This is Qatar and this is Saudi Arabia. And this is Saudi Arabia’s plan to dig a
big channel effectively slicing off the border with Qatar. But could Saudi Arabia really make this happen? Yes they could, and we’re about to find
out how. Qatar is a peninsula that juts out from the
mainland, into the Persian Gulf. Its only land-border is with Saudi Arabia,
but it is also close to Bahrain in the west, the United Arab Emirates in the east, and
across the gulf, with Iran in the north. In 2018 Saudi Arabia first publicly floated
the idea of digging a canal, called the Salwa canal, between itself and Qatar. This obviously raises a lot of questions,
which I’ll do my best to go through answering in this video. But first, we need to rewind a little bit. To understand why Saudi Arabia might want
to dig a literal trench between itself and its neighbour, we need to know a little bit
about the recent politics of the Persian Gulf. In 2017 – Qatar’s 3 geographically closest
neighbours, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, along with a handful
of others denounced and cut-ties with Qatar. Their main reasons were Qatar’s relationship
with Iran, meddling in other countries internal affairs, and Qatar’s perceived support of
terrorist organisations. These 3 countries banned Qatari planes in
their airspace, banned Qatari ships in their ports, and Saudi Arabia closed its land-border
with Qatar. Suffice it to say that political tensions
in the Gulf have been high. So that brings us back to Saudi Arabia’s
plan to build a canal that would quite literally slice off Qatar. Why do they want to, and could they really
do it? First the why – and there are a few reasons. Saudi Arabia claims the new canal will create
loads of jobs. This is probably not wrong, as spending hundreds
of millions of dollars on construction usually does create jobs. They also claim that the Salwa canal will
be a tourist attraction – complete with beaches, water-sports and luxury villas. Again, a hard claim to refute, as throwing
loads of money at something can make a desert into a luxury tourist hub. Thirdly the canal would provide an alternate
shipping route from the UAE, to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. It will also let ships avoid navigating too
close to Iran, with whom these countries have a perpetually volatile relationship. We’ll talk about the dimensions of the proposed
canal in a moment – but there should be enough room for cargo ships and for recreation. And finally, the obvious reason sticking out
like a giant peninsula of a sore thumb, regardless of the reasons you do it, building a moat
between you and your neighbour is a huge political statement. It could permanently close the land border
between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as the remaining land on the Saudi-side of the border would
likely be reserved for military use, and possibly even for nuclear waste. So now we know the why, we need to know the
how – can this huge political flex of a project even be done? The planned Salwa canal would be 20m deep,
200m wide and about 70km long. It will most likely be dug at least 1km away
from the border of Qatar, and follow the curve of the border in an arc around from the Salwa
area in the west, to the Inland sea in the east, which empties into the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia is suggesting this 70km of canal
can be dug in only 12 months’ time. That would be a huge effort, but definitely
not impossible. There are two main options when designing
and building a canal – sea-level canals and locks. The choice is normally determined by the landscape
through which the canal is built, and the constrains of finance and labour. The Suez Canal in Egypt is an example of a
sea-level canal. This means that the canal was dredged so that
the whole canal is at sea level. This prevents the needs for mechanisms such
as locks, which we’ll get to in a moment. Sea-level canals can be very expensive to
build if the terrain is rugged, requiring a huge amount of earth to be excavated. The Panama canal is an example of a canal
that is not at sea-level. Instead, it has locks, which fill with water
to allow ships to travel to higher elevations, and empty water which allows a step-down to
lower elevations. This reduces the cost of building a canal
in rugged-territory, as less earth needs to be removed, but does slow the passage of ships. It is not yet clear what kind of canal Saudi
Arabia intends to build, but either way, it would have geographical and political ramifications. So are countries allowed to build canals willy-nilly
that alter the geography of the earth? Yeah, they kind of are. The Panama Canal and the Suez Canal each cleaved
continents, connecting bodies of water that would not otherwise be connected for thousands
of kilometres. And despite evidence of invasive Red Sea species
in the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal has been expanded in recent years. Even recently, the Nicaraguan government was
serious about creating a canal to compete with the Panama canal, that would have bisected
the country’s own largest source of freshwater. They could not secure funding for the project,
and it may be just as well because an accident or oil spill over lake Nicaragua may have
been catastrophic for the people and animals reliant on the freshwater lake. The environmental impact of the Salwa canal
would likely not be as drastic as this. The landscape is arid, and sparsely populated,
and the bodies of water that would be connected are relatively close anyway, on a global scale. A canal of comparable dimensions is actually
the Kiel canal in Germany. It is shallower and slightly narrower than
the Salwa canal is planned to be, and it does include locks. But if we zoom out a little we can see that
actually, the canal passes through the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, and cuts off
the Jutland peninsula, which is a part of Denmark. So what has Qatar’s response been to all
this? Well, they pretty much refuted the claims
made by Saudi Arabia and their other neighbours, and have turned to Iran and Turkey to rely
on their imports, many of which would previously have come across their land border. So what impact is the canal likely to have
on Qatar? Probably not much more than a closed land
border is already having. At release of this video the land border between
Saudi Arabia and Qatar is still closed, so building a 200m wide canal on the Saudi side
is kind of like making that situation a little more permanent. In terms of making Qatar into an island – it
is not about to float off into the Gulf, it is still attached to the continental shelf
after all. Similarly, asking a Danish person how they
feel living on the island of Jutland would probably only get you a few confused looks. So the next time you see click-baity titles
of articles about Qatar becoming and ‘island’ or Saudi Arabia ‘slicing-off’ Qatar, think
about the Danes, and how little they probably think about the Kiel canal. What it WOULD mean though, is that Saudi Arabia
followed-through on a plan which many see not just as a ‘tourist project’ – but
as a giant bird flip to Qatar. It would indicate that Saudi Arabia has no
intention of re-opening the land border, and that they are done ‘building bridges’
so to speak, with their neighbour. It may also leave many Qataris wondering how
adept their own government is at dealing with foreign policy issues, since they now have
to deal with trade blockades, neighbourly tirades and possible future canals being made. Thanks for watching this video about the Salwa
canal – if you enjoyed it, feel free to subscribe to the channel and leave a comment
or a thumb to let me know. Thanks for watching.
