Posted on 09/21/2012 8:59:57 AM PDT by JerseyanExile
Egyptian authorities fearful of a monopoly on Nile waters received agreement from Khartoum to build an airbase in Sudan, to launch attacks on Ethiopian damming facilities, claims the anonymous media outlet; Wikileaks.
Wikileaks has leaked files allegedly from the Texas-based global intelligence company, Stratfor, which quote an anonymous "high-level Egyptian source," claiming the Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon said in 2010 his nation would do anything to prevent the secession of South Sudan because of the political implications it will have for Egypt's access to the Nile.
The Nile is vital in providing fresh water to the people and agricultural projects of Egypt. Also in the Nile Basin and reliant on its waters are Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi.
As Egypt is at the end of the river it is a particularly politically precarious situation.
Ethiopia's planned massive hydroelectric damming project has sent shockwaves throughout the region, highlighting the faults in previously-signed treaties on Nile-sharing.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be Africa's largest hydroelectric facility and will be built 40km upstream from Sudan on the Blue Nile.
Ethiopia has denied Egypt's requests to inspect the dam, unless it relinquishes its veto on water allocation. Although, according the source, Ethiopia has agreed not to use the reservoir waters for irrigation, there are concerns about the extent of water loss due to evaporation from the dam's reservoir.
According to Wikileaks, a 2010 internal email records Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir's agreement to host an Egyptian airbase in Kursi in the west of Sudan's Darfur region. This base would be used to launch an Egyptian assault on the Ethiopian dam, if diplomatic efforts fail.
The anonymous source cites the "useful case-study" of Egypt's 1976 sabotage of an Ethiopia damming project.
However, the viability of joint Sudanese-Egyptian military operations have been brought into question in light of their fractious relationship.
According to Wikileaks, the Stratfor source claimed that "if it comes to a crisis, we will send a jet to bomb the dam and come back in one day, simple as that. Or we can send our special forces in to block/sabotage the dam."
Although they agree upon the Nile Basin Treaty, the contested Halayed Triangle, in 2010, to Bashir accusing Egypt of occupying Sudanese territory.
The immediacy and extent of the Ethiopian threat to Egyptian freshwater access is questionable but its domestic political usefulness for the now ousted Mubarak regime is not.
The continued political application of the Ethiopian threat is, allegedly, now being exerted on the incumbent government by the Muslim Brotherhood.
On 26 August Egypt denied allegations that the new government is under pressure to persuade key regional investor, China, to not back such Nile development programmes.
The UN estimates that by 2050 the world's population will have increased by 3.5 billion, with the majority of the growth in developing countries where water stress is already in key issue, potentially making access to freshwater more incendiary than access to fossil fuels in the coming decades.
Although Egypt was a perennial economic underachiever during the Mubarak regime's years of mismanagement, it has the potential to be a powerhouse. This makes its need to secure future access to resources all the more important and potentially domineering.
Why is Julian Paul Assange still alive?
It makes me think he (probably unwittingly) is posting counter intel.
Otherwise, we’d end up hearing how he committed suicide by shooting himself 15 times in his head.
Not as long as Egypt remains controlled by Islamic supremacists.
“there are concerns about the extent of water loss due to evaporation from the dam’s reservoir”
What ever happened to the Jonglei Canal project which was to divert the White Nile water, bypassing the vast papyrus swamp of the Sudd and its enormous evaporation loss?
Egypt does not want to get into a dam busting conflict with Ethiopia, not with Aswan sitting upstream!
(Answer to self: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonglei_Canal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudd)
Yes, someone could be running him as a disinformation agent. Maybe even us, you never know.
Why is he alive? Because he released a 1.4 gig encrypted “insurance file” of documents.
If anything happens to him, the encryption code gets released. There’s dirt on them in there they don’t want released. Our government treats us with complete disdain and works hard against us, openly. I cannot understand the fantasy that behing secrecy, they suddenly morph into solid America firsters, championing truth, justice and the American way.
That smakes no sense that our fully-corrupted, budding totalitarian, security state NWO government is suddenly working FOR us when we cannot watch them.
Assange is a low life personally. But wkikleaks has exposed nmerous scams involving Swiss bank and Cayman banking. They exposed the looting as Iceland had it’s savings bank implode. They exposed American diplomats strong arming every nation they could to sign a Copenhagen follow-on to Kyoto. They exposed billions of dollars cash that simply vanished into thin air in Afghanistan.
The list goes on. And yes i know some secrets need to be kept. So eventuallay he needs to be stopped.
But largely, it has been a service to expose that the US State dept almost totally works against Americans.
Fr example. Somewhere, i would bet a paycheck there is an email discussing the hard move to be made aganst the second amendment as the primary goal of Fast and Furious. Id like to see it.
Id like to know internal details of the Federal reserve. I want to know how many trillions we gave to foreign banks.
Wikileaks has done more good than bad in my opinion. ANd im sure he’s happier exposing conservatives more than dems. But we have been long in need of disinfecting sunshine.
“What ever happened to the Jonglei Canal project which was to divert the White Nile water, bypassing the vast papyrus swamp of the Sudd and its enormous evaporation loss?”
WE are probably paying for it through the US agency for international development, and a few billion scattered through the region. And at the same moment, our EPA is suing into bankruptcy anyone dares level a half acre “wetland” to build their house.
Egypt sucks, but i can’t see a huge threat to the Aswan dam from Ethiopa. The spears would bounce off. But seriously, Ethiopa doesn’t have the equipment or weapons to get it done.
And theres no way a dam like that is coming down from some force 10 from navarone raid, sticking some C4 on it.
For African nations, bringing down a dam is as daunting as building one without western or Chinese help would be.
So, that's his insurance? I thought we had back doors as well as brute force hacks to determine what is in any encrypted file.
Now, releasing the data to the public might help him, but the gov is also experts at making things like this look fake or from another source or country.
We'll see.
For an excellent discussion of the geopolitics of the Nile, see:
http://bastiatblogger.blogspot.com/2010/01/geopolitics-of-nile-chaos-theory-and.html
The author is an interesting character:
“Sebastian Pritchard is a graduate of Oxford University and the Navy’s Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) Class 195.
In 2003, he co-founded BCM, a boutique private investment firm that uses a proprietary algorithm to exploit price trends in the major commodity and financial futures markets (and achieved an 80% return during the 2008 crisis).
Bastiat Blogger is a clearinghouse for thoughts on hedge funds, global macro, free markets, decision theory, mixed-martial arts (Seb trains MMA with American Top Team) and dueling culture, private-sector tactical training, and a host of related and unrelated interests.”
First of all, your comment is condescending and further perpetuates stereotypes about Ethiopians. It shows that you know nothing about their history, except what you got from the media during the famine of 1985. That aside, building a dam for Africans in poor countries is a question of costs, not ingenuity. It so happens that China is willing to develop economic partnership with Ethiopians, instead of treating them like children, as we in the West have done repeatedly. Ethiopia uses modern weaponry just like any other country. They have been successful in beating back the Islamic extremists from Somalia, Al-Shabaab. You really think they use spears? It won’t take much to destroy the Aswan dam. But either way, Ethiopia is not looking to bomb anyone. They are looking to develop their own resources and continue economic development. (Here’s a homework assignment, study the history of Ethiopa)
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