Some years after returning to
civilian life, I became enamored with ancient Egypt and its achievements. So when the United States and Egyptian
governments announced during the late 1950s – early 1960s that they were discussing
having the United States construct a massive dam on the Nile, one that would
match the achievements of early Egypt, I was interested. Then aggrandizing world politics entered the
picture and what was planned as a blessing for the people of Egypt turned
into a massive tragedy. The dam was
completed in 1970, but more on that later.
As the title indicates, this
essay has to do with the Nile, that grand
river of Africa. But my interests and activities related to Egypt didn’t
start with the Nile. Over forty years earlier, I was deeply
involved with Egypt’s
historic pharaoh, Tutankhamen. It only
seems appropriate to recap this earlier part of my Egyptian interests before
getting on with the story of the Nile.
My continued strong interest
in Egypt
provided a wealth of information over time.
During the 1970s, Egypt
permitted thirty-or-so treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamen to tour six
participating museums in the United
States, including The Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York City
during 1978. Tickets for admission were
issued for particular days and were difficult to obtain requiring standing on
line for hours. However, the pending
exhibit was so popular that people were taking time off from work in an effort
to obtain tickets. I was very fortunate,
getting tickets for two visits through the cooperative assistance of
friends. The visits were very productive
in providing me with information on, not only the Tutankhamen treasures, but on
Egypt
and the Nile.
During this approximate
period, my daughter Wendy had one or more of her children in St. Anne’s School in Fairlawn, New Jersey,
one of which was in the 5th grade.
Armed with all of my new found knowledge on Egypt, I approached the teaching
staff and offered to make a presentation with slides, books and artifacts. They accepted, and allowing for my
inexperience, I made a successful presentation.
Subsequently, Wendy transferred her children to the Saddle Brook
Long School
where I met Mrs. L. Schoen.
Mrs. Schoen conducted an
annual program on United Nations Day where each child would choose to represent
a country by constructing a shadow box exhibit reflecting a well-known feature of the
country. Each child’s parents would prepare
a food reflecting their heritage for a general all-are-invited lunch for the
class members, parents, teachers and other program participants. Mrs. Schoen, with the help of a class
committee, would solicit 3-4 speakers from a list of volunteers to make a
presentation on a country or subject of their choice. I volunteered for an annual talk on Egypt, either
on the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, the Nile
or such other subject matter that was preferred. In my case, Mrs. Schoen chose the
pharaoh.
For each presentation, I
prepared a binder of information with maps and photographs for the students to
review, provided each student with a set of handouts and a 3x5 card with the
student’s name in English and Egyptian hieroglyphics. The length of each of my talks varied with
the time available and with the student's interest.
One of the handouts was a map
of Egypt
annotated by me with additional information on geographical and important
sites. I would use the map during my
talks to locate my subject. One feature
of the map was the Gulf
of Aqabah located
southeast of the Sinai Peninsula. At the head of the gulf is the city of al Aqabah. During my first two talks, I described the importance
of al Aqabah to Turkey
during the first World War by relating to the students part of the movie plot
of Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence successfully
leads a force of Arabs in wresting al Aqabah from Turkey after crossing an allegedly
impassible desert. The students didn’t
seem to understand, something that confused me.
It wasn’t until one of the teachers explained that none of the students
were born early enough to have seen the movie and so didn’t know what I was
talking about. Something I hadn’t
considered in my preparations. I cite
this incident as an illustration of the best-laid plans gone astray. Lawrence
was never used again.
The purpose of the preceding
paragraphs is to illustrate how my general interest in Egypt resulted
in a specific interest in the pharaoh, which ended with a series of United
Nations Day presentations.. The Nile either has played a subordinate role or has been
ignored completely in the past. This
essay attempts to correct the omission.
The story of the Nile is being presented in four parts in this essay: The
first two parts, The White Nile and The Blue Nile describe their origins and
their contributions to The River Nile. The third part, The River Nile presents the story of the Nile
prior to the construction of the High Aswan Dam. The fourth and following part, The High Aswan Dam, discusses the events
leading to the construction of the dam, the dam itself and the events during
and following its construction. As with
the material presented in the previous parts on The White Nile and The Blue
Nile, all information presented in this essay is supported by a bibliography
of source material. .
The Nile
is the longest river in the world (over 4,100 miles), and is important to
northeast Africa. Never the less, public knowledge of the
features of this river is mostly concentrated on the northernmost part, the
part found in Egypt. Very little general information, other than
formal studies, has been prepared for the southern part of the Nile from the Egyptian – Sudanese border south to Lake Victoria and the White Nile,
and southeast to the highlands of Ethiopia and the Blue
Nile. This is
understandable when one considers what is found, and what has been exploited,
along the Egyptian Nile compared to what the Sudanese Nile has to offer north
of Khartoum and
south to the Nile headwaters. Ignored in popular articles are the Lake Victoria basin and its effect on the countries that
surround it and the importance, both politically and geographically, of the Lake Tania
plateau in Ethiopia
to Egypt
and its economy. The chapters that
follow will attempt to correct this oversight by describing the origins of the White Nile and the Blue Nile,
the passage of these rivers to Khartoum,
where they join and form the more familiar Nile,
and the flow north of the Nile through Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea.
Around 457 B.C., Herodotus,
who traveled as far as the first cataract, remarked. “…of the sources of the Nile no one can give any account … it enters Egypt from
parts beyond.” During the second century
B.C., Eratosthenes, a Greek writer, sketched a reasonably correct Nile to Khartoum
and suggested lakes as a possible source.
And so it went over the years with exploring expeditions from Greece, a Roman
governor of Egypt,
and representatives of Roman emperor Nero, who managed to get as far as The
Sudd before turning back. Ptolemy, the
Greek geographer who lived in Alexandria,
opinioned that the Nile source was in the
“Mountains of the Moon,” now believed to be the Ruwenzori Range. Centuries of additional explorations added
little to what was known. Maps of Africa through the early 19th century were
neither accurate nor consistent, usually showing the interior as unexplored or
not known, with fanciful drawings and descriptions of all sorts of
monstrosities. Through the last half of
the 19th century, organized exploratory expeditions contributed much
additional information on the sources of the Nile
and drew attention to a large area of lakes and rivers situated around Lake Victoria.
Lake
Victoria’s rain basin is
unusually small, considering the size of the lake, but a major feature of the
lake itself can explain this. Most lakes
drain a broad area with rivers, streams and ground water flowing into the
lake. Not so with Lake
Victoria where most of its water comes from rain that falls
directly over the huge lake. Included in
the lake’s rain basin are parts of five countries: Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and the
eastern edge of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. Surrounding Lake
Victoria is a broad system of lakes and rivers that contribute to
the White Nile, with a few secondary streams
draining into the larger rivers. Lakes
include Lake Edward, Lake
George, Lake Albert, Lake Kyoga and the northern tip of Lake
Tanganyika in Burundi. As a whole, the Lake
Victoria rain basin may be considered as the source of the White Nile, but when the many rivers and lakes are
considered, in reality, the White Nile has
more than one source.
An interesting climate exists
in that part of Africa including Lake Victoria and the East African lakes region. Lake Victoria
sits astride the equator, though most of it will be found in the southern
hemisphere, just south of Kampala. East of the lake, between the lake and the Indian Ocean, lies a region in Kenya known as the East African
Plateau where summer temperatures easily reach 115°. In the East African lake region, due to a
well-distributed rainfall, the mean temperature varies little during the year,
ranging from 60° F to 80° F with relative humidity at about 80 percent. While location and altitude affect these
readings, the climate is more Mediterranean than tropical.
There are two commonly used
descriptions of the White Nile (Bahr el
Abiad). The first includes that part of
the river from Khartoum
south to the junction of the Bahr el Jebel and
the Bahr el Ghazal at Lake
No near Malakal. The
second, and more descriptive, uses the Lake Victoria
basin.
The Ruvuvu River
drains the Luvironza
River in Burundi and
flows into the Kagara
River in Tanzania, which
empties into Lake Victoria (Victoria
Nyanza) on the west. From
the north shore
of Lake Victoria, the Victoria Nile passes through Lake
Kyoga into Lake Albert and, as
the Albert Nile (Mobutu Nile), flows north to
Nimule into Sudan
as the Mountain Nile (Bahr el Jebel) where it
receives flow from the Sobat
River. Continuing north, the Mountain Nile passes
through an area of rapids from Nimule to Rejaf, enters a broad plain at Juba, and enters as Sudd at Bor. The Sudd is a huge swamp remaining from a
years past inland sea. The area is a
papyrus-choked swamp where half the river flow is lost to the Nile
with the discharge from the Sudd into Lake No
ranging from zero to 1,700 cubic feet per second. At Lake No,
near Malakal, the Bahr el Jebel and the Bahr el Ghazal are joined and the river turns east to Khartoum where it joins
the Blue Nile and becomes the Nile.
Just west of Djibouti is the
Danakil Depression, which is the most northern part of the Ethiopian Afar
Region. The Region forms an isosceles
triangle with its apex east of Addis
Ababa, pointing like an arrow at Kenya as a part
of the Great Rift Valley. The Afar Region is approximately 250 miles
east of Lake Tanya.
The Afar Triangle is a plate tectonic triple junction where three plates
are pulling away from one another: the Arabian Plate and the two parts of the
African Plate. The area is highly
unstable. Geologists predict that the Red Sea will eventually flood the East Africa Rift,
including the Afar Region, submerging its entire length and forming a new
inland sea similar to the Red Sea.
As if to confirm the geologists’
prediction, in September 2005, Nature reported
that the movement of the Arabian and African plates away from each other had stretched
the Earth’s crust such that, over a period of three weeks, the crust on the
sides of the rift moved apart by 26 feet over a 37-mile section. Aerial photos, as well as more detailed
information, on the cracks and faults formed above the zone may be found in my
essay More on the Great
Rift Valley. During
the event, molten rock rose into the plate, reaching to within 1.2 miles of the
surface. Indications are that more of
the same may be expected in years to come.
The primary source of the Blue Nile is the southern shore of Lake Tana,
but a secondary source is a small spring at Gishe Abbai, at an altitude of
approximately 6,000 feet, flowing together with several feeder streams into the
Abbay River and thence into the lake. The Abbay River,
now the Blue Nile, leaves Lake
Tana and flows south, then southeast through the Tis Issat Falls
and rapids, and south again, where it is approximately 100 miles from the Rift
Valley, a fact of some importance. The
river continues its journey southwest through a mile-deep gorge and canyon
after which it takes a sinuous path west where it receives minor additional
flow from the Little Blue Nile flowing from Ghish, flows northwest into the
Sudan toward Khartoum. During its
transit of the Sudan,
the river receives flow from two rivers that originate in the Ethiopian
highlands: the Dinder and the Rahad
Rivers.
At Khartoum, the Blue Nile
joins the White Nile to create the River Nile,
which then flows north to empty into the Mediterranean Sea.
The Ethiopian Rift Valley is
a part of the Great Rift Valley. It includes the Afar Region from the
Djibouti-Ethiopian border southwest through the rift to the border with Kenya. The rift separates the Northwestern and
Southeastern Plateaus that form Ethiopia
into two highlands parted by a deep, wide, almost impassible gorge. The Blue Nile
is in the Northwestern Plateau and so is at the 6,000 feet or so level of the
plateau during its travel to the Sudan. At the point where the river approaches
within 100 miles of the rift valley, a potential exists for a future
tragedy. The rift valley is an unstable
area, especially in the Afar Triangle, as demonstrated by the 2005 event. It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize
a future, similar event happening in this 100 mile area where the surface of
the plateau would rupture and permit all or part of the Blue
Nile to empty into the adjacent gorge of the rift valley.
In his book, The Blue Nile, Alan Moorhead describes
the contribution of water to the River Nile, by both the White and Blue
Niles: “The White
Nile is a much longer river than the Blue. Already at Khartoum, it has come two thousand miles from
its source in Lake Victoria in Central Africa, and except for its passage through the
great swamp of the Sudd in the south Sudan its banks are inhabited
nearly all the way. But the fall of the
White Nile’s water over this vast distance has been barely 2,000 feet (compared
to the Blue Nile’s tumultuous drop of
nearly 5,000 feet), and so it has a quite and sedate appearance. Steamers and feluccas move about comfortably
on its broad expanse of water. It is
very much the parent stream. However,
the real strength of the two rivers that now unite and lose their separate
identity at Khartoum
lies in the Blue Nile. It provides six-sevenths of the total volume
of water in the combined stream, and for six months of the year, it rushes down
from the Ethiopian mountains with the effect of a tidal wave. By June the force of this flood is so great
that the White Nile is dammed back upon itself
at Khartoum; it
pauses, as it were, and stands back while the younger, livelier river pushes
past carrying hundreds of thousands of tons of discolouring grit and soil to Egypt. At last, in January, the tremendous rush
subsides, and the White Nile begins to assert
itself again. Then at Khartoum you can
see the two rivers flowing on quietly side by side in the same river bed and
for a few miles there is a distinct dividing line between them on the surface
of the water; the White Nile not precisely white but more nearly muddy grey,
the Blue seldom absolutely blue except for certain moments at dawn and in the
evening, but more of a brownish-green.”
The effect of the previously
described rupture diverting the Blue Nile from
its passage to the Sudan
would create havoc in a number of ways.
First, of course, 80-90 percent of the water volume of the River Nile
would be lost to Egypt, whose economy is closely dependent upon maintaining a
normal River Nile flow, the loss of the Blue Nile’s annual damming of the White
Nile would affect boat transportation on the White Nile south of Khartoum and
on the entire length of the River Nile, and the cascading flood of Blue Nile
water into Kenya through the rift valley would exacerbate the already serious
flood conditions in Kenya and possibly Tanganyika. The solution, of course, is the construction
of a dam, and possibly a canal, to prevent the water loss. Unfortunately, a decision locating the new
structures must await the disaster to guarantee proper placement. In an alternate decision, a canal could be constructed
beforehand, with gates to control water volume, from above Tis Issat Falls to
the Little Blue Nile, bypassing the entire loop of the Blue
Nile that approaches the rift valley. Hereto are problems. The proposed area of construction lies in
very remote and primitive countryside.
One last item to further
confuse the reader and, so to speak, muddy the waters. During the 1960s, an America survey
team was at work investigating the resources of the Blue
Nile and the massive gorge through which it flows. One of the members of the team, in a separate
study collected specimens of the silt of the Blue Nile
and was unable to make anything grow in it.
This was very surprising since the Ethiopian silt was thought to be the
silt upon which the River Nile and the fertility of Egypt depended for centuries. It was evident that dry or wet, the soil is
sterile. It now appears that the Blue Nile supplies high-volume water flow and silt, but
the White Nile adds thick slime-filled ooze,
which makes the River Nile the fertile river it is. The source of fertility is still a question
that has not been satisfactorily answered and the research continues.
The River Nile, For many thousands of years
the Nile has flowed north from Khartoum through the Sudan and Egypt, emptying
into the Mediterranean Sea. During its transit, it has deposited millions
of tons of silt and fertilizing soils annually along its banks and on adjacent
farmlands and additional tonnage of soil in the Mediterranean
Sea forming a huge delta that has added acres of land to Egypt.
Historians credit Egypt with
originating irrigation and taking advantage of the Nile
flooding to support their efforts at cultivation. Records show that the Egyptian farmers
divided the Nile floodplain into a number of large
basins separated by earth banks or berms, some as large as 50,000 acres. During the periods of flood, the basins would
be inundated with the silt-rich Nile
floodwaters. The waters would remain for
up to six weeks after which they would drain away as the river level fell,
leaving behind a deposit of rich Nile
silt. The farmers would then sow their
crops in the waterlogged soil. Under the
basin system, farmers could only sow one crop per year, usually wheat or
barley, and being totally dependent upon the river floods, were at the mercy of
annual fluctuations in the size of the flood.
As technology improved the farmers’ lot, additional irrigation methods
were employed, such as the shadoof, a counterbalanced lever device that uses a
long pole to lift water from the river and swing it over the land to be
irrigated. The Persian waterwheel was
also introduced, as was the Archimedean screw.
Initially, the farmer or his animals operated these devices. Gradually, the basin method was replaced by a
system of barrages and waterworks employing canals and dams, and more recently,
mechanical pumps. The revisions to the
Egyptian irrigation methods permitted farmers to irrigate their fields as they
needed, and so enable them to plant multiple crops of cotton, sugarcane or
peanuts.
Under both the basin system
and the changes that followed, only a fraction of the Nile
silt and sediment was diverted to farming.
Much of the suspended material continued north adding depth and acreage
to the delta and, since prehistoric times, has contributed bulk and nutrients
to the Mediterranean Sea as far east as the Levant coast.
In 2002, Eduardo Garzanti of
the University of
Milan and Ahmed el Kammar
of Cairo University reported a major change in
the structure of the Nile sediment. Prior to the construction of the High Aswan
Dam, the Nile load was estimated at 40 million
t/a. Reassessing the effects of erosion
caused by deforestation and intensive land use in the Ethiopian highlands and
weathering in the southern Sudan swamps, they have re-estimated the sediment
rate at 210-250 million t/a, a substantial increase over the earlier
estimates. Further, they found that the Blue Nile contributed 61% of the Nile River
sediments and the River Atbara 36%, while all other sources only 3%. This information is significant when the
effects of the High Aswan Dam are considered, as will be done in the following
section of this essay.
After the White and Blue
Niles join at Khartoum
and become the River Nile, the river continues its passage north, passing Omdurman as it leaves Khartoum. Omdurman
was the site of the final decisive battle in 1898 between the al-Mahdi native
forces and a British-Egyptian army under the command of General Kitchener. Al-Mahdi had terrorized the Sudan for eight
years before being defeated. An
interesting sidelight is the fact that Winston Churchill was a journalist at
the time and had just completed a stint covering the Boer War before being assigned
to Kitchener’s
campaign in the Sudan.
The stretch of river north of
Khartoum is sometimes called the United Nile and includes a part from Khartoum
to what will be Lake Nasser in 1960 and thereafter. My discussion of the Nile,
including Lake Nasser, will be covered in the next
section of this essay. This section will
treat the river before the construction of the High Aswan Dam and the formation
of Lake Nasser.
The 830-mile long United Nile flows through a dessert region receiving
negligible rainfall but with some irrigation along its banks.
Fifty miles below Khartoum, the river
reaches the 6th cataract at Sablukah, the most distant cataract from
the Mediterranean Sea. Continuing northward, the river makes a big
loop, first northeast to Barbar and the 5th cataract, then northwest
to Abu Hamad, where it turns severely southwest past the 4th
cataract to Kurti and Ab-Dabbah. At Ab-
Dabbah, it turns north past Dunqulah and the 3rd cataract and
continues past the 2nd cataract to the Sudanese-Egyptian
border.
About 200-miles north of Khartoum, south of
Barbar, the Nile receives the flow of the Atbara River,
the last tributary of the Nile. The Atbara originates in the Ethiopian Plateau, north of Lake Tana at 6,000-10,000 feet above sea level near Gonder. In turn, the Angereb and the Tekezo feed the Atbara. The Atbara has properties similar to the Blue
Nile, rising and falling rapidly in flood as a large, muddy river,
but in the dry season deteriorates to a series of pools.
In describing the passage of
the Nile in the Sudan, I used geographic features
of the land. In Egypt, however,
I have made liberal use of locations and features that have historical or
architectural value to the discussion.
Ignoring the High Aswan Dam
and Lake Nasser, the Nile
leaves the 2nd cataract and Sudan, traveling once again in a
northeast direction past Abu Simbel, Amada,
Kurteh, Dendur, Philae, the 1st
cataract and Aswan. This Aswan
is not the location of the High Aswan Dam, but does have a smaller dam
constructed between 1899 and 1902 with modifications through 1934 and locks for
navigation.
Dendur is the former location
of the Temple of Dendur, which now resides in a special
wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York City. At
its new site, the temple is located on a raised platform along a simulated Nile River
with benches conveniently located. Along
one wall is an extensive history of the temple with the story of the two
brothers honored and the facts related to the temple being gifted to the people
of the United States
from the people of Egypt.
Past Aswan, the Nile
reaches the area of the Valley of the Kings
and Edfu, Gabelein, Luxor,
Karnak and Dendereh, to name just a few of
these historically rich sites. A more
detailed discussion of these archeological treasures may be found in my other
essays on Tutankhamen and ancient Egypt.
From Aswan to Cairo is about 500-miles. The last 200-miles before Cairo, the Nile
tends to favor the eastern shore and so most of the cultivated land will be
found there. In the Cairo area, Sakkarah, Memphis, Giza and, of course, Cairo is the dominant river features. Beyond Cairo
is the delta built mostly with 50-75 feet of silt from the Ethiopian Plateau. The delta is immense, measuring 100 miles
north to south, and about 155 miles from Alexandria
to Port Said. The seaward shore includes a number of
brackish lagoons, salt marshes and lakes approximately 52 feet below Cairo. Beyond the Delta is the Mediterranean
Sea into which the Nile empties.
The High Aswan Dam Aswan is a modest Egyptian city of less than 200,000 population,
located on the east bank of the Nile less than
50 miles from the border with Sudan. Between Aswan
and the Sudanese border are two dams: the Aswan Dam and the High Aswan Dam. Aswan Dam construction was
started in 1899 and completed in 1902 with a number of improvements through
1933 and was the first dam built on the Nile
to store part of the autumn floodwaters for future use. This dam also has four locks permitting
navigation and 180 sluices that permit the passage of Nile
silt to the farmlands of the north. In
time, it was found that the Nile flood waters
would reach the top of the Aswan Dam and a decision would have to be made to
once more extend the dam or replace it. The
age of the existing dam convinced the Egyptians that they were better off
building a new dam south of the existing dam to reduce the stresses on the
Aswan Dam and to transfer the biggest part of the workload to the new dam. And so the idea for the High Aswan Dam was born
around the end of World War II, but the dreamers could not anticipate the
effect of politics on its construction.
In 1948, the newborn United
Nations decided to convert the existing British mandate in Palestine to a new state for Israel
survivors of the holocaust and for the Palestinians. The Arab nations rose up it protest and
attacked the new nation. To the surprise
and dismay of Egypt,
Syria,
Jordan
and others, the Arab armies were defeated.
Around 1952, Egypt decided
to construct the High Aswan Dam and in 1954 submitted requests for loans from
the World Bank. Concurrently, Egypt
negotiated an agreement with the United States to provide technical
assistance and additional funding. The
agreement included a provision that the United States would conduct a
feasibility study for review by the Egyptian consortium prior to commitment for
construction. In addition, Egypt decided
to reduce anticipated loans by nationalizing the Suez
Canal, a decision that did not set well with England and France.
The nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 by Egypt resulted in Egypt being
attacked by England
and France
with Israel
joining in the fray. Outside interests
intervened and the war ended with Egypt in total control of the Suez Canal. During
this same period, the United
States submitted a negative feasibility
study, advising the Egyptians against building the high dam, and withdrew its
offer of financial aid. Egypt was
outraged and approached the USSR
for help. Since the end of World War II,
the United States
and the Soviet Union were involved in a cold
war that had many hot spots. The Soviet Union was only too glad for the opportunity to
tweak the nose of the U.S.
and agreed to assist Egypt. However, their offer of help came with many long
strings. They agreed to provide technical
and financial aid, but insisted that they also provide technical ‘assistants’
who would live in Egypt
and be paid and supported by Egypt.
Material and equipment (other than
material available locally), would be purchased from the USSR through
on-site representatives of USSR
companies, and finances would be arranged through USSR banks.
The USSR also
advised Egypt
that the Egyptian armed forces would be “upgraded” to USSR standards
by a staff of military officers and advisors from the USSR and that
military equipment, such as MIG
fighters, heavy tanks and support equipment would be sold to Egypt to
replace the “antiquated” equipment now used by the Egyptian armed forces. Additionally, contracts would be negotiated
for replacement and spare parts and supplies.
The construction of the High
Aswan Dam began, and in 1965, Gamal Abdel Nasser became president of Egypt.
During the following two
years, the USSR
made certain that the Egyptian armed forces were rebuilt in the Soviet
image. In 1967, Nasser,
his eyes sparkling with dreams of empire with his new powerful army,
transferred tens of thousands of his newly equipped troops to the Sinai Peninsula on the border with Israel. Syria followed suit on Israel’s
northern border. With the high dam
almost completed, Egypt
and Syria,
with the general logistics support of the Arab nations and the Soviet Union, launched the 1967 6-day war in anticipation
of a quick and decisive victory.
Israel monitored the huge military buildup on its borders
and in anticipation of the pending Arab attack; Israel struck the Egyptian air
force and destroyed the greater part on the ground. The Egyptian armored forces were encircled
and decimated in the Sinai before they were able to move into Israel. In a desperate effort to save what they
could, the Egyptian high command ordered a general retreat, but before they
could leave Sinai and return intact to Egypt, their army was surrounded
and captured by Israel
forces. Unable to care for so many
captives, Israel
escorted the unarmed lower rank prisoners to the Suez
Canal and set them free, directing them to return to Egypt. Only the Egyptian officers were
confined. Syria suffered equally at the hands
of Israel. The 1967 6-day war was a total disaster and a
humiliating defeat for the Arabs. In
public statements after the debacle, Nasser
insisted that Egypt
and Syria
had lost the war only because the United States and England, operating
from carriers in the Mediterranean Sea, had
participated in the war and assisted Israel in their unprovoked
attack. As late as 2007, 40-years later,
the general populations of the Arab nations still believed this fiction to be
the real reason for their loss.
Later, in 1967, at a meeting
of Arab nations in Sudan,
Nasser refused to consider any negotiations
with Israel. In addition, the U.N. had decided to turn on Israel;
siding with the Arabs and issuing Resolution 242 ordering Israel to withdraw
from the “occupied lands,” while totally ignoring the facts of the Arab
attack. Meanwhile, the Soviet
Union had started to replenish the military equipment lost by Egypt and Syria.
By 1970, the High Aswan Dam
was completed and formally inaugurated in January 1971.
The perceptive reader may
have noticed that though the United
States had withdrawn its offer to assist in
the construction of the High Aswan Dam after completion of the feasibility
study, no mention was made in this essay of the content of the study nor were
any reasons given by the writer for the withdrawal. This was not an oversight. Very little information of this nature was
found during research. It can only be
assumed that in the preparation of the study, the U.S. investigators uncovered
possible major faults in the dam’s design or location that cautioned against
construction. In the pages following, a
number of deficiencies in the dam’s design and operation are enumerated and
explained based on post-construction studies and evaluations conducted by other
than the United States, some or all of which may have also formed part of the U.S.
feasibility study.
Gamal Abdel Nasser died while
president in 1970 and Anwar Sadat assumed the presidency.
Still smarting from their
1967 defeat and completely rearmed by the USSR with modern Soviet weapons, Egypt and Syria plotted yet
another attack against Israel,
confident of the support of Arab world governments and populations. They waited
for the Jewish holy holiday of Yom Kippur in 1973, and launched a fourth attempt
to conquer Israel. . The
attack was unexpected and caught Israel by surprise. The Arabs made initial gains using heavy logistic
and strategic satellite support from the Soviet Union. The U.S. increased their logistics
support to Israel
and Israel
recovered, crossing the Suez Canal, trapping
the Egyptian army in Sinai, and marching on Port Said.
Concurrently, Israel
moved through the Golan Heights of Syria and advanced on Damascus.
Alarmed over the turn of events and seeing their surrogates facing
another major defeat by Israel, the Soviet Union threatened to enter the war, going
so far as to paint Egyptian markings on the Soviet aircraft. The United States, not wanting to risk
a possible broadened war, intervened and convinced Israel to enter into a cease-fire
with Egypt
and Syria.
At the conclusion of the Yom
Kippur War, Israel
had conquered Sinai, Gaza,
the Golan Heights and the West
Bank to the chagrin of the Soviet Union
who had supplied all of the armaments, and the many Arab states that had helped
finance the four wars with Israel.
During the first few years of
operation of the High Aswan Dam, the major benefits sought by Egypt appeared
to have been achieved. Hydroelectric power
generation was up sharply and floodwaters were being regulated and were under
control. But, was all as it
appeared? Questions and doubts began to
surface. Complaints from the Egyptian farmers
over increased irrigation and fertilization costs were being raised. Sudan was complaining that their share
of the water rights was in violation of a 1959 treaty. They also were upset that other decisions affecting
Sudan were made by Egypt without Sudan being consulted, suggesting that Egypt
was treating them as a vassal state dating back to when Sudan and Nubia were
part of Egypt. Ethiopia, the
home of the Blue Nile, annoyed that Egypt had not
consulted with them before constructing the dam, had initiated studies into
diverting Blue Nile waters for their own use
and was threatening to reduce the flow into the Sudan. The latter was a serious threat to the
Egyptian economy, not to be taken lightly. It would appear that Egypt had
substituted many new problems for old.
The dam was constructed over
a period of ten years at a cost of about one billion American dollars. Physically, the dam is 364 feet high, has a
crest length of 12,562 feet, a volume of 57, 940,000 cubic yards, and impounds
a reservoir (Lake
Nasser) of 137 million
acre-feet (169 billion cubic meters).
Negotiations between Egypt
and Sudan
resulted in the allocation of the discharge of approximately 74 billion cubic
meters to Egypt
(55.5 billion cubic meters) and Sudan
(18.5 billion cubic meters). The dam has
added about 1.8 million acres of irrigated land to Egypt’s cultivable area and
converted about 730 thousand acres of land from basin to perennial irrigation. Lake
Nasser, the second
largest man-made lake in the world, has an enormous storage capacity of more
than 40 cubic miles and a potential maximum surface area of 2,600 square
miles. Its vast size has permitted Egypt to stock
it with fish and create a bonus fishing industry of about 100,000 tons of fish
per year. About 17% of Lake Nasser
extends 125 miles into Sudan. A not inconsiderable benefit provided by the
dam is its hydroelectric plant with an installed capacity of 2,100 megawatts.
These achievements were not
without major non-financial costs.
Ninety thousand Egyptian peasants (fellahin) and Sudanese Nubian nomads
had to be relocated. Fifty thousand
Egyptians were transported to the Kawm Umbu valley, 30 miles north of Aswan to form a new
agricultural community called Nubaria.
The Sudanese Nubians, however, were relocated 370 miles from their homes
in a location called Khashm al-Qirbah. The
300-foot estimated depth of Lake
Nasser threatened many
precious artifacts as the lake backed up during construction of the dam. An international consortium was formed led by
the United States
to salvage what treasures could be saved.
Most important was the costly moving of Abu Simbel
from its centuries-long original location along the Nile
to a new location high on the cliffs above Lake Nasser. In recognition of the participation of the United States
in saving Abu Simbel and other ancient temples
and artifacts, Egypt
donated the Temple
of Dendur to the U.S. The temple now resides in a special wing of
The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Having resolved their
differences with Sudan,
Egypt
found even greater problems with Ethiopia. The Ethiopians felt that since their Blue Nile provided almost ninety percent of the flow to Egypt’s Nile, Egypt
should have consulted with them and coordinated the construction of the dam. They complained that Lake Nasser
was primarily a Blue Nile lake that benefited Egypt and Sudan, but not Ethiopia. Perturbed over being ignored by Egypt, they initiated
the preparation of Integrated Resources Development Master Plans (IRDMP) for
all the river basins of Ethiopia,
as they put it, “…to protect and conserve their natural resources.” They have since submitted a request to the
World Bank for financing the preparation of a Small-scale Irrigation
Development Project that, obviously, would precede construction – a decision
that has irritated Egypt.
Concurrently, Eritrea noted
that the waters feeding the Nile are a key
natural resource originating in both Eritrea and Ethiopia. Though they have not taken full advantage of
this resource, both Eritrea
and Ethiopia
are “water stressed.”
Eritrea is currently constructing a number of small dams
using Nile water for irrigation. They go on to say, “But we are afraid this
will anger Egypt,
the most powerful nation in the region.
We seek ways to peacefully share our common resource and to enhance our
environment.” Then they continue with
recognizing the risks being taken by the Ethiopian government relative to the
diversion and use of Blue Nile water.
The Eritrea
concerns are well founded. In his report
on the hydro-politics of the Blue Nile, Daniel
Kendie of the Michigan State University Press had this to say:
“Since concern with the free flow of the Nile has always been a national security issue for
Egypt,
as far as the Blue Nile goes it has been held
that Egypt
must be in a position either
to dominate Ethiopia, or to neutralize whatever
unfriendly regime might emerge there. As
the late President Sadat [President Sadat was
assassinated after he entered into a negotiated
peace agreement with Israel] stated ‘Any action that
would endanger the waters of the Blue
Nile will be faced
with a firm reaction on the part of Egypt, even if that action should
lead
to war.’ “
Egypt has never withdrawn or amended this position. In a contribution to Project Muse on
northeast African studies, in 1999 an anonymous author contributed additional
material to the Kendie position:
“In this respect, an acute observer of the Egyptian
scene recently wrote: Egypt
is a country
that has not abandoned its expansionist ambitions. It regards its southern neighbors as its
sphere of influence.
Its strategy is essentially negative: to prevent the emergence of any
force that could challenge its hegemony, and to
thwart any economic development along
the banks of the Nile
that could either divert the flow of the water, or decrease its volume.
The arithmetic of the waters of the Blue Nile River
is, therefore, a zero-sum game, which
Egypt
is determined to win….”
The waters of the Nile River
are more than just a large flowing stream.
The waters feed a narrow strip of irrigated
land, which, with the delta, is Egypt. In one respect, Ethiopia has more control over Egypt’s economy
through the Blue Nile, than Egypt
does. About 96 percent of Egypt’s
population occupies a narrow strip of land within twelve miles of the river, a
strip that is only four percent of Egypt’s land. Ninety-six percent of the land is arid
desert. Were it not for the Nile River
and its sediment…the grand civilization of ancient Egypt probably would never had
existed.”
With the Nile River
water barely adequate to service Egypt’s current needs, Egypt has
announced a new program, the New Valley Project. They plan to transfer 5 billion cubic meters
of Nile water from Lake Nasser
through the Western
Desert to the New Valley. As they state, “Seven million people will be persuaded to move away from the Nile to live in this new agricultural area.” (Emphasis
added) They go on to state, “This
project is very expensive, and the Nile may
not provide enough water. Although in
the past Egypt’s
official policy was to maintain a monopoly on Nile
water, today we wish to cooperate to equitably distribute the river resources
to bring stability to the region and to promote economic development. We also need help in monitoring the effects
of our water development projects on the environment.” With their announcement, Egypt has
created more doubt in the minds of the governments of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan and has
exacerbated what previously was a very dangerous political path.
Bad as it sounds, it gets
worse.
The Russian design of the
High Aswan Dam anticipated and provided for an annual silting of the dam and Lake Nasser
at an estimated 40 million tons per year, a silting rate that was based on the
annual Nile floods for many past years. Silting is one of the results of restricting
the normal flow of a river with a dam.
The old Aswan
dam did not silt, as does the new dam; it permitted passage of the soil that
farmers used to fertilize their fields in the north. In the 2002 Garzanti study discussed earlier
in this essay, the Italian author corrected this erroneous silting number from 40
to 210-250 million tons of silt per year, an increase of from 525% to
625%. The maximum capacity of Lake Nasser
is stated as a design total of 169 billion cubic meters. It would take more than an average lifetime
for the dam to silt up if the old rate was correct. Dr. Garzanti, however, in demonstrating
through actual measurement that the real silting rate is 5-6 times the old
rate, shows us that the design is faulty and the dam will silt in ten years
what the designers had estimated would take 50 to 60 years. What does this mean to future water use? As the dam ages and silting advances at the
accelerated rate, the volume of Lake
Nasser will be severely
reduced and there will be less water available in storage for most years and
especially for years of drought. It is under
this reduced water availability that Egypt has proposed the New Valley
Project with its increased water needs.
With Egypt planning
greater use of Nile water, despite its own
admission that there might not be enough water to service their plans, with Eritrea
constructing a number of small irrigation dams, with Ethiopia entering into a planning
state for the future diversion of Blue Nile
water, the future availability of Nile water
is bleak. The effect on the Egyptian
economy is predictable and from the past statements of the Egyptian government
on their rights to the Nile
River waters, the
reaction of the Egyptian government to the actions of Ethiopia and Eritrea is
equally predictable.
As serious as the described
international problems are, Egypt’s
domestic problems related to the dam are easily as bad and possibly worse.
The construction of the dam
permitted Egypt
to control and regulate the flooding of the Nile
north of Aswan. It also provided Egypt with the means of
establishing a reserve water supply in Lake Nasser
to guarantee river flow during years of drought. With these positive benefits came a
price. The farmers no longer were able
to fertilize their fields with the silt and sediment from the annual Nile floods, as they had done for centuries. Instead, they were forced to purchase and use
about a million tons of artificial fertilizers as a substitute for the fertile
soil once deposited by the river. The
increase in irrigated land permitted by the new dam has suffered from poor
drainage, which has led to increased salinity.
As a result, over one-half of Egypt’s farmland is now rated as
having medium to poor soils with reduced output.
The reduced flow of the Nile and the practical elimination of the river’s
sediments have affected more than just the farming community. Downstream soil replenishment has been
severely reduced and together with the reduced flow of river water to the Mediterranean Sea, has permitted salt water to enter into
and inundate the lower reaches of the river while reducing the flow of
nutrients to the sea. The delta has
started to accumulate salt, the creation of Lake Nasser has caused the water
table along the river to rise with increased pressure, some areas have shown
increased soil salinity, the offshore fish population of the eastern
Mediterranean has reduced dramatically without the river supplied nutrients,
the silt-free water below the dam has caused erosion of the downstream barrages
and bridge foundations and has caused coastal erosion in the delta. Without the annual floods and with the river
providing only a controlled irrigation, a parasitic disease (schistosomiasis),
associated with the stagnant water of the fields and the reservoir, has increased.
When the dam was built it was
assumed that the continuous annual flow into the Nile
from the Lake Victoria basin and the Ethiopian
highlands would fill and maintain Lake
Nasser. Long before the lake had reached its maximum
area and depth, the Egyptian engineers noticed a slowdown in the lake’s
growth. Ultimately, the lake stopped growing
and its size became relatively static.
Subsequent investigations found that the large area of the lake was evaporating
a quantity of water equal to the input from the Nile
south of the dam. Without added water,
the dam would grow no larger. Efforts
made to reduce the evaporation were unsuccessful. One such attempt called for a major part of
the lake to be covered with a thin film to reduce the area subject to
evaporation. With the lake now limited
to a volume considerably less than design, and with 5-6 fold increase in the
silting rate, Egypt
found additional water losses through seepage.
The latter was not a serious a problem since any seepage from the dam
would add to the downstream flow and could be included in the engineer’s
calculations when releasing water from the dam.
Another problem that
developed was with power generation. The
dual purpose of the dam was irrigation and hydroelectric power generation. The dam more than met the power generation
requirements of the design. The failure
was with the engineer’s inability to control the use of the generated
power. They treated the power generated
as inexhaustible, which it wasn’t. The
dam was constructed with 12 hydro-generators each rated at 175 megawatts, with
a total output of 2.1 gigawatts. By the
1980s, the dam was providing half of Egypt’s electricity. The dam increased Egypt’s total installed generating
capacity to 16.6 gigawatts up from 3.8 gigawatts in 1976. With the continued increase of thermal power
plants in Egypt,
the percentage contribution by the dam has dropped to less than 13
percent. The problem is that Egypt is now
using relatively cheap hydroelectric power for only one quarter of what it was
using 20 years before and is depending more on thermal plants using oil, gas or
coal. Their total power capacity is
estimated to be about 26 gigawatts in another three years. So, the dam will be contributing about 8.1
percent of Egypt’s
requirements by 2010, down from about 50 percent in 30 years, with the added
electric power needs being supplied with the more expensive thermal
plants. Nuclear powered plants have
never been considered.
Excerpts from the Garzanti
report summarize the major problems: “Until construction of the Aswan High
Dam…, the Nile represented the major source of
sediment to the eastern Mediterranean Sea….In
the past, fertile volcanic muds carried by summer floods of the Nile have brought prosperity to Egyptian dynasties. Today, the river is increasingly vital to a
rapidly growing population exceeding 100 millions, but it is facing a number of
environmental problems caused by extensive exploitation of its territory and
resources. Deforestation and intensive
land use on Ethiopian highlands led to accelerated erosion and loss of arable
soil, while dams built in Egypt
and Sudan
for flood regulation, water supply and hydropower virtually stopped sediment
transport to the sea. Rather than on the
delta and fan, huge volumes of sediment accumulate today in reservoirs,
resulting in rapid loss of storage capacity on one side, and in ravaging
erosion of deltaic cusps on the other.
Only a greater knowledge of the river system and its natural equilibria
can help improve watershed and coastal management, and thus mitigate
undesirable impacts of human activities.”
The interference of man with
nature may have serious consequences if not carefully reasoned before taking
action.
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