Nile Politics, Egypt, Sudan, Abyssinia, and the Horn of Africa
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
April 09, 2008
In the present article, we will complete the refutation of the unsubstantiated link made between my rejection of possible parallels between Kosova and Somaliland and the assumption that I express positions of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that supposedly makes a link between the Egyptian Nile policy and the Egyptian – Arab League opposition to Somaliland´s failed attempt to obtain formal recognition.
First comes the uncommented part of Mr. Ahmed Ali Ibrahim Sabeyse´s response, and then my comments. Numbers encrusted in the text refer to the subsequent comments. Mr. Ahmed Ali Ibrahim Sabeyse ´s diatribe was published in several portals, e.g. http://www.somalilandtalk.com/node/3181, and http://radiohadhwanaag.com/index.php?news=426.
Kosovo and Somaliland: the Impossible Equation – The Egyptian Position
The River Nile is Egypt 16 and Egypt is the Nile. 17 The livelihood of 100 million Egyptians 18 takes precedence over the very existence of over 180 million inhabitants in the River Nile Basin. 19 The population of the riparian states is expected to double in the coming twenty years. The imbalance between a diminishing natural resource coupled with the consumption demands of exploding populations, is a sure recipe for an armed conflict in the region.
The Nile Water Agreement of 1929 guarantees Egypt about 56 Billion cubic meters out of about 74 Billion cubic meters of the total water flow- that is roughly 76% of the total water volume. 20 This outdated formula gives the Egyptian government almost exclusive monopoly and right of usage of the River Nile waters. For example, one of the clauses of the agreement states:
"Without the consent of the Egyptian Government, no irrigation or hydroelectric works can be established on the tributaries of the Nile or their lakes if such works can cause a drop in water level harmful to Egypt". 21
Times have changed 22 and the littoral states [Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, and Ethiopia are under tremendous pressure 23 to renegotiate the terms of water allocation and usage. The Egyptian demands on the waters of the River Nile are simply unsustainable. Sooner or later, the needs of other nations should be addressed. However, the Egyptian regime is not even prepared to address the issue, let alone renegotiate the terms of the old agreement. The Egyptian foreign ministry views any diversion of the Nile water as an act of war. 24 With exploding populations of their own, the countries at the source of the Nile are vying to tap this resource within their boundaries for their domestic agricultural and industrial development needs. Ignoring the belligerent stand of Egypt, the Tanzanian government embarked on 170 mile long pipe-line to deliver water to about 400,000 people at an estimated total cost of US$85.10 million. The rest of the East African nations question the legitimacy of this eighty year old agreement and it is a matter of time before they follow the Tanzanian example. 25
To be continued
Ahmed Ali Ibrahim Sabeyse
Comments
16. This statement does not reflect but the historical background; it is absolutely irrelevant to the present policies of the Republic, to say the least. In the Antiquity, certainly Egypt was the Nile Valley; the name of the country, Kemet, applied exclusively to non desert surface. Wherever the desert started, there was no Kemet anymore. The concept prevailed until the Islamic Ages. In the second half of the 20th century, efforts made to gain back surface that was green in the Antiquity but had become desert involved the erection of the second Aswan dam, the High Dam, thus triggering the gradual formation of a Second Valley (Wadi Guedida), notably the huge Toshka project. On the other hand, the expansion throughout the Red Sea and the Sinai coasts, and more recently in the Northern Coast (between Alexandria and Sallum on the Libya border) lessened the earlier quasi-total dependence of Egypt on the Nile. The statement of the author, as absolute and unmitigated, does not reflect the reality anymore.
17. Viewed otherwise, it would be extremely wrong to limit the importance of the Nile in Egypt exclusively, as the author with his unconditional statement attempts. One could even say that Sudan depends on the Nile more than Egypt does, and that the Nile is first Sudan, then Egypt, and then all the rest. Undisputedly, the river´s longest part is to be found on the territory of modern Sudan that for its northern parts corresponds to the authentic Ethiopia of the Greco-Roman sources. Plenty of critical traits and aspects of the Nile are to be found in Sudan rather than in Egypt.
The merge of the two Niles, the White Nile (coming from Southern Sudan and further beyond from the Great Lakes region - Kenya and Uganda), and the Blue Nile (coming from Abyssinia), takes pace in Khartoum (the name of the Sudanese capital means ´tusk´ in Arabic), Sudan.
The famous change of direction of the Nile´s water flow from NE to SW (in the area of Abu Hamed) and then from SW to NE again (in the area of Debba) was a natural phenomenon that fascinated the Ancient Egyptians and the Kushites of Sudan (who were named Ethiopians by the Ancient Greeks and Romans); however, it all happens in Sudan.
Due to the central position of the Nile in the Weltanschauung, the philosophy and the religion of the Ancient Egyptians and the Ancient Ethiopians (the ancestors of the modern Oromos), the natural phenomenon became the matter of extensive interpretations and theories, during many long millennia.
Out of the six cataracts of the Nile (another physical phenomenon that fascinated the Ancient Egyptians and the Ancient Ethiopians, provoking many theoretical approaches and efforts of interpretations), five are located in Sudan, and one in Egypt.
Due to the erection of the Khazan (Reservoir – the small dam of Aswan built in 1899) and the High Dam (Sad el Ali, built in 1964), the two northernmost cataracts (one in the southernmost confines of Aswan, and another in the south of Wadi Halfa) are by now submerged. So, currently, all four existing cataracts (rapids) of the Nile are in Sudan.
Needless to say it, Sudan´s potentialities in agriculture are far greater than Egypt´s, due precisely to possibilities offered by the Nile.
As all this is obvious, there would be perhaps no need to mention it here, but the author´s unbalanced statement obliged me to clarify the situation.
If I now try to interpret the author´s maximalism in this statement, I can simply say that it reflects the simplistic and fanatic approach of the racist Amhara – Tigray Abyssinian elites who – under monarchical, communist and pseudo-republican regime – expressed always a complex of inferiority vis-à-vis Egypt, as their anti-Egyptian passion blinded their otherwise ignorant minds. When this concerns the criminal and cruel rulers of the Cenotaph Ethiopia, it is not a matter of surprise. Their voracious hatred and enmity towards Egypt led them to invade other nations during the second half of the 19th century, as they imagined that, with a bigger country under their control, they could match Egypt.
So foolish and paranoid they have been that they forgot that a larger / bigger country is not necessarily stronger; it can be an unbearable burden. They were not able to realize that, with all the subjugated nations, the Oromos, the Ogadenis, the Sidamas, the Afars, the Kaffas, the Shekachos, the Agaws, the Anuak, the Kambatas, and the Wolayitas, imprisoned in the state of Abyssinia, terrorized and pushed to ipso facto loath and despise their barbaric Abyssinian rulers, Abyssinia – even when it is fallaciously re-baptized as Ethiopia – remains irreversibly weak, impotent, and immaterial.
18. Egypt´s population totals 80, not 100, million people.
19. The sentence "The livelihood of 100 million Egyptians takes precedence over the very existence of over 180 million inhabitants in the River Nile Basin" consists in racist rhetoric that the ailing Abyssinian regime tries to export to the unrepresentative and un-Somali, dictatorial regime of Hargeysa.
First, I never insinuated anything of the sort, particularly in my article to which this diatribe´s author supposedly tried to answer.
Second, the Egyptian government – with which I never had any contact and of which I am totally irrelevant – never hinted at anything like that. All this however matters less.
The statement itself, linguistically analyzed, contains all the characteristics of semantic differentiation which stands always at the beginning of every racist, discriminatory, fascist and Neo-Nazi discourse. This I will analyze here.
When you compare incomparable notions or items in order to purportedly prove something, you evidently cheat.
Even worse, when you do so in order to promote political interests and draw political conclusions, your semantic differentiation is the seed itself of Nazism.
More specifically:
a. One can compare (the verbal expression ´take precedence over´ clearly signifies a comparison) the ´livelihood´ of a people to the ´livelihood´ of another.
Similarly one can compare the ´existence´ of a people to the ´existence´ of another.
But when you compare the ´livelihood´ of a people to the ´existence´ of another, you deceive your reader, as you compare incomparable notions; sheer ´existence´ is far more critical than mere ´livelihood´.
Within this semantic context, not only you deceive your reader, but you promote a detrimental comparison that triggers in and by itself differentiation.
And Nazism, fascism, every type of totalitarianism, and all inhuman theories emanate from an original aberration - differentiation.
b. When an initial semantic differentiation creates in the reader´s mind a certain predisposition in favour of the part, which is presented as victimized, and a second element of differentiation is added, the technique is complete. In the aforementioned Neo-Nazi text, the second differentiation is focalized on the numbers given for the populations to compare ("100 million Egyptians" and "180 million inhabitants in the River Nile Basin").
If the author made a sentence like the following "The livelihood of 100 million Egyptians takes precedence over the livelihood of over 180 million inhabitants in the River Nile Basin" or "The very existence of 100 million Egyptians takes precedence over the very existence of over 180 million inhabitants in the River Nile Basin", no one would accuse him of having taken Neo-Nazi Abyssinian courses of rhetoric.
Of course, the statement is dismissed by all the Sudanese, many Kenyans and Ugandans, and almost all the Somalis and the Eritreans. This is the place to remind to the otherwise ignorant and unaware author that Sudan is currently building a dam nearby Karima! No problem!
Even worse for the renegade Somalis of the limited Hargeysa circle, the majority of the population of Abyssinia rejects his statement.
All the oppressed nations of the misfortunate realm, the Oromos, the Ogadenis, the Sidamas, the Afars, the Kaffas, the Shekachos, the Agaws, the Anuak, the Kambatas, and the Wolayitas, after having suffered at the hands of the cruel and inhuman Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians, would never miss the opportunity to pressurize over the Egyptian diplomats and administration so that Egypt never allows the criminal Amhara elite to build a God-damned dam in the lake Tana region.
So debilitated and demented the gangsters of the Abyssinian elites are that they cannot grasp that their action brings reaction, and that they will inevitably pay in the years ahead a tremendous and extremely prejudicial price for the serial genocides that they have incessantly perpetrated.
Only Punishment will be adjusted to the inhuman Abyssinian elites in the future, if they do not repent in time, dissolve their repugnant tyranny by themselves, limit their rule in the Amhara and Tigray provinces, and start respecting the cultures and the religions of the neighboring nations.
20. The Nile Water Agreement is an old document; there is no doubt. Unless trust prevails among the Nile riparian states, no new agreement can be reached. And who can trust the tyrannical despots, the butchers of the Tigrays and the Amharas?
21. This text highlights the permanent weakness and impotence of the tribal colonial relic Abyssinia that expanded to the detriment of so many other nations, without however managing to take any sort of international benefit. Who would pay attention to diplomats of gangsters who pretend to be the ´representatives´ of the nations that they passionately and urgently want to exterminate?
22. Times always change, and that´s why Abyssinia, fallaciously re-baptized Ethiopia, will split to ten independent states; Africa's most loathed tyranny will be shattered down, and cease to exist.
23. This is sheer lie; none of these states is ´under tremendous pressure to renegotiate´; certainly the Abyssinian diplomacy tried but failed to mobilize the Ugandan and the Kenyan diplomats to support the ridiculous claims of the minority rulers of Abyssinia. In fact, only the dictators who rule Abyssinia, representing 18% of the local population, are ´under tremendous pressure to renegotiate´.
Why?
Because they know that their days are numbered, and they will be turned to ashes, in the advent of the forthcoming rebellions of all the subjugated nations of Abyssinia.
24. If this is so, it only highlights Abyssinia´s impotence and farcical existence.
25. The entire world, before ´questioning the legitimacy of this agreement´, definitely questions the ´legitimacy´ of the Abyssinian state that is the cemetery of so many Ancient and Noble African nations.
Even sooner, the world will question the legitimacy of the presence of Abyssinian death squads (impersonating a supposed ´national´ army) in Somalia, and will be put a dead end to it.
The dissolution of the Abyssinian tyranny will come immediately after the withdrawal of the Abyssinian thugs from Somalia. Somaliland will then cease to exist too, and Ogaden will merge with Somalia.
Note
Picture: Elephantine island in Aswan - the beginning of the First Cataract of the Nile )now submerged)