailia, halfway down the course of the existing canal. Trucks carrying earth rumbled behind him. Work had begun a little more than a week earlier and so, for now, the new channel is a dry pit in the desert. A reporter from an Egyptian broadcaster interjected, “A million jobs for the Egyptian people?” The general nodded, “Yes, a million jobs for the Egyptian people.”

President Abdel-Fattah al-Seesi, the former military chief who overthrew an elected Islamist government last year, is touting the new canal as a bold step to reinvigorate Egypt’s economy, which has been battered by political unrest since the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak. Estimated to cost between $4 billion and $8 billion, the project will complement a separate plan to establish a trade and industrial hub on the banks of the existing canal. On Aug. 17, Al-Azhar Grand Imam Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the country’s highest Muslim religious official, visited the site, declaring it approvingly as “a jihad in the path of God.”