New Nile dam fuels talk of Egypt-Ethiopia war

Emad Mekay, IBA Middle East Correspondent

One concrete structure that is bothering Egypt's military is the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a massive $5bn hydropower project on the Blue Nile, that Addis Ababa announced unilaterally in 2011. Cairo quickly scrambled for talks about the project and had kept talks mostly behind closed doors ever since.

But in October, Cairo dramatically announced that nearly nine years of talks with Sudan and Ethiopia over Nile River water sharing had come to ‘nothing’ and that negotiations had reached ‘a deadlock’. The highly choreographed Cairo state-run media sprang into action and declared the talks ‘a failure’, ‘completely dead’ and ‘an Ethiopian sham all along’ to buy time.

The mood quickly soured as many in Cairo started to accuse Addis Ababa of adopting policies likely to cause a resource crisis and trouble in north-eastern Africa, including the possibility of a military confrontation.

After the official announcement, Egypt, which had until then kept details of the negotiations away from public scrutiny, was quick to solicit input from the public and the country's intellectuals. The Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies, a think-tank backed by the country's powerful intelligence, held an unprecedented public conference to discuss the future of the dam and its impact on the country.

At the event, former diplomatic negotiators with Ethiopia, previously banned from discussing the water-sharing talks publicly, were given the green light to share rare insights from behind-the-curtain negotiations with the media.

Their common message was that ‘Ethiopia had adopted intransigent policies’ and that Addis Ababa is firmly in violation of previous agreements that date back to 1929 and 1959. Ethiopia says the dam is essential for its development and it cannot go back on the costly project and responded by saying that it was Egypt that was taking unjustified positions by clinging to deals that belong to colonial times.

Egyptian sources say they object to the dam on technical grounds. The design of the dam, for example, ‘poses multiple threats to Egypt's national security.’ Egypt wants a slower pace of filling the dam’s reservoir, and to increase its gates. Cairo's previous demands of limiting the dam’s height to 90 metres and reservoir’s capacity to only 14.5 billion cubic metres of water have all been rejected by Ethiopia. Ethiopia modified its dam plans to a height of 145 metres and a reservoir capacity of 75 billion cubic metres.

A Cairo government spokesperson, Diaa Rashwan, has suggested that Egypt reserves its right to all options ‘within international law’. Experts suggested that, while a military option was way too drastic, it wasn't completely off the table. Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took to social media to say that Cairo was committed to protecting its Nile water rights.

But, while Egypt chose to posture through various media outlets, Ethiopia has been more direct. Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has warned if there's ever a war over the dam disputed with Egypt, his country, with a population of 110 million, could ready millions of people for military action.

Ahmed's threat worked fast. Egypt toned down its rhetoric with officials saying that they still preferred a negotiated outcome through diplomacy. Unlike Ethiopia, which is opposed to international intervention, the Egyptians invited third-party international intermediaries and said they preferred Washington to play a role.

During a Russian-African summit late in October, both countries returned to diplomatic public niceties. Egypt’s signal of tough action was nothing more than political manoeuvring to force Ethiopia back to bargain, some suggested in Egypt. The two countries, along with Sudan, met in Washington early in November with some help from President Trump. The countries committed to reaching an agreement by mid-January 2020.

However, Sisi is grappling with rising unfavourable sentiment over the issue at home that the souring public mood in Egypt could push a military option back on the table. Cairo fears that Ethiopia is only buying time to impose realities on the ground that Egypt cannot alter later. Sisi, who faced rare street protests in September, wants to revalidate his legitimacy as a strong leader. He also wants to fend off accusations of being complacent in the looming crisis expected to face the country if the dam becomes fully operational.

The project at the head of the Nile could deprive Egypt's 100 million people of not only their only water source but power-generation capacity worth nearly $300m from the High Dam, large swaths of green land, which could lead to massive unemployment in the critical agricultural sector. Egypt's hand may indeed be forced into a military strike and the once-friendly neighbours could indeed start a war over water in the region.

International experts say there are still alternative agreements that the two sides can look to for inspiration towards a fresh deal and avoidance of war. ‘There are some experiences around the world on water-sharing agreements between countries,’ says Kleber Luiz Zanchim, an officer of the IBA Water Law Committee. ‘A famous one is the India-Bangladesh agreement regarding the Ganges. This should be the best alternative for Ethiopia and Egypt because it prices the water and the infrastructure needed to assure the proper treatment and supply for both countries.’

Andre Monette, Senior Vice Chair of the IBA Water Law Committee, highlights treaties that allocate the Tigris and Euphrates rivers between Turkey, Syria and Iraq; the treaty that allocates water on the Colorado River and Rio Grande River between the United States and Mexico; and the treaty that allocates water in the Lake Titicaca and Lake Popo between Bolivia and Peru. ‘If people are creative, they can craft solutions that allow both sides to get the water they need,’ he says. ‘Countries can work together to implement efficiencies to create ‘new’ water - that is water that would otherwise be lost to poor delivery systems or evaporation.’