Ayoon Wa Azan (Fleeing forward)

The bread and livelihoods of Egyptians are at risk, and as though this were not enough by itself, their water is now under threat. So what did President Mohamed Morsi do to tackle the threat from the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to Egypt’s quota of the Nile waters? He severed ties with Syria. Personally, I do not care much whether Egypt severs or maintains diplomatic relations with Syria, as these are non-existent to begin with. Rather, what is important is that Egypt is facing a possible threat to the livelihoods of its people, and yet the government chooses to focus on other issues, perhaps exactly because it is unable to deal with the most pressing matters and so it stirs up other populous issues to preoccupy the people from the real problems. Egypt is supposed to be a major power in Africa. Ethiopia would not have dared threaten King Farouk, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, or Hosni Mubarak, but Ethiopia found the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt to be inept and weak, and decided to go ahead with a massive dam that it claims is meant to generate power. I said in the beginning “possible threat,” because I am trying to be objective. If the dam is indeed solely for electricity generation, then there would be no problem. But I find the details about the project to be worrisome, especially since Israel is covertly encouraging and inciting Ethiopia. The 1929 agreement between Egypt and Britain gave the former 65 percent of the waters of the Nile, and Sudan 22 percent, while the rest was divided among the countries of the Nile Basin. However, seven riparian countries, namely, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo met in 2010, in the absence of Egypt and Sudan, and repealed the old agreement. The dam’s idea dates back to the 1950s, but did not go into the implementation phase until one party repudiated the existing quotas. Subsequently, an Italian company was awarded a $4.8 billion contract to build the dam on the Blue Nile, which will be 170 meters high and 1,800 meters long. The lake the dam will produce will have a capacity of 63 billion cubic meters of water, and will generate 6,000 megawatts of electricity. The Ethiopians refuse any negotiations over the dam. They have resolved to build it and will go ahead with the project. Meanwhile, I read that Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr will visit Addis Ababa, near the end of this month, to discuss a win-win situation, as Prime Minister Hisham Qandil claimed. This is nice, but is it possible? Once again, I find that there are causes for concern, something that was expressed clearly by Prince Khaled bin Sultan, in a lecture during the Arab Water Council conference in Cairo, chaired by former Egyptian Minister of Irrigation Mahmoud Abu Zeid. We are talking here about Egypt’s lifeblood, so concerns are justified even if it is over a limited or unconfirmed threat. These concerns are then made worse by the Egyptian government’s approach to tackling them. President Morsi threatened to defend every drop of water “with our blood,” and also said that “all options are on the table.” But the dialogue that took place at the presidential palace with party leaders was a session of amateurs, who left their microphones on. People thus heard them talk about sabotaging the Ethiopian dam, which Ethiopian officials met with strong diplomatic protests, while other sources threatened to destroy the Aswan High Dam if the Ethiopian dam were destroyed. And yet, President Mohamed Morsi chose such a critical moment in Egypt’s modern history to sever ties with Syria, at a rally of his supporters, before revealing his true intent by attacking the groups that called for protests at the end of the month, accusing them of representing the former regime and conspiring against the January 25 Revolution. No one would have been able to ‘conspire’ against the January 25 Revolution, if those ruling in its name, after taking it over (I won’t say hijacked it) from the young people who started it, had offered the Egyptian people any achievement in economy or security. But they have not, and now we see them perplexed and unsure what to do about the Ethiopian dam. My pain for Egypt increases when I read in the Washington Post that Ethiopia is seizing on Egypt's fragility and reduced clout in the Arab world, to go ahead with a plan that is a humiliating blow to the Egyptian regime. This is according to a renowned US newspaper, not me. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.