Bin Laden’s Bridge over Troubled Waters
Yemen and Somalia have been breeding, training, and harboring terrorists for decades. Geographically, the two countries face each other across the Gulf of Aden, one of the most dangerous and troubled waterways in the world. In considering the bleak geographical proximity of two of the world’s ever-increasing security threats, I was reminded of one of the strangest news stories from last year, right around this same time. That would be the ambitious plans of Tarek bin Laden, the developer brother of the world’s most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden, to build the world’s longest suspension bridge between the two terrorist havens. Reported to cost as much as $70 billion, that’s one very expensive bridge over very troubled waters. Why anyone would spend this much money building such a thing is even more confusing than al-Qaeda’s approval of hip-hop lyrics as a means to return to the Islamic ideal of an eighth-century-like world.
Yemen is the poorest nation in the Arab world. With an unemployment rate of 35 percent, nearly 50 percent of Yemenis are illiterate — neither is a promising statistic for a scenario of rapid economic growth. As for Somalia, save piracy and jihad hip-hop, the country currently exports almost nothing. What exactly will this bridge — stretching from Yemen to Somalia’s tiny neighbor, Djibouti — transport back and forth?
“This has been Sheik Tarek’s idea for many, many years,” Jameel Murshed, a lawyer for Middle East Development LLC, the partnership led by Tarek bin Laden, told the Washington Post last May. “He wants to serve his mother country.” Osama and Tarek’s father, Mohammed bin Laden, was born in Yemen.
Which doesn’t answer the question. Nor can the San Francisco-based public relations firm Noor City Development Corporation, which was hired to manage the project. “The benefits of such a transportation route are unfathomable,” Noor says on its website, without any mention of what those benefits might be. Even Noor City employee Amman M. Said, a representative from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, told the Post, “When I talk to people about [the bridge], 99 percent of the time they think it’s a joke at first.”
Is it a joke, then? Or is it something else? Last summer, reporters for the Economist viewed a promotional video on the bridge project (originally named Bridge of Tears but later renamed Bridge of the Horns). In it, a voice promises that the bridge will be “a hope for all humanity,” claiming it would surely propel Djibouti into becoming “the first environmental city of the 21st century.” And yet the Economist could find no African official to “explain how the [city of Djibouti] could run on renewable energy” when 150,000 of its 800,000 people are “facing imminent starvation.”
That’s not all. The Economist also reported that bin Laden’s partner, Muhammad Ahmed al-Ahmed, “a Saudi former shipping executive,” had previously worked for the American military contractor DynCorp. Other behind-the-scenes partners include U.S. defense contractors Allied Defense Systems and Lockheed Martin — two companies hardly known for their interest in renewable energy.
Since the original flurry of reporting last year, little more has been written about one bin Laden brother’s seemingly inexplicable Bridge of Horns. Meanwhile, the other bin Laden brother, Osama, continues to successfully transport jihad back and forth between the Middle East and Africa with the ultimate goal of bringing his global enterprise to America.
In a just world, Yemen would be treated like a joke by Comedy Central. There is so much material here.
One thing about bridges. They’re easy to blow up.
If they have 35% unempluyment, why don’t the take it on with ultra cheap labor. We could give them shovels and wheelbarrows. Most folks do not know the only remaining sector on this planet with slavery is a set of Muslim nations. all other cultures hve left slavery. Of course if slavery is productive, why don’t they apply their prosperity to their infrastructure?
You don’t understand. Building a bridge to nowhere is one of those popular liberal foreign infrastructure projects, paid for by the American tax payer, to jump start sustainable growth in the “third world.” It’ll erase poverty by putting all those would be religious warriors to work, building bridges of cross cultural understanding and empathy. As we’ll know, poverty produces to hate. Why would any self respecting rich Saudi prince spend their own money on regional economic development when the the Americans can so easily be extorted? Give me your money or I’ll blow up your church!
Am I the only one who noticed that the bridge isn’t going to Somalia? It’s going to Djibouti, which has a very different relationship with the US. Djibouti is home to Camp Lemonier the only permanent US military base on the continent. It’s still a stupid idea but it’s not a bridge connecting two terrorist havens.
Talk about a bridge to nowhere
I’d rather see the Saudis spend $70 billion on an idiotic bridge than use it to continue to fund Wahabbi mosques across the U.S. and Europe, spreading their filthy, slimy, 6th century bedouin dogma.