Egypt's other existential crisis - The Nile

Egypt's other existential crisis - The Nile

Today's Egyptians are facing two overriding crises that threaten their national wellbeing.

The one that is getting all the world headlines involves the domestic unrest over the now former Islamist government; the other is a foreign threat to alter the flow of the country's essential life force, the Nile River.

For millennia, Egypt, which gets very little rainfall, has been totally dependent on the water and the silt of the Nile to survive and feed a now fast-growing population of 85 million.
So critical is this flow of the Nile that any diminution upstream is seen as a threat to the country's very existence. That's why Cairo has long vowed some form of direct military action, if necessary, to stop Ethiopia building a giant hydroelectric dam along the headwaters of the Nile that flows through its northern highlands.
This conflict has now shifted from the theoretical to the practical. Refusing to be cowed, Ethiopia has now started work, with China's help, on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the largest in Africa.
Ethiopia feels it has as much right to the Nile water, and an equal need, to escape its crippling poverty. The dam's future hydroelectric capacity, Ethiopia insists, will allow it to grow economically.
That argument does not appease Egypt one iota. It insists the massive reservoir that will be created will reduce the downstream flow of water to Egypt by a catastrophic 20 per cent. Vast farming regions will be lost; millions will lose already fragile livelihoods.

What's more, Ethiopia's actions, if allowed to succeed, will surely encourage others to follow suit.
The Blue and the White Niles, which meet before flowing to Egypt, cross many other nations as well, all of which are desperate for hydroelectricity and irrigation.
Increasingly strident threats
So serious is the concern that, before the anti-government demonstrations and the Egyptian army's coup earlier this month, it was the Nile conflict that dominated news coverage in Egypt, fed by increasingly strident threats from officials and politicians.
"If we lose one drop, our blood is the alternative," then-president Mohammed Morsi vowed, shortly before his overthrow, a barely veiled threat of war echoed by, among others, the country's foreign minister.
The idea sounds incredible. But not to diplomats in the region who noted in early June a live television broadcast from Morsi's office that inadvertently picked up the president and senior political leaders discussing a possible pre-emptive attack on Ethiopia.
The military alternatives ranged from an Egyptian air attack on the dam construction sites to guerrilla sabotage and even moves to destabilize the Addis Ababa government.
When Ethiopia demanded an explanation of the broadcast, Morsi was unapologetic, vowing that "all options are open."
For its part, Ethiopia appears to doubt that Egypt has the capability to launch a direct attack against its own capable military, especially as the two countries are separated by the vast, harsh terrain of Northern Sudan.
However, Northern Sudan, along with Eritrea to Ethiopia's north, both side with Egypt in this dispute, so the Ethiopian government can't ignore Egypt's ability to at least stir up the kind of guerrilla activity that could dramatically escalate the crisis.