Sudan and Egypt are extremely wary of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam which, they believe, will limit their access to the life-giving waters of the Nile.
There has been so much attention in India and Asia on China’s plans to build a super dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo (as the Brahmaputra is called in Tibet). And Pak apologists become apoplectic over the last couple of years over discreet suggestions that India might cut off the Indus river’s flow into Pakistan by abrogating the 1960 Treaty. At another level, US Vice President Kamala Harris, looking at a possible water crisis in America, repeated a warning that has been given for 30 years at least: “For years there were wars fought over oil; in a short time there will be wars fought over water”. Of course, for her America is the world. She discussed how the new American Jobs Plan would provide an investment of more than $111 billion in the country’s water infrastructure to ensure it is safe and equitable. So while we may not expect F-16s scrambling to fight over the Missouri and Mississippi, there is a far more dangerous confrontation over river water brewing in Africa.
With almost half the world water stressed (Kamala Harris does not know it), and a quarter of it water scarce, I predict that the next major conflict will be over the Nile, the world’s longest river and the life giver to millions in Central and Northeast Africa.
EGYPT AND THE NILE
The Nile is the melody that occurs constantly through the north African opera. Beginning in Burundi, the White Nile flows north through several lakes, till its magnificent confluence (mughran) in Khartoum with the Blue Nile rushing down from the Ethiopian highlands. As Herodotus famously wrote in the 5th century BCE, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile”. From infancy, every Egyptian learns that the Nile belongs to Egypt, as every Pakistan child recites “Kashmir banega Pakistan”.
In 3000 BCE, when the first Egyptian dynasty unified the lower and upper parts of the Nile River, there were no states in Eastern or Central Africa to challenge Egypt’s access to Nile waters. The Nile was a mysterious god: sometimes beneficent, sometimes vengeful. Floods between June and September, the months of peak flow, could wipe out entire villages, drowning thousands of people. Floods also brought the brown silt that nourished the delta, one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, feeding not only Egypt but many of its neighbours.
The river’s central importance to Egyptian life is captured in A Hymn to the Nile, recorded in Papyrus Sallier II:
Hail to thee, O Nile, that issues from the earth and comes to keep Egypt alive! …
He that waters the meadows which He created …
He that makes to drink the desert …
O, Nile, verdant art thou, who makes man and cattle to live
The river flow follows regular patterns, increasing between May and July, peaking in September, and then receding until the next year. But the river volume is very unpredictable, as documented by nilometers (multi-storied structures built hundreds of years ago in to measure water heights). Successive empires of Pharaohs, Greeks, Romans, Christian Copts, and Muslims celebrated the rising waters of the Nile and dreaded floods or droughts.
Five millennia of Nile history show how years with high water have produced ample food, population growth, and magnificent monuments, as during the first five dynasties from 3050 BCE to 2480 BCE. Periods with low water have brought famine and disorder. In the 11th century, an Arab engineer studied the damming of the river at Aswan, but gave up.
The first Egyptian to write about the potential for an Ethiopian diversion of the Nile was the 13th century Coptic scholar Jurjis al-Makin. Since the twelfth century CE Christian Ethiopian kings have warned Muslim Egyptian sultans of their power to divert waters of the Nile, often in response to religious conflicts. Stories about Ethiopia’s power over the Nile inspired the 14th century European legend of Prester John, a wealthy Christian Ethiopian priest king. In 1510 the legend returned to Ethiopia with Portuguese explorer Alfonso d’ Albuquerque, who considered the possibility of destroying Egypt by diverting the Nile to the Red Sea. In 1513 d’Albuquerque even asked the Portuguese King for workers skilled in digging tunnels. Nothing came of the plan.
From the time of the Pharaohs until 1800 CE, Egypt’s population rose and fell due to food availability and epidemics. The irrigation projects of the 19th century Ottoman ruler Mohammad Ali allowed year-around cultivation, causing the population to swell to 10 million. Since the opening of the Aswan High Dam in 1971, Egypt’s population has increased from about 30 million to well over 100 million.
90% of Egypt’s people live on the banks of the Nile and with no appreciable rainfall, Egypt’s agriculture depends entirely on the river. Ancient Egyptians believed that the Nile flooded every year because of Isis’ tears of sorrow for her dead husband, Osiris. The flood deposited rich silt on the river’s banks, allowing farmers to grow crops. The Nile’s seasonal flooding is a central theme in Egyptian history. This flooding was so regular that the ancient Egyptians set their three seasons—Inundation, or flooding, Growth, and Harvest—around it. It is celebrated by Egyptians as an annual holiday for two weeks starting 15 August, known as Wafaa El-Nil. It is also celebrated in the Coptic Church by ceremonially throwing a martyr’s relic into the river, hence the name, the Martyr’s Finger.
The Nile Basin nations have a combined population of over 500 million people (expected to double by 2035) and over 200 million of them rely directly on the Nile, the only major reliable source of water for their food and water security. Water is a dangerously scarce commodity in Northeastern Africa. Climate change brings the continual threat of drought. The Nile River was the highway that joined Egypt together. Since there are no forests in Egypt, wood was brought from Lebanon to build the boats that transported granite for the construction of pyramids. Today, the felucca, a small open sailboat, is a common mode of transporting people and goods on the Nile.
There have been several treaties on the use of Nile waters.
In 1891, the Italian rulers of Ethiopia agreed with England not to disturb the flow of the Nile, reaffirming this in 1925. In 1902, Ethiopia promised to maintain the flow of the Blue Nile. In 1906, Belgium contracted not to reduce the water flowing into the White Nile at Lake Albert. In 1906, Britain, France and Italy agreed to safeguard the interests of Great Britain and Egypt in the Nile Basin. But ignored Ethiopia that supplied 80% of the Nile’s waters. The 1929 Agreement between Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan gave over 90% of the Nile’s waters to Egypt, with the January-July dry season flow reserved for Egypt, giving it complete control when water was most needed for irrigation, and allowed it the right to monitor the Nile flow in the upstream countries.
The 1959 Nile Waters Agreement between Sudan and Egypt upped Sudan’s share to 20% and allowed Egypt to construct a High Dam at Aswan, capable of storing one year’s flow of the Nile. It again ignored Ethiopia. The geo-political shift in the region has led to a proliferation of upstream developments, including dams and irrigation networks. Egypt and Sudan have built several dams and reservoirs, hoping to limit the ravages of droughts and floods which have so defined their histories. Egypt is extremely protective over its decreasing share of the Nile’s water especially as the Nile is shrinking due to intermittent precipitation in Ethiopia. Moreover, Lake Victoria, the source of a fifth of the Nile waters, is shrinking fast.
The 2010 Entebbe Nile Basin Agreement shifted control over the Nile away from Egypt and Sudan, which previously had a monopoly over the river’s resources as a result of colonial agreements. Now Ethiopia, one of eight upriver states and the source of most of the Nile waters, is building the largest dam in Africa. With it, Ethiopia will physically control the Blue Nile Gorge—the primary source of most of the Nile waters.
Ethiopia is referred to as the water tower of Africa due to its combination of mountainous areas with a comparatively large share of water resources in Africa (but uses less than 1% of its hydro potential). Ethiopians have long identified the Gihon river in the Garden of Eden with the Blue Nile. Located 45 km from the Ethiopia-Sudan border, the partly China-funded Grand Renaissance Dam (to relieve its acute energy shortage) begins a new chapter in the long, bellicose history of debate on the ownership of the Nile waters, and its effects for the entire region will be profound. The reservoir, whose filling has just resumed, should be full by 2025.
Sudan and Egypt are extremely wary of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam which, they believe, will limit their access to the life-giving waters of the Nile. In 2012 newspapers around the world reported a Wikileaks document revealing Egyptian and Sudanese plans to build an airstrip to bomb the dam in Ethiopia, but political turmoil in Egypt prevented it. Downriver Egypt and Sudan argue that they have historic rights to the water upon which they absolutely depend. In 1979, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat threatened war on violators of what he saw as his country’s rights to Nile waters, stating that “if Ethiopia takes any action to block our right to the Nile waters, there will be no alternative for us but to use force”. He believed that after signing the Camp David Peace Accords with Israel in 1979, no other problem could again take Egypt to war except water.
Egypt’s current president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has described the flow of the Nile to Egypt as a matter of life and death. Controlling the Nile’s resources is a zero-sum game. This reality is startlingly clear to the Egyptians, and China’s unreliability is commonly believed. Symbolically and practically, the Nile is Egypt’s beating heart, providing the life source for over 90-million people who live along its banks. Upriver Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania argue that they too need the water that originates in their lands, because without water there would have been no food, no people, no state, and no monuments. I believe the Renaissance Dam is intrinsic to this conflict, with 11 riparian nations involved.
Although conflict over the allocation of the waters of the Nile River has existed for many years, the dispute, especially that between Egypt and Ethiopia, significantly escalated when the latter commenced construction of the dam on the Blue Nile in 2011, ignoring the water sharing agreements of 1929 and 1959.
Ethiopia, whose highlands supply more than 85% of the water that flows into the Nile River, has long argued that it has the right to utilize its natural resources to address widespread poverty and improve the living standards of its people. Egypt and Sudan disagree. The stakes could not be higher for the millions of people who owe their livelihood and very existence to the Nile’s waters.
Ethiopia had asked several countries from the West, and India, to fund the dam, they declined, China jumped in. In return for part-funding the Renaissance Dam, Chinese companies were awarded five other dam projects without bidding. But, being truly stupid in search of profit, China has stuck its finger into the hornets’ nest. It will be stung so badly that no spurious vaccine will help it. Egypt-Sudan-Ethiopia talks on Nile water sharing have broken down time and again, and the latter two want the UN to intervene. Distrustful of the African Union, Ethiopia has hardened its position and has moved to the second filling of the dam.
If the Chinese virus was not enough, at the most inopportune time, a civil war has reignited in a seemingly stable and rapidly growing country. The revived conflict in the northern Tigray region with foreign intervention does suit somebody. Ethiopia is fast learning the limits of Chinese influence. Western, Sudanese and Egyptian covert support to the Tigrayan rebels should be a grim reality check. The spillover of refugees from Ethiopia into Sudan and Sudan’s assertiveness over lands which Ethiopia had been utilizing, has led to further tensions.
Now what? Nothing! I have been in Africa long enough to believe that it is better to celebrate hope rather than to wait for achievement. We wait to see who wins the battle of the Nile.
Ambassador Dr Deepak Vohra is Special Advisor to Prime Minister, Lesotho, South Sudan and Guinea-Bissau; Special Advisor to Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils, Leh and Kargil.