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As if tensions in Gaza, on the Israeli-Lebanese border, and between various nations and Iran weren't enough, there's other trouble brewing in the Middle East (and beyond), as The Times notes in "War Clouds Gather as Nations Demand a Piece of the Nile":
Without the Nile, Egypt would be a scarcely habitable desert, Sudan a parched wilderness. The world’s longest river flows for more than 4,000 miles through northeast Africa; it irrigates farmland, provides water for drinking and sanitation and drives hydroelectric power stations.
The Nile supplies almost all of Egypt’s fresh water and three quarters of Sudan’s. Both countries claim historic rights over it but neither controls its sources. For thousands of years Egypt has jealously defended its right to use the Nile’s waters as it pleases.
Now, amid warnings of conflict and crop failure, the balance of power is starting to change as other countries make new claims on the water.
Last month most of the countries that occupy the Nile’s headwaters signed an agreement granting themselves greater control of the river and removing a colonial-era veto, held by Egypt for more than 50 years, over how it is used. Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda have already signed up, disregarding a refusal by Egypt and its ally, Sudan, to co-operate. Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo are expected to follow.
Egypt has threatened legal action and said it will not sacrifice a drop of its historic entitlement. Yet a new Ethiopian hydroelectric dam, which opened last month, further emphasises Egypt’s diminishing control over the river that is its lifeblood.
The new World Bank-backed Nile Basin Initiative agreement was a decade in the making. It is intended to replace two existing Nile treaties that ignore the upstream countries.
In 1929 Britain, as the colonial power, signed a deal in the name of its colonies giving Egypt almost all of the Nile water and the veto power over its use upstream. In 1959 a revised treaty gave three quarters of the Nile waters to Egypt with Sudan taking the rest.
However, in recent years the countries to the south have grown more vocal in their demands for a greater share of the water and an end to Egypt’s veto, which includes stopping hydroelectric and irrigation projects that might disrupt the river’s flow.
The Nile Basin Initiative proposes the formation of a new regional commission to decide on hydropower and irrigation projects on the Nile. It has become a focus for tensions in the region, raising fears of a looming water war.
Thirty years ago Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian President at the time, said: “The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.” During the famine that afflicted this part of Africa in the 1980s, Boutros Boutros Ghali, Egypt’s Foreign Minister who became UN Secretary-General, warned: “The next war in our region will be over water, not politics.”
Since the agreement was signed last month, angry Egyptian officials have echoed this sentiment. Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Foreign Minister, described the Nile waters as a matter of national security and a “red line” not to be crossed. Some Egyptian newspapers even discussed tactics that would prove effective if war erupts.
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