Dividends of Peace

The past week was torture for Israel. The Arabs fought in bravery and determination. The Israelis were sad & depressed finding out the war cost them much, British "Financial Times" on October 11, 1973.

At the 6th Century BC the Egyptian people led by Ahmos waged the first war of liberation and came out victorious... Such victory opened for an age where science and arts flourished.

The same revival was witnessed when Thotomos II conquered the Hittites.

Also it happened again when Sultan Qotoz won the Ein Galout battle, and once more when Mohamad Ali defeated Ottomans.

The same old story

The same old story with the October 1973 victory... The story of war, victory, peace, and development.

"Egypt and the 21st Century" Document seeks to clarify the general orientations and landmarks of development across the forthcoming century.

Egypt has been always a maker of history; it is the recorded history of man on earth. From time immemorial, Egypt has witnessed successive ages and epochs and the stages of its own history have been densely eventful.

In Egypt, man learned how to render serviceable the elements of life and make humanity's first civilization and how to regulate the affairs of such life.

With the accumulation of knowledge in today's world, humanity can cover only in a day, distances of progress that could have been covered over years, in the past.

Mubarak's tenure
The new overall reawakening of Egypt is starting concurrently with the commencement of a new millennium in the age of humanity.

The document points out the trends already started by Egypt over the first 15 years of President Mubarak's tenure, marked with political stability, democratic set-up, media & cultural openness, peace and regional cooperation, economic reforms, new prospects of development, rapidly progressing administrative and legislative reform and an earnest drive towards integration into world economy.

General orientations
It is most reassuring that Egypt is starting its comprehensive awakening guided by the enlightened vision of a leadership, that has acquired deep experience in dealing with the world and a sound and conscious understanding of its variables.

The maintenance of Egypt's effective role in the Arab, Islamic and African spheres is one of the outstanding successes Egypt will be carrying forward from the 20th Century, in spite of several ebbs, tides and fluctuations.

Probably, one of the 20th Century lessons is that maintaining this role, is not simply an Egyptian quest, but rather an Arab and Islamic pursuit. It is indeed, a mechanism of self-defence and protection of national interests and cultural identity. At the same time, it can serve as a ground for mutual agreement, that should be further enhanced into a basis for broad consensus over integration strategy starting with economy and extending to other fields.

Regardless of any reservations, for us, there is no other way ahead but to enhance cooperation and coordination as a means of achieving integration.

Mega projects
Nowadays, Egypt is starting some gigantic programmes and projects that can be called national projects for which it has set long-term strategies and applied scientific planning to lay the foundations of a modern society.

Those projects are considered Egypt's avenue to the 21th Century and to a new era characterized by achievements & quick pace and by keeping up with modern technology.

The needs of the future have dictated the starting of some gigantic national projects that would offer opportunities for founding new urban communities awayfrom the Old Valley, either in the New Valley or Sinai through comprehensive development within the framework of an overall strategy.

Following is the most important national project:

Toshka: the New Delta

Digging the New Valley's Canal is considered the greatest national project. It started in January 1997.

Via this canal, the Nile's water will be moved to the west where the New Valley's virgin lands are. Thus, Egypt can start comprehensive urban development and found a new delta that would open new horizons of investment in the fields of agriculture, industry, tourism and mining, and establish new urban communities. Such communities would attract population and offer new numerous job opportunities.


The project's objectives:
Adding about 500,000 feddans of arable land to be irrigated by the New Valley's Canal. The studies have affirmed that some 3.3 million feddans in South Egypt are reclaimable.
Establishing agricultural/industrial communities based on the exploitation of the crops of this new delta.
Carrying out projects for livestock, poultry and fish with the aim of supplying the requirements of the local market and export.
Building and upgrading a network of main roads and sub-roads and upgrading air and maritime services.
Promoting tourism and exploiting the tourist sites in this promising area.
Exploiting metal and mineral resources and developing metallurgical industries in the south.
Founding new urban communities to absorb some 5 million persons

Description of the project:
The New Valley Canal (the Sheikh Zayed Canal) aims to move water from Lake Nasser to the New Valley. The canal will start from a site lying 8 km to Lake Khor-Toshka on the north of Lake Nasser. The first phase of the canal's course has been determined to start north of Khor-Toshka then move westward to Darb-El-Arbe'ien then to the town of Paris. The course's length will be 310 km. 500,000 feddans of arable land, on the two banks of the course will be reclaimed during this phase.

The targeted length of the canal till its final phase will be some 310 km and it will irrigate an area of 3.3 million feddans of virgin arable lands.

There is also the New Valley Canal which will be 310 km long, 30 m wide (at bottom and some 58 m at surface) and 6 m deep. It will start from the pumping station on Lake Nasser and end in Al-Wahat Al-Bahareya (Bahareya Oases).

The main canal will have 9 branches (of different lengths) that will irrigate 447,000 feddans. There will be some infrastructural projects the mostimportant of which are:
Implementing an ambitious plan in the field of transport (till the year 2017) with aim of facilitating movement between those new areas.
In January 1997, some of these projects were already started.

Following are some examples:
Building Toshka/Owainat road (220 km) at a cost of L.E.67 million.
Building and Macadamizing Armant/Wahat road on the west bank of the Nile (70 km) at a cost of L.E. 25 million.
Widening Dakhla/Gharb El Mawhoub road, the 1st phase, 50 km long, at a cost of L.E. 12 million.

Linking the 53 km Aswan/Abu-Simbel road to the work sites in the New Valley Canal (Toshka Canal) and macadamizing the roads to those sites.
Providing telephone lines for working sites of the project (30 lines for each). A 200 lines capacity telephone exchange for connecting Toshka area station with AbuSimbel telephone central is being installed.
Opening the phase of making Edfu/Aswan railway (100 km) two-way and finishing the Safaga/Qena/Abu-Tartour line.
Modernizing the Abu-Simbel International Airport at a cost of L.E. 75 million.
Developing and upgrading the High Dam/AbuSimbel/ Halfa river line at a cost of LE 500,000.
The Urban Planning Authority has chosen 7 sites for development and construction over an area of 18,500 feddans in Toshka, Kharga, Farafra, Dairout, East Owinat, Beiram and Dakhla for housing about 980,000 persons.

Estimated cost of the project:
The New Valley Canal Project is estimated to cost some L.E. 5.5 billion. The pumping station will cost around L.E. 1.5 billion (L.E. 900 million for machinery and L.E. 600 million for the electric power network, transformer station and civil works).

Extending cooperation
We should not also neglect mentioning 228 hours of hard intensive work to boost cooperation with seven African countries; aiming at March 3rd 1998, up till 06.00 pm Thursday March 12th 1998. The language of numbers, products, goods, production lists was the jargon of the whole team, each in his own specialty. The same language was also used in talks with businessmen and officials in the seven countries of the tour; starting with Niger and ending with Chad, going through Senegal, Guinia, Cout D'voire, Mali and Ghana.