A Bin Laden Brother's Ambitious Bridge Project

The mammoth bridge is only one part of the project. Bin Laden's firm is also planning to build giant free-trade zones and expanded ports on both sides of the crossing.

The plans take some imagination to envision. The southwestern tip of Yemen is sparsely populated, with only a few fishing villages dotting the landscape. It is so remote that Yemen's government has agreed to grant more than 500 square miles of land to the developers -- gratis.

If the project is completed, some Yemenis might be in for a cultural shock. Bin Laden is planning to ban all firearms from the free-trade zone, as well as any traces of khat -- a leafy narcotic plant that an estimated 80 percent of Yemeni men chew daily for its mood-changing effects.

"It will be a very modern city," said Murshed, the lawyer for Middle East Development. "In 10 to 12 years, you will see in the Bab al-Mandeb area a city that will look like Dubai, or Hong Kong."

Other massive challenges loom. The Red Sea is a seismic hot spot, with several active volcanoes and a constant threat of earthquakes.

There are man-made hazards, too. The waters around the nearby Horn of Africa are infested with pirates.

According to preliminary designs, the link would consist of several sections. The first would be a bridge from Yemen's coast to Perim island, two miles away. After crossing the 2.5-mile-wide island as a highway, the route would become a bridge again, making the 13.5-mile jump across the strait to Djibouti.

The total length would be about the same as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which extends 17.6 miles from Virginia Beach to Cape Charles, Va. The waters there, however, are only a tenth as deep as the Bab al-Mandeb, which reaches about 1,000 feet at its lowest point.

To allow large vessels to pass underneath, the bridge would have two main suspension spans, each about 1.7 miles long.

"This is a huge challenge from an engineering point of view," said Henrik Andersen, a department head at COWI, a Danish firm hired by Tarek bin Laden to design the bridge. "But we think it can be done."

Despite the enormous price tag, developers said they don't expect to have much trouble raising private capital to build the bridge, given the flood of petrodollars in the Middle East these days.

"At the end of the day, we're all in this to make money," said Ayyad, the American of Kuwaiti origin who heads Noor City Development. "Once people realize the magnitude of this project, everybody will want to jump in and get involved."