Proteger y manejar poblaciones en el ambiente marino

From the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, Great Britain was the dominant power in the Nile Basin. Egypt was colonized in 1882, and Sudan in 1899. Although London maintained de facto control of both Sudan and Egypt, the former remained nominally ruled by the Khedive (and prior to the First World War part of the Ottoman Empire), and the latter, as we shall see, by Egypt.

While the initial goal of British conquest of Egypt was control of the Suez Canal as a route to India, the Nile quickly became a priority due to its unrivalled importance for Egypt. The aim of British Nile control was thus twofold: to cement British control over Egypt in order to secure access to the Suez Canal; and to improve cotton-production – at the time vital to the Egyptian economy – in order to improve the Egyptian ability to pay its debts to Great Britain and other European countries, which had run high due to considerable loans by pre-colonial Egyptian rulers (Tvedt 2006).

In order to increase the productivity of Egyptian cotton production – which before the construction of the High Aswan Dam could be grown only in summer in conjunction with the flooding of the Blue Nile – the seasonal fluctuations of the river needed to be evened out. This initially lead to plans for dams on the White Nile, because the Blue Nile was considered unsuitable for the construction of dams due to the amount of silt it carries.

The mud moved by the Blue Nile in one year was estimated to equal 160-180 million tons (UNESCO 2008), and this would cause any dam to become silted up in a short period. A dam on the White Nile, however, would be capable of storing water which could be sent down to Egypt during the dry season. Moreover, such a dam would be capable of expanding British control over Egypt through control of the Nile – Egypt’s only source of fresh water (Tvedt 2006).

In a quote that encapsulates the British conceptualization of the Nile and remains relevant in light of Egyptian Nile policy today, Cromer, the British Consul-General in

25

Egypt wrote that “the effective control of the waters of the Nile from the Equatorial Lakes to the sea is essential to the Existence of Egypt” (Tvedt 2006:29).

It was in this context the British Empire in 1899 took control of Sudan, having already set foot on Lake Victoria in their effort to control the White Nile from its sources in South-East Africa. The conquest of Sudan was largely paid for from Egyptian coffers and was made by Egyptian forces in the name of Egypt, where the idea of unity in the Nile Valley was popular (Tvedt 2006). Although the Condominium Agreement between Britain and Egypt nominally gave Britain and Egypt joint responsibility for the territory of Sudan, it became a de facto possession of Britain.

Shortly after this expansion of British Nile control, Sir William Edmund Garstin, the influential Under-Secretary of Public Works in Egypt, took Anglo-Egyptian Nile control to its logical conclusion when he in 1904 authored a plan for the British Government which for the first time conceptualized the Nile as “one river that existed for the benefit of the irrigation economies in the north […] (Tvedt 2006:73). In a project emblematic of the contemporary belief in Western rational superiority, the British aimed to completely control the Nile from its sources in Ethiopia and around the Great Lakes to its mouth in the Mediterranean – all for the benefit of London, Egypt and to a lesser extent Northern Sudan.

The British plans for developing Sudan conceptualized the Southern part of the country more or less exclusively as a way to transport water to Egypt and the North. In North Sudan, the most significant development project was the Gezira Scheme, which was to become the largest cotton farm in the world. In order to provide adequate water for it and increase both the water supply to, and control over Egypt, Great Britain planned to construct the Sennar Dam on the Blue Nile in Sudan – a project that was controversial in Egypt for reasons similar to the ones surrounding GERD.

Construction began in 1914, but due to the outbreak of the First World War, the dam was not completed until 1925. Despite the fact that almost 80 percent of the dam’s water was reserved for Egypt, the project caused outrage there. It was at the time seen as a threat to the Egyptian Nile and a way for London to pressure Egypt – where the Wafd Party under the leadership Saad Zaghloul was campaigning for independence (Tvedt 2006).

26

At the hands of London, and through the continued development of infrastructure, Sudan became at once a carrot and a stick to be used for control over Egypt. This increased control became especially urgent in the context of an increasingly restive political climate, which culminated in the Egyptian revolution of 1919 and the unilateral British declaration of Egyptian independence in 1922.

This independence nevertheless left London in control over the Suez Canal and with considerable influence in Egypt. The following quote from the Foreign Office in 1923 shows that British aims towards control over Egypt had not diminished: “the power which holds the Soudan [sic] has Egypt at its mercy, and through Egypt can dominate the Suez Canal” (Tvedt 2006:87).

The case of the Sennar Dam shows that there is historical precedence for the Egyptian worry about upstream Nile control. Dams both in Sudan and in Ethiopia – as we shall see below – were considered instrumental in British Nile control, and the capacity to withhold water from Egypt was an explicit part of London’s strategy.