From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu May 20 2010 - 09:17:39 EDT
http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8587:states-stockpile-arms-as-row-over-nile-waters-rages&catid=34:news&Itemid=59
States stockpile arms as row over Nile waters rages
News
Written by Edris Kiggundu
Wednesday, 19 May 2010 21:31
Egypt adopts tough stance as Uganda calls for dialogue
Two senior Egyptian government officials have said that Egypt would do
anything –including going to war – to safeguard what they called their
country’s historic right to the largest share of the Nile waters.
Briefing the Egyptian Parliament last week, Moufid Shehab, the Minister of
Legal and Parliamentary Affairs is quoted by MENA, a state news agency, as
having said that the four countries that signed the Nile River Co-operative
Framework Agreement (CFA) last week took a “wrong step.” He added that this
was not “the end of the game,” affirming that Cairo still believes in its
“inalienable and historical rights” over Nile waters.
Another government official, Mohammed Allam, the minister of Water Resources
and Irrigation, added: “Egypt reserves the right to take whatever course it
sees suitable to safeguard its share.”
Their comments came shortly after four Nile basin countries; Uganda, Rwanda,
Tanzania and Ethiopia signed the Nile River Cooperative Framework Agreement
(CFA) last week, in Entebbe.
Other countries; Kenya, DR Congo and Burundi affirmed that they would also
sign the agreement that will transform the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) into
the Nile Basin Commission (NBC), which will coordinate the equitable usage
of the water. Countries will have to submit their intended projects along
the Nile to the Commission for endorsement.
On their part, Egypt and Sudan declined to sign the agreement, saying they
want to maintain the status quo as stipulated in two colonial agreements
they signed with the British colonialists in 1929 and 1959. These agreements
stipulate that other riparian countries should first seek permission from
them before embarking on any large scale development projects that would
affect the level and flow of the waters.
But of the two, Egypt appears to be more aggrieved. While Egypt has not
explicitly declared that it will take up arms to defend its rights, the
stern statements from their ministers barely disguise the potential for
conflict.
As early as April this year, when it became clear that Egypt would lose the
battle over the agreement, some Egyptian legislators urged their government
to take stronger action against other Nile basin countries – a veiled threat
of war.
Other Nile basin countries, including Uganda, are already wary of this
threat.
Okello Henry Oryem, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, told The
Observer on Tuesday that the war threats, if Egypt was indeed invoking them,
were unfortunate.
“The Government of Uganda was doing its job [by signing the agreement].
These [war] threats should not be there and I know the door is still open
for dialogue with our brothers (Egypt) under the AU framework,” Oryem said.
Kenya’s Director of Water Resources, John Nyaro, told the BBC last week: “If
we don’t have an agreed co-operative framework, there will be no peace.”
A book on the conflict published this year notes among other things that
until the countries find a peaceful resolution, the fear of war will always
loom large.
“The Nile waters might become a pathway to peace or a currency of war or
both at different historical junctures,” notes the book titled: The River
Nile in the Post Colonial Age; Conflict and cooperation among the Nile Basin
Countries. The book was edited by Terje Tvedt, a professor of development
studies at the University of Bergen in Norway.
No wonder some analysts have linked the disagreement over the Nile waters to
increased military spending by some countries in the East African region in
anticipation of war.
In a 2008 survey of weapons purchases carried out by the Swedish
International Peace Research Institute, Kenya was ranked fourth out of 23
East and Southern African countries and, according to a news report in The
East African of April 12, 2010, Kenya’s military expenditure rose from $222
million in 1999 to $260 million in 2008.
The survey notes that Kenya has recently purchased armoured personnel
carriers and Y-12 military utility planes from China. For Uganda’s case,
notes the study, military spending rose from $173 million to $237 million
between 2003 and 2008.
Last month, while defending the army’s decision to buy six fighter jets from
Russia for Shs 654 billion, Army Spokesperson, Lt. Col. Felix Kulayigye,
said Uganda needed the jets because it faced many threats among them the
unresolved conflict over the Nile waters.
Reached this week, Kulayigye declined to expound on his earlier assertions.
Oweyegha Afunaduula, who chairs the Nile Basin Discourse, a civil society
organisation that has been at the forefront of ensuring equitable sharing of
the waters, told The Observer that Egypt’s war threats will not work.
“Whenever we talk about equity, Egypt talks about war in an attempt to
harass other countries to submit to their terms. We are opposed to this
arm-twisting,” Afunaduula said.
It is not the first time that threats of war have punctuated negotiations
over the Nile. In 1985, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former UN Secretary
General who at that time was Egypt’s minister of Foreign Affairs, told the
BBC Radio 4 in an interview that the next war in the region could be over
the waters of the Nile, not politics.
“The security of Egypt is related to the relation between Egypt and
Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya and other African countries. The real problem is that
we need an additional quantity of water and we will not have an additional
quantity of water unless we find an agreement with the upstream countries
which also need water and have not used Nile water until now,” he said.
Maj. Gen. James Kazini, the late former army commander, said in 2002 while
launching a new Defence Reform Programme, that Egypt and Sudan “wanted to
control Uganda through River Nile”. He too cautioned that the next war in
Africa could be over water.
Treacherous history
Egypt’s claim to the Nile waters is based on a 1929 agreement between it and
Great Britain on behalf of Britain’s colonies which gave Cairo the right to
most of the more than 100 billion cubic meters of Nile waters.
Egypt says this agreement with Britain is sufficient enough to address any
outstanding issues regarding the sharing of the Nile waters, but other Nile
basin countries, including Uganda, contend that this particular agreement
favours the Egyptians and have been working on a new agreement.
The Nile River Basin is home to an estimated 160 million people, while
almost 300 million live in the 10 countries that share its waters. The
World Bank projected in a 2004 report that the population in the basin will
double in the next 25 years, adding more pressure on arable land.
As the 10 riparian countries–Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya,
Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Eritrea–seek
to exploit the Nile waters to provide for their growing populations, the
dispute simmers.
Egypt owes its entire existence to the Nile.
The largely arid country has no other source of fresh water and depends on
the river for irrigation and industrialisation projects to sustain its 80
million people. However, the countries upstream, including Uganda, want to
use the Nile to build dams and create hydroelectric power for
industrialisation, to provide clean drinking water to their people, and to
establish irrigation schemes to grow enough food to feed their growing
populations.
During a water conference in March, President Museveni attacked the colonial
agreements on the Nile waters. The agreements, he noted, had stipulated that
85 billion cubic meters of water per annum would be consumed by Egypt and 18
billion by Sudan.
“The rest of us are supposed to get nothing,” he said.
By signing the CFA last week, the riparian countries sought to correct this
historical imbalance.
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