General Kamel el-Wazeer, the head of the Egyptian military's Engineering Authority, recently stood on the banks of what he hopes will be a second lane of the Suez Canal. "The entirety of Egypt and the whole world" will benefit from this project, he said, speaking to a small group of journalists on Aug. 19 outside the city of Ismailia, halfway down the course of the existing canal. Trucks carrying earth rumbled behind him. Work had begun a little more than a week earlier and so, for now, the new channel is a dry pit in the desert. A reporter from an Egyptian broadcaster interjected, "A million jobs for the Egyptian people?" The general nodded, "Yes, a million jobs for the Egyptian people."
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