The thorny question of how to divvy up Nile water resources is ruffling feathers among Nile Basin countries, writes Mohamed Hafez When countries at the sources of the Nile decide that it's time to set new quotas in order to keep those downstream from monopolising too much water, the latter will surely dig in their heels with criteria for quotas tailored to their own interests. More explosively, upstream countries might see the water of the Nile as an economic commodity that should be sold to downstream countries at a certain price per cubic metre consumed. Downstream countries would naturally reject this out of hand on the grounds that international waters cannot be exported. As such diametrically opposed positions bounce back and forth between the parties, it is not difficult to picture tempers wearing thin and the gloves beginning to come off. Such were the dynamics of the spiralling controversy between downstream countries -- Egypt and Sudan -- and countries at the sources of the Nile during the meeting between Nile Basin ministers of irrigation that was held in Sharm El-Sheikh in April. Following more than 17 hours of intensive haggling that still failed to resolve differences, upstream countries -- the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi -- declared their resolve to begin concluding a separate Nile Valley framework agreement without Egypt and Sudan. It was not until 1995 that countries at the sources of the Nile began to call for a new Nile waters agreement. Some held that the existing quotas were no longer fair and should be reset in order to meet the developmental needs of upstream countries. Kenya and Tanzania in particular were eager to promote the transition from seasonal rain-dependent agriculture to more permanent irrigation-based agriculture. Others countries claimed that as source countries, Nile waters were their own property to do with as they pleased whether this entailed storing water behind dams or selling it to countries upstream. Upstream countries protested that the 1929 Nile Waters Agreement, which served as the blueprint for subsequent Nile Basin agreements, was signed between Egypt and the British occupation authority, which did not observe the needs of its other colonies. Now that all those colonies had won their independence it was time to revise the core principles of the earlier agreement. The call for "fairer" quotas is not entirely above suspicion. Consider, for example, Egypt is dependent on the Nile for 95 per cent of its water needs -- the ratio for Ethiopia is one per cent, Kenya two per cent, Tanzania three per cent, Congo one per cent, Burundi five per cent and Sudan 15 per cent. In all these countries, high levels of rainfall reduce their dependence on Nile waters. It is little wonder why Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Sudan were so adamant upon their refusal in the third round of talks of any framework agreement that does not contain points regarding: water security; advanced notification on any hydraulic projects envisioned by any of the Nile Basin states; a special decision-making mechanism and; the relationship between the framework agreement and earlier agreements. Nevertheless, upstream countries refused to budge from the draft agreement put to the meeting of Nile Basin countries, held in Kinshasa in May last year. That text failed to include the aforementioned demands that Cairo and Khartoum maintain to uphold their historic rights to Nile waters that were established and sustained through successive agreements. As the foregoing suggests, this is not the first time that Nile Basin countries clash over the division and utilisation of the Nile and a legal framework for regulating such issues. Regardless of the diverse, sometimes political, factors motivating countries to take this position or that, the disputes are real and need to be resolved. Unfortunately the problem is very intricate and multifaceted. At one level there are legal questions pertaining to the criteria for setting quotas and stipulating usage, to dispute and arbitrating mechanisms, and to the situation that would arise in the event that countries fail to reach an agreement. To complicate matters further, conflicting principles are in play, such as the notion of acquired historic rights versus the principle of absolute national sovereignty over territorial waters. At a more abstract level there is a conceptual problem. There is a considerable degree of misunderstanding among the ruling and cultural elites of the southern Nile Basin countries, especially regarding Egypt's negotiating position. They mistakenly believe that Egypt monopolises the lion's share of the Nile in breach of the principle of fair distribution. They also charge that Cairo refuses to acknowledge the rights of other countries and uses its political influence and international connections to stifle any talk of a significant modification of the current provisions regarding quotas and the utilisation of Nile waters. The recent meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh aimed to overcome such misperceptions and bridge differences. It had two goals, the first being to present a study on how to transform the Nile Basin initiative, which has entered its tenth year without achieving its objectives, into a commission. The second was to elicit participants' opinions on the presidential initiative. No progress whatsoever was made towards these ends. Participants butted horns firstly over the relationship between the framework agreement with previous agreements, with Ethiopia insisting on no reference to former "colonialist" agreements and Egypt determined to include reference to earlier agreements in order to safeguard its historic rights. They clashed, secondly, over whether parties to the agreement should be required to notify others in advance of any hydraulic projects on the Nile. Again it was Ethiopia that was the most adamantly opposed on the grounds that the hydraulic projects it constructed on its own territory were no business of countries downstream. Egypt, meanwhile, voiced certain reservations on the wording of the provision pertaining to countries' right to achieve water security. Differences over this issue date back to the Nile Basin countries meeting in Entebbe in June 2007 when Egypt and Sudan maintained that this right should not impact negatively on the rights and uses of other Nile Basin countries. The other seven Nile Basin countries rejected the Egyptian-Sudanese demand and suggested that the issue could be explored further after the creation of the oversight commission. Egypt and Sudan held that the matter could not be deferred, in response to which other wordings were proposed -- such as one country's right to achieve water security "must not tangibly impinge on another country". Other participants countered that the concept of water security was vague and that the term has never been used in any international agreement or even in international law on trans- boundary watercourses. The Egyptian handling of the Nile Basin question has leaned towards a conciliatory approach, as was demonstrated by the way it contained difficulties that arose in 2003 when Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania objected to recognising the 1929 Nile Water Agreement. At that time, Egypt brought the situation under control through the offer of incentives to those countries that object to the principle of Egypt's acquired historic right. Yet in spite of such incentives and the progress they brought towards closer commercial and economic cooperation, it appears that those countries now want more and that they have chosen this moment in particular to pressure Egypt in that direction. This development casts to the fore the question of Egypt's strategy towards Africa, in general, and the Nile Basin countries in particular. At a time when other powers are stepping up their activities in Africa, Egypt should develop clearer, more consistent and more effective policies aimed at broadening the scope of mutual interests in the logic and practice of cooperative arrangements, thereby generating an increasingly solid hedge against areas where historical legacy and various reservations in principle can not be brought into play and against the attempts of foreign powers to intervene in -- or undermine -- cooperative arrangements. Egypt should then take pains to carefully explain its strategy and its instruments to the governments and peoples of these countries. The Egyptian drive, in this regard, should consist of two phases, the first dealing with the immediate complexities of the negotiating process and the second with more long-term concerns. The first phase should proceed from the principle of averting political escalation and adopt what we might term a "containment offensive". There would be a greater focus on action at the head-of-state level supported by intensive diplomatic efforts aimed at enveloping the technical drive led by the Ministry of Water Resources within a clearly defined political framework. This framework would simultaneously provide room for a private sector role so as to promote channels of communication at the non-governmental level between Egypt and the other countries of the Nile Basin. It will be important in this concerted campaign to rally all legal instruments in support of Egypt's acquired and historical rights to its current quota with an aim towards halting any hydraulic projects on the Nile by the other riparian countries and pre-empting their possible recourse to international arbitration or international financial organisations. On the other hand, escalatory tactics could be brought into play in the event of an attempt to rupture the contractual formula between Egypt and other Nile Basin countries as organised by international agreements. Tactics would include activating any number of the pressure cards Egypt possesses in order to drive up the cost of a bid to imperil Egypt's higher interests or to bypass the Egyptian role in the Nile Basin. At the same time, Egypt must expand its involvement in a range of issues and conflicts that threaten the stability of this region. Recourse to any of the foregoing alternatives is, of course, contingent upon how responsive other parties are to the Egyptian drive, which leads us to the second phase, which aims to promote bodies of opinion favourable to the Egyptian viewpoint within the ruling elites and cultural circles of the Nile Basin countries. Here it will be important to devise innovative ways to address public opinion in those countries. As for foreign intervention, which impacts negatively on direct negotiations, Egypt should seek to counter this at three levels. The first is to broaden and deepen direct dialogue with the leaders and peoples of the region, with an aim to creating and expanding realms of common interest between the Nile Basin nations and exploring ways to meet their developmental needs through the provision of financial, technical and other forms of assistance. The second is to promote an Egyptian-European dialogue with an eye to generating a kind of counterweight to US interests with countries opposed to the Egyptian- Sudanese vision. In this regard, we should be able to draw on the support of Britain, which had signed Nile water accords on behalf of Egypt and Sudan, and of France and Italy, which are seeking to strengthen their African interests and aspire to a greater role in the region. Finally, at the third level, Egypt should work to neutralise the US-Israeli position with respect to Nile waters negotiations by means of exercising a necessary and effective role in Middle East issues and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in particular. In the process, it should seek to dissociate the Nile waters question from the dynamics of Middle East issues as much as possible.
