Conflict over the Blue Nile Dam Could Destabilize the Middle East

While Ethiopia is engaged in bloody internecine fighting in its Tigray region, and Sudan is in the midst of a significant political transition, plans for the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam—constructed athwart the Blue Nile, which flows into Sudan and there joins the waters of the White Nile and continues on to Egypt—continue apace. Since work on the dam began in 2011, it has been the subject of tension between Addis Ababa and Cairo, the latter fearing its potential effects on the Nile’s waters in Egypt. Both Egypt and Ethiopia have longstanding friendly relations with Israel, while Sudan only recently signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state. Alberto M. Fernandez examines the implications for the Middle East:

The [dam] should, in normal rainy years, bring benefits to all three countries in terms of regularizing waterflow, but in years of drought, Egypt would be at the mercy of a foreign power 2,000 miles away. . . . [T]here is no doubt that the distrust and tension are rising.

[Meanwhile], the military dimension of a possible conflict is closer to the surface than ever before. Parts of the Sudan-Ethiopian border now host not only regular Sudanese and Ethiopian armed forces, but irregular forces and ill-disciplined tribal militias. Sudan’s former Janjaweed, [an Arab militia], face [Ethiopian] Amhara militias known for their brutality against local people. With the chance of inadvertent, escalating clashes and public saber-rattling so prominent, a first step must be to ensure that a dangerous, volatile situation does not deteriorate even further into open military conflict before the rains come.

The rising regional conflict places Sudan’s fragile transition toward democracy and national peace at great risk. . . . Sudan is assaulted by remnants of the Omar al-Bashir regime broadcasting daily anti-government Islamist propaganda in Arabic from Istanbul. (The Erdogan government was very supportive of the brutal Bashir regime in its last years). . . . The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel can all play a role in making the situation better or worse and need to be in constant dialogue with international mediators to ensure they play, at least, a non-negative role.

Read more at MEMRI

More about: Egypt, Ethiopia, Middle East, River Nile, Sudan

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF