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Politics

War-Driven Race for Food and Gas Converges on Arab Linchpin Egypt

Growing energy exports but a dependence on imported foods are prompting international concern over a strategic ally seen as too big to fail.

Wheat grain cascades from a delivery truck at a government-operated mill in central Fayoum, Egypt.

Wheat grain cascades from a delivery truck at a government-operated mill in central Fayoum, Egypt.

Photographer: Islam Safwat/Bloomberg

Offshore from Ras al-Bar, where the Nile flows into the Mediterranean, cargo ships shimmer through the midday haze as they head west along the coast toward the blue loading-cranes on the horizon.

It’s here, at the Egyptian port of Damietta, that the twin impacts of Russia’s war on Ukraine converge.