Ruben Rosario: St. Paul nun says backlash against Coca-Cola ad is rooted in ignorance

Spry Sister Rosemary Schuneman, 75, has been teaching English for 54 years, first to grammar-school kids, now mostly to new immigrants and refugees. She currently heads an ESL class for adults at the Ronald M. Hubbs Center for Lifelong Learning in St Paul. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

The nerve of Coca-Cola. They aired a commercial during last week's Super Bowl depicting Americans of different cultures singing "America the Beautiful" in seven languages. Xenophobic social-media trolls criticized it, as was expected.

"Who in their right mind celebrates people singing one of our patriotic songs in a foreign language? It is a disgrace and an affront to our heritage and culture," wrote one yahoo in the comments section of the YouTube version that so far has had more than 8.3 million hits.

If completely clueless about the message behind the ad, many also confused the song with the national anthem. Ignorance is a you-know-what.

Given I'm trilingual -- I speak English, Spanish and New York City Spanglish -- I liked the ad. So did Sister Rosemary Schuneman.

"It's beautiful," the 75-year-old educator and two-time cancer survivor said after I showed it to her.

Schuneman has been teaching English for 54 years, first to grammar-school kids, now mostly to new immigrants and refugees. She's the embodiment of that statue that sits in New York Harbor, the one whose plaque still implores the world: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ..."

She doesn't understand the hate or the backlash.

"People need more education about the reason different people come here and the hurdles that they have to go through just to learn English, and it's not easy," said Schuneman, the longest-serving educator at the Ronald M. Hubbs Center for Lifelong Learning in St. Paul. Part of the public school system, the center offers adult courses in English, GED instruction and commercial license, carpentry and a host of other occupational prep courses.

"I tell my students that your language is precious," she added. "You don't stop speaking your own language and teaching it to your children. But I also tell them that in order to get ahead and do your job and help people, they have to learn English."

A CALLING TO TEACH

The current students in Schuneman's English Level 3 classes are a mix of adult refugees and immigrants from Somalia, Ethiopia, the Karen community, Congo, Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Two are Da Bu and Mui Kpu Lu, husband and wife and Karen refugees who lived in separate Thailand refugee camps and met while serving as nursing assistants at a clinic. They arrived here three months ago.

She asked the class recently how many languages they spoke. "I had people who said they could speak four languages -- that's incredible."

A member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Schuneman grew up in St. Paul's Frogtown neighborhood and attended St. Agnes grammar and high school and was taught by nuns of the same religious order.

Sister Rosemary Schuneman taught English as a Secondary Language class to adults at the Hubbs Center in St. Paul Thursday afternoon February 6, 2014. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

She wanted to become a singer and dancer, but chose education after she felt a calling and became a nun in 1958. She taught first- and second-graders throughout Minnesota and Iowa and changed course in the 1970s, when she accepted an offer to teach English to African sisters in Kenya.

She came back with a passion to open a school for adults after she watched news reports of Vietnamese "boat" people and other Southeast Asian refugees undergoing resettlement here and elsewhere. St. Paul Cos. offered her a conference room at their headquarters, where she began teaching new Hmong refugees and others for 11 years.

THE REWARD

Schuneman was diagnosed with breast cancer a week after she was hired at the center 19 years ago.

The young and spry (for her seventy five years), Sister Rosemary teaching English as a second language to eager learners from various different nations of the world. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

She underwent a mastectomy and a debilitating chemotherapy session that landed her in the hospital.

She began teaching the day after she was discharged and has not stopped. Not even a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma 14 years ago has kept her from the hundreds of students who have benefited from her lessons throughout the years.

"She's a terrific person and a well-respected teacher here," said Scott Hall, the center's director.

It's not all work for Sister Schuneman. She's an avid square dancer and was once named Queen of the Knights of Columbus Hall in Bloomington. She also performs prison and jail ministry.

But teaching gets her up in the mornings. One of her students of Korean heritage achieved a doctorate and is working in New York City. Other students are scattered throughout the Twin Cities; she occasionally bumps into them at stores and other locales.

"I love working with these adults," she said before class began last week. "When you teach someone, particularly a woman, you are empowering the whole family. She is transferring those skills to them."

Schuneman dismisses the perception that today's immigrants don't want to learn English. Her life experiences, crowded classrooms and long waiting lists to attend adult-literacy classes across the country pretty much deflate that view.

"These people understand the need (to learn English)," she said. "They want to get a job, they want to help their children do their homework and they want to be able to talk to their boss or co-worker."

Hall added that research shows that it takes seven years or longer for adult students to master a second language.

"I have found that many people who make this criticism have never attempted to learn another language themselves," he said.

So, those doubting this perhaps should visit one of Schuneman's classes. Perhaps a little enlightenment is not so bad.

"It's just a wonderful feeling that you know you have helped future citizens of America," she said. "I have received more than I have given -- the respect, the love, the trust -- it's incredible."

I'll drink to that. Make it a Coke this time, por favor.

Ruben Rosario can be reached at 651-228-5454 or rrosario@pioneerpress.com. Follow him attwitter.com/nycrican.

Op-Ed: Bill Gates: The world is better than ever

He wants Americans to know that investing in optimism works.

Bill Gates is worried that too many people believe that foreign aid is a waste of taxpayers' money. (Jim Watson / AFP/Getty Images / February 8, 2014)

By Doyle McManus

Bill Gates wants you to feel much better about the future of mankind. Things are looking up, he says, way up.

"By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been," Gates wrote in his annual letter chronicling the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, through which he plans to give away most of the fortune he made from Microsoft.

"People are living longer, healthier lives. Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient," he wrote. "By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world."

By then, he added, the child mortality rate in the world's poorest countries should be as low as the U.S. child mortality was in 1980. And the world's population will soon stop growing too, his wife, Melinda Gates, wrote in the letter. Once parents no longer fear losing children to starvation or disease, she explained, they'll choose to have fewer babies.

Does the Gates' letter do a little bit of overselling in the service of their optimism? Probably.

On health, for example, where Gates has spent billions, he cites a study by Gates-funded scholars suggesting that child mortality in the developing world could fall to the 1980 U.S. rate by 2035 — "with the right investments and changes in policies." But the same study also warns that the goal can't be reached without those investments and policy changes.

On population, Melinda Gates quotes Swedish statistician Hans Rosling, who has ebulliently declared that the number of children alive in the world today "is probably the most there will ever be." Plenty of population experts think that's premature. And, in any case, the Gates Foundation is still working to make contraception more available, including sponsoring a global competition to invent a more user-friendly condom (to borrow terminology from the software industry).

But these are quibbles, because Gates' letter wasn't meant as a sober, scholarly forecast. It was intended to puncture the widespread belief that the world's deepest problems can't be solved. And many development experts agree with Gates that the primary momentum in most of the developing world today is one of progress on poverty and health.

Last year, for example, the United Nations announced that the global rate of extreme poverty, defined as less than $1.25 per person per day, has been cut in half since 1990, far faster than expected.

"The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can't solve extreme poverty and disease, isn't just mistaken. It is harmful," Gates writes. "It can stall progress. It makes efforts to solve these problems seem pointless."

In particular, Gates is worried that too many people believe that foreign aid is a waste of taxpayers' money.

"Aid is a fantastic investment, and we should be doing more," writes the man who made his name as a cutthroat software entrepreneur.

As Gates put it to me in an interview several years ago, "If voters understood it, they'd be for it."

Public opinion polls suggest that he's right about Americans not understanding. Polling has found that most voters think foreign aid accounts for anywhere from 10% to half of the federal budget; the actual figure is about 1%. And yet, many of the same voters say they're willing to support foreign aid, as long as they can be convinced that it's effective.

In Gates' view, there's plenty of evidence that it is. "The increase in farming productivity, like the green revolution, that's aid; billions would have starved without aid," he told the Washington Post recently. "Measles deaths are down; that's all aid. Smallpox eradication, that's aid. Capitalism did not eradicate smallpox; it just doesn't know how."

And Gates presents evidence that his efforts too have had results.

Fewer children are dying from preventable diseases, thanks partly to the large-scale vaccination programs Gates has helped build. There's even been progress in the global campaign to eradicate polio, although last year saw new outbreaks of the disease in Syria, Somalia and Kenya.

There are even signs that Gates' message is getting through on Capitol Hill.

Last month, even as it was cutting federal spending for most discretionary programs, Congress actually approved the Obama administration's full request for international health programs — and, after lobbying by Gates, actually increased U.S. funding for polio eradication.

The goal, the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee said, was to "fulfill the nation's moral obligation to those in dire need."

Reducing childhood disease and closing in on the elimination of polio are historic achievements, to be sure. But persuading Congress to increase funding for foreign aid? Now that's a miracle.

doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com

Twitter: @DoyleMcManus

Source: latimes.com

The Last Hijack: Berlin Review

by Deborah Young

A insightful look into the origins of Somalia's piracy epidemic creatively uses animation to go deeper.

Imaginative animated sequences enliven a behind-the-scenes documentary about piracy in Somalia.

Playing like the backstory to Captain Phillips, Femke, Wolting and Tommy Pallotta’s Last Hijack is a serious documentary exploration of the phenomenon of piracy in Somalia. Its extraordinary added value is recurrent sequences of animation that go where no camera can, recreating scenes of ship-boarding and violence.  The story of Mohamed, who leaves behind his normal life for the money and excitement of piracy, is illuminating, even if he is never a terribly sympathetic character that the viewer can warm up to. Only through the traumas undergone by his younger cartoon self do the choices he makes become understandable. The Match Factory title should stand a better than average chance of pickups during its festival shelf life.

Animation offers the filmmakers a chance to leave reality behind and create a powerful symbol of piracy in a giant bird of prey who grasps a cargo ship in its talons and flies off with it. Pallotta, who produced RichardLinklater’s seminal Waking Life, and Wolting, who has produced Peter Greenaway films, are confident in shifting from live action to cartoon versions of the protags. The film lacks a strong structure, however, and at times relies too heavily on these whimsical inserts to refocus audience attention.

Against his parents’ wishes, Mohamed abandoned his village life to sign up with a band of pirates. He braves the danger of setting off to sea in pursuit of huge oil tankers and foreign cargo ships, and in their small boat they seem like a rubber raft challenging a whale. But they strike it lucky the first time out, capturing a big ship without firing a shot. The crew is ransomed for $1.85 million.

At first, Mohamed explains, he was seen as a village hero and his exploits earned him respect: “from pauper to president.” But as time goes by and more and more fishermen-turned-pirates are killed and jailed, and the recruitment of high school kids begins, the tide of popular sentiment turns against them. The film offers the impressive statistic that only 2 percent of the pirates who started ten years ago are still alive and free men. There is a sense that things are changing; if once the pirates ventured into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to attack up to three ships at a time and “every man in Somalia wanted to become a pirate,” Mohamed says that now it's easy to get caught and people are against them.

Mohamed himself takes a break to get married to a young girl who is adamantly opposed to piracy and urges him to make money legally, even if it means working in a stone quarry. Like any gang, it’s easy come, easy go with money squandered on new cars, hotel rooms and women. The pirates keep only 15 percent of their booty, with the rest going abroad to negotiators and middle-men. Then it’s back to the sea and new targets.

Mohamed’s elderly father begs and threatens him to give up the pirate’s life, but his words fall on deaf ears.  Animated sequences reconstruct the tragedy that forced the family off their land and into the city, and the terrors of the tribal warfare that followed. It’s easy to empathize with young Mohamed, who seems like a different person from his older real-life counterpart, who the filmmakers visually transform into a merciless animal, a bird of prey.

Another important, positive voice in the film is a radio announcer who runs an anti-piracy station. The radio has been attacked three times, once with a hand grenade, and two journalists have been murdered. Still he risks his life to get out the message.

This is a doc focused on people and their faces smiling even when tense, which tell the story better than the dry stone village and empty beaches. Kreidler’s synthesized score offers apt accompaniment.

Production companies: Submarine, The Media Programme of the European Union, Netherlands Film Fund, COBO, Film und Medienstiftung NRW, The Dutch Media Fund,  The Flanders Audiovisual 
Fund, The Irish Film Board, Planete, RTS Radio Television Suisse, Still Film, Razor Film, Savage Film, Jamal Media, Ikon, ZDF

International sales: The Match Factory, www.the-match-factory.com

Producers: Bruno Felix, Femke Wolting

Co-Producers: Nicky Goganm Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul

Associate Producers: Lucia Haslauer, Isa Ostertag, Lucas Schmidt, Charlotte Uzu

Editor: Edgar Burcksen

Music: Kreidler

Animation Supervisor: Gavin Kelly 

Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama), Feb. 8, 2014.

Production companies: Submarine, Irish Film Board in association with Still Films,

Razor Film, Savage Film, Jamal Media, Ikon, ZDF

Directors/Screenwriters: Femke Wolting, Tommy Pallotta

Producers: Bruno Felix, Femke Wolting 

Co-producers: Nicky Gogan, Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul, Bart Van Langendonck

Director of photography: Ahmed Farah

Editor: Edgar Burcksen

Music: Kreidler

Sales Agent: The Match Factory

No rating, 83 minutes.

  

Boots on the Ground or Robots in the Sky

The Future of War Project Offers a Look at the Changing Face of Warfare

Left: A British soldier waiting to receive a medal after returning from Afghanistan. (Matt Cardy-WPA Pool/Getty Images) Center: A LUNA reconnaissance drone in Germany. (Philipp Guelland/Getty Images) Right: British soldiers march from the parade ground after receiving medals in Wiltshire, England. (Matt Cardy-WPA Pool/Getty Images)

By Evelyn Crunden

Chemical weapons, bioterrorism, cyber attacks, drones – these are the ammo of 21st century war. But weaponry’s not all that’s changing in modern war: the “War on Terror” has blurred frontlines and complicated our definition of “the enemy.”  So what’s next, and how do we thrive in these new battles?

This month, New America launched a new project on the “Future of War” - an effort that’s convening a  wide range of thinkers to demystify contemporary conflict. Led by Peter Bergen, Director of the National Security Program, the project will move beyond the post-9/11 state of perpetual war and towards an enhancement of human rights globally.

Here are a few key takeaways:

1. Technology is a big reason why the nature of war is shifting; the face of war has been forever altered by it.

2. Surveillance on an unprecedented global scale, the use of private contractors for publicly-funded ventures and the delicate and dangerous line walked by those who utilize drones are components of modern war that have introduced new conceptual and legal hurdles. Even defining the conflicts we engage in and the persons we engage with requires its own complex wording.

“If we retain existing constructs of war and peace, how do we define these? In the “war” against al Qaeda and its allies, “the battlefield” is potentially anywhere on the globe and “the enemy” is not another army but a loosely associated group of individuals of varying nationalities. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were armed conflicts, but as a legal matter, is the United States in an “armed conflict” with suspected violent extremists living in Bosnia, or with militant leaders in Pakistan’s tribal regions? Are we in an armed conflict with suspected al Qaeda “associates” in Somalia? Is a U.S. drone strike in Somalia a lawful strike against an enemy combatant in an armed conflict, or the illegal, immoral murder of a human being in a foreign country (and a possible violation of sovereignty and the United Nations Charter to boot)?”

3. Human rights is a broad term, but as we venture into a new world of conflict we must consider who we leave at a disadvantage. Sovereignty has been tested by weapons like drones, and access to information technology can at times be a privilege granted only to a few. Moreover, the line between civilian and target has become increasingly blurred. Powerful nations have seized upon the ability to overpower those with less access to resources, and the dynamic has become polarized.

These topics and others will be raised by the Future of War team, in what looks to be a vital and essential defense against permanent global conflict. As we find ourselves in the midst of a radically changed world, we must begin to seek answers and solutions.

Learn more about the future of war.

Read the original on the New America Foundation website. 

Bodies of Westgate gunmen with FBI: Kenya

Kenya's army has revealed that the bodies of the gunmen who attacked Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall last year are in the hands of the FBI.

Military chief Julius Karangi was on Friday describing his troops' response to the attack at a forum organised by the media council to review coverage of the incident.

He said his troops finally killed the attackers on the Monday morning, two days after they marched into the Westgate mall on September 21 and sprayed shoppers and staff with machine gun fire.

He said the all-clear was finally given late on Tuesday, September 24, after at least 67 people had been killed.

"After the incident happened on Saturday, we finished them on Monday morning," Karangi told the audience at a Nairobi hotel.

"Their bodies are with the FBI somewhere," he said.

Karangi did not give any further details on the bodies.

All four attackers were ethnic Somalis - and believed to come from Somalia - with two of the attackers named as Mohammed Abdinur Said and Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, a 23-year old Somali who spent several years in Norway.

Kenyan security forces initially said they were fighting about 12 attackers, although the number of gunmen later turned out to be just four.

Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was a warning to Kenya to pull its troops out of southern Somalia, where they are fighting the extremists as part of an African Union force.

The group said the attackers were from a special suicide squad.

Maalintii 3-aad oo Internet la’an ay ka jirto Muqdisho

 

Magaalada Muqdisho ayaa maalintii 3-aad waxa aan ka shaqeyneynin adeegga Internetka ee laga isticmaalo taleefonada gacanta.

Arintan aayaa daba socota amar ka soo baxay Al-Shabaab oo ku aadan markii ay mamnuuceen internetka laga isticmaalo taleefonada.

Waxa ay saameyn ku yeelatay dad u badan dhallinyaro oo aad u isticmaali jiray adeegaas iyo shirkadaha.

Inta badan Koonfurta iyo Bartamaha Soomaaliya ayaan adeeggan uusan ka shaqeyneynin hadda, mana jirto wax war ah oo ka soo baxay shirkadda Hormuud oo ku aadan sababta ay u joojisay adeegga Internetka.

Dowladda Soomaaliya ayaa si rasmi ah uga hadlin arrintan, balse waxaa dad badan ay lee yihiin maxaa keenay iyadoo dalka ay ka jirto dowlad in Shabaab ay mamnuucdo adeegga Internetka.

Artsakh President Meets with Mediator

Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakian meets with Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk in Stepanakert, Feb. 6, 2014.

STEPANAKERT (Armenpress)—Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakian on Thursday met with Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, the president’s press office reported.
 
The two discussed the current status of Karabakh conflict settlement negotiations and its prospects.

President Sahakian also referred to the Azeri cease fire violations along the Karabakh-Azerbaijan border during the meeting.

On Friday, in accordance with the agreement reached with the authorities of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, the OSCE mission conducted a planned monitoring of the “line of contact” between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan in the Hadrut region near the Horadiz settlement.

From the side of the Karabakh Defense Army, the monitoring was conducted by Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk and his field assistants Yevgeny Sharov (Ukraine) and Khristo Khristov (Bulgaria).

From the opposite side, the monitoring was conducted by field assistants Jiri Aberle (Czech Republic) and William Pryor (Great Britain).

The monitoring passed in accordance with the agreed schedule. No violation of the cease-fire regime was registered. However, the Azeri side did not lead the OSCE mission to its front-lines.

From the Karabakh side, the monitoring mission was accompanied by representatives of the Karabakh Republic’s Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense.

The Armenian Ministry of Defense has refuted recent reports in Azeri media that an Azerbaijani soldier was killed by Armenian snipers.

“Let the Azerbaijani side examine the situation inside its army to understand the reason of frequent losses. Azerbaijan awards medals to soldiers, killed because of internal problems, for fighting against Armenians in an attempt to conceal the real condition of their army. The Armenian side has nothing to do with the death of the Azerbaijani soldier,” Spokesman for the Armenian Ministry of Defense Artsrun Hovhannisyan said in comments to Armenpress.

Spokesman for the Artsakh Ministry of Defense Senor Hasratyan told News.am that the subdivisions of the Armenian and Artsakh armies are committed to the maintenance of the ceasefire regime. “The Armed Forces of Nagorno Karabakh never incite incidents at the line of contact,” he said.

Baku said on Friday that one of its soldiers had been shot dead by Armenian forces. “Azerbaijani army serviceman Eshgin Guliyev died as a result of a ceasefire violation on Thursday,” Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Dalka Shiinaha oo laga Helay Qabri Qof Somalilander ah oo Hal Qarni ku Dhawaad Halkaas ku Aasnaa

Muwaadin Somaliland ah oo Qabrigiisa Laga Helay Dalka Shiinaha

Magaalo  ku taalla bartamaha dhulka Shiinaha oo lugu magacaabo Jiyo-Jaan, ayaa waxaa ka dhacday arrin filan waa  ku noqotay dadkii maqlay iyo kuwi arkayba kaddib markii Jaamacad halkaasi ku taalla oo dhismaheeda laballaarinayey lagu arkay qabri nin Somaliland ah oo kudhawad 100 sano ka hor halkaasi lagu duugay,sidaa waxaa sheegatay warbaahinta.

Markii la arkay qabrigaasi, lana akhriyey qoraaladii ku qornaa dhagxaantii daboolka u ahayd qabrigaasi waxaa la xaqiijiyey qofkii halkaasi ku duugnaa in uu ahaa Soomaali, lana aasay 1916-kii, iyadoo la hakiyey dhimihii Jaamacadda, doodna ka dhalatay sida laga yeelayo.

Mid ka mid ah Ardayda wax ka barata dalkaasi oo lagu Magacaabo Cabdalla Maxamed Cabdi Horeeye oo la hadlayey raadiyaha  ayaa sheegay innay Qabriga dul-tageen ay ku arkeen erayo Qoran 89-sano.

Wiilkaan Ardayga ah ayaa ka mid ah guddi loo xil saaray innay baaritaano ku sameeyaan Meydka Qofka Somalilander ah ee la aasay 1916-kii,kaasoo aasan 89-sanno.

Qabriga waxaa kale oo ku qornaa sidaan:-

Taariikhda la aasay:-1916-kii

Magaca:-Dhoodaan Macalin Axmed

Deegaan:-Berbera Somaliland.

06:37

06:37

Dowladda China ayaa baaritaan ku wada Meydka Ninkaan,waxaana la ogaanayaa sidii uu u geeryooday,waxaana haddii la dilay ay noqonaysaa in China ay dhul ballaaran ka siiyo dalkeeda Somaliland.

Battle of the Nile: Egypt, Ethiopia clash over mega-dam

Ethiopia and Egypt clash over mega-dam - UPI

Ethiopia and Egypt clash over mega-dam - UPI

KHARTOUM (UPI) -- Egypt and Ethiopia remain at loggerheads over Addis Ababa's plan to build a $4.2 billion, 6,000-megawatt dam on a major tributary of the Nile River that Cairo says will greatly reduce the flow of water that is Egypt's lifeline.

Tension between the two African states rose sharply in January after Ethiopia rejected Egypt's demand it suspend construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the 4,130-mile river, the world's longest.

Egypt has vowed to protect its "historical rights" to the Nile "at any cost" and says it could lose 20 percent of its water if the giant dam in northwestern Ethiopia, one of several hydroelectric projects planned by Addis Ababa, is completed.

"It would be a disaster for Egypt," Mohamed Nasr Allam, a former Egyptian water minister, lamented to the Guardian daily of London in 2013. "Large areas of the country will simply be taken out of production."

Despite Cairo's tough declarations, and Addis Ababa's insistence on pressing ahead with the massive dam -- which it denies will damage Egypt to any critical extent -- there's little likelihood of the two states going to war, if only because the vast distance that separates them.

But the dispute is swelling into a major diplomatic wrangle in Africa that could have consequences on other continents as the planet faces water shortages in the decades ahead.

Ethiopia's Chinese-backed dam program will, if completed, produce abundant supplies of electricity that could transform the economies of the regional states long mired in poverty.

Egypt's position has been seriously weakened by the December defection of Sudan, its southern neighbor and longtime ally, in the Nile dispute with Ethiopia and other upstream African states.

That has left Egypt isolated in a long-running dispute with those states, which all want a greater share of the Nile water than they are accorded under British colonial era agreements that gave Egypt, and Sudan to a lesser extent, the lion's share of the river's flow.

Despite political turmoil in both Egypt and China-backed Ethiopia in recent months -- the July 2013 military coup in Cairo that ousted Egypt's first democratically elected president, and the 2012 death of longtime Ethiopian strongman Prime Minister Meles Zenawi -- both sides have dug in their heels over the Nile crisis.

Egypt, with 82 million people, is the most populous and the most militarized state of the 11 riverine states along the Nile, which rises in the highlands of Ethiopia.

But with Sudan now "so squarely in Ethiopia's camp, Egypt could not stage a ground attack on the dam," observed Hassen Hussein, a leader of Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, the Oromo, in an analysis on al-Jazeera Thursday.

An airstrike on the dam, 20 miles from Sudan's southern border in the vast Blue Nile gorge, "is still possible, but fraught with risks.

"To Egypt, water security equals national security," Hussein noted. "To Ethiopia, the dam has become a matter of national pride.

"An airstrike could turn the clock back on the dam. Although Ethiopia lacks the means to respond to such an attack in kind, Egypt risks earning the international community's wrath and seeing its relationships with sub-Saharan Africa strained."

 

But these relations are already strained over Egypt's claim that it has rights to 87 percent of the Nile's waters that were guaranteed under British-inspired treaties in 1929 and 1959 that also gave Cairo veto power over dam-building by upstream states.

Egypt was allocated 55.5 billion cubic meters a year of the Nile's flow rate of 84 billion cubic meters. Sudan, then Egypt's ally, got 18.5 billion cubic feet.

The Blue Nile joined the White Nile at Khartoum, capital of Sudan, to flow northward to the Mediterranean.

In 2010, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya signed an accord, the Cooperative Framework Agreement, to negotiate a more equitable water-sharing arrangement. They were later joined by Burundi , the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea and South Sudan.

These upstream African nations, former colonies of the 19th century European powers, all say they need greater access to the Nile's flow to meet swelling demographic and industrial demands from a waterway that has sustained civilizations for millennia.

Much depends on how the current dispute plays out. Right now, an estimated 238 million people depend on the Nile to some extent.

Source: upi.com