Renaissance Dam .. Has Egypt accepted reality and is preparing for the aftermath of operation?

Cairo -

Recent days have brought developments in Egypt's internal and external policy towards dealing with the crisis of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, after negotiations with Addis Ababa reached a dead end, which prompted some to fear that this dam had already turned into a fait accompli.

The UN Security Council lowered expectations before a scheduled session on the dam next Thursday, after receiving a request from Egypt and Sudan to discuss the crisis, and said in a statement yesterday, Saturday, "We will not be able to solve the problem of the Renaissance Dam, but we will invite the three countries to attend and encourage them to negotiate."

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry commented on the Security Council's position, saying that Cairo expects the Security Council to make an additional effort to push the parties to resume the Renaissance Dam negotiations, considering that there are conflicting interests within the Council, and that some of its members are reluctant to discuss water issues.

At the same time, Shoukry stressed that his country has all the means to protect its national security, and that all the means are available to it to do so, he said.

Abdel Fattah El-Sisi comments on the crisis with #Ethiopia during a lunch following the opening of the “3 July” naval base in Jarjoub pic.twitter.com/PNIxwF7LPH

— Monitor Network (@RassdNewsN) July 4, 2021

During the opening of the July 3 naval base in the north of the country yesterday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said that negotiations with Ethiopia should not continue indefinitely.

The host of the ceremony, Brigadier General Yasser Wahba, also used an escalating language that was celebrated by activists on the communication sites, when he said, "Sometimes the winds come with what ships desire, but ships must not be safe from the wrath of the wind, and the winds of the Egyptian army are rational winds that do not erupt and do not rise unless it comes to Egyptian and Arab national security, They turn into hurricanes that do not remain or scatter."

Despite the escalation of the Egyptian tone towards the dam crisis, it does not go beyond the limits of statements, and therefore Egyptians fear that these developments will lead to dealing with the Renaissance Dam as a fait accompli, after all the negotiating papers and regional and international pressure failed to reach any agreement, as well as the internal Egyptian policies that It began to activate alternatives to the waters of the Nile.

Brigadier General Yasser Wahba: The winds of Egypt's army turn into hurricanes if it comes to its national security pic.twitter.com/0nKTJ1I9BU

— Masrawy (@masrawy) July 3, 2021

Egypt's movements in the Nile Basin

In parallel with the foreign moves towards the Security Council and others, Cairo has intensified its communication with the Nile Basin countries to establish water dams that provide them with electricity. These countries are expected to benefit from the operation of the Renaissance Dam and its generation of electricity, and thus its purchase from Ethiopia.

Cairo's moves to enhance cooperation in the fields of dams and electricity, and to approach the pace, according to observers reading the scene, come as part of its efforts to deal with the Renaissance Dam crisis, redistribute its presence on the water map in the Nile Basin, and win over the positions of those countries in the face of Addis Ababa's attempts to change the historical water distribution map.

In this regard, Egypt has been involved in the study and construction of many dams to produce electricity in countries such as Tanzania, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are seeking to complete the implementation of the "Inga" dam, which is located on the largest water slopes in the world, as well as its previous contribution to building dams in both Sudan and Uganda.

Urgent |

Ethiopian military commander: Defense forces are on high alert to successfully complete the second phase of filling the #Nahda Dam pic.twitter.com/JwtaTRVvEk

— Al Jazeera Egypt (@AJA_Egypt) July 4, 2021

Ingratitude

In this context, Adviser to the former Egyptian Minister of Irrigation, Dr. Dia El-Din El-Qusi, said, "This trend is not new. Egypt has spared no effort in building many dams since the thirties of the last century until today, whether in Uganda or Sudan, and has contributed to the establishment of many development projects in other countries. Nile Basin.

Al-Qusi added, in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, but unfortunately, there is a denial of all these favors that Egypt offered to many African countries, especially the Nile Basin, and he attributed the reason for this to Ethiopia's constant attempts to distort the image of Egypt and incite those countries against it, he said.

He expected that despite the generous support from Egypt over the past decades, whether materially or morally, and its role in liberating some African countries, and providing humanitarian and economic aid, it did not and will not get anything in return, stressing that Ethiopia's allegations of establishing the dam to generate and export electricity are nonsense, and that it is a fake dam to arrest the The neck of Egypt, as he described it.

A few days ago, the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation announced the signing of a technical cooperation protocol with South Sudan, which includes the preparation of a feasibility study for the construction of the multi-purpose “Wu” dam on the Siwi River, one of the main branches of the Jore River in the Bahr al-Ghazal Basin (a tributary of the Nile River) in South Sudan.

Egypt always asserts that it is not against any areas of development in the Nile Basin countries, and that it supports the construction of dams, but in line with international laws and norms, and in a manner that does not harm its water resources and historical share, but it sees the opposite in the Renaissance Dam.

internal alternatives

On the internal level, the Egyptian government has resorted to adopting strategic plans to save water on the one hand, and reduce waste and rationalize consumption on the other hand, and to this end, it has established seawater desalination plants and wastewater treatment.

In addition to using new varieties of crops that consume less water, reducing the areas of cultivation of rice, bananas and sugar cane, which are voracious crops for water, adopting modern irrigation systems instead of traditional methods, and lining thousands of kilometers of canals and branch canals.

In order to achieve the greatest degree of regulation and rationalization of water consumption, the Egyptian Parliament issued the Water Resources and Irrigation Law, which included the imposition of fines and penalties in some of its articles, and the government says that it aims to preserve and develop water resources and improve irrigation efficiency.

Despite the importance of these steps in maximizing the use of water, according to experts and specialists, they are expensive and carry great financial burdens on citizens, and do not compensate for the potential shortfall in the flow of the Nile River if Ethiopia retains large quantities of the Blue Nile waters, the lifeblood of the Nile River.

The cost of the "National Water Plan" in Egypt to confront the water shortage is $50 billion, and will continue until 2037, according to the statements of the Minister of Irrigation Mohamed Abdel-Aty, who did not reveal how many billion cubic meters it would provide annually.

There is no alternative to the Nile but the Nile

In his estimation, Dr. Abdel Tawab Barakat, an assistant professor at the Agricultural Research Center in Cairo, previously believed that “the lives of Egyptians depend on the Nile, and there is no alternative to the Nile except the Nile, no matter how many alternatives the state introduces or enacts laws or adopts plans.”

In his speech to Al Jazeera Net, Barakat considered that the cost of protecting Egypt's historical share of the Nile water in all ways and options will be much less than the cost of hunger and thirst, and will be less than the cost of searching for other alternatives, whether by desalinating sea water, purifying waste water, or preventing the cultivation of some crops.

Realism.. Wishes

Dealing with the Ethiopian dam as a fait accompli that Sudan has approved from the beginning, according to Sudanese political analyst and journalist Yasser Mahjoub Al-Hussein.

While Egypt's position shifted from initial rejection to accepting the fait accompli, in March 2015, after signing the Agreement of Principles in Khartoum.

Mahjoub added, to Al Jazeera Net, but it does not seem that the stage after the filling and operation of the dam for Egypt or even Sudan has been planned and prepared for, but the countries remained subject to regional and international conditions, as well as the effectiveness of the time-buying policy that Ethiopia continued to pursue until the dam became a reality without reach an agreement.

The political analyst downplayed the possibility of Egypt's attempts to make an African breakthrough. Cairo, despite its technical and material assistance to South Sudan, was unable to pull Juba on its side, as it remained supportive of the Ethiopian position without hesitation, he said.

He pointed out that there has been a quasi-African alignment against Egypt and Sudan since 2010, when 6 Nile Basin countries, including Ethiopia, signed the Entebbe Agreement, but Cairo and Khartoum refused to sign it because it violated the historic Nile water agreements of 1929 and 1959, which included historical shares of Egypt and Sudan in the water.