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Who Owns the Nile?
- baybal2 6y agoI know how it will work. Most likely nothing will happen. Egyptian regime is very fragile, and will not risk a foreign intervention while having to suppress monthly uprisings back home.
- HorkHunter 6y agoThe difference is, regardless of political divisions, everyone in Egypt totally understands that they are doomed without water. so the mentality there is slowly shifting towards "well, if we are dying anyway...."
- sremani 6y agoThe crisis of lack of water is bigger, who ever bombs the shit out of Great Renaissance Dam is going to be popular in Egypt. Egypt more than one occasion came close to doing something like that. Long story short. Who ever has better military capabilities will own the Nile. Egypt can use Suez as another piece to get Europe to accept its bombing campaign.
- bumbada 6y agoThey face retaliations with the Aswan dam. Egypt can not use Suez, because the US, Europe and Israel will intervene for sure on that particular case against Egypt and Egypt will lose for sure.
- golemiprague 6y agoIsrael will not intervene because it has a peace treaty with Egypt which is much more important than starting some stupid war on the behalf of foreign countries. Since the war with Egypt in 1956 Israel only had wars with entities which directly attacked Israel and even in 1956 there were some excuses due to attacks by the Fedayun that came from Egyptian area and to the fact that the Egyptian blockaded the entranc to the Israeli port on the red sea. If anything they will just dig a canal or create some route from Eilat port to Ashdod port and make some profit out of the whole situation.
- baybal2 6y ago> who ever bombs the shit out of Great Renaissance Dam is going to be popular in Egypt. Would they? GERD destruction = tsunami on the nile, possibly setting a chain reaction through downstream dams. Sisi has now managed to beat even Murbarak on getting the lowest rating on record from any semblance of legit polls done nowadays. Turkey is all over Ethiopia, and Sudan on top of that. And Sisi has a paranoid fear of Turkish involvement, either back home as a subversion, or a direct attack from Turkish African bases. Turkey staring Sisi down from all sides is by far a much bigger concern to him than Ethiopians waving their MiG 21s at him. If he has a gram of gray matter, he will not push Ethiopians further towards decision on Turkish military base.
- HorkHunter 6y agoThat is really old news. read the current situation between Turkey and Egypt, which is actually getting better https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-egypt-diplomacy-idUSKBN2B41G9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-egypt-diplomacy-id...
- yyyk 6y agoEgypt doesn't have the capability. Their air force has too little range and too little refueling capability.
- cbnotfromthere 6y agohttps://dailynewsegypt.com/2021/03/31/egypt-sudan-air-forces-carry-out-joint-nile-eagles-2-training/ https://dailynewsegypt.com/2021/03/31/egypt-sudan-air-forces...
- HorkHunter 6y agoThat was the case before they bought the Rafale from France I guess
- sudosysgen 6y agoNot exactly. in these situations they would bomb the GERD then ditch, out of fuel, in international waters ready to be picked up or in Sudan. It's been done before. For really high value targets range doesn't matter as much.
- yyyk 6y agoWhich means they couldn't maneuver at all at the attack site, making themselves extremely vulnerable; Furthermore, a dam is an highly fortified target by nature, making serious damage requires very heavy bombs, not sure they could make it even as a one way trip if they are properly armed. IMHO, most likely result of an attack (for Egypt) is that Egypt loses a part of its airforce in return for temporarily harming Ethiopia's ability to generate electricity at the site. At which point Ethiopia fills the dam anyway and works on repairing the damage, while Egypt wouldn't be able to repeat this.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThey could certainly maneuver at the attack site - there is very limited depth for Ethiopian defences as the dam is only ten miles from the Sudanese border. But yes, the planes would be expendable. That said, Egypt could very well breach the dam itself. It would needs some creative use of munitions but modern munitions are precise enough to allow for breaching of dams.
- Freestyler_3 6y agoWhy bomb a damn when you can hack it.
- masoeg 6y agoi dont think boombing the dam is a popular thing in egypt
- slibhb 6y agoI think a war with Ethiopia would help the Egyptian regime, assuming it went well. And it probably would because Egypt's military is the strongest in the region minus Israel. The real question is what Sudan would do (probably lie down for the Egyptians).
- bumbada 6y agoEthiopia is probably the only nation in Africa that has not been dominated by foreign powers. The reason is the topography. Ethiopia has lots of mountains, like Switzerland and it is painful to attack. Any foreign nation helping Ethiopia could mean disaster for Egypt.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoMaybe Sudan would help Egypt. They use the Nile's water too.
- HorkHunter 6y agoThey had a joint training Air force operation 2 days ago named "Nile Eagles" https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/egypt-sudan-hold-nile-eagles-2-joint-air-exercise/2194661 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/egypt-sudan-hold-nile-e...
- gorkemyurt 6y ago"Egypt's military is the strongest in the region minus Israel." and minus Turkey
- onetimemanytime 6y agoWater is life or death. So they might have to try it. Go block oil extraction in the Arab world and USA will be all over you...national interest.
- sremani 6y agonot any more (vis USA and Arab world) - is the fifth fleet still there in persian gulf ?
- luckylion 6y ago> Go block oil extraction in the Arab world and USA will be all over you...national interest. You mean like they did in the 70ies when the opec cartel cut oil production for political reasons? yeah...
- BurningFrog 6y agoNot anymore. The US is an oil exporting nation now.
- martinpw 6y ago> The US is an oil exporting nation now. That is irrelevant. Oil is fungible. Block oil exports from the Middle East and the price of oil skyrockets worldwide including in the US.
- dukeyukey 6y agoNot necessarily. From 1975 to 2015 the US had a law banning most crude oil exports from the US (aside from Canada and partially Mexico), effectively creating a separate North America-only oil market. It wouldn't take much for the US to reinstate this ban, meaning oil produced in the US stays in the US. And since the US is a net oil exporter, that means North American oil prices will stay low and stable.
- BurningFrog 6y agoAs an oil exporting nation, rising oil prices are now good for the US!
- kevin_b_er 6y agoIf it becomes an existential threat to Egypt via the Nile drying up, then the Egyptian people themselves will want war.
- medium_burrito 6y agoNo need to intervene in the ear of 5th gen wars, especially when Ethiopia effectively has a civil war going on.
- didibus 6y agoIt's crazy that Great Britain was even ever involved in a treaty related to this.
- onetimemanytime 6y agoAt some point there were just a bunch of tribes living around the world without much of a horizon. A "real" country played them against each other
- LanceH 6y agoAh yes, disrupting the historically peaceful coexistence of the middle east.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThe Middle East has indeed had very long periods of stability, and very often was significanrly more peaceful than Europe in all aspects including religious coexistence.
- jcranmer 6y agoThere's generally been a long-standing division between two polities, one controlling the upper Nile (modern-day Sudan/South Sudan) and one controlling the lower Nile (modern-day Egypt), although note the boundary between the two of them has shifted over the millennia. The Islamic caliphate conquered the lower Nile from the Byzantines in their initial expansion, but failed to make progress on the upper Nile, leading the region to remain Christian. The Ottomans eventually displaced the rump states of the caliphate as the rulers of Egypt, but made essentially no progress again pushing south into Sudan. However, the governor of Egypt eventually went on a campaign and actually managed to conquer Sudan and it held for a couple of decades later. But then Sudan had a successful rebellion against Egyptian rule, so the Egyptian governor asked the British (who had by that time invaded and colonized Egypt, even though it was still legally part of the Ottoman Empire) to help him reconquering Sudan. This was successful, leading to Sudan becoming effectively a British colony under nominal Egyptian (but not nominally Ottoman, unlike actual Egypt) sovereignty [1]. That's how Britain acquired Egypt and Sudan. By the time of the first treaty, of course, the Ottoman Empire was carved up for good and Egypt became a clear British protectorate and Sudan a clear joint-British/English condominium. That's why Britain was involved. One of Britain's goals in ruling Sudan was to prevent it from becoming an extension of the Egyptian state, and the first treaty was an instrument to that end (by requiring Sudan to provide Egypt with a reliable supply of water, it's less necessary for Egypt to actually physically control Sudan). [1] Yes, trying to figure out the actual boundaries of the Ottoman Empire were in its last century of existence is an exercise in frustration.
- chriselles 6y agoEgypt literally dies as a nation without Nile water. Uganda purchasing SU27 advanced long range fighter bombers and Egypt recently placing increased emphasis and resources on training military units(including western training efforts) responsible for upstream Nile force projection is not a coincidence. Nile resource sharing is a massive flash point. I recall glancing at an engineering report that indicated clearing/dredging swamps in Sudan could significantly reduce mile water evaporation and increase downstream flow. But at massive environmental and financial cost. Perhaps it’s time to stock up on Egyptian cotton sheets now, since the future of Egyptian cotton may seriously be in doubt. Tough choices to be made amplified by the need for them to be across sovereign borders.
- medium_burrito 6y agoand the big ass damn in Ethiopia. Given the civil war there, don't be surprised in this turning into a bigger conflict.
- reducesuffering 6y agoHas the world always been this on-the-cusp of war? Turkey-Greece, Azerbaijan-Armenia, China-Taiwan, Ethiopia, Egypt-Uganda, Saudi-Iran-Yemen, Congo, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Russia-Ukraine, Morocco-Western Sahara-Algeria, India-China, India-Pakistan, Syria Maybe I've just been watching too much Caspian Report lately, and a lot of these issues are a century in the making, but damn if it doesn't feel like early WW2 issues arising along with the geopolitical implications of climate change.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> Has the world always been this on-the-cusp of war? Usually much more so.
- MomoXenosaga 6y agoThose are small conflicts and skirmishes. Take India-China. Those borderguards were literally fighting eachother with rocks and sticks because they don't issue guns to them PRECISELY to avoid war.
- vfclists 6y agoEgypt is not a "proper" country. It is simply a string of settlements along the banks of Nile river and its delta. Don't let the large trapezoid shape fool you. Most of that is the result of a line on the ground drawn by colonialists. If you want see a country like Egypt look at the Gambia, another country drawn along the eponymous river wholly surrounded by Senegal, another product of colonial machinations.
- 8note 6y agoOr look at Canada, a string of settlements on the US border. See also: Nevada
- BiteCode_dev 6y agoI seem to recall the US is also the result of lines in the ground drawn by colonialists.
- Etheryte 6y agoRoughly 70% of the world population lives within 5 km of a body of water [0]. By this definition, every country is a string of settlements along water. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110782/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110782/
- wl 6y agoThe difference is that many places have more bodies of water for people to live next to. In Egypt, you've got the Nile, the Faiyum, and a smattering of oases.
- scythe 6y agoOver 90 million people live on that insignificant river! Egypt was the center of the Mughal Sultanate that beat the Crusaders and the Mongols. They went into decline under the Ottomans and never really recovered — infamously, they faced the Ottoman guns with swords and bows in 1517 and were unceremoniously trounced.
- 6y ago
- yyyk 6y agoThe old colonial treaty split the waters 85-15 between Egypt and Sudan ignoring all the other African countries. This is completely unsustainable, the poor uptream countries must have their share. Egypt just needs to use desalinization and water saving methods like other ME states.
- gorkemyurt 6y agowell Egypt is the downstream country in this case..
- yyyk 6y agoOops. I did know that, but my fingers did not. Thanks, I edited the original.
- dragontamer 6y agoRivers that flow northward mess up all of our brains a little bit,.
- martinpw 6y agoApparently it was the reverse for the Ancient Egyptians when they marched into the Middle East, encountered the Euphrates and were shocked to find a river flowing South.
- HorkHunter 6y agoThe problem revolves around the filling duration. 3 years is way too fast for the downstream. thirsting the downstream is hardly ever a solution.
- luckylion 6y agoIf only Egypt would realize that and cooperate with the upstream countries, or more specifically, Ethiopia. They could easily mitigate the issue with money, but they believe they have an ancient colonial right to command their neighboring countries.
- throwawaysea 6y agoSomething similar is happening in South Asia, where China has repeatedly proposed plans to dam rivers in Tibet. This has led to the possibility of war (https://asiatimes.com/2021/01/china-risks-a-himalayan-water-war-with-india/ https://asiatimes.com/2021/01/china-risks-a-himalayan-water-...) with India because rivers fed by the Himalayas supply a lot of India’s fresh water, and any alteration would dramatically affect its environment, agriculture, etc. This is a modern issue both because Tibet was historically it’s own sovereign territory and because the world didn’t face such overpopulation or resource strains. The southwest of the US addressed this via an interstate compact that lays out shared allocation of river flows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact
- joking 6y agoI'm really curious on how they ignored their mexican counterparts, and really astonished that the US use all the caudal from the river leaving nothing to flow through the border. How they even manage to justify that decision is incredible to me.
- csense 6y agoDoesn't Egypt have a really powerful military? If the dam's an existential threat to Egypt, why don't the Egyptians simply launch a military strike to blow it up?
- sudosysgen 6y agoThey probably would, yes, and have hinted as much.
- hutzlibu 6y agoAh yes, the simple solution to many problems: violence and war.
- ilstormcloud 6y agoThis is stupid. If Ethiopia decides to hurt Egypt, it won't need to build a massive dam. Wasting water has never been too difficult. Egypt would do well to not create such an enemy at their water source.
- nullifidian 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Air_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Air_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Air_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Air_Force Egypt can just occupy them, install a puppet regime and then move on. They definitely have that capability.
- ilstormcloud 6y agoDepressing. I'll call it like it is. This is an idiotic response that lacks common sense. It's so common in the pro Egypt camp. Most of the inventory is filled with short range equipment. The only jets able to reach Ethiopia are the Rafales and the SU-35 which make up a minority. They're not enough. More importantly, wars are not won by equipment (though they help immensely). I don't get why such reductive opinions are so common when this issue is discussed.
- dehrmann 6y ago> While most rivers flow south, the Nile flows north I've heard this before, but it doesn't sound right, unless you get a weird bias because of weather patterns and lots of landmass that would drain into the arctic ocean.
- bourgoin 6y agoI have a hard time conceiving of any reason that North and South would be different in this regard, but maybe it's possible if there is a tendency for rivers to flow towards the equator for some reason, since most of the world's landmass happens to be in the northern hemisphere.
- darkerside 6y agoPerhaps on some level, since melting ice would follow away from the ice mass. But AFAIK, there is no causative reason for rivers to flow towards the equator. A quick Google search corroborates this.
- lizknope 6y agoI live on the east coast of the United States and I have always felt that rivers flow east from the Appalachian mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. If I lived in Siberia I would probably think that most rivers flow north to the Arctic Ocean.
- ilstormcloud 6y agoI have talked with a few Egyptians on the subject. Unfortunately most think a military solution would be simple and straightforward. "Egypt has hundreds of fighter jets. Ethiopia has 20, We can turn the dam into dust". They probably can. But then what? History is not over yet. Egypt thinks of Ethiopia as enemy state. A lot of Ethiopians believe Egypt supports every rebel group in Ethiopia. But Ethiopians still don't view Egypt as an enemy, more like a thorn on the side. For thousands of years the Nile has been flowing toward Egypt without much objection. Bombing the dam will change that. It is the equivalent to creating a monster at your water source. Ethiopia will not try to block the water or anything like that. But it can and probably will start small irrigation projects everywhere. And it will stop consulting with Egypt. In the end, this will be much more devastating to Egypt than a hydro-electric dam which isn't even used for irrigation. What baffles me about the Egyptian stance is, climate change is coming. Projections for fresh water in Africa in the coming decades don't look rosy. Mitigation for this is, fresh water sources should be developed and protected from environmental degradation. And you need the cooperation of upstream countries to do that. Being source of 85% of the Nile, Ethiopia's support is needed to do that. Even if Ethiopia stops constructing the dam right now, in 50 years, at a time Egypt is sporting 200 million souls, there is potential that water levels on the Nile are probably going to decrease purely from climate change. The talk of war is stupid. Playing zero sum game of "Only Egypt" is a bad idea.
- herodoturtle 6y agoInsightful comment, thanks for sharing. For those that are interested, here is some more context on official cooperation between countries that surround (and are dependent on) the Nile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_Basin_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_Basin_Initiative
- ilstormcloud 6y agoThanks for bringing up the Nile Basin Initiative. Unfortunately, and to the surprise of no one, Egypt has been doing its best to kill it.
- masoeg 6y ago
- vfclists 6y agoIt is surprising how most of the responses here seem so sympathetic to Egypt whilst forgetting the Nile countries who have had less benefit from a river originating in their territories. The Black African countries have as much right to benefit from the river as Egypt and the idea that they must submit to some agreement created by the British who ignored the needs of Nile countries is simply absurd. If any people "own" it is the Ethiopians, the Kenyans and the Ugandans in whose countries the Nile originates not Egypt, and they have as much right to it as anyone else. Instead of having proper negotiations on how the Nile should be shared they bringing up colonial agreements which none of the African countries were parties to. This is simply absurd and as racist as anything else. Gadaffi created huge pipelines to draw water from aquifers, a resource which is way more valuable than oil, and offered to supply a substantial portion of Egypt's water needs and these fools supported his overthrow and turned the whole country into a scene of chaos, and now they are making silly noises about war with Ethiopia and other crap.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- danmaz74 6y agoThe water extracted in Libya is a non renewable resource, it's no not going to last.
- newdude116 6y agoDont underestimate Ethiopia. Few countries have such a potential in Africa. The Track record of the Egyptians against Ethiopia is also not very good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian%E2%80%93Egyptian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian%E2%80%93Egyptian_War
- AnotherMan80 6y agoI see several persons claiming a lot of what is being said over the last few years as a propaganda from the Ethiopians as people or as a Government. Egypt only receives 55.5 billion cubic of water. Do you know how much the Nile rover represent for Egypt as a source of water? ONLY 83.1% of the FRESH WATER. https://water.fanack.com/egypt/water-resources/ https://water.fanack.com/egypt/water-resources/ Egypt has NO other water resources except the Nile river. How about Ethiopia? AT LESAT 936.4 BILLION Cubic meters and we don’t count underground water here (16.9 times as the Egyptians). https://www.worldometers.info/water/ethiopia-water/ https://www.worldometers.info/water/ethiopia-water/ Simply speaking: what does Ethiopia need? Ethiopia wants to SELL the water to Egypt. Ethiopia is being used as a dirty hand to get Egypt down in any debate with major forces especially Israel. Water MUST NOT be sold. You CAN NOT trade lives of millions by money. This problem should be finished once and for ever. All the Nile river African countries have ZERO problem of water supplies EXCEPT Egypt. Egypt is already suffering from extreme water deficiency. Ethiopians always claim that they don’t get any benefit from the Blue Nile. Well, the answer is so simple, it is the civil wars that got your country sunk in bloodsheds of killing, it is your divided ethnic groups, it is your inadequate capability of using the huge water resources that you already have. I am not sure who supports negotiating about the lives of millions of people by trading their lives with money. You guys don’t imagine the consequences. It is not about war only, it is about uncontrolled anger which will reach a lot of places in the Ethiopian country. Last, if you don’t have enough information about this debate, do not place meaningless comment. This is not your daily sh* you post on social media. Numbers talk. That what we all know. Without number, what we say is just garbage. Grow up and have the info. Do not place your fail as a country or people on another nation