Loading ...Here's Your Update on the Suez Canal
By: Sara Tawfik/Arab America Contributing Writer
The saga of the world’s most famous stuck ship is finally over. With the Suez Canal open again, the ships are starting their runs through — and going a little faster than normal. According to the Suez Canal Authority, the maximum speed allowed through the canal is between 7.6 and 8.6 knots, but the ship-tracking website Marine Traffic shows most of the ships are traveling around 8 and 10 knots at the moment. Where a container ship the size of a skyscraper was stuck. It has choked off a narrow artery that sees the passage of about a tenth of all global shipping. Egyptian authorities ordered preparations for the unloading of the vessel’s 18,000 containers as a fall-back scenario.
What is the Suez Canal?
The Suez Canal is a man-made waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea. It enables a more direct route for shipping between Europe and Asia, effectively allowing for passage from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean without having to circumnavigate the African continent. The waterway is critical for international trade and has been at the center of conflict since it opened in 1869.
The Suez Canal stretches 120 miles from Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt southward to the city of Suez. The canal separates the bulk of Egypt from the Sinai Peninsula. It took 10 years to build and was officially opened on November 17, 1869. Today, an average of 50 ships navigate the canal daily, carrying more than 300 million tons of goods per year.
History of the Suez Canal
Many kings who ruled kept improving and expanding this canal. Construction began, at the northernmost Port Said end of the canal, in early 1859. The excavation work took 10 years, and an estimated 1.5 million people worked on the project. Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt and Sudan, formally opened the Suez Canal on November 17, 1869. In 1888, the Convention of Constantinople had stated that Suez Canal would operate as a neutral zone, under the protection of the British, who had by then assumed control of the surrounding region, including Egypt and Sudan.
In 1956, Egyptian President Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal to pay for the construction of a dam on the Nile. This led to the Suez Crisis with the UK, France, and Israel mounting an attack on Egypt. The conflict ended in 1957 after the United Nations got involved and was followed by the first instance of the UN Peacekeeping Forces being deployed anywhere in the world. Even as the occupying forces withdrew their troops, the UN forces were stationed at Sinai to maintain peace between Egypt and Israel.
What Other Crisis is the Suez Canal Currently Struggling with?
The canal has had anything but smooth sailing in the 150 or more years since it was formally built. In fact, political, financial, and technical problems have resulted in the canal shutting down five times, the last closure lasting eight years before reopening for navigation in June 1975.
There is another fundamental lesson to be relearned here, and it about more than just the Suez Canal. It is the criticality of a handful of so-called “choke points” around the world upon which the global navigational grid depends. These are spots where traffic patterns collide, and the tens of thousands of ships underway on the world’s oceans at any given moment come together in tightly managed traffic schemes
The canal continues to be the lifeline for all trade between the West and East as 10 per cent of the global trade passes through it every year. The average 50 ships that pass through it daily carry about $9.5 billion worth of goods, every day. The freight and cargo include everything from crude oil to perishables.
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