By Gregory R. Copley
Egypt’s Morsi Government has initiated a return to covert
war against Ethiopia, which controls the source of the Blue Nile, Egypt’s and
Sudan’s principal source of water.
The result will almost certainly lead to an increased
level of insecurity in the strategic Red Sea/Suez sea lane and in the upper
Nile riparian states, such as South Sudan, with some impact on global energy
markets. Certainly it promises to see greater instability in the Horn of Africa
at a time when Western media portrayals hint at a return to stability in, for
example, Somalia.
Significant, mounting public unrest in Egypt during May
and June 2013 (with more promised), expressing discontent with the economic and
social policies of the Ikhwani Government of Pres. Mohammed Morsi caused the
President to search for a major foreign distraction — a perceived threat to
Egypt — to turn public attention away from the worsening domestic social and
economic climate. The campaign includes a major media offensive at the alleged
threat, and also included the commitment of major political, intelligence, and
military resources to a trenchant
reversal of Egypt’s brief period of rapprochement with Upper Nile riparian
states, particularly Ethiopia.
This amounts to a full — even expanded — resumption of
the indirect war to isolate Ethiopia politically and economically and to ensure
that it cannot attract foreign investment and political support. It also
attempts to ensure that Ethiopia’s main avenues for trade, through the Red Sea
ports in Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somaliland, become closed to it. This, in
particular, means that the Egyptian campaign to prevent recognition of
independent Somaliland (former British Somaliland) has been reinvigorated, and
military aid given to Somalia (former Italian Somaliland) to help overrun the
Republic of Somaliland, thus cutting Ethiopia’s trade link through Somaliland’s
port of Berbera.
The discontent in Egypt — and Morsi’s search for a
foreign distraction — coincided with the start of work on Ethiopia’s major
Great Millennium Dam (aka the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam), which some
Egyptians have claimed, without evidence, would take Nile waters away from
Egypt. The coincidence of the timing has proven explosive, although the Morsi
Government had already initiated discreet steps to re-escalate indirect
hostilities against Ethiopia.
The Egyptian military knows that Egypt is not in a
position — even allied with neighboring Sudan — to take direct military action
against Ethiopia, but Pres. Morsi had begun returning to the confrontational
approach with Ethiopia which had characterized the former governments of Pres.
Hosni Mubarak. The move away from this approach, which had failed to gain any
traction against Ethiopia or other upstream riparian states, began under the
post-Mubarak military Government of Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi with
an initiative aimed at achieving negotiated results.
Pres. Morsi, on assuming power in Egypt, discovered
during his visit to Addis Ababa for an African Union summit in 2011, that the
Great Millennium Dam project would proceed, although Ethiopian officials
assured Egypt that this would not interfere with the flow of water to Egypt.
The dam was expected to produce 6,000 megawatts of power, and its reservoir was
scheduled to start filling in 2014.
An independent panel of experts concluded that the dam
would not significantly affect downstream Sudan and Egypt, but Younis Makhyoun
(Zakaria Younis Abdel-Halim Makhyoun), leader of the ultraconservative Salafist
al-Nour party, said on June 3, 2013, that Egypt should back rebels in Ethiopia
or, as a last resort, destroy the dam. The Morsi Government, in fact, had
already begun that action, using the allied Sudanese Government of Pres. Umar
Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir to support Ethiopian radical Islamist leaders sitting in
exile in Khartoum. These leaders prompted major anti-Government demonstrations
to take place in Addis Ababa in the first days of June 2013. One, on June 1,
2013, involved some 10,000 demonstrators, mostly Muslim, calling for increased
religious freedom, the release of political prisoners, and so on. [Reports
claiming that there were 100,000 demonstrators dramatically overstated the
reality.]
What was significant was that the demonstrations
attracted the support of urban, Christian youth, who saw the demonstration as a
chance to protest against the Government. But it was the extreme Islamist
elements which, with considerable Egyptian backing through the Khartoum
connection, made the protests significant. The rally was formally organized by
the secular Semayawi (Blue) Party, which received official permits for the
rally, but the event was co-opted by the Islamists, making it just the event
which Cairo had sought.
Not coincidentally, a senior Egyptian Ministry of Defense
delegation arrived in Mogadishu, Somalia, on June 4, 2013, officially to begin
discussions on an Egyptian project to rebuild the headquarters and offices of
the Ministry of Defense of Somalia. However, the Egyptian delegation made it
clear to its hosts that it also intended to equip, train, and rebuild the
Somali Armed Forces, with the intent to support a Somalian move to assume
control of the Republic of Somaliland, to its North. The independent and
internationally-recognized Republic of Somaliland had joined with the former
Italian Somaliland to create Somalia, on June 1, 1960. Following a massive
brutalization of Somaliland by southern “Somalian” forces, Somaliland on May
18, 1991, withdrew from the union.
The Egyptian Government, however, has, since that time,
ensured that the African Union (AU) and Arab League did not recognize the
return to independence of Somaliland, largely in order to ensure the isolation
of, by now, landlocked Ethiopia, and to limit Ethiopia’s economic viability and
therefore its ability to engage in major projects on the Blue Nile headwaters.
Egypt’s pressure within the (then) Organization for African Unity (OAU), later
the AU, the Arab League, and on its US ally, ensured that no bid for
recognition of Somaliland made headway.
That process was beginning to be reversed when elections
in Somaliland on July 26, 2010, installed Pres. Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo and the Kulmiye party. Significantly, Silanyo,
beset by advanced diabetes and probable dementia, has relied increasingly on
Minister of Presidency Hersi Ali Haji Hassan (Somali: Xirsi Xaaji Xasan), who
is essentially an ally and front for the salafist jihadi movement, al-Shabaab.
He has essentially taken control of the Government. Thus, progress by the
outgoing Somaliland Government with the governments of the US, Britain, and
Germany for de facto recognition ended.
Egypt, then, is now advancing on several fronts in its
campaign to isolate Ethiopia: through Somalia; through Sudan; through its
sponsorships via a number of channels of Ethiopian Islamist and other
opposition movements (including the Oromo Liberation Front: OLF); and via
Eritrea (although the Eritrean option has become limited because of the
paralysis of the Government there, under the ailing President, Isayas
Afewerke).
Significantly, Cairo actually has no real national
security case on which to base its new war. There is no evidence that the
Ethiopian dam would constrain Nile water flow to Sudan and Egypt, and, anyway,
there is little Egypt could do, either legally or militarily if the flow was
threatened: other than to bring Ethiopia into a state of chaos.
But the major reason for the Egyptian initiative was,
according to sources in Cairo, to mobilize Egyptian public opinion around Pres.
Morsi. Significantly, however, by posing such a threat to Ethiopia, Egypt risks
actually galvanizing Ethiopian public opinion around the Government in Addis
Ababa, and perhaps creating a reason for Ethiopia to consider using water flow
as a weapon against Cairo.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn, who was
elected as a stop-gap leader following the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi
in mid-2012, has only a modest power base of his own. But his one option now
may be to do what Meles had been dissuaded from doing before: to formally
recognize the sovereignty of Somaliland. Hailemariam, in May 2013, promised in
Parliament to defend Somaliland. Other African states have promised to
recognize Somaliland, but did not want to be the first. Somaliland’s senior
military officials, meanwhile, flew to Addis for talks on June 5, 2013.
The war has begun, but it may not save Pres. Morsi from
the collapsing Egyptian economy, even bigger demonstrations of unrest, and even
opposition to his policies of antagonizing upper Nile states.
By. Gregory R. Copley
Source: Oilprices.com
