Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst. — Rudyard Kipling My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States. — Rutherford B. Hayes A Herculean challenge and an engineering marvel, the 14.5 km-long artificial waterway cutting through densely forested mountainous terrain in the divide between North and South America almost confounded construction engineers at the time. For seven years, Panamanian crews under American technical supervision laboured day and night in the blistering heat of the tropical jungle and torrential rain to build the Panama Canal, blasting immense mountains, hauling huge boulders, and suffering mountainside avalanches until their mission was accomplished. By every measure, the Panama Canal was rightly regarded as one of the seven wonders of modern times. But the international celebration scheduled for the canal's official inauguration on 15 August 1914 never took place. The start of World War I intervened and US President Woodrow Wilson had already pushed a button in Washington to blast a dike for the final flooding of the Panama Canal. Ominously, a devastating earthquake later rocked the Canal Zone. Miraculously, the canal itself was unscathed, even though Panama City was wrecked. Tropical diseases like malaria and yellow fever, as well as frequent mountain mudslides, claimed many lives. As well, cesspools and standing water were constant menaces. The Rockefeller Foundation and other American-based charitable and humanitarian organisations stepped in to resolve such difficulties. Yet anti-American antipathy smouldered, and Columbia in particular was furious about the US decision to snatch the province of Panama and turn it into a US neo-colony to host the canal. “Columbia was hit by the big stick, and all Latin America trembled,” remarked historian Samuel Eliot Morrison. The Caribbean metamorphosed into an American lake and a new era was ushered in with the monumental engineering feat of the Panama Canal. Latin America was unceremoniously relegated into the subservient status of America's backyard. Before the construction of the Panama Canal, the US was no superpower. To its consternation, it dawned on Washington during the War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru (1879-1883) that the South American nations could deploy warships superior to those of the US Navy at the time. But the canal and Panama turned Latin America into America's playground. The US had toyed with the idea of a constructing a canal in neighbouring Nicaragua, but Nicaragua's seismic perils constrained the Americans. However, today the construction of a Nicaragua Canal remains on the cards. If Nicaragua manages to raise the funds to construct its own canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, this would certainly negatively impact Panama. The latter's interests would be seriously compromised and the country's economy possibly ruined. It is for this reason that Panama is now seeking to upgrade its own canal. The $5.25 billion expansion project for the Panama Canal is slated to finish in 2015, promising quicker transit times and more space for the huge ships that don't presently fit into the canal's waterways. Egypt's Suez Canal, by contrast, was cut through an arid desert wasteland. The most serious challenge was the dearth of water, and thousands of Egyptian labourers lost their lives digging in the parched desert. The Suez Canal today has the edge over that in Panama, and the world's largest container shipping company, Maersk, has decided to abandon Panama in favour of the Suez Canal. Strategically, the Suez Canal is better positioned than the Panama Canal. The latter handles around five per cent of the world's total trade, whereas about 7.5 per cent moves through the Suez Canal. Both the Suez and Panama canals are currently undergoing massive restructuring and development. These projects are expected to have important repercussions on the economies of Egypt and Panama. Egypt's finance minister, Hany Kadry Dimian, says that Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb has formed a quartet committee including the ministers of investment, industry and planning, alongside Kadry, to ensure the rapid acquisition of the required funding for construction of a new canal at Suez. The decision was made after consultations with President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi. History of the canals: The Suez Canal opened on 17 November 1869 and allows for the passage of ships up to 20 metres of draft. It is now owned and managed by the Suez Canal Authority headquartered in Ismailiya. Unlike the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal has no locks. No major armed conflicts have taken place in Panama, whereas in Egypt many battles have been fought on the banks of the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal remained under colonial control until 1956, when Egypt's then president Gamal Abdel-Nasser wrested it into Egyptian ownership. The Tripartite Aggression, better known in the west as the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Britain, France and Israel invaded and attempted to occupy the Suez Canal Zone, led to the nationalisation of the canal. Later, much of the fighting in the 1967 Six Day War took place around the Suez Canal, and it remained closed until 5 June 1975. Wreckage from this conflict remains visible along the canal's banks. By 1975 clearance operations were complete, and the canal and its lakes were considered clear of mines. In Latin America, the Spanish-American War of 1898 accelerated the building of the US Navy. America became a naval power, and Panama was pivotal to Washington's strategic interests. The Isthmian Canal, as it was then known, became crucial to the fulfilment of Washington's policy. The US formally took control of the Panama Canal on 4 May 1904, only ceding it back in 1977 when the Torrijos-Carter Treaties provided for the handover to Panama. After a period of joint American-Panamanian control, the canal was taken over by the Panamanian government in 1999. Shipping goods from Shanghai to New York via Panama takes 25 to 26 days, compared to 27 to 28 days through Suez, but only about 20 per cent of China's exports to the US head through the Panama Canal. When the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps obtained a concession to construct the Suez Canal from the khedive of Egypt and Sudan, Said Pasha, in 1854 a new chapter in Egypt's history began. De Lesseps was not the first person to conjure up the idea of a canal linking the Mediterranean and Red seas. A canal that connected the Nile, and hence the Mediterranean, to the Red Sea was constructed by pharaoh Senusret III of the Twelfth Dynasty in ancient Egypt, and renovated in the reign of Ramses II of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Aristotle writes that a pharaoh named Sesostris attempted to link the Nile with the Red Sea, but changed his mind after he realised that the fresh water of the Nile might be polluted by the saline Red Sea. The Greek historian Herodotus says that 120,000 men perished digging a navigable canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea during the reign of Necho II, one of the last native pharaohs of ancient Egypt. The canals today: The Suez Canal is vital to the Egyptian economy, and Egypt is readying itself for an economic boom with its new Suez Canal project. Revenues from the Suez Canal total about $5 billion a year, the country's largest source of foreign currency. This total is expected to be multiplied several times by the building of the new canal project. Egypt plans to add an extra lane to the Suez Canal, running parallel to the existing waterway, in order to increase the number of ships using it each day. Initial calculations of costs and feasibility studies have been encouraging. The project was inaugurated by the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, Moheb Mamish, in the presence of President Al-Sisi on 5 August. “We want all Egyptians to hold shares in this project,” Al-Sisi said in his inaugural speech. Hany Tawfik, head of the Egyptian Direct Investment Association, said he expected the cost of the new project to be around $4 billion. Tawfik wants the government to allow foreigners to buy certificates in the project, instead of limiting investment in it to Egyptians only, in order to ensure new financing from outside the local banking system. For his part, Mamish said that revenues from the new canals would jump to $12.5 billion, adding that much of the money would be used to transform the canal cities of Ismalia, Suez, and Port Said into international trading centres. The government has also said that many new projects in the Suez Canal Zone are being studied, such as the building of glass factories, cement factories, and fish farms. Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb has said that the project will provide a variety of job opportunities and lower the country's high unemployment rates. The bigger question is whether Cairo is prepared to give investors enough of what they want in the new Suez Canal project for it to get under way. Investors, both local and foreign, may need to provide much more capital than previously anticipated. Egypt has taken the plunge, and Panama also plans new development projects. Politics, as always, may be the biggest hurdle, but the future seems bright for both countries.
