Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

With the 30 June anniversary of his assumption of power approaching, Egypt’s President Muhammad Mursi appears to be using the dispute with Ethiopia over a dam project on the River Nile as a means of whipping up nationalist support.  Speaking on 10 June, Mursi told supporters: “We are not calling for war, but we will not allow, at all, threats against our water security…all options are open.”

Mursi was attending a “Popular Conference for Preserving Egypt’s Rights in the Nile Waters”.  One speech, by Safwat Abd-al-Ghani, argued that the Ethiopian dam project was part of a conspiracy against Egypt,  He said: “No one can debate that there are several conspiracies which face Egypt in this period as it attempts to cooperate with Nile Basin Countries.”  He then added, without specifically naming a country, that “new regional players” were involved, which led to chants by the crowd against Israel and the US.  Among Abd-al-Ghani’s calls for action was “monitoring the movement of Israel in Nile Basin countries”. 

A point that was missed out, however, was the increasing role that China is playing in the development of Nile Basin countries, particularly Sudan and Ethiopia.  A full discussion of China’s role in the development of upstream projects on the Nile was included in the May issue of Courcy’s Future Threats: Riparian states squeezing Egypt, with help from China.

The following day, on 11 June, Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Tewodros Adhanom expressed his alarm to European Union officials about the tone of Egypt’s opposition to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.