Ethiopia’s GERD Dam a Source of Pride and Conflict

 By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Daily Gleaner

The countries around the Horn of Africa, which include major states such as Ethiopia and Sudan, usually get little attention except when they are involved in wars. But there are other stories as well.

One such is the controversy surrounding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which may become a source of conflict with neighbours Sudan and Egypt.

The largest dam in Africa, the GERD, built at a cost of some six billion dollars, has been 14 years in the making. It led to a surge in Ethiopian nationalism, uniting a nation often polarised along ethnic lines and mired in conflict, not least because it was financed by Ethiopians themselves, including through the purchase of bonds by individuals.

The GERD is on the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the Nile River. At 1,800 metres wide and 175 metres high, it can hold back up to 74 billion cubic metres of water in a huge reservoir covering an area larger than the city of London, called Lake Nigat, which means dawn in the Amharic language.

The dam will generate 5,150 megawatts of electricity and will double Ethiopia’s current electricity capacity. Currently, about half of the country’s population doesn’t have reliable access to electricity. The dam has raised hopes that not only will it meet the 135 million-strong population’s energy needs, but it will boost its foreign currency earnings.

Hailing it as “a great achievement not only for Ethiopia but for all Black people,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, standing alongside Kenya’s President William Ruto and Djibouti’s Ismail Guelleh, on Sept. 9 formally launched the dam.

But for downstream states Egypt and Sudan, the waters of the Blue Nile are vital, and they have opposed what they describe as Ethiopia’s unilateral measures to control the river’s flow, fearing the effects on water availability. They have called for joint management of the river, but Abiy has refused, claiming the GERD is not a threat to them.

“Ethiopia remains committed to ensuring that our growth does not come at the expense of our Egyptian and Sudanese brothers and sisters,” Abiy reassured them in a speech to the Ethiopian parliament in July. “We believe in shared progress, shared energy and shared water.”

In fact, he claims the dam will generate electricity for export in the Horn of Africa, boosting the African Union’s regional development plans. Addis Ababa has already signed electricity contracts with Kenya, Sudan and Djibouti, and discussions are underway with other neighbouring countries. Some Ethiopians even have ambitions of building a transmission network to cross the Red Sea to sell to Middle Eastern states like Saudi Arabia.

The dam is just below the Ethiopian-Sudanese border, so Sudan will be the first to feel the effects of the dam. Apart from tits ruinous civil war, that country faces increasing drought and desertification, and depends on the river for drinking water and farming.

After flowing into Sudan, the Blue Nile joins the White Nile at Khartoum, its capital, and the combined river moves north toward Egypt. As has been true for millennia, that country relies on the Nile for around 90 per cent of its water. About 93 per cent of Egypt is desert, with almost no people. Almost all its 107 million people live on the Nile.  

But Ethiopians claim the GERD will be used to generate electricity and the water will continue to flow downriver after it goes through the generating turbines, rather than stay in Ethiopia to be used as irrigation, so this, they state, should not adversely affect Egypt.

Cairo’s main issue with the project was Ethiopia’s decision to build it without first reaching agreements with its neighbouring states, which could set a precedent for future developments. A 1929 treaty gave Egypt and Sudan, both at the time under British control, rights to about 80 per cent of the Nile’s waters. The colonial-era document, updated in 1959, also gave Egypt veto powers over any projects by upstream countries like Ethiopia that would affect its share of the waters.

Ethiopia refused to be bound the treaty and started building the dam in 2011 without consulting Cairo or Khartoum. Some Egyptians suggest Ethiopia took the unilateral decision to build the dam only because Egypt was hit by the Arab Spring revolution at the time, leading to the overthrow of long-serving ruler Hosni Mubarak. Current Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi contended in 2019 that it would never have got under way had Egypt not been distracted by political turmoil.

Egypt had lobbied for institutions like the World Bank not to finance the dam’s construction. Ethiopia also got no help from the International Monetary Fund or European Union. So the Ethiopian government embarked on a big drive to successfully raise funds from its own citizens.

Since this is the first in a series of possible hydroelectric dams Ethiopia has planned for the Blue Nile, Egypt and Sudan have pushed for a legally binding deal to guarantee water flow, operational coordination and a legal mechanism for resolving disputes, to no avail.

As the dam became fully operational, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty stepped up his government’s rhetoric, warning that water security was a “red line” and the dam posed an “existential threat.” Will Egypt be girding up for war?

 

In Australia, as in Canada, Jews Are on Their Own

 

By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

Australia and Canada share many similarities, and so do their Jewish communities. Most Jews live in two large cities, in Australia’s case, Melbourne and Sydney. And they have been well off and integrated into society. Yet in both countries, there has been an unprecedented rise in antisemitism.

I would submit that a majority of Australians and Canadians have now lost sympathy for Israel. It doesn’t matter if what they hear about Israel being engaged in genocide in Gaza is true or not, nor even if they don’t believe all or most of it. The bottom line is that they see Israel as engaging in war crimes. (As for Americans, a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University between Aug. 21 and 25 found that half of voters – and 77 per cent of the Democrats among them -- believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.)

On July 29, a national poll in Australia delivered a deeply unsettling message. The survey revealed that just 24 per cent of Australians hold a positive view of Jews, while 28 per cent express negative views, and the rest are indifferent or unsure. I’m guessing Canadian numbers wouldn’t be all that different.

And this comes after two years of unrelenting escalation, during which antisemitic incidents in Australia and Canada have surged by over 300 per cent. Synagogues have been vandalized, and Jewish businesses attacked. Marches have featured chants glorifying terror and calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.

On August 3, tens of thousands of Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge under the banner “March for Humanity -- Save Gaza.” Among them were former foreign minister Bob Carr, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and Sydney’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore. Australians took to the streets again three weeks later to advocate for Palestinians. A man at the very front of that first procession held aloft a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Such symbolism has become even more disturbing in light of recent revelations. On August 26, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, along with Mike Burgess, Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), confirmed that Iran directed the arson attacks against Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, a Jewish-owned business in Sydney, last October, and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne two months later. Yet even this disclosure will change little.

In fact, Australia denied entry to Israeli parliamentarian Simcha Rothman ahead of a planned solidarity visit with the country’s Jewish community. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke justified the move by claiming Rothman was coming “to spread a message of hate and division.” Rothman, chair of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, had been scheduled to meet with victims of antisemitism, visit Jewish institutions and address Jewish schools and synagogues.

Readers know that Canada is no better. Within days of the October 7, 2023 pogrom, pro-Hamas protesters were emboldened by inaction on the part of authorities and police forces. What followed has been months of harassment, intimidation and open antisemitism, at levels not seen here in more than 80 years.

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather last month issued a call to action amid growing antisemitism across Canada, co-signed by 31 of his Liberal colleagues. Citing Statistic Canada data on police-reported hate crimes, he pointed out that while Jews make up only one per cent of Canada’s population, they are the victims of 70 per cent of reported religious-based acts of hate.

All but six of the signatories were MPs from Ontario or Quebec. But why did the other 137 members of the Liberal caucus not sign on? “Why is fighting antisemitism seemingly determined by constituency demographics,” University of Ottawa Law Professor Michael Geist asked in a comment posted on X.

As Geist also noted in “There is a Growing List of Unsafe Places for the Jewish Community in Canada,” an August 29 article in the Globe and Mail, the rise of antisemitism in this country “has too often been met with inaction and generic statements against all forms of hate, or assurances that this behaviour wasn’t reflective of Canadian values. As politicians remain silent and law enforcement stays on the sidelines, the language becomes more violent in nature amidst allegations of criminality directed at an entire community. The cumulative effect is the gradual erasure of a visible Jewish presence in Canada.”

For the past two years, we’ve watched the unthinkable become normalized, and still, the silence has persisted. We believed that behind the chaos of social media and the radicalism of campus protests, there was a steady, principled middle who would never let hate take hold. But we were wrong. Many condemnations were merely lip service. Institutional policies were rarely enforced. And while we heard reassurances from officials that “this is not who we are,” perhaps it’s exactly who “we” are.

So why did we believe?  Because the alternative is that the “silent majority” doesn’t exist and that antisemitism is being tolerated. It means that when politicians like Albanese or Mark Carney announce they will recognize a Palestinian state that has no defined borders, a non-functioning and certainly non-democratic government, while Hamas still holds hostages and preaches genocide, they are not defying their supporters but catering to them. Albanese later told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that his decision was partly motivated by a phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu that made it clear that the Israeli prime minister was “in denial” about the situation in Gaza.

The pleas of Australia’s and Canada’s Jews to reconsider this absurd move fell on deaf ears. It means that we are not surrounded by quiet allies, but by people who don’t care. When attacks on Jewish gatherings or buildings take place, most non-Jews, even if they don’t approve, are unlikely to be very angry or upset about it. We “deserve” it, in their view, by supporting a nation committing crimes and mass murder.

This requires a complete change in our psychological mindset regarding our place in society. From the 1950s until recently, the “default mode” that we assumed to be true was that most people, save some antisemites here and there, were fine with us as members of the larger community, and deserving of respect and protection. They didn’t have to be our “friends” to feel that way.

No longer. We can’t continue to be “shocked” when the leaders of the world, even countries like ours and Australia, no longer have any particular interest in our welfare (as is demonstrated day after day in news stories). And it’s not just because our enemies have greater domestic electoral clout. It’s just easier for most people to distance themselves from us quietly – which is not that hard to do for those, including most politicians, who have never moved much in circles where they’d be close to Jews.

We are on our own, and this will require a psychological adjustment. It doesn’t mean most people are now antisemites or supporters of Hamas or Islamists. But they will not particularly care to support us. We are now associated with a country they see in a very negative light, one many consider even worse than China or – yes! – Putin’s Russia. Only those people with genuine historical or religious knowledge, clearly a minority, will understand our plight. We must get used to this new reality.