The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Photo Credit: Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCO)
The Horn Africa waters are in the news lately not because of their life-giving abilities but because of the tensions they have caused among the many countries that use these waters and, indeed, they are most of the countries of the world. On the one hand, there is the Nile waters which flow through multiple African countries to the Mediterranean and on the other, there is the Red Sea waters and the Gulf of Aden where some 12% of the world’s trade passes through annually.
Ethiopia is the source of one of the major tributaries of the Nile, the Blue Nile, which provides most fresh water to Sudan and Egypt. It has built a Dam, the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (“GERD”), just about twenty kilometers from the Sudano-Ethiopian border, which has irked both Sudan and Egypt.
Ethiopia argues that the GERD is a fait accompli, a reality with which Egypt has to come to terms and that the GERD is a matter of Ethiopia’s sovereignty. But on the other hand, Ethiopia is violating the sovereignty of Somalia through an illegal MoU which it has forced and/or extorted one of the regions of Somalia to sign. Somalia contests this incursion to its sovereignty and has hence signed a defense pact with Egypt and other countries to preserve its territorial integrity.
Ethiopia is now crywolfing that countries are ganging against itself when it is, indeed, the main perpetrator of all those wrongs in the region, including the large killings of its own populations in the Tigray and Amhara states within its territory.
The waters of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and, indeed, all coastal countries are the property and ownership of the coastal countries. In the case of the Horn of Africa States, it is the countries of Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia, and Ethiopia, a landlocked country, should stay out of those waters unless it signs either multilateral or bilateral arrangements with those sovereign states of the region.
Provinces or regions of countries are not sovereign bodies, and this puts Ethiopia on the wrong side of the law as it signed an MoU with one of the regions of Somalia. Indeed, it is the only country, in the region, which has broken international law at present.
The issue of the waters of the Nile goes back to colonial times when the UK was the supreme colonial country in the region from Egypt to South Africa and when it needed to have its Egyptian colony not to be deprived of water at all.
The UK was thus the main driver of the Nile agreements of 1929 and 1959, the first between the UK and Egypt and the other between Egypt and Sudan. Both agreements allocated most waters to Egypt without regard to all the riparian countries.
Several countries of the Nile Basin came together in 1999 and signed an agreement termed the Nile Basin Initiative or the BNI. This was an attempt to address the concerns of some of the countries and the increasing pressures over the Nile waters. This was converted to a Cooperative Framework Agreement in 2010 among many of the riparian countries. The CFA was rejected by both Sudan and Egypt, which led to a freezing of relations between the riparian countries and Egypt for some years.
Egypt and Sudan, Ethiopia claims have never come to terms with a fair and equitable sharing of the Nile waters or indeed, the sovereignty of Ethiopia over the waters that rise in its territories and hence the dispute between the three countries.
The dispute is, indeed, similar to other disputes over river waters in other parts of the world like those related to the Mekong, Euphrates-Tigris and the Zambezi rivers, which all point out to potential political instabilities in the regions they flow through.
But sovereignty cannot be an instrument used when convenient and not, when it does not serve one. This appears to be the case with respect to Ethiopia, when it comes to the other waters of the region, namely the long coastal belt of the region and owned by the countries of Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. The illegal MoU which Ethiopia extorted one of the regions of Somalia to sign is a clear indication that Ethiopia weighs “sovereignty issues” lightly.
We are in the closing years of the first quarter of the twenty first century and it is disappointing to see that colonialist Ethiopia is still working on taking more lands and seas from its neighbors just as it did at the turn of the nineteenth century along with the European colonialist countries of the UK, France, and Italy, when it expanded from its northern enclave of Abyssinia to its present-day Ethiopia, the large land mass in the Horn of Africa.
Ethiopia has not come to terms with the fact that it is a landlocked country as it was always except for the brief period when Eritrea was forced to join by Emperor Haile Selassie, and it is this fact which endangers not only Ethiopia itself but also all the other countries of the region. There is no doubt that other non-regional parties will take advantage of the opportunity to interfere in the region’s affairs.
A better and a winner option would have been to help create a regional platform to have all the countries of the region, including Ethiopia, working together through an economic integration and other cooperative processes. However, Ethiopia seems to have chosen to go it alone and sway its weight around.
The current Ethiopian regime forgets that an opportunity only knocks once and never knocks again. Would the regime reverse itself from its current pose in the region? It is a major question, and we let this for the Addis regime to address.
The extension of the sanctions on Ethiopia for another year, the denial of the AGOA reinstatement all from the United States, the imposition of the multilateral financial organization on a floating Birr, and the conditions related for further assistance with respect to selling off national assets such as the Ethiopian Airlines or the Ethio Telecom and others, are but an indication of worse things to come.
The fighting in the Amhara State, the eminent revival of the Tigray war, the ongoing Oromo Liberation Army war and others including potential wars related to its neighbors and even distant Egypt are not good signs for a multi-ethnic nation such as Ethiopia is. This could lead to a break-up of the nation and probably, this is what the regime wants!
Ethiopia was seen as a reliable ally of the West in the past, but its current tortoise moves towards the East and more specifically to BRICS and China are raising eyebrows, and this would not be good for the country. Recently the Kenyan President Ruto was invited to Washington and awarded a red-carpet reception. Is the West working on replacing Ethiopia with Kenya as the key ally in the region?
Aggressing Somalia as it did already with the illegal MoU will not benefit much the Ethiopian regime. A forced takeover can only be a harbinger of a wider war, which will not assure Ethiopia of its continuation of its current set up or indeed, its existence. It may give rise to new nations like Tigray, Amhara, Sidama, Afar. Oromia, and West Somalia and others.
The Prime Minister of Ethiopia probably takes the essence of sovereignty lightly. He fails to understand that it is the bedrock of international relations according to the Council of Foreign Relations of the United States.
It is how countries interact with each other and not interfere in each other’s internal affairs. This is supposed to protect countries from being invaded by others over the internal matters of each country.
Ethiopia decided to ignore the sovereignty of Somalia on the belief that Somalia is so weakened that it could not do much about protecting itself and in particular when large forces of Ethiopia are in Somalia itself through the ATMIS accord and on bilateral arrangements. The illegal MoU it signed with one of the regions of Somalia is a blatant aggression against Somalia and the world has told the Ethiopian regime of the same. The insistence of Ethiopia to materialize the MoU is but an invasion of Somalia’s sovereignty and Somalia is bound to defend itself with whatever means, including bringing in foreign troops such as those of Egypt and others to help it defend its turf.
The waters of Somalia are as sacred to Somalia as the Nile waters seem to be sacred to Ethiopia, but unlike Somalia, which allows international laws to prevail, Ethiopia seems to ignore international laws and rules.
Dr. Suleiman Walhad
Dr. Suleiman Walhad writes on the Horn of Africa economies and politics. He can be reached at suleimanwalhad@yahoo.com.