Sharing the Nile

Seifulaziz Milas

Description

The Nile, the longest river in the world, is a both a resource for agriculture and industry and a mechanism of power. Drawing on decades of experience in the Horn of Africa, Seifulaziz Milas reveals the political nature of the 'Great River', recounting the history of disputes over its waters.



Herodotus wrote that 'Egypt was the gift of the Nile' and the relationship of the Egyptian regimes to the river, from colonial rule under Benjamin Disraeli to present, have been central in shaping the politics of the country and its foreign policy. Examining Egypt's central role in the river's politics, as well as its function for the ten other Nile countries, including Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia, Milas' study takes in quests for dominance, the impact of the Nile Basin Initiative that advocates for shared socio-economic benefits of the river, and the potential for conflict over ownership of the river.



In outlining the history of disputes and power struggle, Milas hopes the Nile countries can learn from past mistakes, and suggests a way forward, based on co-operation, peace and development.
Acknowledgements

1. Introduction and Overview

2. The Upstream States Reject Egyptian Control of the Nile Waters: The Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA)

3. Nile Waters, Drought, Poverty and Conflict Risk

4. Who Needs the Nile Waters: One River, Eleven Countries

5. Who Owns the Nile Waters: The Legal Context

6. Egypt and the Nile: Cairo’s Quest for Hegemony

7. The Nile Basin Initiative: Efforts at Cooperation in the Nile Basin

8. The Imperative of Equitable Allocation of the Nile Waters

9. Regional Inequity in Water Resource Development and Conflict Risk

10. Nile Basin Initiative to Cooperative Framework Agreement

11. After the CFA, What has Changed?

12. Dimensions of the Threat of Conflict: Egypt’s military might

13. Egypt’s Nile Waters War: Could it Ever Become Real?

14. The Way Forward

15. Conclusions

Notes

References

Index

Sujets

• Environmental Policy
• Public Policy
• Political Science
• África
• International relations
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 08 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781849648134
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

SHàRInG THE NILE

ShariNg the Nile eGypT, eTHIOpIà ànd THE gEOPOLITIcs Of WàTER

Seifulaziz Milas

FIRsT pubLIsHEd 2013 by PLuTO PREss 345 aRcHwày rOàd, lOndOn N6 5aa

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DIsTRIbuTEd In THE UnITEd STàTEs Of amERIcà EXcLusIVELy by PàLGRàVE MàcmILLàn, à dIVIsIOn Of ST. MàRTIn’s PREss llC, 175 FIfTH aVEnuE, NEw YORk, NY 10010

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Acknowledgements

 1. Introduction and Overview  2. The Upstream States Reject Egyptian Control of the Nile Waters: The Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA)  3. Nile Waters, Drought, Poverty and Conflict Risk  4. Who Needs the Nile Waters: One River, Eleven Countries  5. Who Owns the Nile Waters: The Legal Context  6. Egypt and the Nile: Cairo’s Quest for Hegemony  7. The Nile Basin Initiative: Efforts at Cooperation in the Nile Basin  8. The Imperative of Equitable Allocation of the Nile Waters  9. Regional Inequity in Water Resource Development and Conflict Risk 10. Nile Basin Initiative to Cooperative Framework Agreement 11. After the CFA, What has Changed? 12. Dimensions of the Threat of Conflict: Egypt’s Military Might 13. Egypt’s Nile Waters War: Could it Ever Become Real? 14. The Way Forward 15. Conclusions

Notes Index

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acknOwLEdGEmEnTs

First of all, I must express my appreciation to Meseret and Frehywot for their persistent encouragement to take a break from wandering off to unstable and often dismal zones of the Horn of Africa and beyond, and sit down and do some serious writing. Having finally heeded their call, I hope they will find the result to their liking. Had the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) not sent me to northern Ethiopia at the beginning of the 1984–85 famine to identify a location for a planned film on desertification, this book might never have been written. This was my introduction to the headwaters of the Blue Nile and the question that it posed. Why so many people must suffer and die, from drought, in the presence of such an enormous water resource? I needed to know the answer, but it was elusive. The experience afforded me by my time with UNICEF’s Operation Lifeline Sudan, also contributed parts of the answer, and gave rise to additional questions, for which I needed to find answers. In seeking the answers, I began to find and increasingly, to understand the hidden linkages among the problems that had attracted my interest, and that these were all parts of a much larger and more complex set of problems. UNICEF Somalia, with whom I worked in Mogadishu at the height of the civil war that followed the collapse of the Siyaad Barre regime, provided another occasion for me to identify more of the questions and seek, and attempt to understand the answers; and the linkages between them. For example the role of Egypt in Somalia’s civil wars and the linkages between it and the Nile waters dispute. One could not help but wonder why Egypt maintained an embassy in Mogadishu, putting their diplomats at risk, more than a year after all other embassies had fled the carnage. And why the persistent stories about an Islamist militia training camp run by an Egyptian colonel in the Galgadud region, north of Mogadishu? It seemed strange, as Cairo had little tolerance for radical Islamist groups in Egypt, but appeared to have a significantly different attitude towards radical Islamists in Somalia and across its borders with Ethiopia and Kenya. Could it be linked to the Nile?

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aCKNoWleDgeMeNtS VII

The answers were slow in coming, but began to fall into place, and explain a variety of issues, about the Nile dispute, its linkages with diverse conflicts around Ethiopia’s borders, and the reasons why Ethiopia had not been able to use the Blue Nile waters to prevent the 1984–85 famine, the 1974 famine, and others like them. I am particularly appreciative of Jalal AbdelLatif, then Director of the InterAfrica Group (IAG), based in Addis Ababa, who was involved in the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) from its outset, and provided me with the opportunity to do some sustained research on the Nile dispute, and the human rights to water of Nile basin residents. My work with IAG’s Nile Basin project, also provided the occasion for me to meet and discuss with various Nile experts, such as Tony Allan, whose bookThe Middle East Water Question: Hydropolitics and the Global Economywas especially helpful, and Ashok Swain, as well as experts from Nile basin countries. In this respect, I would also like to express my enduring appreciation to Abdul Mohammed, Alex de Waal, John Markakis and all those colleagues and former colleagues who have shared with me, their deep and extensive understanding of the conflict and development issues of the Nile basin and Horn of Africa regions. Their contributions are all part of what made this book possible.

1 inTROducTIOn ànd oVERVIEw

“Who controls the Nile, controls Egypt,” the old saying used to go. Egypt’s nineteenthcentury British rulers took this to heart and made its interests their own, as they intended to remain. But Egyptian rulers have always dreamed of controlling the Nile, rather than being controlled by or through it. That could quite possibly be the psychological effect of living in a vast waterless desert where, besides the River Nile, the only permanent sources of water are a few scattered desert oases, a long camel ride between. In 1929, Britain still controlled the Kingdom of Egypt, as a “protectorate,” valued for its Suez Canal, a key strategic post on the sea route to India, then Britain’s most valued colonial possession. Egypt was also valued by Britain, for its irrigationbased longstaple cotton, a key input for what was then the United Kingdom’s huge and strategic textile industry. That, at a time of serious unrest in Egypt, and growing opposition to British rule, led Britain to pacify the Egyptians through a 1929 Treaty between the United Kingdom and Egypt, purporting to give Egypt priority control of the Nile waters by prohibiting Britain’s upstream Nile basin possessions (Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika) from building water infrastructure to use the Nile waters, without Egypt’s consent. The upstream countries and peoples, however, were never consulted about this disposal of their natural resources, and on regaining their independence, promptly rejected the colonial treaties supposedly made on their behalf. This was to become a source of future discord between Egypt and the upstream Nile basin countries. Nevertheless, despite the reports of tensions about the Nile, up and down the Nile valley, from Cairo to Khartoum and Kampala, and even to Addis Ababa, tensions are not rare; but, like a damp firecracker, the worst to be expected is an almost inaudible splutter, certainly no big bang. The Nile is a very long and complex river, with two main and quite different branches. The White Nile starts from the equatorial highlands of Burundi, from where its waters flow through Lake Victoria, Uganda, and the huge Sudd swamps of South Sudan where

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