Egypt – Pike & Hurricane

The Nile: River Wars

Nikhil Gupta — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 13:28:21 +0000

It’s weird to imagine human beings as walking, talking sacs of water. After all, 70% of our body consists of it. Water is just as important to the individual as it is to the whole- it facilitates life on this planet. In 2010, the UN recognized water as a basic human right and called for countries and International Organizations to provide financial resources, help with capacity building and share technologies in order to grow together.

That’s fantastic right? Well, one thing studying political science teaches you is that it’s always complicated. Let’s try to break down the logistics of the idealistic goal of providing safe drinking water for the entire planet.

Water the tensions?

Fires require friction. And in this story, the friction is fundamental. Everyone needs water. However, clean water is scarce. How does one hydrate an exponentially growing population with the added complication of an imminent, irreversible, change of climate? Langford highlights that there are two dominant approaches to answer this question. The economic approach sees water as a commodity. This means that the delivery of water depends on market mechanisms and is regulated by price. Conversely, the social approach advocates for a top-priority universal access to water.

No prizes for guessing–the former is the dominant and widely practised approach.

In fact, several reports indicate that the implications of climate change would be droughts and mass water shortages. Researchers from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre conducted a study wherein they identified areas in the world where the likelihood of a water war is more likely to occur. The most volatile of these areas are transboundary waters i.e water bodies that transcend political borders and are shared by neighbouring countries. The likelihood of water-related friction amongst these countries is expected to increase by 74.9 to 95 percent. The lead author of this study, Fabio Farinosi, said in a statement that the key factor that would equip countries to avoid conflict is cooperation.

And there’s the catch! Countries sharing rivers as part of their main fresh water supply find themselves in a zero sum game situation. Ideally, they need to balance domestic needs with the needs of every party involved. But the reality is far from this, as there exist a multitude of factors influencing a country’s stance on a foreign policy situation.

And the situation surrounding the world’s longest river is turning out to be quite the conundrum.

11 Recipes for War

The Nile river basin encompasses 11 countries, and over 300 million people depend on it. Its resources, however, are distributed unequally and some countries are more vulnerable than others. In order to devise a win-win scenario, one needs to choose between equality and equity. Domestic and international needs must be shared instead of seen as a trade off.

Easier said than done. In particular, the geopolitical situation between Egypt and Ethiopia is quite concerning. The problem stems from the flow of river and the relative geography of the countries. For centuries, Egypt has had the lion’s share of the river, mainly due to historical treaties. It is also the most dependent on it. In 1979, the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat made the bold claim that the only thing that could make Egypt go to war is water. This status quo has been put to the test when Ethiopia decided on the creation of the largest dam in Africa by the blue Nile river.

How exactly is this a problem? Well, dams are like taps–they control the flow of the water. Moreover, Egypt happens to be at the bottom of this pyramid i.e. there are 10 other nations that are further upstream and would receive water from the Nile before Egypt. This concern was noted by Mohamed Abdel Aty–Egypt’s minister of water resources and irrigation. He estimates that if the water that’s coming to Egypt is reduced by 2% , one million people will be without a job.

From an Ethiopian perspective, the project to build the dam was seen as an initiative to fight their own poverty, and transition into a middle income country. Egypt’s claim to Nile’s waters can be traced back to the Nile Waters Agreement that was signed between Egypt and Sudan during the British colonial rule. This agreement assigned no water to Ethiopia and the other 8 countries that are based around the river. Thus, although Egypt might need the water most, the upstream states would not recognize its legal and historical claim.

The Ethiopian government claims that the dam would do no harm to Egypt because it is solely meant for hydroelectric purposes. The country has no plans to divert water for irrigation. This may be true in theory, but if the reservoir behind the dam is being filled, it could hold back water supply to Egypt for an entire year. This is especially worrisome for them because water passing through each upstream country comes with a unique set of complications. For instance, water passing through Ethiopian highlands would provide a year-long flow for Sudanese farmers that would be very pleased with this development. Alex de Waal of the World Peace Foundation states that the Sudanese government is already handing out leases for farmlands that will be irrigated once the dam in Ethiopia is built. While this is a boon for Sudan, it could be disastrous for Egypt.

Zero Sum Game

In addition to all the technicalities, there’s an emotional connection between Egyptians and the Nile. They’ve had an entire ancient civilization built around it. It’s their history- written in books and songs. If some sort of agreement isn’t reached, the chances for armed conflict are less abstract. It seems as though there’s trade offs to be made everywhere. One country’s misfortunes are another’s chance to grow and develop.

In such a stalemate, I’m reminded of the movie Saw–the one where a group of strangers play a sick game against their will that involves cutting off their own legs and other gory things for seven movies. It is later revealed that in every game, the strangers had to make a choice–similar to a zero sum situation wherein they either choose to win everything, or cooperate with each other. The idea was that in every situation, it was possible for every participant to survive through communication and trust.

This is the real world though. And unlike the Saw, the countries involved can get help from outside. If anything, the potential volatility in this region must be acknowledged by the African Union and the United Nations. War can always be prevented.

by Nikhil Gupta

Photo Credits:

On_The_Nile, pixelsniper CC BY 2.0

City of Aswan and the Nile river, Christian Junker CC BY NC NC 2.0

Nile Sudan, Stefan Gara CC BY NC ND

Nile at night, Bora S. Kamel CC BY NC SA

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Mahraganat: How a New Musical Genre Emerged in Egypt

Michael Schätzlein — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 13:26:10 +0000

A few years ago, no one would have imagined that Salam City, a poor suburb in the periphery of Cairo, could become the heart of a music scene that would come to influence the whole of Egypt. The town, which was erected after a 1992 earthquake, now houses artists that, although hardly known outside of Egypt, have succeeded in establishing a new musical genre that is played all over Cairo and is slowly spreading to other parts of Egypt. This new genre, which is called Mahraganat- “festival” in Arabic, combines heavily audiotuned lyrics written in the local slang with traditional Egypt shaabi music and influences from hip-hop and electronic music and hit the scene in 2009, just a year before the revolution began.

Mahraganat, also known as electro shaabi, can be understood as music created by the poor for the poor. Its listeners are mostly young working class people with low prospects for the future and the quality of music is not very high, since the technical possibilities are quite restricted due to a lack of funding. It started off on a local level, with online video platforms, like Youtube, being one of the primary ways of distribution. Artists would sing about the life in their neighbourhood, which made them quite popular with the people living there. Although Mahraganat has grown, spread and evolved over the years, it still retains its focus on the artists’ respective neighbourhoods and remains the music of the streets.

In the turmoil of the demonstrations that would lead to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s government and the ensuing chaos, it was easier for the artists to promote their music by giving concerts in spaces formerly reserved for bigger artists as there was nobody to hinder them from doing so. In a way, the Arab Spring paved the way for this anti-traditional kind of music.

It is also the Arab Spring that provided the main incentive for an evolution of the genre. With thousands occupying Tahrir Square in Cairo from January 2011 onward, it was inevitable for the artists and their music to be politicised. Their focus had shifted toward political expression and nowadays, the music also tackles social issues like the ever present sexual harassment of women in Egypt, drugs and violence, breaking with the taboo issues in Egypt’s traditional society. Other than most other genres, Mahraganat music dares to speak up openly, which is why it is considered too vulgar to be played on public radio stations and is viewed with contempt by most middle- and upper-class people.

The most famous amongst the Mahraganat artists, Sadat, is often credited with being the first musician of the genre, has become a hero of the young people of Salam City. He is a former aluminium factory worker who was able to overcome problems, like his social status, and is now a successful musician known all over Egypt, for example, his wedding party was attended by about 20,000 people. Sadat also inspires others to do as he has and despite his success, he stays true to his neighbourhood of Salam City where he continues to live and perform free concerts. Just like other artists, he still relies on performances as a primary source of income, as the Mahraganat scene is mainly directed via genre websites that provide the music for free.

Mahraganat, however, is not an isolated case. Various other music genres have emerged in the past few years in the Islamic world. Slowly, traditional Islamic society is opening up for what can be called a Westernisation of music. Muslim punk, also called Taqwacore, was popularised following the publishing of Michael Knight’s novel The Taqwacores in 2003. Taqwacore, although still tightly bonded to Islam, takes a more radical approach to religious themes than Mahraganat, which is also why religious authorities are feeling challenged by the ideas of Taqwacore. The scene witnessed a major crackdown in 2012, when Indonesian police forcibly shaved the heads of concert-goers in an effort to “rehabilitate” them into Indonesia’s predominantly Muslim society.

But not all of the new genres are critical of Islam. Muslim hip-hop, which developed during the 1990s, spawned a new sub-genre called “jihadi rap” following the events of 9/11 and the wars in Afganistan and Iraq. Artists of this genre rally against the USA and its allies, promote self-sacrifice and seek to inspire young Muslims to join the Jihadist movements. The USA quickly became aware of this and launched campaigns using hip-hop as a means of cultural understanding, with rap artists touring the Islamic world, like the national ping-pong team did in China back in the times of ping-pong diplomacy.

Following the politicisation of the music and media coverage on the Arab Spring, Mahraganat also became known outside of Egypt with various artists of the genre enabled to perform abroad. A circumstance which also inspired cooperation with the London-based urban music radio station Rinse FM, which tries to support Mahraganat music by giving artists opportunities to collaborate with UK electronic music artists and to learn not only about technical subjects such as mastering, but also about how they can sell their music better in order to expand. Sadat is one of them.

By Michael Schätzlein

Image Credit:

Picture 1: Ron Rothbart, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Picture 2: Ramy Raoof, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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