Human and Material Losses: A Russian Newspaper Reviews the Painful History of the ‘Suez Canal’

A Russian newspaper sheds light on the history of the events associated with the Egyptian Suez Canal, starting with the human losses caused by its digging and the forced labor system that took place during it, and ending with the case of the Japanese container ship Ever Given.

The Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, in an article by Maxim Makarychev, mentioned the closure of the 193 kilometers waterway caused by the Japanese container ship after its unintended berth, which has completely paralyzed navigation through the canal since March 24, 2021.

According to the writer’s description, this incident “is considered one episode of the Canal’s saddening drama series.”

Fantastical

The writer attributes the accumulation of more than 160 huge ships on the northern and southern ends of the canal to the narrowness of the canal and its importance for global trade at the same time, as it constitutes 12 percent of the total shipping traffic in the world, and it is also the shortest water link connecting Asia and Africa, stressing that the financial losses for stranded ship owners exceed 10 billion dollars.

Makarychev relays the statements of the advisor to the Egyptian president on Suez Canal zone and seaports, and the former chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, Mohab Mamish, which he made to the Agence France-Presse that “the navigation traffic through the canal will be resumed within 48-72 hours, and that he personally supervised several similar operations and that he is familiar with every centimeter of the canal.”

Despite these promising statements, the author believes, based on the opinions of many specialists in this field, that Mamish says “something of a fantasy.”

Makarychev said: “Experts believe that the process of recovering a container ship of 4 soccer fields from a sandy and muddy shallow area causes an estimated displacement of 240 thousand tons of water, and would take about a month long.”

He added: “Egypt is using 8 large tug boats in addition to drilling equipment on both sides of the canal, but all attempts to recover the huge vessel have failed so far, and the ship’s recovery needs a much greater effort than is currently taking place.”

Specifically, there is a need to extract approximately 15-20 thousand cubic meters of sand from a depth of 1.2-1.5 meters along the two ends of the canal, in order for there to be a possibility to push the ship out of the shallow area.

Makarychev stated that “the history of the canal was linked to a series of painful events. The beginning of the work on the construction of the canal was in the mid-19th century, when the French diplomat, Ferdinand de Lesseps, obtained a license to establish the Suez Canal Company by the Egyptian viceroy at the time.”

In 1859, excavation work began and the company’s shares were sold almost exclusively to French investors, and during the 10 years that followed the start of digging the canal, thousands out of a million and a half who participated in the canal work died due to the many infectious diseases that spread among them, including cholera, as well as many of them were summoned to participate in various wars at the time.

The writer noted that “the canal was officially opened in November 1869, and the SS Dido was the first ship to cross the canal heading from south to north.”

It is worth noting—according to the writer—that the French General Napoleon Bonaparte had recommended his country’s scientists to conduct a study to establish a waterline linking the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, but the scientists told him that this was impossible, because the two seas are geographically leveled at different elevations.

The writer believes that “the opening of the canal has saved valuable time more than a week in the voyage of every ship heading from south to north, but at the same time it weakened Great Britain’s dominance of trade with the Far East and started a new era of European colonization of Africa, which is considered one of the bloodiest and darkest ers in history.”

Strategic Importance

Makarychev continues his review of the history of the canal, stating that “a few years after the opening of the canal, the United Kingdom was able to persuade Khedive “viceroy” Ismail in Egypt to sell his share in the canal, which constituted 44 percent of the total shares, and with this step the United Kingdom became one of the largest shareholders in the Suez Canal Company in 1875.

Seven years later, Britain invaded Egypt, which was then legally part of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1888, a treaty was concluded making the Suez Canal a neutral area under British protection, and in that era and over the course of 70 years after that, Egypt became a British colony, and perhaps this period “was one of the longest turbulent periods in Egyptian history.”

As for the two World Wars, the Suez Canal had a great strategic importance as evidenced by the Ottomans’ attempts to control the canal, from which they were repelled by the British forces in the First World War. In the Second World War, the Nazis and the Nazi Italian government made the canal a center for their campaign in North Africa, but in 1954 the British left Egypt, according to the writer.

Makarychev said: “In 1956, the then Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal, preventing Israeli ships from crossing the canal, which led to the Suez Crisis, as Israel allied itself with Britain and France with the aim of regaining control over the waterway.”

He added: “The agreement was that the Israeli forces, with the support of the two European allies, would attack the Suez district, and the two European allies had promised the Zionists to create a legal cover for the campaign on the pretext of restoring stability in the Middle East.”

The tripartite plan was thwarted by the initiative of the Canadian diplomat Lester Pearson, who proposed an alternative to the aggression against Egypt, with the idea of ​​establishing the first United Nations Peacekeeping force to ensure security in that region. Washington voted in favor of this proposal, and Paris and London agreed to it, and the channel was reopened by the forces of United Nations Peacekeeping in 1957.

The writer pointed out that “ten years after the opening of the canal by the UN Peacekeeping forces, Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula, including the eastern coast of the Suez Canal. As a result, Egypt imposed a comprehensive ban on the movement of all ships in the canal, and the canal continued to be closed until 1975.”

In 1979, an agreement was concluded between Egypt, Israel, the United States and other countries to replace the UN Peacekeeping forces with multinational forces and international observers, and since then the Suez Canal has not been closed to water transport, but frequent shipwrecks have led to its closure many times.

The writer concluded: “The history of the Suez Canal does not record an accident that caused such heavy material losses or affected oil prices on the world market, as the Ever Given container ship has done.”