Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan resume talks on the Nile dam. The last hope to avoid a regional war.
After various boycotts and double games, negotiations on the exploitation of the Nile water resources and on the Ethiopian GERD dam resume thanks to African Union and West Power pressures . Reaching an agreement means avoiding the first water war on the African continent. Unfortunately, the ambiguous attitude of the Addis Ababa government, economic interests and territorial border disputes could make the last chance to avoid war disappear. The Great Rebirth Dam still has all the chances of becoming the greatest misfortune of the Ethiopian people and the peoples of the region intact
Talks have resumed to resolve the extremely dangerous dispute over the huge Ethiopian dam on the Blue Nile: Great Renaissance (GERD) whose works began almost 10 years ago, entrusted to the Italian construction company Salini Impregilo. The negotiations took place with a cycle of videoconferencing talks with virtual presence of South African mediators (South Africa is the presidency of the African Union Council) and international observers including representatives of the United States and the European Union.
The resumption of negotiations was presented by the African Union, the United States and the European Union, as a success as Sudan boycotted the latest round of discussions six weeks ago, while Egypt lost all hope of a peaceful solution. Reaching an agreement means avoiding the first water war on the African continent. The signs of conflict are already evident. Officially caused by a border dispute between Sudan and Ethiopia.
The optimism of the international community seems motivated by the hope of removing the nightmare of a regional war inserted in an (already existing) context of civil war in Tigray and the associated risk of Balkanization of Ethiopia. The press release from the Sudanese Ministry of Water Resources does not reveal the same optimism but only extreme diplomatic prudence. “The negotiations just concluded will pave the way for the resumption of tripartite negotiations scheduled for next January 10, in the hope that everything can be concluded positively by the end of January”, reads the statement.
At 145 meters high and almost two kilometres long, the concrete giant GERD will become Ethiopia’s largest source of electricity. As Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam, it will produce over 15,000 gigawatts / hour of electricity, starting in 2022, by supplying water from Africa’s longest river, the Blue Nile. Few (even among the Ethiopian public opinion) know the real intentions of the Addis Ababa government on the production of electricity. Only a paltry 40% will be allocated to national energy needs, according to rumours received since July 2018 when the engineer Simegnew Bekele, general superintendent of the works, was found dead in Addis Ababa.
Federal police dismissed the death as a suicide and the government gave him a state funeral. “A strange suicide since there were two bullet holes: one in the heart and one in the head,” noted an Ethiopian university professor at the time. A statement that has never been confirmed by the autopsy results, which have not been made public. GERD would have the ability to cover national energy needs but, excluding Addis Ababa and some other strategic cities, the majority of Ethiopians risk remaining in the current energy deficit as the Central Bank desperately needs foreign currency, obtainable only through the sale of energy to foreign countries. The more gigawatts sold the more hard currency will enter the state’s coffers. Currently to buy 100 euros even at private banks you need various permits and long waits.
The mysterious murder of Bekele is not the first “dark side” of GERD. The report of the American NGO Human Right Watch (HRW) which dates back to 2012, resumed in Italy by FrontiereNews.it clarifies without reservation that the Ethiopian government in July 2006, through the EEPC (Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation), contracted, without a tender or tender, the construction of the dam to the Italian company Salini Contractor. The decision was made by the Trigray People’s Liberation Front — TPLF, which at the time controlled the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front governing coalition. According to local sources, the Salini brothers have established excellent relations over the years with the Ethiopian government and with the TPLF which have earned them numerous orders.
To begin the work, the TPLF brought into action the federal army which kicked around 200,000 people in the ass in the Omo Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. According to the 2012 HRW report, the “eviction” operations were of an impressive brutality. Federal soldiers were charged with violence, murder and rape.
Although the legal system of Adis Abeba provided for an assessment of the environmental and social impact before the approval of the project, the TPLF gave the green light to the works. Only in 2008, following countless complaints from international environmental associations that had attracted the attention of Western media, the Ethiopian Environmental Protection Authority commissioned the Milanese company CESI, specialized in technical and engineering consultancy in the field of technology and innovation for the sector of electricity, to carry out a study on the environmental impact of the mega dam. The outcome of the study was amazing. The environmental impact of the Grande Rinascita dam was defined as “negligible”, even “positive”. The study was used by the Ethiopian government to silence any criticism.
The report by the American NGO HRW broke a lance in favour of CESI, specifying that the Milanese company had received from the TPLF the terms of reference of the environmental impact study that excluded the impact on the lands adjacent to the dam, asking to focus on how they would work future plans for regulation of floods and artificial irrigation.
On the contrary, independent studies carried out by a number of international NGOs indicated that the mega dam would dramatically and irreversibly alter the seasonal flows of the Omo and would have a huge impact on the delicate ecosystems of the region.
Sudan and Egypt will see their water reserves decrease by 40%, putting agriculture and the lives of at least 2.8 million farmers at serious risk. The two countries rely on the waters of the Nile for about 97% of their agricultural irrigation and drinking water needs. Kenya will also have serious environmental consequences as the flow of Nile water will suffer a drastic reduction which will cause the risk of an equally drastic decrease in the water basin of Lake Turkana with a serious impact on the economy of the Kenyan district and the survival of 300,000 people.
The environmental impact had been known since 2010 but deliberately and cynically ignored by both the TPLF and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali. In 2016, the international NGO Survival International presented a petition to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — OECD, against Salini Impregilo S.p.A. accused of being a party to and responsible with the Ethiopian government for the destruction of the livelihoods of thousands of people and for irreparable environmental damage in Ethiopia and Kenya. The OECD did not comply with the petition for “respect” to the Ethiopian government. In those years, any Ethiopian who dared to criticize the dam, the government and the Italian construction company was in danger of facing serious personal consequences.
The crucial point, which was the main cause of the failure of the previous meetings that took place during 2020, is the filling and functioning of the vast reservoir of the GERD dam. Khartoum and Cairo, supported by studies of international experts, ask for a period of 7 to 12 years to fill the reservoir. Addis Ababa is filling the basin and expects to finish the operation within a year. According to various industry experts, these very short times will dramatically increase the damage to the environment and to populations from Egypt to Kenya.
If the international community seems to be optimism about the current talks, regional observers express concerns. There are other factors that can lead to regional conflict. Between Sudan and Ethiopia there is still an unresolved dispute over the Al-Fshaqa border territories which in fact belong to Sudan without a shadow of doubt. The presence of Sudanese troops in these territories has generated the threat of an Ethiopian military offensive. Even if the threat remains unanswered at the moment, a small border incident is enough to spark war between the two countries. Associated with this problem is the suspicion of Khartoum’s political, logistical and financial support for the TPLF, which is still capable of continuing the civil war in Tigray declared over (and won) by the federal government on November 28, 2020.
The conflict in Tigray has jeopardized the huge Egyptian investments in the industrial area. Since 2015, two factories have been operating in the northern region on an area of 10,000 square meters, one for the production of electrical transformers and the other for wooden furniture. Alaa Al-Saqati, head of the Egyptian industrial zone in Ethiopia, recently revealed Egypt’s decision to appoint an international law firm to handle a case before international courts against the Ethiopian government to protect Egypt’s investments.
In a statement to the Egyptian daily Youm7 on December 22, Saqati explained that this decision was made after a meeting he held with representatives of the Ethiopian embassy in Cairo on December 16. The meeting did not produce any positive developments to resolve the investment crisis in Egypt in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, where an inhuman armed conflict has raged for two months.
Ethiopian embassy officials did not provide a specific, binding date that would allow work to resume in Egyptian factories in the Tigray region without any risk to employment, Saqati said, adding that factories in the region are closed and inactive.
Sure that a compromise solution was found on the exploitation of the waters of the Nile that would safeguard the economic interests and the populations of the three countries, the regional conflict would be avoided. Unfortunately, the unknown is Ethiopia itself. Both the TPLF and the current Premier Abiy have always adopted a deceptive policy towards the Egyptian and Sudanese counterparts, using the talks not to seek a solution but to acquire precious time to implement their plans.
Ten years ago the TPLF began work on the GERD mega dam during the first talks with Egypt, unleashing the wrath of the dictator Mubarak. The Egyptian military aviation was ready to bomb the works that had just begun but the fall of the regime by the Arab Spring avoided the war between the two countries. Egypt was able to focus on the Nile problem only after General Al-Sisi regained control of his country thanks to a coup that ended the short period of the democratically elected government of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The TPLF took advantage of the troubled period of internal Egyptian instability to accelerate the dam construction in order to make the construction work harmful to the entire region irreversible. Salini and other Chinese firms that received subcontracts have always operated in a militarized construction site after the brutal expulsion of 200,000 Ethiopian citizens, mostly peasants, considered by the mentality of the Addis rulers as worthless subjects.
Once the military regime without Mubarak was re-established, General Al-Sisi reopened the GERD dossier as a direct threat to the national economy, but the Cairo-Khartoum axis was shattered. In a desperate attempt to find pro-Western regional alliances, the Sudanese dictator Omar El Bashir had moved the alliance with Egypt to that with Ethiopia, giving Addis the precious time necessary to complete the work without suffering air or missile strikes.
Even the Arab Spring in Sudan was cleverly exploited by Premier Abiy who had already come to power thanks to the need for the TPLF to present a new face to avoid civil war. No Tigrinya executive could have imagined that their man, who for ten years had contributed to the close surveillance of the population by identifying dangerous political opponents (exiled, imprisoned or eliminated), could turn against. Abiy’s “betrayal” was not aimed (as the West initially believed) to open up democratic spaces as it was in the case of Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Irreversibly impregnated by the Ethiopian authoritarian and totalitarian culture of power, Abiy has progressively replaced the TPLF to better impose its dominion and the economic interests linked to it. The current civil war is only the epilogue of a calculated policy against the TPLF. Like his predecessors, the Nobel Peace Prize winner used the various meetings on the Nile crisis to buy time. Displaced by the reconstruction of the Cairo — Khartoum axis against GERD in 2020, while negotiations on the timing of filling the dam’s reservoir were underway, Abiy ordered the waters of the sacred river to flow into the dam basin. Regardless of the devastating environmental effects, its goal is to finish this phase by 2021 and start producing energy (for export) by 2022.
The history of the damned dam is studded with betrayals, lies, broken promises that have frustrated not only Egypt or Sudan but the African Union and the United States. After the failure of American mediation (due to Abiy’s accusation against the Americans of favoring his rival Al Sisi), President Trump’s sentence “Egypt has every reason if it bombed the dam” is the result of frustration in the face of double games and Abyssinian deceptions. This attitude has not changed. The current talks probably serve the Premier to avoid a premature regional war as the conflict in TIgray is still ongoing.
No compromise seems to be inherent in the real intentions of the Premier who aspires to absolute power and the resurgence of the Menelik Dynasty. The Great Rebirth Dam still has all the chances of becoming the greatest misfortune of the Ethiopian people and the peoples of the region intact. Ironically, the majority of African countries have abandoned mega dam projects to move towards environmentally friendly small dam network solutions and the combined exploitation of solar, geothermal, wind and classic fossil fuels. It is hoped that these pessimistic analyses will be contradicted by an honourable agreement between the parties. A difficult hope in this post-Communist era where the only remaining ideal is to enrich oneself at the expense of one’s neighbour, regardless of whether the profit is generated by the misery, suffering and loss of life of others.
