How did the Renaissance Dam start? The argument of Omar Suleiman and Meles Zenawi that sparked the war in the Nile Valley

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an introduction

In an apparently expected scenario, Ethiopia announced the completion of the third filling of the Renaissance Dam, ignoring the objections of Egypt and Sudan.

This step is an extension of Addis Ababa's intransigent positions, which cannot be explained only by the importance of the dam and its centrality in the country's ambitious economic development plans, without looking at the historical mutual rivalry between Addis Ababa and Cairo, and the historical dominance of Egypt in this regard, and what makes the Renaissance Dam - In essence - for the Ethiopians the most prominent link in their efforts to prove superiority and control in the face of the Arabs.

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The observer of the Renaissance Dam crisis between Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia realizes that it is not the result of the past few years, but no one knew exactly when the seeds of this crisis were planted to engage the three countries in the midst of their political battles now, with the exception of Isaias Afwerki, the Eritrean president who attended a session The annual conference of the summit of the Organization of African Unity, held in Cairo in 1993, attributed to and from the first phase of the conflict in an interview conducted (1) with Eritrean television in January 2016.

The summit held in Cairo in late June, headed by an Egyptian and in the presence of the leaders of the continent, including "Meles Zenawi", the leader of the "Ethiopian People's Democratic Front" and its strongman at the time, witnessed, according to Afwerki, a sharp dialogue between Zenawi and Omar Suleiman, the head of Egyptian intelligence at the time, In it, the first tried to put forward his plans for the development of Ethiopia, which has barely emerged from nearly a quarter of a century of civil wars and famines that killed more than a million people, including plans for development in the fields of energy and water on the Nile River, to end his presentation with a sharp and surprising question from Solomon: Who do you think you are?

Meles Zenawi (Reuters)

Zenawi did not answer directly, although he did give a private answer to the storyteller Afwerki saying that he would “show the Arabs” who he was, and in practice, a year after that incident, a wide range (2) of water and energy development projects in Ethiopia started with small power plants and ended With the Great Dam project, which will make Afwerki declare that the Renaissance Dam is only an “emotional” and “political” project rather than a developmental project aimed at advancing the needs of the Ethiopians.

Despite this, the dispute over the Nile River was not the result of this incident alone, but rather it dates back to a period longer than it by nearly a century, and during the European colonization of the continent, which Ethiopia considers to have robbed the upstream countries of their right to water in favor of the downstream countries, Egypt and Sudan “which were In turn, it is part of Egypt.” British colonialism was an occupier and a representative of both of them in controlling the waters of the Nile to serve its interests on the continent.

Historical domination of the North

The historical hegemony (3) of the two downstream countries over the largest share of the river’s water, and as Addis Ababa sees it, stems mainly from the power of Great Britain, as Egypt at that time was of strategic importance to England, which prompted the latter to pressure Ethiopia to sign the 1902 agreement whose provisions stipulated that no Ethiopia by any projects on the river that may affect Egypt’s share of the water, which at the time was (84 km³), which is equivalent to all the water flowing in the Nile River.

This agreement constitutes one of two agreements that Addis Ababa does not recognize in the matter of water, and while Ethiopia claims that it did not sign the 1902 agreement, although its terms were bound long after that date, the other agreement that it does not recognize as well concerns both Egypt and Sudan only, and their government In 1929, the British occupation signed an agreement obligating Khartoum to maintain the regular flow of water through it to Egypt, although the new agreement allocated an annual share of water to Egypt (48 km ³) and made it to Sudan (4 km ³), while leaving another (32 km ³) unallocated.

After that, Egypt did not face a problem related to water until Sudan gained independence from Britain - and Egypt by extension - in 1956, so that Khartoum began the stage of rebellion against Egyptian hegemony, not only regarding its share of water, but also with regard to Cairo's ability to establish water-related development projects such as the construction of a dam Aswan on the Nile (which actually started in 1902), and then doubled its reservoir capacity again and again in 1908 and 1933, without Khartoum being able to build a dam similar or less capacity to generate electricity within its borders.

It ended in Cairo in 1959 to amend the previous agreement with Khartoum in a way that redistributed the annual water quotas between them, so that the first amounted to (55.5 km³), the second to (18.5 km³), and the remaining (10 km³) was left for the possibility of water evaporating or leaking from the dam tank or otherwise. Among the factors, but by pleasing Sudan, Egypt was opening a door that will not be closed from the demand of all the remaining Nile Basin countries for a special share of the river’s water, although the continuation of colonization and the extreme poverty of most of the southern African countries at that time still prevented the announcement of these demands.

The issue of the emerging conflict over water in the East of Africa was not hidden from the newly withdrawn European countries, which were still present in other ways to take care of their interests, so the rapid intervention under the umbrella of international sponsorship represented in the United Nations was an inevitable thing to resolve the conflict in its cradle, to begin the middle of The sixties will continue for more than thirty years of diplomatic cooperation on water, without Ethiopia participating in at least the first quarter of the century.

fragile water co-operatives

The first phase of the Nile (4) African Water Cooperation was launched under the name "Hydromet Project" or the Hydromet Project (short for "Hydrology" and "Meteorology" or the sciences of water and weather), and it aims to improve weather and water services in Africa through the cooperation of the responsible institutions in The field, and while Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda initially participated in the project’s work, before they were joined later by the countries of Rwanda and Burundi, 25 years of the project’s life between (1967-1992) failed to achieve its goals due to the lack of Ethiopia has refused to participate, and by limiting the ability of officials and participants in the project to work within the Ethiopian “Lake Tana”, of which (5) annually flows the equivalent of 80% of the Nile River’s water, while the rest of the water (20%) comes from “Lake Victoria.” In Uganda and Tanzania, studying the latter's water and weather wouldn't make much difference.

The end of the project in 1992 coincided with the start of another water-related project in which the entire ten basin countries participated this time, under the title “The Technical Committee for the Promotion of Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile Basin” or (TECCONILE) for short, while the work of the new project did not make a significant difference in the development of participation. Or cooperation between the basin countries, as the year 1993 constituted a watershed point for both Egypt and Ethiopia, especially with regard to water agreements, when Egyptian President Mubarak decided at the time to sign a bilateral agreement with Zenawi in which fruitful cooperation between the two countries could be achieved in this regard. A framework of observing water rights and complying with international laws without harming or detrimental to both.

This document did not survive for a long time in the face of Egyptian intransigence in rejecting any development projects that might be established on the river, which was evident in the aforementioned Suleiman-Zinawi incident, but matters became more complicated after the famous assassination attempt of Egyptian President Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995, Because of which Cairo severed all diplomatic relations with Addis Ababa, leaving the latter an open space to implement its projects on the river and elsewhere without thinking twice about returning to Cairo or waiting for its blessing.

The assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995

Measures in the shade

The year prior to the assassination attempt witnessed Addis Ababa issuing its first "national energy policy", which included a wide range of plans to build dams and energy projects on its various rivers. Egypt in 1995 to immediately begin comprehensive modernization of water and energy surveys and research, and to unleash its national policy to go beyond being ink on paper, giving the green light to build a series of targeted energy projects on its rivers, at a time when another diplomatic campaign will begin, this time leading countries The source of the Nile Basin to refuse recognition and renegotiate all agreements related to the distribution of the river's water.

Ethiopia's argument in opposition to these agreements was that they were established during the colonial period, and in what did not grant the upstream countries the right to a fair distribution of water, as well as setting up their own projects on the river, at a time when the downstream countries are allowed to carry out what they want of development projects without returning to the upstream countries. And helped her in establishing her argument at that time, when Egypt headed in 1997 to carry out the huge “New Valley” project, without notifying the upstream countries, at a time when rumors of possible Egyptian plans to divert the Nile’s waters to Sinai with the aim of selling it to Israel did not stop.

After that, Ethiopia did not need much effort to attract the eight upstream countries in the face of the two downstream countries to renegotiate new agreements regarding water quotas and development projects on the river, and while Cairo was still insisting on its estrangement with Addis Ababa, the rest of the basin countries were around the The latter, and the World Bank’s sponsorship with the great powers’ blessing of discussions on water, stimulated an agreement signed (7) in 1999 by nine out of ten countries of the basin under the title “Nile Basin Initiative”, which Egypt was forced to join under pressure from the international community, after refusing to Initial.

The general framework of the initiative revolved around creating an institution through which vision, participation and cooperation would be organized around the waters of the Nile, and as the “first founding agreement” for a just right to water and development projects on the river for all basin countries, this agreement put the Nile River on the map as a source of water peace, instead of From being a source of wars in the global water literature.

in spite of that;

The periodic meetings of the water ministers of the nine countries did not go beyond being a space for disagreement about the distribution of shares and the eligibility of each country to establish its own projects on the river without paying attention to the impact of distribution or projects on other countries, which was enough to end the initiative less than a decade after its launch, and even after If another agreement replaced it in 2010, the latter also did not succeed in fixing what was corrupted between the Nile countries, so that each of them began to take its own way to obtain its share of water individually, and on top of it was Ethiopia.

Meanwhile, Addis Ababa was able, individually, to develop its comprehensive water and energy development plan, aimed primarily at transforming itself into one of the largest energy exporters on the continent, and by 2010 and the collapse of talks on a water agreement, it had the opportunity to announce the launch of its national project The largest since the end of the civil war in 1991, which aims to achieve comprehensive development by building the largest power generation dam in Africa on the Blue Nile, a project that the world will now know as the “Great Millennium Dam” or “Renaissance Dam.”

AlNahda dam

Declaration of rebellion

The Nile has received the lion’s share of Egyptian foreign policy concerns, especially since the establishment of the republic, and what made the “declaration of war” the only official Egyptian response in many cases to any attempt by southern Africa to work on the river with projects that might threaten Egypt’s share of the water, and since the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser and Sisi, Egypt’s argument in this is that the upstream countries monopolize the lion’s share of the torrential rains that constitute for them the main source of water and agriculture, while Egypt relies for more than 85% of its water and energy needs on the Nile only.

This made the use of the war card, in addition to Western pressure accompanying its being of strategic importance in North Africa, Cairo’s way to win the water battle for decades, even if this did not benefit it with the final exit of colonialism from the brown continent in the early nineties and the desire of the former colonial countries to take care of their interests that were not It is still there, and thus the hard currency of the huge Western investments began to flow into the Nile Basin countries, and Ethiopia among them, and it is also giving it a somewhat parallel weight to Egypt.

Foreign investment funds gave Addis Ababa an opportunity to regain its active work in the construction of small and medium dams and power stations, and by 2005 (8) Ethiopia replaced its National Energy Policy (1994) with the “25-year” or comprehensive development plan that will be updated every five years thereafter With the aim of transforming Ethiopia from a poor country into a middle-income country and a leader in the field of energy export in Africa, by building a wide network of power plants and large and huge dams on its various rivers, including the Blue Nile.

The projects (Gilgel Gibe 1, 2, 3) that started their work in 2004 were the first step in implementing the new energy policies. The three dams were among the most important new projects of Ethiopia for power generation at the time;

With a capacity of (184 megawatts) for the first and (428 megawatts) and (1870 megawatts) for the second and third, respectively, although these projects derived another special importance that came from the fact that they were launched with multiple international funding between the World Bank and the Italian and Chinese governments, and the Investment Bank The European Union and the African Development Bank, and a contract with the Italian construction company "Salini Impregilo", which works extensively in several African energy projects.

Gilgel Gibe 3

These projects explain the general situation at the time of the international scramble to participate in the projects of the African renaissance in general and the Ethiopian renaissance in particular, on the one hand, and on the other hand, they illustrate the extent to which Addis Ababa sought to reach very quickly the goal of the comprehensive Ethiopian development plan;

Namely, the shift in energy production in Ethiopia from (473 megawatts) in 2005 to (981 megawatts) in 2012, with the expectation that this value will reach more than two thousand megawatts by 2025 according to the original plan prepared by a private Canadian company for the government Ethiopia, and if the latter decided to self-modify and double the required production capacity by 2010 to exceed three thousand megawatts, in a new plan that the World Bank considered at the time “unrealistic” and “irresponsible”, given that it far exceeds Ethiopia’s energy needs, and does not pay attention to balancing its plan With its economic and financial capacity, nor with its infrastructure that is incapable of accommodating such large projects.

Addis Ababa did not wait for anyone's approval or blessing in any way to continue working on its ambitious plan. In fact, it went beyond that in 2006 to secretly begin work on the so-called "Project X" (9), which included updating all surveys of energy sites in Ethiopia, including a study prepared by the US Bureau of Reclamation in the mid-sixties to determine the best possible sites for building large dams on the rivers of Ethiopia, and then identified four potential ideal sites, one of which is located on the Blue Nile.

The alleged "Project X" that Addis Ababa mobilized from the first day until the announcement of the start of work on it in 2010 was nothing but its next plan to build the "Millennium Dam" on the Nile, as the project from the Cold War era to restore Ethiopia to its old position as an influential regional power Africa and globally through a clumsy plan to reach its energy production to nearly six thousand megawatts by 2018, as was expected at the time, and enough to export the large amount of surplus energy and obtain the hard currency needed to rebuild the new Ethiopia.

Therefore, Ethiopia began promoting the project as its next gateway to the worthy development and progress of the Ethiopian people, and it was not expected that things would pass peacefully without resistance coming from North Africa to preserve the only lifeline for Cairo and Khartoum, and from then on the possibility of an unprecedented war over water began to erupt in Nile Basin.

Battle of Negotiations

Ethiopia preempted the announcement of the construction of the dam in November 2010 by signing the "Cooperative Framework Agreement" (10) on May 14 of the same year in Entebbe - Uganda with three upstream countries, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, before joining them After that, Kenya and Burundi, although on the surface it seemed a new modification of the old image of the 1999 initiative, the new agreement was nothing but an acknowledgment by the upstream countries to stop the implementation of all agreements (signed under colonialism) related to water and the river and to take the new document as a basis for the upcoming water transactions.

Both Egypt and Sudan rejected the new cooperative framework, and both refused to announce the dam despite Ethiopia’s reassurance that the only goal of its construction is energy generation and not water storage or irrigation, and the Arab Spring revolutions that broke out in early 2011 intervened to prevent all parties from taking an actual step towards negotiation or Others, while Ethiopia took advantage of Egypt’s preoccupation to actually launch the project’s work on the second of April 2011, putting the two downstream countries in front of the fait accompli. Egypt found itself in May, after Mubarak’s rule was overthrown and a transitional government took over the conduct of business in the country headed by Essam Sharaf. , seeking to establish a dialogue with Ethiopia, a dialogue that started in the same month and became the first in shuttle tours (11) that will not stop for the following years between Addis Ababa, Cairo and Khartoum.

It was agreed in principle to form a “committee of experts” in September 2011 (2 from each country and 4 internationals from outside the Nile Basin countries) to be the first breakthrough in the talks that had previously been overshadowed by the dispute and prejudice between the three countries, although this did not prevent the continuation of construction operations on foot. Despite the demands of Cairo-Khartoum to halt it until the issuance of the experts' report, and so that the discussions could take place within a framework of knowledge of the potential effects of the dam on both of them, he made claims that Addis Ababa ignored before it preceded the final meeting of the Committee of Experts (12) to issue the final report of the committee scheduled on the 31st From the same month, on the twenty-sixth of May 2013, it made a diversion in the course of the Blue Nile waters with the aim of completing the construction work of the foundations of the dam.

Egypt then entered a critical stage of negotiations, resulting from the internal differences that occurred after the late President Mohamed Morsi took power in June 2013 and the political conflict that arose at that time between the Brotherhood government and the deep state, and two leaks emerged from it;

The first was the meeting of the Morsi government with some of the opposition leaders to discuss the Renaissance Dam, a famous meeting that was broadcast on the air with the proposals of some of the attendees for Egyptian military action against the dam and Ethiopia. The Egyptian plan to build a military base on the latter’s border with Addis Ababa, with the approval of Khartoum;

This should be the base from which the Egyptian forces may launch to strike the dam if the negotiations reach a dead end.

After that, Khartoum’s announcement on December 4, 2013, by then-President Omar al-Bashir, that it supported the Renaissance Dam was a severe blow to Egyptian endeavors, and at a time when the continuous meetings of the water and irrigation ministers of the three countries (which began in Khartoum in November) did not reach (November 2013) for some agreement, the African Union summit held in June 2014 in Malabo-Equatorial Guinea witnessed the first possible breakthrough for negotiations resulting from the first direct meeting, without a mediator, of the new Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi with the Ethiopian Prime Minister “Hailey Miriam” Dessalines, who took over the acting government in 2012 after the sudden death of Meles Zenawi.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (Reuters)

The negotiations then witnessed a state of mutual settlement between Egypt and Ethiopia, in particular;

While the first gave up its continuous request to stop construction work until an agreement was reached, the second agreed, in return, to complete studies on the potential impacts of the dam on the two downstream countries by international experts and under Ethiopian supervision, a recommendation that had been proposed by the report of the “committee of experts.” who admitted at the time the negative impact of the dam on the two countries, although the report itself remained a secret until it was leaked to the press in 2014.

That openness in negotiations continued until the meeting that took place in Khartoum between 3-5 March 2015 in the presence of the ministers of water, irrigation and foreign affairs of the three countries, who announced for the first time since the start of negotiations in 2011 that an agreement had been reached on the dam to be reviewed by heads of state and heads of state. Ministers, an agreement that was actually signed on the twenty-eighth of the same month under the title “Declaration of Principles Agreement” (13), and it was considered the first Egyptian recognition of Ethiopia’s right to build the Renaissance Dam on the Nile River, followed by another recognition on the twenty-ninth of December The same year, the three countries signed the "Khartoum Document" (14), which confirmed the Declaration of Principles and outlined the completion of studies on the dam.

About Ethiopia's development projects

The two previous agreements drew several question marks about the way Cairo deals with the entire water file. Signing them represented a recognition of Addis Ababa’s right to build a dam that might impede the arrival of water to Egypt without the latter obtaining the necessary official confirmations of its water rights. Cairo in this regard, the years of estrangement between them and Addis Ababa (1995-2011) put a barrier to the two countries’ ability to cooperate in security and intelligence matters in particular, a cooperation that was necessary throughout the negotiation period, as the tripartite meetings of the Ministers of Water and Irrigation became accompanied - to As well as the presence of foreign ministers - in the presence of officials from the intelligence services of the three countries.

Concurrently, Ethiopia began to impose a deliberate wall of secrecy around the dam's work;

Starting with the secrecy of its studies and construction plans, through preventing international experts and journalists from accessing the dam, and not ending with declaring the area around it a no-fly zone and establishing an army air base near it to protect it from any potential hostile attacks, whether from local or international parties, and these are efforts It proved its relative efficiency when it halted the armed attack (15) on the dam on March 1, 2017, by an opposition group affiliated with the 7th May Movement (or hibernating bombshell), although it was not hidden from anyone that this high protection of the dam is a natural result of the fact that the Minerals and Engineering Company The Ethiopian military's subsidiary METEC is one of only two companies responsible for the project work, while the second was none other than the Italian company Salini Impregilo.

This duality raised several local and international suspicions, especially after the death of Meles Zenawi in 2012 and the return of unrest to the Ethiopian street, accompanied by investigations into issues of mismanagement and government corruption, including at the time the “security sector” almost entirely responsible for the construction of the dam, specifically the “Metec” company, which has become At the heart of these issues, although it did not take a step towards them until the arrival of Prime Minister Abi Ahmed to power in April 2018 and his massive set of political and economic reforms, including the removal of the “Metec” company from the dam works and the indictment of corruption charges against 63 of its officials.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed

METIC was not the only one under suspicion in corruption cases. The Italian "Salini" was in the same place in 2006, and an investigation opened by the Italian government itself related to the three Glijel projects in Ethiopia, which was undertaken by "Salini" in partnership with the state-owned Ethiopian Electricity Company, known for its acronym. With "EEPCO", the Italian investigation was linked to the largest "aid credit" of 220 million euros granted by the Italian Development Fund since its inception to the Glijel projects, and the Ethiopian government at that period chose to deal directly with "Salini" without conducting a public tender for local and international companies to compete to establish the project.

These issues caused the dam’s work to be delayed again and again, the last of which was in 2019 to replace some of the construction work that had been carried out by the “Metec” company in the foundations of the dam, and the Ethiopian government described it as substandard and had to be modified, adding to the cost of the dam, which was originally estimated at five billion dollars. Ethiopia had decided to collect it on its own and without requesting a loan or an international contribution - which it would not have obtained - with the downstream countries rejecting the existence of the dam, and the refraining of financial institutions and international companies from involving themselves in the conflict between the two countries, which continued until the signing of the Declaration of Principles between the three countries in 2015, which paved the way for the influx of international companies, especially Chinese and European, to get a piece of Ethiopia's development cake and its giant projects.

Who wins the battle of the dam?

The next stage of the signing of the Khartoum Document at the end of 2015 was a series of stalled negotiations and disagreements over the technical effects of the dam, and most importantly about the proposed period for filling the dam’s reservoir, which has a capacity of 74 km³, which is roughly equivalent to Egypt and Sudan’s shares of water. A period of time of up to ten years to fill the reservoir, and taking into account the years of drought, Ethiopia wants to limit this period to between 4-6 or 7 years only, considering that it has given up its desire to fill it in only two to three years as it wanted.

Matters became more complicated at the end of October 2019 with the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed warning (16) of a war against Egypt to protect the dam if necessary, what Cairo considered “inappropriate” and even “contrary to the texts, principles and spirit of the Basic Law of the African Union.” And she responded by accepting the invitation of the United States (17) to discuss in Washington about the dam, after Russia had failed in the same task a few days before that (18).

It required four months of negotiations under the auspices of Washington, and shuttle tours of the travel of the foreign ministers and the ministers of water and irrigation of the three countries between Cairo, Khartoum, Addis Ababa and Washington to reach a final version of a draft agreement (19) that was supposed to be signed at the end of February 2020, before For Ethiopia to surprise everyone by withdrawing (20) before signing on the pretext of the American bias towards Egypt in the negotiations, and claiming that the final version of the agreement was not what they negotiated.

The Ethiopian withdrawal put an end to nearly a decade of negotiations that culminated for the first time in Washington in a final formula that included a road map agreed upon by the three countries on the plan to fill the dam and the procedures for its operation during normal and drought years, and since then the negotiations have returned to the umbrella of the African Union in short negotiating rounds. It is useless, and often ended without an agreement, and with mutual accusations about the reasons for the failure, as happened in the recent Kinshasa negotiations a few days ago, while Ethiopia sticks to its intransigent position, insisting on starting the second filling of the dam next July, regardless of the position of Cairo and Khartoum.

In any case, the main headlines of the dispute, such as the duration of filling the reservoir and the years of drought, will not be the biggest problems of Cairo and Khartoum in the future in any case, the absence of Ethiopian frankness regarding the construction of the dam, and the suspicions that accompanied several studies of potential problems in its infrastructure, as well as the involvement of both responsible companies him in acts of corruption and mismanagement;

All this leaves a great possibility of the dam itself cracking or collapsing when heading towards filling its reservoir, which poses a potential danger to the three countries if it happens, and by adding the possible shortage of Egypt’s share of water and the lack of coordination between it and Ethiopia in the work of both the Renaissance Dam and the High Dam in Aswan. On the Nile, and the problems that this may cause for Egypt in the flow of water and electricity generation, the water crisis in Egypt is about to go beyond just reaching the stage of water poverty that Cairo has already declared.

As for the big picture about the dam crisis, Africa is now experiencing a stage of balance of power in which the poor countries of the ancient South play the role of the powerful emerging powers on the arena of influence.

Either for its wealth that attracts major capitals, or for its strategic positions in the places of the upcoming conflicts globally that have placed the Horn of Africa against its will in the middle of it, and which gives Ethiopia an opportunity to restore its influential historical role there, a role that seems to be on the verge of displacing Cairo from its old position at the head of African powers grand.

وعلى الرغم من أن سنوات عدة قادمة قد تلزم دول الجنوب الأفريقي للاستقرار والخروج من عنق الزجاجة سواء سياسيا أو اقتصاديا، فإنه يجب على القاهرة الانتباهُ لهذا في محاولتها الخروج بأقل خسائر مُمكنة في نزاعها على المياه مع أديس أبابا التي تبدو وكأنها لا تُبالي بالتهديدات وليس لديها ما تخسره، على عكس مصر التي قد تجد نفسها خلال العقد القادم في مواجهة نقص حاد في مياه الشرب والزراعة اللتين تُشكِّلان عصب الحياة ومصدرها الأول للغالبية العظمى من الشعب، وهو ما سيضع الحكومة في القاهرة حينها في مواجهة صراع داخلي على تقاسم موارد المياه بالشكل الذي يُهدِّد مستقبل مصر التي عرفها العالم منذ آلاف السنين بوصفها هبة النيل.

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