From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Jun 04 2010 - 08:37:29 EDT
War clouds gather as nations demand a piece of the Nile
Tristan McConnell, Nairobi and Addis Ababa
June 4, 2010
Without the Nile, Egypt would be a scarcely habitable desert, Sudan a
parched wilderness. The world's longest river flows for more than 4,000
miles through northeast Africa; it irrigates farmland, provides water for
drinking and sanitation and drives hydroelectric power stations.
The Nile supplies almost all of Egypt's fresh water and three quarters of
Sudan's. Both countries claim historic rights over it but neither controls
its sources. For thousands of years Egypt has jealously defended its right
to use the Nile's waters as it pleases.
Now, amid warnings of conflict and crop failure, the balance of power is
starting to change as other countries make new claims on the water.
Last month most of the countries that occupy the Nile's headwaters signed an
agreement granting themselves greater control of the river and removing a
colonial-era veto, held by Egypt for more than 50 years, over how it is
used. Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda have already signed up,
disregarding a refusal by Egypt and its ally, Sudan, to co-operate. Burundi
and the Democratic Republic of Congo are expected to follow.
Egypt has threatened legal action and said it will not sacrifice a drop of
its historic entitlement. Yet a new Ethiopian hydroelectric dam, which
opened last month, further emphasises Egypt's diminishing control over the
river that is its lifeblood.
The new World Bank-backed Nile Basin Initiative agreement was a decade in
the making. It is intended to replace two existing Nile treaties that ignore
the upstream countries.
In 1929 Britain, as the colonial power, signed a deal in the name of its
colonies giving Egypt almost all of the Nile water and the veto power over
its use upstream. In 1959 a revised treaty gave three quarters of the Nile
waters to Egypt with Sudan taking the rest.
However, in recent years the countries to the south have grown more vocal in
their demands for a greater share of the water and an end to Egypt's veto,
which includes stopping hydroelectric and irrigation projects that might
disrupt the river's flow.
The Nile Basin Initiative proposes the formation of a new regional
commission to decide on hydropower and irrigation projects on the Nile. It
has become a focus for tensions in the region, raising fears of a looming
water war.
Thirty years ago Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian President at the time, said: "The
only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water." During the famine
that afflicted this part of Africa in the 1980s, Boutros Boutros Ghali,
Egypt's Foreign Minister who became UN Secretary-General, warned: "The next
war in our region will be over water, not politics."
Since the agreement was signed last month, angry Egyptian officials have
echoed this sentiment. Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Foreign Minister, described
the Nile waters as a matter of national security and a "red line" not to be
crossed. Some Egyptian newspapers even discussed tactics that would prove
effective if war erupts.
High in the Ethiopian mountains an ancient monastery watches over the sacred
Gish Abbai spring. The waters bubbling out of the ground feed Lake Tana,
then spill into a gorge to become the Blue Nile. In the Sudanese capital
Khartoum it meets the White Nile, which gushes northwards out of Lake
Victoria, and together they flow on through Egypt to the Mediterranean.
Much of the White Nile's waters evaporate in the vast Sudd swamp of Sudan,
so it is the waters of the Blue Nile that are most at stake. Ethiopia's
Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, is intransigent in defence of his right to use
this water to drive development.
In an interview soon after the opening of the controversial new Tana Beles
hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile last month, Mr Meles dismissed Egyptian
complaints that the move was provocative. "Some people in Egypt have
old-fashioned ideas based on the assumption that the Nile water belongs to
Egypt, and that Egypt has a right to decide who gets what," said Mr Meles.
Ethiopia, he added, had "the necessary resources to build whatever
infrastructure and dams it wants on the Nile water. The way forward is not
for Egypt to try and stop the unstoppable."
It is unclear how Tana Beles was financed. China is investing billions of
pounds in the larger African countries, including some of the world's
poorest nations. Last year a Chinese company completed the Tekeze Dam on a
tributary of the Nile in western Ethiopia, which is now the largest dam in
Africa.
"The China factor is one of the most worrisome in the new debates over water
in Africa," said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a
California-based environmental and economic research centre. "They are
pursuing unilateral water development projects that are going to affect
downstream countries and regional politics."
Behind the intensifying competition is rapid population growth, running at 2
to 3 per cent in the countries that line the Nile. This means the water that
barely sustains 200 million people today will have to provide for half a
billion within a generation. Farmers in northern Egypt took to the streets
this week to protest against a lack of water for their crops but their
seasonal water shortages garner little sympathy from a country such as
Ethiopia, where millions face drought and famine.
The old treaties need to be renegotiated. If they are not - or if disputes
cannot be resolved - analysts warn that conflict is all but inevitable. Dr
Gleick said: "Without some kind of negotiated agreement on how to share the
waters, the risk is growing that conflicts will occur and those conflicts
will be violent."
Water rivalry is most acute in poor, arid regions such as northeast Africa
but are not confined to Africa.
Experts point to hotspots between India and Pakistan over the Indus, in the
Middle East over the Tigris and Euphrates, and in South-East Asia over the
Mekong. "Conflict over water is becoming a huge issue globally," said Steven
Solomon, author of Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and
Civilisation.
Yet most analysts say that neither Ethiopia nor Egypt wants to go to war
over water. "Water wars are not inevitable," said Dr Gleick. "I'm optimistic
that the Nile Basin countries are still negotiating, despite the rhetoric."
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