There have been a series of articles on the Nile issue in several leading African Publications. Notably, Sort Out Nile Water Before It's Too Late, Water Wars Loom along Nile, Kenya to Chair Nile Initiative, Unquiet Flows the Nile, and Claiming the Nile.

The articles highlight the competing aspirations of the riparians and suggest the need for cooperation, consultation, and collaboration to achieve an equitable utilization of the shared resource. Furthermore, devising a fair, just and coherent plan for the full and most efficient use of the sub-basin's waters demands accommodations by modifications of existing uses or future plans, consideration of priorities and alternatives, or compensation for abstaining from taking action.

However, the history of Nile Basin cooperation narrates a relationship, which has been characterized by unsuccessful diplomatic and political initiatives, hostility, tension, and non-cooperation. The history confirms lower riparians' perception of "superior rights" to the basin's waters by virtue of relative need, prior appropriation, and a perceived requirement on upper riparians to maintain the absolute integrity of the basin's rivers for the exclusive benefit of lower riparians. The history chronicles the lower riparians' failure to accept propositions to engage in negotiations with the upper riparians, and the lower riparians strategy of equivocation, avoidance, and hostility to deflect the issue of equitable utilization of the basin's resources in preference for preservation of the status quo.

Predictably, increasing tensions and frustration in the entire Nile Basin have called for creation of devices to reduce potential conflict by promoting basin-wide dialogue and cooperation, the most recent in the form of the "Nile Basin Initiative". Despite the riparians' professed intentions and public statements to cooperate and to achieve the equitable and sustainable utilization of the basin's resources, the riparians' succeeding actions do not provide a basis for optimism. Indeed the outcome of recent efforts towards cooperation confirms the continuing tension between upper riparians' demand for an equitable share of the basin's waters and lower riparians' preference for maintaining the status quo, most recently on the basis of a perceived lack of comprehensive knowledge concerning the basin.

This article is a review of the post-colonial Egyptian attitude towards sharing the Nile and the prospect(s) for cooperation in the context of the Nile Basin Initiative - or more appropriately, the western "alternative" mechanism to obscure sovereign demands for equitable use of the shared resource. .

Threat of Force

As deterrence, the Egyptian High Command has established contingency plans for armed intervention, in each country in the Nile Basin, in case of a direct threat to the flow of the Nile. Egyptian military plans, known as Waraa-el-hidoud (Beyond the Borders), were traditionally associated with Nile water. Some of the plans date back to the early nineteenth century, to the days when Mohammed Ali was rebuilding the Egyptian army. All have been updated several times since then, several by the British around the turn of the century. Today, a full-time staff at the Nasser Military Academy in East Cairo reviews and adapts the plans to changing circumstances. While the military strategists are at work, Egyptian officials emphasize that they would prefer diplomatic solutions and compre­hensive agreements among all states concerned rather than confrontation.

In 1977, Ethiopia announced its intention to irrigate 90,000 ha of land in the Blue Nile Basin, and another 28,000 ha in the Baro (a tributary of the Sobat) to increase food production following the devastating drought in 1994. In the first case, President Sadat of Egypt immediately threatened strong countermeasures, including war, if any steps were taken by Ethiopia to alter the course of the Blue Nile River. In December 1979, the warning was repeated in much tougher language to the Ethiopian ambassador in Cairo. Yet, during the same time in 1979, Sadat offered to supply water to Israel in exchange for concessions on the occupied Palestinian territories and Jerusalem and a year later, in 1980, announced Egypt's intention to divert the Nile waters out of the drainage basin to irrigate land in Sinai.

The Ethiopian government, reacting to these events, sent a memorandum to the OAU accusing Egypt of misusing the waters of the Blue Nile and infringing the rights of other riparian states (violation of the riparian rule - on the ground that Sinai lay outside the Nile basin). Sadat immediately countered with public threats of war. In an article on June 2, 1980 published in the Egyptian Gazette President Sadat was quoted to have said, "once I decided to divert the Nile water into Sinai I will not try to get permission from Ethiopia, if they do not like our measures, they can go to hell." Following that statement Sadat openly called upon an audience of army officers to prepare a military plan to foil any attempt by Ethiopia to impede the flow of the Nile. At one point, Sadat instructed the Egyptian Second and Third Army officers to stand ready to deploy against Ethiopia should Ethiopia interfere with the flow of the Blue Nile River. Sadat stated:

"If Ethiopia undertakes any action that will affect our full rights to the Nile waters, there is no alternative to the use of force we will retaliate when something happens but we have to be ready with plans and alternatives to firmly stop any action."

Until recently, President Mubarak, who succeeded Sadat after his assassination in 1981, had not repeated Sadat's threats. However, Egyptian ministers continued to allude to their country's vital interest. In 1985, Boutros-Ghali, then the Egyptian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, told an interviewer that the "next war in our region will be over the waters of the Nile, not politics." June 1990, Boutros-Ghali convened an African water summit in Cairo and invited Government delegates from forty-three African nations. The conference gave prominence to what hydrologists in many countries had been arguing: the need for regional cooperation. Boutros-Ghali emphasized, "co-operation between African countries is essential in order to make the best use of the Nile River, through solidarity we will be able to achieve a common policy." At this Cairo conference, Egypt publicly acknowledged the idea of "interdepen­dence" and "regional cooperation". Less than a year later, despite the assurances of solidarity and cooperation, in October 1991, General Tantawi, the Minister of Defense, told an interviewer that Egypt might use force to protect Egypt's supply of Nile water. He made clear, however, that this would be a last resort, should all other means fail: "'We are not ruling out the possibility of using some acts of deterrence after exhausting peaceful means in case any party tries to control the River Nile".

The Egyptian warlike attitude was confirmed only a year later, in 1992, when the Egyptian parliament was given an up-to-date assessment of threats facing the country's water resources in a hitherto unpublished report by Dr Hamdi el-Taheri. Dr el-Taheri, an inter­nationally known expert on water, concentrated on the "external dang­ers" because, he said, the internal difficulties were well known and studies were under way to see how those matters could be rectified. For the external dangers, Dr el-Taheri had no ready solutions. He merely identified them in his report to the Parliamen­tary Select Committee on the Nile. The Committee was told the immediate external danger to Egypt was that either Uganda or Ethiopia, or both, would implement plans to build new dams on the White or Blue Nile River. The Committee was further advised of Egypt's vulnerability in Sudan should the southern part of the country split off; that would have a direct effect on the future of the Jonglei Canal project, already halted because of civil war. Dr el-Taheri's report was subsequently presented to a special session of the Egyptian parliament, amidst shouts of "when are we going to invade Sudan?" and "why doesn't the air force bomb the Ethiopian dams?" from the Egyptian Deputies.

In 1993, Ethiopia and Sudan published reports that there were plans to divert Nile water to Israel, as part of the Northern Sinai Agricultural Development Project. Sudan and Ethiopia saw great risk in selling or diverting any Nile water to Israel because the decision sets an undesirable precedent and because once Israel begins to take water from the Nile it may compete for larger shares in future. If Egypt has water to spare in Sinai, Ethiopia and Sudan felt the water must first be offered to the other Nile riparian countries for desperately needed development projects in the Nile Basin.

The Sudanese protest was quickly followed by a series of Egyptian declarations. Egyptian Foreign Minister Amir Moussa bluntly warned Sudan's protesting Islamic leader Hassan al-Turabi not "to play with fire" when Turabi countered by threatening to retaliate by reducing Egypt's water quota. Information Minister Safwat el-Sherif stated Egypt "rejects the hollow threats [on water] from the Sudanese regime. Any [Sudanese] wrongdoing or infringement will be met with full force and firmness." Water Resources Minister Abdel-Hadi Radi warned the 1959 Nile waters agreement with Sudan allocating water to Egypt was a "red line that can never be crossed." The Egyptian President added, while he had remained silent in the face of many "Sudanese provocations" in the past, "It is finished, I will not stay quiet, I do not want to hurt the Sudanese if they are helpless, but I say, and the world hears me, that if they continue with this stance and take other measures, then I have many measures of my own." Most recently, Ethiopia's announcement in 1999, to build a dam on the Blue Nile River, elicited a threat from Mubarak "to bomb Ethiopia." However, the Ethiopian government considered these threats as an "irresponsible instance of jingoism that will not get us anywhere near the solution of the problem" and "there is no earthly force that can stop Ethiopia from benefiting from the Nile."

Last month, Kenya's intended withdrawal from the 1929 Nile Waters Agreement was described by Egypt as "an act of war" and Egypt's Minister for Water Resources and Natural Resources, Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, accused Kenya of breaching international law by opting out of the treaty and threatening that Kenya could not lay claim to sovereignty to protect itself from any action that Egypt may want to take'. According to the newspaper account, the Egyptian Minister " hinted at sanctions, saying Kenya would suffer if [Egypt] and the other nine decided to punish it for quitting the treaty."

Early Attempts towards Collaboration

Hydro-met Project

Between 1961 and 1964, a sudden and unpredictable twenty percent in­crease in the rainfall on the lake plateau raised the level of the equatorial lakes by 2.5 meters, producing extensive flooding around their shores and the disastrous inundation of the Sudd floodplain. The East African countries sought to relieve the areas surrounding Lake Victoria by an increase of one hundred twenty five percent in the out­flow at the Owen Falls Dam causing flooding downstream. The Sudd basin in Sudan doubled in size from (13,100 km' to 29,800 km') and the flooding destroyed an estimated 120,000 heads of livestock and tens of thousands of Nilotic lives.

These extraordinary events elicited a proposal from the World Meteorological Organization for a hydro meteorological (hydro-met) survey of the lake plateau financed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The project was established in 1968, which the East African states joined and "in the spirit of African unity" invited Egypt and Sudan to participate. Egypt and Sudan ea­gerly accepted this gesture and quickly proposed establishing a "Nile Basin Planning Commission" for the total planning of the waters of the Nile Basin.

However, Ethiopia and the East African countries were not prepared for Egypt's proposal. The countries were concerned that Egypt would dominate the Commission by virtue of Egypt's technical and legal expertise, relative economic and political influence coupled with Egypt's history of unilateral actions and unfavorable attitude towards co-operation and negotiations with the upper riparians. The damage and how to ameliorate the suffering inflicted by the floods upon citizens of new and unsteady states was of primary concern to the East African states rather than planning for storage of additional flood waters for Egypt and Sudan.

After its completion, the project was extended for a second phase with further assistance from the UNDP. A Technical Committee was established with representation from all participating countries, with Ethiopia as an observer, to oversee and monitor the study project on behalf of the governments in the Nile Basin. However, Egyptian and Sudanese efforts to extend the study to other reaches of the Nile Basin came up against political suspicion and resentment that has accumulated over the years and brought the project to a close.

UNDUGU Group

The prospect for Nile Basin cooperation for water, or for that matter any concern, soon proved illusory. In 1977, Egypt and Sudan again invited the East African states to join with them in a commission of all the riparian states to plan the development of the water resources for the whole of the Nile Basin. The proposed Commission was to serve as a framework for negotiations on the apportionment of the Nile waters and its development. There was every reason for Egypt and the Sudan to want to see such a Commission set up, but the other riparians had no incentive to agree to its establishment. They had nothing to gain and might well lose valuable water rights by making premature commitments.

The African states were suspicious of any organi­zation of nine sovereign states, seven with little power and less experience in matters hydrological that would be dominated by Egypt. They resolved this dilemma by deflecting Egyptian and Sudanese interests by creating the UNDUGU group, from the Swahili ndugu (Brotherhood), consisting of Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Central African Republic. UNDUGU soon delved into many furtive and unproductive conferences and ministerial meetings. Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia were conspicuously absent, and without them, there was little prospect for Nile Basin cooperation.

Rebuffed but determined, Egypt and Sudan continued to press for a Nile Commission but despite numerous meetings of Ministers, Heads of State and a team from the PJTC, which aggressively toured the countries of the riparian states, the leaders refused to gather collectively at the negotiating table. Egypt had little to offer the upstream states other than its own ambitious 17 Volume Nile Water Master Plan, which was unveiled in 1981. The plan was conceived and produced by the Egyptian Ministry of Public Works and concentrated on the Upper Nile Basin without consultation or participation by any of the Nile Basin countries in whose territories the plan proposed to construct works. The plan also neglected to take into account Ethiopia's Blue Nile Plan and Sudan's Nile Valley Plan and the requirements of the East African states set forth in the British Diplomatic Note of 1959.

The UNDUGU commission held sixty-six meetings at the technical and ministerial level between 1977 and 1992 with more rhetoric than results. Communiqués issued after its meetings have made very little mention of the Nile apart from platitudinous statements on African and Middle Eastern political questions and tended to focus on closer cooperation in development matters unrelated to the use of the Nile waters, such as transport and communication. However, this dismal record of non-achievement and prevarication on the Nile issues could not continue. The 250 million people living in the Nile Basin states were rapidly increasing at three and six-tenths percent a year, the extensive en­vironmental degradation, and the looming demand for equitable sharing of the Nile waters was becoming imminent. Egypt responded to these needs with a policy of confidence building by offering assistance for regional projects for pollution control and watershed management in the upstream states to divert attention from the fundamental but contentious issue of the division of available water. Despite the Egyptian initiatives, the member states proceeded to abolish the UNDUGU Commission and reorganized it in 1993 as the Technical Cooperation Committee for the Promotion, Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile (TECCONILE) to address the contentious matter of equitable use of the Nile waters.

TECCONILE

In 1993, at their sixty-seventh meeting in Aswan, the ministers for water resources abolished and reorganized UNDUGU into the Technical Cooperation Committee for the Promotion of the Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile (TECCONILE). Since its establishment, TECCONILE has participated in the preparation of an atlas of the Nile Basin, conducted a series of training sessions for staff members of water resources agencies in the basin in Geographical Information Systems, Hydrological Modeling, Monitoring, Forecasting, and Simulation and organizing a series of annual Nile 2002 Conferences. The conferences provide a forum for local as well as international experts to present technical studies related to the development of the Nile basin, to exchange views and to foster cooperation. TECCONILE has organized workshops to develop and elaborate the "Nile River Basin Action Plan (NRBAP)" which includes twenty-one basin projects for funding at an estimated cost of US $100 million. With funding assistance from the Canadian International Development Agency TECCONILE has also developed a "cooperative framework" among the basin countries to formulate agreements for the equitable use and protection of the shared resource.

TECCONILE was at first concerned with the water quality of the equatorial lakes and then drafted the Nile River Basin Action Plan (NRBAP), which was not so much a plan as "an expression of commitment by the basin states." The Plan was enthusiastically approved at the third meeting of the Nile 2002 Conference in February 1995. During his open­ing remarks to the conference the Tanzanian Prime Minis­ter announced that his government was committed to the principle of "eq­uitable entitlement" to the water resources of the Nile, formally challenging the opposing Egyptian principle of "historic and estab­lished rights." The principle of equitable entitlement advocated by Tanzania elicited strong support from its neighbors. The following year, in May 1996 at the fourth 2002 Nile Conference in Kampala, an in­ternational basin association was proposed (to include Eritrea) by the members who fervently blessed the spirit of cooperation.

Nine months later in February 1997, at the seventy-first meeting of TECCONILE held in Cairo to approve twenty-two projects mostly for en­vironmental protection contained in NRBAP, Egypt strongly supported the US $100 million needed to carry out the NRBAP environmental activities, hopefully to placate the opposition to its historic needs and to demonstrate confidence building among the upstream riparian who would gather a week later at Addis Ababa for the fifth annual Nile 2002 Conference. However, Egypt's coopera­tion and support for the environmental concerns of their upstream neigh­bors could not disguise the fundamental issue of "equitable use."

In his opening address to the three hundred representatives from the ten riparians and international agencies, the Ethiopian Minister for Water Resources insisted that "as a source and major contribution of the Nile waters, Ethiopia has the right to have an equitable share of the Nile waters and reserves its rights to make use of its water." In 1956, the imperial Ethiopian government offi­cially declared that Ethiopia "would reserve for her own use those Nile waters in her territory," but in 1997, Ethiopia was simply de­manding an "equitable share." Indeed, Ethiopia's position appeared to be more in keeping with the theme of the conference - "Comprehensive Water Resources Development of the Nile Basin: Basis for Cooperation" - than the declaration by Ethiopia fifty years earlier.

The Nile Basin Initiative

Built upon earlier initiatives of TECCONILE and NRBAP, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), was launched in February 1999 in common pursuit of the sustainable development and management of Nile waters and to achieve a regional cooperative framework acceptable to all basin countries in order to promote basin wide cooperation in integrated water resource planning. The riparians agreed to pursue this goal under a transitional arrangement (NBI) until a permanent legal framework is in place. It was believed that the basin wide network would promote international support for sustainable Nile water development and management. The Objectives are:

To develop the water resources of the Nile Basin in a sustainable and equitable way and to ensure prosperity, security and peace for all its people.

To ensure efficient water management and the optimal use of the resources.

To ensure cooperation and joint action between the riparian countries, seeking win-win gains.

To target poverty eradication and promote economic integration.

To ensure that program results in a move from planning to action.

(To be continued next week...)