Egypt: The Russians v. the Nile

The billion-dollar Aswan High Dam, partly financed by Russian credits, is to be the greatest monument in Egypt’s history. Sixteen times the bulk of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the dam will create Lake Nasser, largest man-made lake in the world. According to the plans, it will bring into cultivation a badly needed million acres of now barren land, and double the present Egyptian output of electricity.

But last week there were serious doubts that the project can be finished by its scheduled date, even though 570 Soviet technicians and 17,000 Egyptian engineers and laborers are working round the clock. The High Dam is not supposed to be finished till 1968, and the entire project till 1970, but there is a tight schedule for the completion of successive stages, and if any one were to be delayed, the whole plan would be thrown out of kilter.

Bad from the Start. These are the main stages planned: 1) the blasting out of a mile-long channel to detour the Nile around the main dam; at one point the channel will go underground through six rock tunnels (see map) and activate the turbines of a power station; 2 ) the construction of an upstream cofferdam to steer the Nile into its new bed. and of a second cofferdam downstream so that the river will not seep back into the dam site after its detour; 3) the building of the main dam itself, which cannot begin until the channel is cut and cofferdams are in place, supposedly by 1964.

From its start in January 1960. the project has gone badly. Full Soviet plans were not ready until eight months later, and have changed repeatedly since. The Russians believed it would be easy and inexpensive to build an opencut channel around the dam. But the massive Soviet drills—of a type that was obsolete in the West 25 years ago— failed to make headway in Egypt’s volcanic rock. Over Soviet protests, Nasser ordered batteries of light, rubber-tired rock drills from Sweden, and imported Swedish rock engineers to supervise their operation. Even so. in temperatures of 135°, metal surfaces blistered the human hand. Summer work was done mostly at night under the glare of brilliant floodlights. The rock hauling has been delayed by frequent breakdowns of Russian dump trucks, which cost Egypt $41,000 each.

No Harder Than Space. Twice this summer. Nasser sent delegations to Moscow demanding more and better service. In July the Russians agreed to fire the Soviet project director. Dr. Ivan Kosmin. who had built the great Kuibyshev Dam on the Volga. His replacement. Dr. Alexander Alexandrov. took one quick look at Aswan and rushed back to Moscow to ask for more machines and technicians. The most ominous result of these stops and starts, plan changes and equipment failures, was that rock excavation fell far behind schedule, with only 7,300.000 out of a total of 26 million tons of granite drilled and blasted. But recently, rock excavation has nearly doubled to 45,000 tons per day.

Nasser’s government does not publicly criticize the Russians, but individual Egyptians are increasingly letting off steam. Ahmed Said, 59. a veteran hydraulic engineer, says of the Soviet technicians: “Compared to Western professionals, they’re amateurs.” Ibrahim Qenawi. director general of the Aswan project, snaps: “The Russians simply didn’t know how to do the job here. We’re grateful for their credits and technical advice, but now we’re running the show ourselves.” The chief Russian engineer at Aswan, Georg Radchinko. seems undisturbed by Egyptian rancor. “All great projects present great problems.” says he, adding sardonically: “If we can rendezvous cosmonauts in space, don’t you think we can build a dam on the Nile?”