Two factors loom large over the water dispute between Egypt and the River Nile's upstream countries, especially Ethiopia, from which Egypt gets 85 per cent of its water. One factor is the Egyptian government's exaggerated attachment to agreements on water-sharing that date back to colonial times. The other is the increasing need of upstream countries to launch development plans for their impoverished nations. After years of war and domestic disturbances, some of the upstream countries are finally in a position to divert their resources from military expenditure to development projects. And with agriculture and electricity being their obvious choices for development, hydraulic projects involving the Nile are now at the top of their priorities. Regarding the first factor, successive Egyptian governments have cited the agreements of 1891, 1902, 1906, 1929 and 1959 on the Nile, while insisting that none of the upstream countries can start a hydraulic project that may impede the supply of water to Egypt and Sudan. However, the above agreements are unfortunately hard to enforce unless all those involved benefit from them, which is obviously not the case. This brings us to the second factor, which is that the upstream countries need to cultivate more land and generate more electricity in order to raise the standards of living of their people. It is not that Egypt wasn't aware of all that, or that it was averse to reason, as some of the upstream countries now claim. But by the time Cairo finally came up with the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) in 1999, things had already got out of hand. The upstream countries were not in a mood to recognise any of the aforementioned agreements, and they questioned the logic behind Egypt being assigned a quota of 55.5 billion cubic metres of the Nile's water. The upstream countries were also opposed to two conditions that Egypt saw as essential. One was prior notification concerning water projects, and the other was the manner of making decisions within the Nile riparian countries. Egypt and Sudan, the most vulnerable users of the Nile, wanted decisions to pass by unanimous vote, while the upstream countries maintained that a majority vote would be preferable. Differences over such matters eventually led to the collapse of the NBI, an otherwise valid and mutually advantageous agreement. Things came to a head when, in May 2010, six upstream nations signed the Entebbe Agreement at a ceremony attended neither by Egypt nor Sudan. An opportunity was then lost. Over the previous months, the Nile riparian countries had agreed on 43 articles out of the 44 the NBI contained, according to Mahmoud Abu Zeid, Egypt's former minister of water resources and irrigation. After years of talks, Egypt and Khartoum failed to persuade the upstream countries to respect their quotas. They failed even to find an alternative formula that may have had the same effect while showing some consideration for the sensitivities of the upstream countries, many of which were already making noises about colonialism and the haughtiness of their downstream neighbours. At this point, two matters of no minor importance were decided upon by the signatories of the Entebbe Agreement. One was to ditch the prior notification upstream countries must give downstream countries before any water project, which, by the way, is a standard feature of all international water agreements. The other was to ignore the unanimous voting procedure that Egypt and Sudan so desperately demanded. But Egyptian diplomacy failed in more even than that. It failed to take international action and to draw attention to a situation that was about to become intolerable. Egypt could have put pressure on countries not to engage in projects that would have been detrimental to its water supplies. It was entitled under international law to demand sanctions be put on countries taking steps harmful to its national security. But none of this happened. As it turned out, Ethiopia and other countries began building projects that directly interfered with the flow of water to Egypt, the present Renaissance Dam being a case in point. They did so without waiting for the Nile Tripartite Committee to issue its report on the matter. One cannot ignore the underlying hostility in such conduct. It may be recalled that the late Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi, speaking in November 2011, accused Egypt of assisting rebel groups in destabilising his country, while hinting that Egypt could not win a war with Ethiopia if push came to shove. Sounding no less adamant, the Ethiopian foreign minister at the time spoke of conspiracies made by Egypt to stop donor countries from financing the projects. The paranoid statements by the Ethiopians were rather surprising, considering that Egypt was reassuring all the riparian countries that it supported any development projects they might engage in, so long as these did not reduce the supply of water downstream. To be fair, the Egyptians could have been blamed for at least some of the paranoia the upstream countries felt at the time. The Egyptian media was far from kind to the Ethiopians, often voicing the opinion that the Renaissance Dam was bound to collapse in the future, or even calling for war to stop it from being built. Some writers even recalled the threats once made by the late president Anwar Al-Sadat to this effect. But times have changed since then. It is now utterly out of the question to go to war over a matter of this sort. Any benefit from war would be outweighed by the sanctions and isolation Egypt would have to face as a result. Ethiopia has a lot of powerful friends. The US and Europe rely on it for the protection of shipping in the Indian Ocean, for keeping at bay Islamist extremists and Iran, and for generally looking after their interests in East Africa. Egypt's support of Khartoum during its conflict with South Sudan is also coming back to haunt it. The government of South Sudan, if only to spite Khartoum and Cairo, decided to join the Entebbe Agreement. In fact, the South Sudan government went a step further by stopping work on the Jonglei Canal, even though the latter is almost 75 per cent finished. The Canal, if completed, would have saved nearly nine billion square metres of water lost annually in Bahr Al-Jabal in Sudan. This, too, is ironic knowing how much Egypt has spent on helping South Sudan with education, electricity, water, and other aspects of its infrastructure. Indeed, Egypt has spent nearly LE300 million providing clean drinking water for the South Sudanese people, but none of this has been enough to reverse the resentment felt in South Sudan toward Egypt over its ties with Khartoum. As a matter of fact, Egypt is entitled to some resentment of its own. It had in the past agreed without hesitation to every single hydraulic project that might have benefited the upstream countries. It made no objection when Uganda announced plans to build the Bujagali Dam, just as many decades ago it consented to the building of the Owen Falls Dam in the same country. Egypt also approved the building of several small dams to gather rainwater in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. And it financed the digging of dozens of artesian wells in upstream countries suffering from drought. Moreover, Egypt cleans extensive waterways every year in Uganda and South Sudan from the weed and sediment that block them. Egypt has also offered to fund various projects to improve water usage and agriculture in the upstream countries. Egyptian experts who helped formulate the NBI say that the water supply to the Nile riparian countries could more than double if measures are taken to channel swamp water and minimise evaporation and seepage. Politics, however, have got in the way. To be fair, it is difficult for a government such as that of Ethiopia to overlook the fact that nearly 70 per cent of its people have no access to electricity, while 99 per cent of Egyptians have such access. Since the civil and regional wars ended in East Africa, foreign investors have come up with serious ideas for developing various countries in the region. International investors, including Arab companies, have offered billions of dollars to produce food and grain for export and then share the proceeds with the host nation. Faced with such offers, the various Nile riparian countries have felt the urge to build dams to set the stage for such projects that are usually dependent on water and an electricity supply. According to experts, each billion cubic metres of water can provide enough food for five million people. One can hardly blame countries in which the per capita income is as low as $1 a day for wanting to improve the lots of their citizens. So all the help Egypt was prepared to offer these countries seemed to pale in comparison with the offers they were receiving from various investors. Had our investors matched these offers, could things have been different? It is hard to tell, considering the immense resentment felt towards Egypt that has been bubbling upstream. This is unfortunate, for the NBI could have offered these countries at least as much benefit as anything they hoped to get under the current situation. Indeed, if the riparian countries had agreed, in one form or another, to the NBI, considerable amounts of investment would have flown into their economies. Donors had already set aside $20 billion for 34 project if the NBI had gone through. These projects would have improved irrigation in Ethiopia and Egypt, linked electricity grids in the region, and increased food production along the Nile basin. Still, investors have not given up on East Africa. The Saudis want to invest $2.6 billion to produce wheat in Ethiopia. Qatari and UAE companies have similar plans. China and South Korea wish to cultivate 20 million acres in Ethiopia for the purpose of producing bio-fuel. The Israelis, let us not forget, have had their eyes on the Horn of Africa since the 1980s. Eager to encircle Egypt's southern front, the Israelis have been whispering in the ears of upstream countries about the presumed unfairness of their situation. It was Israel that urged these countries to demand a redistribution of the Nile water according to population and needs. It was Israel that told them that they could rely on Western sympathies if Cairo and Khartoum tried to force their hand. And it was Israel that assured them that there was no lack of funding from donor organisations, especially those controlled by the US. The aim was to pressure the two Arab countries to stay away from Iran and prevent the latter from helping Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Jihad and other adversaries of Israel.
