Moses once parted the Red Sea ... now Osama bin Laden’s half-brother is planning to build a bridge over it.
Building on engineering feats such as the Channel Tunnel between England and France, the Panama Canal linking the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Suez Canal joining the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, the proposed bridge would link Yemen to Djibouti, creating a man-made link between the Middle East and Africa.
Costing 14 billion euros (US$22 billion), stretching around 28.5km and encompassing a six-lane motorway and a four-track railway, the bridge would be of Biblical proportions.
Meanwhile the man behind it bears a familiar name, too — Tarek bin Laden, half-brother of the leader of al-Qaeda.
Tarek, a Saudi construction magnate, has been lobbying the Yemen and Djibouti governments to back the project, which would create a direct link between Arabia and east Africa, without the need to travel by the Sinai peninsula.
Djibouti Prime Minister Dileita Mohamed Dileita said his government was not actively involved.
“The project fell on us from the sky with the proposal by Osama bin Laden’s [half-]brother, who has a construction company in Saudi Arabia,” Dileita told reporters. “People are talking about it a lot here — the Yemenis are convinced the project will be carried out with Saudi and Emirates’ funds to connect the Arab world to Africa.”
The plan envisages building new cities at either end of the bridge — which would itself in fact be a combination of bridges, with a stopoff point in the center of the Bab ed Mandeb (Gates of Hell) straits at Perim Island.
“Numerous American, Yemeni and even French businesses are taking part in the project,” the prime minister said. “But the big advantage will be to take millions of African Muslims to Mecca, by train or by bus.”
Indeed, on top of the commercial and logistic aspects, one of the key attractions of the bridge is spiritual — serving as an easier crossing for millions of African Muslims who make the pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, each year.
One of the new cities at either end of the bridge would be called the City of Light (“Medinet an Noor”) and at 600km² would be six times the land-mass of Paris and serve as a trade, commercial and tourist hub for anticipated traffic.
“We don’t yet know if it will be in the north of Djibouti or in Yemen,” Deleita said.
The bridge would in total measure around 28.5km, including a 3.5km link to the island and a final 13km crossing to Africa — the longest suspension bridge in the world.
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