Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 20:41:42 +0200
Nile River Politics: When Sisi Met Desalegn
By: Nizar Manek
June 26, 2014 |
The guests had been seated at the tables of the great hall in Addis Ababa,
and fanfares rang out as the Emperor Haile Selassie walked in with President
Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt at his right hand. Nasser was a "tall, stocky,
imperious man, his head thrust forward and his wide jaws thrust into a
smile," next to him Selassie's "diminutive silhouette," his "thin expressive
face, his glistening penetrating eyes" worn by the years. Behind the
extraordinary pair, the remaining leaders also entered in their pairs,
writes Ryszard Kapu¶ciński in his chronicle of the fall of the Abyssinian
monarchy and the intrigues at Selassie's court. The audience rose; everyone
was applauding. "Ovations sounded for unity and the Emperor. Then the feast
began."
Their corresponding persons, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt and
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn - a pair less extraordinary,
their relations less gregarious -find themselves seated together on June 26
at the 23rd Ordinary Summit of the African Union in Equatorial Guinea.
During his presidential campaign, El-Sisi spoke of his interest in
travelling to Ethiopia "not once, but ten times" for the mutual benefit of
the two countries. As El-Sisi addressed the crowd at his presidential
inauguration ceremony at the Qubba Palace in Cairo, Ethiopia's Foreign
Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus looked on among Arab royals, the
First-Vice President of Sudan, Lieutenant General Bakri Hassan Saleh, and
heads of state, from Chad's Idriss Déby and Eritrea's Isaias Afwerki to
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has held power in Equatorial Guinea even
longer than El-Sisi's military predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. El-Sisi professed
to the crowd he would protect pan-Africanism, and he wouldn't allow
Ethiopia's self-financed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) to "cause a
crisis or a problem with sisterly Ethiopia." Over centuries, the Nile has
tied the two countries together. Ethiopia's priority now is power
generation, while Egypt, a desert country, prioritises irrigation against
the Nile water source countries on the Central African and Ethiopian
plateaus, which have greater rainwater.
The GERD is a major issue of peace or war. As he summits in Malabo with
Adhanom over Egypt's Nile water crisis, El-Sisi finds himself confronted
with deep and changing historical forces. When Britain occupied Egypt in
1882, Britain immediately understood it had become "ruler of a hydrological
society," and that the irrigation question was central to maintaining
stability along its Suez Canal, notes Terje Tved, professor at the
universities of Bergen and Oslo and an authority on the Nile. Then
everything changed after the First World War, the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire, and the Egyptian revolution of 1919, and yet Britain's strategic
interests remained the same. This trickled into a series of colonial
treaties, including the 1959 Nile Waters agreement, which contributed to
Sudan becoming Egypt's downstream hydro-political ally, and safeguarded
Egypt and Sudan's over 90 percent share of Nile waters. Ethiopia, the source
of the Nile, was left only with ghosts of discord. Selassie himself was left
affronted by Nasser's marginalisation of Ethiopia in the 1959 agreement, and
was to be overthrown in a 1974 coup d'état. At the same time, notes a March
21 2011 memorandum from the international businessman and dam engineer Dr
Ibrahim Mostafa Kamel submitted to the first post-Mubarak government of
Essam Sharaf, since 1969 Egypt has lost an estimated 100 million tons
annually of silt, "creating a 4.1 billion silt dump which lies over the
Egyptian-Sudanese border."
Even if he is a diminutive Nasser, El-Sisi's jaws will not likely be thrust
into a smile, even a wry one. It is not even sure whether there will be a
feast as in Kapu¶ciński's tale, or if so, whether it will be sumptuous. Only
three days before El-Sisi's presidential inauguration,
<http://www.africanglobe.net/africa/egyptian-spies-arrested-ethiopia/> the
governments of Ethiopia and South Sudan arrested three Egyptians reportedly
sent by Cairo to spy on dam projects in South Sudan and western Ethiopia,
principal among them the 6,000-megawatt GERD. Egypt fears the GERD is a
threat to its lifeline, the Blue Nile at Ethiopia's Lake Tana upon which
Egypt depends for over 85%of its Nile water flow. As the dispute fanned to a
flame earlier this year, Egypt boycotted talks over the dam as they ground
to an acrimonious standstill, and followed with a diplomatic card game to
enlist the support of external stakeholders and African countries keen to
capitalise on strategic alliances.
<http://www.africanglobe.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Ehtiopian-prime-Mini
ster-Hailemariam-Desalegn-e1386779213631.jpg> Ehtiopian prime Minister
Hailemariam Desalegn e1386779213631 photo
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has signaled a willingness to
engage with Eritrea
The real threat to Egypt is the reaction of Sudan, given its part in the
1959 agreement; not the GERD itself. If there are signs of a rapprochement
between Egypt and sisterly Ethiopia, it is by Egypt's necessity; it
coincides with a growing rift between El-Sisi's Egypt and Omer Hassan Ahmed
El-Bashir's Islamist regime in Sudan, a former ally of Mohammed Morsi's
government of Muslim Brothers. Egypt courts South Sudan in spite of Sudan,
and besides Egypt's anti-Islamist alliance with Saudi Arabia, there are
signs of a rapprochement with Libya's anti-Islamist leader General Khalifa
Belqasim Haftar. While the Sudanese vice-president Bakri Hassan Saleh
attended El-Sisi's presidential inauguration, he has also reaffirmed Sudan's
commitment to the GERD; Ethiopia is also an important strategic alliance for
Sudan. One reason is its interests in the six-month long conflict in South
Sudan.
The Nile Basin Initiative, which met in Khartoum last Thursday, has called
on Egypt to re-involve itself in the activities in the initiative, which
both Sudan and Egypt left four years ago in protest over the signing of the
Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement by four Nile Basin countries
(Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania). Burundi and Kenya later signed
onto the NBI, which removes Egypt's veto power over upstream irrigation and
hydro-power projects. It is bound to reduce Egypt and Sudan's historically
protected Nile water share. After El-Sisi overthrew Morsi, Sudan returned to
the NBI. Its new chairman also happens to be Sudan's Minister of Water
Resources and Electricity, Muattaz Musa Abdallah Salim. "I should like to
place an appeal to our sister nation Egypt," Salim said at the meeting of
Nile Basin water ministers. "Your resumption of your activities in the NBI
will further consolidate our gains and integrity in the region."
For M. Jalal Hashim, a professor at Comboni University College and a close
observer of Nile politics, the flutters of Khartoum's heart have more to do
with Khartoum's calculations for political survival than technical issues
connected with transboundary water management. "If Khartoum stood against
the GERD, this may lead Ethiopia to host the military opposition of the
regime, and the remaining of the regime in Sudan is a matter of inertia, not
strength," he says. "There is enough opposition to put it out." During his
brief reign, Morsi, who is now languishing behind bars in El-Sisi's Egypt,
showed his readiness to give the disputed area of land at the Egypt-Sudan
border called <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hala%27ib_Triangle> the Halayeb
triangle to Sudan, a matter Hashim thinks played a role in his overthrow.
When the Ethiopian delegation brought up the topic of the GERD for the first
time, in Kampala according to Hashim, the Sudanese delegation was late by
hours due to disruptions in airway programmes. When they joined the meeting,
he says, they discovered that the Egyptian delegation had already blessed
the project. They were "furious" and made clear their reservations to the
GERD being built in an area vulnerable to volcanic eruptions and notified
their minister, who, by his turn, notified his Egyptian counterpart in
protest. "If such a tremor and earthquake takes place and destroys the GERD
that would be disastrous to both Sudan and Egypt," according to Hashim. "The
water will be almost 26-metres high in Khartoum for days. The threat of dam
collapse can wipe out Sudan, while Egypt would not be affected directly."
The Sudanese experts repeatedly warned their government while negotiating
with the Ethiopians, "hoping that wisdom would prevail, but in vain," says
Hashim. According to him, Khartoum's position at the time prompted the
Egyptian delegation to withdraw their agreement to the GERD, while
Khartoum's position has now aligned with the rising power of Ethiopia, which
Egypt continues to contest. Even while Ethiopia's award of a no-bid contract
to an Italian company to construct the US$4.8bn. dam contributed, alongside
Egypt's earlier protests, to it being left without concessional finance, the
World Bank is heavily invested in Ethiopia and the region. At the end of
last month, the bank approved US$178.5mn. credit and a US$254.5mn. grant to
help Ethiopia develop its geothermal energy resources to boost electricity
supply. Several electricity export contracts have already been signed, and
Yemen's Minister of Electricity Saleh Sumai and Adhanom have now agreed to
begin studying electrical interconnection between the two countries across
the Red Sea through Djibouti.
Ethiopia seeks to capitalise on its new economic development, part of which
involves the Nile; Egypt faces the winds of an economic and national
cohesion crisis. Sounds for unity are growing; but because Egypt is fast
running out of alternatives, and faces major change on the Nile. As the late
rebel-turned statesman Meles Zenawi said in an interview on Egyptian
television, the relationship between the two countries is "like a very old
marriage, which has no possibility of divorce. It has its ups and downs, but
it is very solid. It is of long standing." "Sometimes we quarrel, sometimes
we agree," Zenawi told the Egyptian interviewer, radio waves fizzing in the
background. "That has been the case for thousands of years."
Nizar Manek is an independent journalist reporting on Africa.
(image/jpeg attachment: image003.jpg)