Friday - January 17, 2020
Dems In Denial, Trump In The Nile
Team America: World Police and Mediator
Against the backdrop of continuing tension in the Middle East, the United States is playing a peacekeeping role in a dispute among Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia.
You won’t read about the Trump administration’s mediation in the mainstream press because it doesn’t fit the meme of a war-mongering president.
So here goes. The three countries agreed to meet this week in Washington to tackle problems over a dam project on the Nile River that may greatly affect water resources in Egypt and Sudan.
The differences among the three countries date back to May 2011 when Ethiopia started building a dam, which is known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
The $5 billion hydroelectric dam would exist on the Blue Nile near the Ethiopia-Sudan border. The reservoir would hold up to 67 billion cubic meters of water and take at least seven years to fill, which would decrease the river’s flow for at least that period by 25 percent. For Ethiopia, the dam would aid water needs and economic development, as it is set to supply the country with more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity. But it could be devastating for Egypt, which relies on the river for irrigation, fishing, and transport.
The river is so vital that Egyptian officials have made it clear that military action may occur if Ethiopia doesn’t come to an agreement.
Enter the United States as the mediator. Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia agreed to a series of four meetings in Addis Ababa, Cairo, Khartoum. This week’s meeting in Washington is the fourth in this round of negotiations.
It’s unclear whether the United States will be able to help settle this longstanding dispute. But it’s readily apparent that Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia think the Trump administration may be able to help.
How classic that Egypt wants to smite Nubia again. They’ve been doing that for 6,000 years.
Hey Ethiopia: build your damn 100 feet higher. Take the whole damn Nile. It’s your water to begin with.
The Nile flows south to north. The Nile River as you probably think of it really begins in Khartoum in Sudan, never really part of ancient Egypt. [ although the area was so heavily influenced by them that the nearby city of Meroe (aka Saba {son of Cush (Kush) in the bible} ] built their own pyramids {but in the spiky Nubian style} ]
South of Khartoum in Sudan the Nile splits into two smaller rivers, the White Nile and the Blue Nile. Further north in Sudan, downriver, the Nile gets bigger where the seasonal Atbarah River joins in, also in Sudan. However, the Blue Nile, and the Atbarah Rivers both flow from Ethiopia, where they drain the moist highlands.
The White Nile comes up from Lake Albert and Lake Victoria way down in Kenya, but is also fed by Ethiopia’s Baro River, which flows east to west across Ethiopia and in turn is fed by the smaller Birbir and Geba Rivers, which meander all over Ethiopia. The White Nile is the source of more than half of the water in the upper Nile, whereas almost all the good fertile silt that made the Black Land of Kemet of this very Egypt comes from the Blue Nile.
So a whole lot of the water in the Nile originates in Ethiopia. Most of these rivers are damned in several places, with hydroelectric generators.
Classically, the regions along the lower Nile are defined by the cataracts there. Aswan is at the first cataract and has always been Egypt. The old kingdoms of Kush and Nubia lie along the second to fifth cataracts, which are all close together. Khartoum is well south of the sixth and final cataract at Meroe. After that it’s all Deepest Darkest Africa.
~~~~
Footnote, and some Daily Geography
The above story would not exist if it weren’t for the Eastern African Rift, that ancient tectonic plate action that tore Africa off of Asia 25 million years ago, created the Red Sea and the Ethiopian highlands, and a bunch of volcanoes down in central East Africa.
You know how when you look at a global map and you see how eastern South America fits perfectly against western Africa? The same thing goes for that pinched bit of the Red Sea by the Straits of Hormuz. On one side you’ve got Yemen on the south end of Arabia, and on the other side you’ve got Djibouti on the coast, just northeast of Ethiopia.
That little area is known as the Afar Triangle, and it’s a scar of what happened a long long time ago. The land ripped apart sideways as well as vertically; the Afar Triangle is a depression, whereas the Sarawat Mountains on the Arabian side of the Red Sea rise up 12,000 feet. Plate tectonics, awesome stuff.
This is the part of the world where people originated. And moved the heck away as soon as they could: the west end of the Afar is bound by the appropriately named Awash River, which is flows lightly all year long except for the rainy season when it really really floods everything, then evaporates into salt pans, because the Afar area is the WORST PLACE ON EARTH, being terribly dry and unbelievably hot (120°) most of the year.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/17/2020 at 06:15 PM
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