With cyberwarfare, the battlefield is going online. Here’s everything you need to know.
Cyberwar: Here’s what you need to know.
Getty Images/iStockphoto
What is cyberwar?
At its core, cyberwarfare is the use of digital attacks by one state to disrupt the computer systems of another in order to create significant damage or destruction.
What does cyberwarfare look like?
Cyberwar is still an emerging concept, but many experts are concerned that it is likely to be a significant component of any future conflicts. As well as troops using conventional weapons like guns and missiles, future battles will also be fought by hackers manipulating computer code.
Governments and intelligence agencies worry that digital attacks against vital infrastructure — like banking systems or power grids — will give attackers a way of bypassing a country’s traditional defences.
Unlike standard military attacks, a cyberattack can be launched instantaneously from any distance, with little obvious evidence in the build up. And it is often extremely hard to trace such an attack back to its originators. Modern economies, underpinned by computer networks that run everything from sanitation to food distribution and communications, are particularly vulnerable to such attacks.
The head of the US National Security Agency (NSA) Admiral Michael Rogers said his worst case cyberattack scenario would involve “outright destructive attacks”, focused on some aspects of critical US infrastructure and coupled with data manipulation “on a massive scale”. Some experts warn it’s a case of when, not if.
What is the definition of cyberwarfare?
Whether an attack should be considered to be an act of cyberwarfare depends on a number of factors. These can include the identity of the attacker, what they are doing, how they do it – and how much damage they inflict.
Like other forms of war, cyberwarfare is usually defined as a conflict between states, not individuals. Many countries are now building up military cyberwarfare capabilities, both to defend against other nations and also to attack if necessary.
Attacks by individual hackers, or even groups of hackers, would not usually be considered to be cyberwarfare, unless they were being aided and directed by a state. For example, cyber crooks who crash a bank’s computer systems while trying to steal money would not be considered to be perpetrating an act of cyberwarfare, even if they came from a rival nation. But state-backed hackers doing the same thing to destabilise a rival state’s economy might well be considered so.
The nature and scale of the targets attacked is another indicator: defacing a company website is unlikely to be considered an act of cyberwarfare, whereas disabling the missile defence system at an airbase would certainly come close. And the weapons used are important too: cyberwar refers to digital attacks on computer systems: firing a missile at a data center would not be considered cyberwarfare.
Cyberwarfare and the use of force
How these factors combine matters because they can help determine what kind of response a country can make to a cyber attack.
There is one key definition of cyberwarfare, which is a digital attack that is so serious it can be seen as the equivalent of a physical attack.
To reach this threshold, an attack on computer systems would have to lead to significant destruction or disruption, even loss of life. This is a significant threshold because under international law states are permitted to use force to defend themselves against an armed attack.
It follows then that, if a country were hit by a cyber attack of significant scale, they would be within their rights to strike back using their standard military arsenal: to respond to hacking with missile strikes. So far this has never happened – indeed it’s not entirely clear if any attack has ever reached that threshold. That doesn’t mean that attacks which fail to reach that level are irrelevant or should be ignored: it just means that the country under attack can’t justify resorting to military force to defend itself. There are plenty of other ways of responding to a cyber attack, from sanctions and expelling diplomats, to responding in kind, although calibrating the right response to an attack is often hard.
What is the Tallinn Manual?
One reason that definitions of cyberwarfare have been blurred is that there is no international law that covers cyberwar, which is what really matters here, because it is such a new concept. That doesn’t mean that cyberwarfare isn’t covered by the law, it’s just that the relevant law is piecemeal, scattered and often open to interpretation.
This lack of legal framework has resulted in a grey area: in the past some states have used the opportunity to test out cyberwar techniques in the knowledge that other states would be uncertain about how they could react under international law.
More recently that grey area has began to shrink. A group of law scholars has spent years working to explain how international law can be applied to digital warfare. This work has formed the basis of the Tallinn Manual, a textbook prepared by the group and backed by the NATO-affiliated Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCoE) based in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, from which the manual takes its name.
The first version of the manual looked at the rare but most serious cyber attacks, which rose to the level of the use of force; the second edition released earlier this year looked at the legal framework around cyber attacks, which do not reach the threshold of the use of force, but which take place on a daily basis.
Aimed at legal advisers to governments, military, and intelligence agencies, the Tallinn manual sets out when an attack is a violation of international law in cyberspace, and when and how states can respond to such assaults.
The manual consists of a set of guidelines — 154 rules — which set out how the lawyers think international law can be applied to cyber warfare, covering everything from the use of cyber mercenaries to the targeting of medical units’ computer systems. The idea is that by making the law around cyberwarfare clearer, there is less risk of an attack escalating, because escalation often occurs when the rules are not clear and leaders over-react.
The US intelligence briefing lists Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as the major “cyber threat actors” to worry about. Russia has a “highly advanced offensive cyber program” and has “conducted damaging and/or disruptive cyber-attacks including attacks on critical infrastructure networks”, it warns.
China has also “selectively used cyber attacks against foreign targets” and continues to “integrate and streamline its cyber operations and capabilities”, said the report, which also said Iran has already used its cyber capabilities directly against the US with a distributed denial of service attacks targeting the US financial sector in 2012-3. The report also notes that when it comes to North Korea: “Pyongyang remains capable of launching disruptive or destructive cyber attacks to support its political objectives.”
US cyberwarfare capabilities
However, it’s likely that the US has the most significant cyber defence and cyber attack capabilities. Speaking last year President Obama said: “we’re moving into a new era here, where a number of countries have significant capacities. And frankly we’ve got more capacity than anybody, both offensively and defensively.”
Much of this capability comes from US Cyber Command, lead by Admiral Rogers who also leads the NSA, which has a dual mission: to protect US Department of Defence networks but also to conduct “full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries”.
Admiral Michael Rogers, director of the US National Security Agency and head of US Cyber Command
Image: Siim Teder/Estonian Defence Forces
Cyber Command is made up of a number of what it calls ‘Cyber Mission Force teams’. The Cyber National Mission Force teams defend the US by monitoring adversary activity, blocking attacks, and manoeuvring to defeat them. Cyber Combat Mission Force teams conduct military cyber operations to support military commanders, while the Cyber Protection Force teams defend the Department of Defense information networks. By the end of fiscal year 2018, the goal is for the force to grow to nearly 6,200 and for all 133 teams to be fully operational. The US is believed to have used various forms of cyber weapons against the Iranian nuclear programme, the North Korean missile tests and the so-called Islamic State, with mixed results.
Other agencies — such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and CIA — have their own cyber attack capabilities too.
The UK has also publicly stated that is working on cyber defence and offence projects, and has vowed to strike back if attacked in this manner.
What do cyberweapons look like?
The tools of cyberwarfare can vary from the incredibly sophisticated to the utterly basic. It depends on the effect the attacker is trying to create. Many are part of the standard hacker toolkit, and a series of different tools could be used in concert as part of a cyber attack. For example, a Distributed Denial of Service attack was at the core of the attacks on Estonia in 2007.
Ransomware, which has been a constant source of trouble for businesses and consumers may also have been used not just to raise money but also to cause chaos. There is some evidence to suggest that the recent Petya ransomware attack which originated in Ukraine but rapidly spread across the world may have looked like ransomware but was being deployed to effectively destroy data by encrypting it with no possibility of unlocking it.
Other standard hacker techniques are likely to form part of a cyber attack; phishing emails to trick users into handing over passwords or other data which can allow attackers further access to networks, for example. Malware and virus could form part of an attack like the Shamoon virus, which wiped the hard drives of 30,000 PCs at Saudi Aramco in 2012.
According to the Washington Post, after revelations about Russian meddling in the run up to the 2016 US Presidential elections, President Obama authorised the planting cyber weapons in Russia’s infrastructure. “The implants were developed by the NSA and designed so that they could be triggered remotely as part of retaliatory cyber-strike in the face of Russian aggression, whether an attack on a power grid or interference in a future presidential race,” the report said
Cyberwarfare and zero-day attack stockpiles
Zero-day vulnerabilities are bugs or flaws in code which can give attackers access to or control over systems, but which have not yet been discovered and fixed by software companies. These flaws are particularly prized because there will likely be no way to stop hackers exploiting them. There is a thriving trade in zero-day exploits that allow hackers to sidestep security: very handy for nations looking to build unstoppable cyber weapons. It is believed that many nations have stock piles of zero day exploits to use for either cyber espionage or as part of elaborate cyber weapons. Zero day exploits formed a key part of the Stuxnet cyberweapon (see below).
One issue with cyberweapons, particularly those using zero-day exploits is that — unlike a conventional bomb or missile — a cyberweapon can be analysed and even potentially repurposed and re-used. Also, once used, the zero-day exploits are usually rapidly patched by software vendors, which makes it impossible to use them again. These weapons can also cause much greater chaos than planned, which is what may have happened in the case of the Ukrainian Petya ransomware attack.
What is Stuxnet?
the-lightwriter, Getty Images/iStockphoto
Stuxnet is a computer worm that targets industrial control systems, but is most famous for most likely being the first genuine cyber weapon, in that it was designed to inflict physical damage. It was developed by the US and Israel (although they have never confirmed this) to target the Iranian nuclear programme. The worm, first spotted in 2010, targeted specific Siemens industrial control systems, and seemed to be specifically targeting the systems controlling the centrifuges in the Iranian uranium enrichment project — apparently damaging 1,000 of these centrifuges and delaying the project, although the overall impact on the programme is not clear.
Stuxet was a complicated worm, using four different zero-day exploits and likely took millions of dollars of research and months or years of work to create.
What are the targets in cyberwar?
Military systems are an obvious target: preventing commanders from communicating with their troops or seeing where the enemy is would give an attacker a major advantage. However, because most developed economies rely on computerised systems for everything from power to food and transport many governments are very worried that rival states may target critical national infrastructure. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, or industrial control systems, which run factories, power stations and other industrial processes are a big target, as Stuxnet showed.
These systems can be decades old and were rarely designed with security as a priority, but are increasingly being connected to the internet to make them more efficient or easy to monitor. But this also makes these systems more vulnerable to attack, and security is rarely upgraded because the organisations operating them do not consider themselves to be a target.
A short history of cyberwar
For many people 2007 was when cyberwar went from the theoretical to the actual.
When the government of the eastern European state of Estonia announced plans to move a Soviet war memorial, it found itself under a furious digital bombardment that knocked banks and government services offline (the attack is generally considered to have been Russian hackers; Russian authorities denied any knowledge). However, the DDoS attacks on Estonia did not create physical damage and, while a significant event, were not considered to have risen to the level of actual cyberwarfare.
Another cyberwarfare milestone was hit the same year, however, when the Idaho National Laboratory proved, via the Aurora Generator Test, that a digital attack could be used to destroy physical objects – in this case a generator.
The Stuxnet malware attack took place in 2010, which proved that malware could impact the physical world.
Since then there has been a steady stream of stories: in 2013 the NSA said it had stopped a plot by an unnamed nation — believed to be China — to attack the BIOS chip in PCs, rendering them unusable. In 2014 there was the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, blamed by many on North Korea, which showed that it was not just government systems and data that could be targeted by state-backed hackers.
Perhaps most seriously, just before Christmas in 2015 hackers managed to disrupt the power supply in parts of Ukraine, by using a well-known trojan called BlackEnergy. In March 2016 seven Iranian hackers were accused of trying to shut down a New York dam in a federal grand jury indictment.
Nations are rapidly building cyber defence and offence capabilities and NATO in 2014 took the important step of confirming that a cyber attack on one of its members would be enough to allow them to invoke Article 5, the collective defence mechanism at the heart of the alliance. In 2016 it then defined cyberspace as an “operational domain” — an area in which conflict can occur: the internet had officially become a battlefield.
Cyberwar and the Internet of Things
Big industrial control systems or military networks are often considered the main targets in cyberwarfare but one consequence of the rise of the Internet of Things may be to bring the battlefield into our homes.
“Our adversaries have capabilities to hold at risk US critical infrastructure as well as the broader ecosystem of connected consumer and industrial devices know as the Internet of Things,” said a US intelligence community briefing from January 2017. Connected thermostats, cameras and cookers could all be used either to spy on citizens of another country, or to cause havoc if they were hacked.
How do you defend against cyberwarfare
The same cybersecurity practices that will protect against everyday hackers and cyber crooks will provide some protection against state-backed cyber attackers, who use many of the same techniques. That means covering the basics: changing default passwords and making passwords hard to crack, not using the same password for different systems, making sure that all systems are patched and up-to-date (including the use of antivirus software), ensuring that systems are only connected to the internet if necessary and making sure that essential data is backed up securely. This may be enough to stop some attackers or at least give them enough extra work to do that they switch to an easier target.
Recognising that your organisation can be a target is an important step: even if your organisation is not an obvious target for hackers motivated by greed (who would hack a sewage works for money?) you may be a priority for hackers looking to create chaos.
However, for particularly high-value targets this is unlikely to be enough: these attacks are called ‘advanced and persistent’. In this case it may be hard to stop them at the boundary and additional cybersecurity investments will be needed: strong encryption, multi-factor authentication and advanced network monitoring. It may well be that you cannot stop them penetrating your network, but you may be able to stop them doing any damage.
What is cyber espionage?
Closely related but separate to cyberwarfare is cyber espionage, whereby hackers infiltrate computer systems and networks to steal data and often intellectual property. There have been plenty of examples of this in recent years: for example the hack on the US Office of Personnel Management, which saw the records of 21 million US citizens stolen, including five million sets of fingerprints, was most likely carried out by Chinese state-backed hackers.
Perhaps even more infamous: the hacking attacks in the run up to the 2016 US Presidential elections and the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee: US intelligence said that Russia was behind the attacks. The aim of cyber espionage is to steal, not to do damage, but it’s arguable that such attacks can also have a bigger impact. Law scholars are, for example, split on whether the hacks on the DNC and the subsequent leaking of the emails could be illegal under international law.
Some argue that it mounts up to meddling in the affairs of another state and therefore some kind of response, such as hacking back, would have been justified; others argue that it was just below the threshold required. As such the line between cyberwarfare and cyberespionage is a blurred one: certainly the behaviour necessary is similar for both — sneaking into networks, looking for flaws in software — but only the outcome is different; stealing rather than destroying. For defenders it’s especially hard to tell the difference between an enemy probing a network looking for flaws to exploit and an enemy probing a network to find secrets.
“Infiltrations in US critical infrastructure–when viewed in the light of incidents like these–can look like preparations for future attacks that could be intended to harm Americans, or at least to deter the United States and other countries from protecting and defending our vital interests,” said NSA chief Rogers in testimony to the US Senate.
Cyberwarfare and information warfare
Closely related to cyberwarfare is the concept of information warfare; that is, the use of disinformation and propaganda in order to influence others — like the citizens of another state. This disinformation might use documents stolen by hackers and published — either complete or modified by the attackers to suit their purpose. It may also see the use of social media (and broader media) to share incorrect stories. While Western strategists tend to see cyberwarfare and hybrid information warfare as separate entities, some analysts say that Chinese and Russia military theorists see the two as closely linked.
3. “Hiber Radio Exclusive Interview with Dr. Merera Gudina” – Hiber Radio, September 2013
4. ‹‹Dr. Merera Gudina talks about his new book “Ethiopia’s chaotic political journey and my memoirs: from the Ethiopian students’ movement up to EPRDF›› – SBS Amharic, November 2013
3. “Hiber Radio Exclusive Interview with Dr. Merera Gudina” – Hiber Radio, September 2013
4. ‹‹Dr. Merera Gudina talks about his new book “Ethiopia’s chaotic political journey and my memoirs: from the Ethiopian students’ movement up to EPRDF›› – SBS Amharic, November 2013
Sansom Milton is a senior research fellow at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
The media has been quick to associate Qatar’s decision to withdraw its peacekeeping forces from the disputed Djibouti-Eritrea border with the Gulf crisis. This connection was most likely made because Qatar’s decision came only days after both Djibouti and Eritrea announced that they are siding with Saudi Arabia in the diplomatic rift and downgraded their diplomatic relations with Qatar.
The withdrawal of troops, if understood as a knee-jerk reaction, contrasts markedly with how Qatar has been operating since the start of the crisis. Qatar has not reciprocated the harsh, punitive moves of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in a tit-for-tat spiral of vindictiveness. Nor has it reacted to countries which have reduced diplomatic relations, such as Jordan, by taking retaliatory measures against its thousands of nationals working in Qatar.
While Qatar Airways offices have been sealed off in Abu Dhabi and its senior staff harassed, no such measures have been taken by Doha. Furthermore, while food supplies through Saudi Arabia and the UAE were cut, Qatar continues to supply the latter with around 57 million cubic metres of gas daily. This shows that Qatar continues to play the long game by taking the moral high ground – a strategy that looks to have paid off given the number of international diplomatic capitals that have refused to cave into the intense lobbying of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to vilify Qatar.
Given what we know about how Qatar has operated during the crisis, the explanation that the troop withdrawal is purely a knee-jerk reaction to the downgrading of diplomatic ties does not add up. Doubtlessly, with downgraded relations, Qatar finds itself in a difficult position as a mediator and peacekeeper between the two nations. No mediator can operate effectively with reduced representation, both on a practical and reputational level. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the decision has been made in a retaliatory manner. Rather, there are three less evident reasons for why the decision to withdraw has been on the cards for some time and why it is now impossible for anyone in Qatar to advocate for maintaining the peacekeeping force.
The potential fallout of the crisis could have ripple waves spiralling out of the border dispute to the much larger Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict and the rest of the Horn of Africa at a time when the sub-region is facing a massive humanitarian crisis.
First of all, a fundamental principle of conflict mediation is that any third party must maintain a credible threat to walk away if the conflicting parties are not committed to reaching a negotiated settlement. Qatari troops have, for the past seven years, been stationed in the dusty uninhabited border region between the two East African countries to monitor the implementation of the terms of a ceasefire agreement brokered by Qatar in June 2010.
Despite consistent attempts to turn the ceasefire into a peace agreement, little progress has been made. A minor breakthrough was achieved in March 2016 when, in a deal mediated by Qatar, Eritrea released four prisoners from Djibouti’s armed forces who were captured in June 2008 during border clashes. However, in the past year, the Eritrean negotiating team has disengaged from the mediation process despite the United Nations Security Council mandated-arms embargo on Eritrea being re-approved in November 2016, demanding that Eritrea release all missing prisoners and allow UN monitors to enter the country.
The two states, particularly Eritrea, have not heeded calls for border demarcation and have gone into denial by refusing to refer to the border conflict as a serious issue. The presence of the Qatari peacekeepers had allowed both parties to grow accustomed to the status quo of a mutually beneficial stalemate.
Second, Djibouti and Eritrea consistently engage in a geostrategic game of shifting alliances. When Qatar entered the fray, the Djibouti-Eritrea border dispute was a minor conflict with very few international actors showing an appetite for mediation. Since then Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti has expanded to become the largest US military base in the region, China has also entered Djibouti, while, in April 2015, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea signed a security cooperation agreement and the UAE is currently completing the construction of a military base north of the port city of Assab in Eritrea from where its armed forces have been operating in the military campaign in Yemen. This particular corner of the Horn of Africa is by now far too crowded for a small nation like Qatar to justify its military presence as a buffer.
Third, maintaining the 500-strong presence of Qatari troops in a remote area is a costly and largely thankless endeavour. While the withdrawal was doubtlessly hastened by the changes in diplomatic relations with Eritrea and Djibouti, this has more to do with the infiltration of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia into Eritrea. This military presence clearly renders Qatari troops stationed thousands of miles away in an isolated area a soft target for direct or indirect retaliation. Moreover, 500 troops represent a significant investment of military manpower for an armed forces of around 12,000 during the most urgent crisis the country has faced in its history.
With Eritrea moving its forces into the contested Dumeira Mountain and Dumeira Islands, the temperature of the conflict has been increased and the situation is now more explosive than ever before, for all actors involved. The rapid development of the situation demonstrates the important stabilising role that Qatar had played under the radar for many years.
Moreover, the potential fallout of the crisis could have ripple waves spiralling out of the border dispute to the much larger Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict and the rest of the Horn of Africa at a time when the sub-region is facing a massive humanitarian crisis. This should serve as a cautionary note for the potential of escalation in other places where Qatari assistance has been keeping the lid on conflict, in particular, the Gaza Strip, where as a result of the increased isolation of Qatar by its Gulf neighbours we may see the end of the single most important donor to the reconstruction of the besieged territory to date. This should focus the minds of world leaders on the need to resolve the Gulf crisis amicably as soon as possible.
Professor Sultan Barakat is the director of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and professor in the Department of Politics at the University of York.
Dr Sansom Milton is a senior research fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
“This base can support Chinese Navy to go farther,” Chinese paper says
Djibouti has become host to several foreign military powers
(CNN)China has dispatched troops to Djibouti in advance of formally establishing the country’s first overseas military base.
Two Chinese Navy warships left the port of Zhanjiang on Tuesday, taking an undisclosed number of military personnel on the journey across the Indian Ocean.
An editorial Wednesday in the state-run Global Times stressed the importance of the new Djibouti facility — in the strategically located Horn of Africa — to the Chinese military.
“Certainly this is the People’s Liberation Army’s first overseas base and we will base troops there. It’s not a commercial resupply point… This base can support Chinese Navy to go farther, so it means a lot,” said the paper.
The Global Times said the main role of the base would be to support Chinese warships operating in the region in anti-piracy and humanitarian operations.
“It’s not about seeking to control the world,” said the editorial.
Chinese People’s Liberation Army-Navy troops march in Djibouti’s independence day parade on June 27, marking 40 years since the end of French rule in the Horn of Africa country.
Chinese military presence
At a regular press briefing Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang described the base as part of ongoing efforts to help bring peace and security to the region.
“China has been deploying naval ships to waters off Somalia in the Gulf of Aden to conduct escorting missions since 2008,” said Geng. “The completion and operation of the base will help China better fulfill its international obligations in conducting escorting missions and humanitarian assistance … It will also help promote economic and social development in Djibouti.”
China has expanded its military ties across Africa in recent years. According to a report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), cooperation with Africa on peace and security is now an “explicit part of Beijing’s foreign policy.”
In 2015 Chinese President Xi Jinping committed 8,000 troops to the UN peacekeeping standby force — one fifth of the 40,000 total troops committed by 50 nations — China also pledged $100 million to the African Union standby force and $1 billion to establish the UN Peace and Development Trust Fund.
More than 2,500 Chinese combat-ready soldiers and police officers are now deployed in blue-helmet missions across the African continent, with the largest deployments in South Sudan (1,051), Liberia (666), and Mali (402), according to the ECFR.
“Blue-helmet deployments give the PLA a chance to build up field experience abroad — and to help secure Chinese economic interests in places such as South Sudan,” said the ECFR report.
Africa is home to an estimated one million Chinese nationals, with many employed in infrastructure projects backed by the Chinese government.
“China’s involvement in African security is a product of a wider transformation of China’s national defense policy. It is taking on a global outlook … and incorporating new concepts such as the protection of overseas interests and open seas protection,” said the report.
US ‘strategic interests’
China joins the US, France and Japan, among others, with permanent bases in Djibouti, a former French colony with a population of less than one million residents.
Though small in both population and size, Djibouti’s position on the tip of the Horn of Africa offers strategic access to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
The strait, which is only 18 miles wide at its narrowest point, connects the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean beyond.
One of the world’s most important sea lanes, millions of barrels of oil and petroleum products pass through the strait daily, according to GlobalSecurity.org.
US Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, stressed Djibouti’s location during a visit to the US Camp Lemonnier garrison there earlier this year.
“This particular piece of geography is very, very important to our strategic interests,” Waldhauser said in joint appearance with US Defense Secretary James Mattis.
The US military has some 4,000 troops at Camp Lemonnier, a 100-acre base for which it signed a 10-year, $630 million lease in 2014, according to media reports.
Elsewhere in Djibouti, the US military operates the Chabelley Airfield, from which the Pentagon stages drone airstrikes, likely into Somalia and across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into Yemen, according to the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York. The Pentagon is investing millions in the base, and satellite photos show several construction projects, the center reported last year.
US Marine Corps MV-22 Ospreys prepare to land at a landing zone during training conducted in Djibouti on January 10.
‘Get-rich-quick scheme’
Japan, which has seen tense relations with China over disputed islands in the East China Sea, has established what it calls an “activity facility” to support its anti-piracy efforts there.
A spokesperson for the Japan Self Defense Forces said 170 troops are at its 30-acre facility in Djibouti.
Lease terms would not be released, but Japan will spend about $9 million to operate the facility this fiscal year, the spokesperson said.
Edward Paice, director of the London-based Africa Research Institute, said a base in Djibouti makes a lot of sense for China, just as it does for Japan or the US.
“It (China) has cited its desire to play a greater role in peacekeeping, and it has combat troops in both South Sudan and Mali. It’s logical that it needs an actual base somewhere in Africa, which is really no different from the Americans saying that they need Camp Lemonnier as a headquarters for operations in Africa, whether in peacekeeping or counterterror or whatever,” Paice said on The Cipher Brief website.
Picture taken on May 5, 2015, shows work in progress on the new railway tracks linking Djibouti with Addis Ababa.
Paice points out that China made a substantial investment in Djibouti — about $500 million, according to reports — to build the Djibouti portion of a rail line to the capital of neighboring Ethiopia.
“It’s a confluence of these factors — trade, military, and stability in the host country’s government” that brought China to Djibouti, Paice said.
Meanwhile, for Djibouti, it’s all about money, Paice said. “This is a fantastic get-rich-quick scheme — to rent bits of desert to foreign powers. It’s as simple as that.”
CNN’s Serenitie Wang, Daisy Lee and Junko Ogura contributed to this report.
The musician’s latest album, with songs hailing Ethiopia’s glorious past, is the fastest-selling record in the country’s history. But his political views have made him enemies at home
Teddy Afro … somewhat unintentionally, a flag-waver for the Ethiopian opposition. Photograph: Mulugeta Ayene/AP
Tewodros Kassahun’s manager meets me on a quiet suburban road inside a gated compound. With their neoclassical mansions, manicured lawns and white picket fences, compounds such as this are a rarity in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and this one is as grand as it gets. Still, I’m underwhelmed as we turn in to the driveway of the house, which, by contrast with its neighbours, is relatively modest. This is, after all, the home of the biggest star in Ethiopian musical history: Teddy Afro.
He greets me in the living room, padding around in a tracksuit and socks. The house is in a bit of a mess, and he apologises – they’re clearing up the remains of an album launch party over the weekend. He and his manager are in high spirits. Three days earlier, they released Ethiopia, his fifth studio album; it had a record $650,000 recording budget, was the fastest-selling record in the country’s history, and topped Billboard’s world albums chart. Teddy’s relief is palpable – the release was beset by delays – as he settles into a chair and begins outlining his philosophy. “Art is closer to magic than logic,” he says, beaming cheerfully.
It is difficult to overstate Teddy Afro’s popularity and importance in Ethiopia today. “His level of celebrity is simply unprecedented,” says Heruy Arefe-Aine, the organiser of the country’s Ethiopian Music festival.
Teddy Afro – Ethiopia
Ethiopia has long had a remarkably unified pop music culture – a national canon heard on buses and in bars across the country – but even in this context, Teddy stands out. He is the only artist of his generation to have risen to the level of Mahmoud Ahmed and Aster Aweke, the two greats of post-1960 Ethiopian pop, but at home at least he has comfortably outrun them both. Moreover, his significance reaches well beyond national borders: his popularity among the 2-million-strong Ethiopian diaspora, especially in the US, is unparalleled. The Ethio-Canadian R&B singer the Weeknd has cited him as a major influence.
But he is also a controversial figure. In 2008, he was imprisoned for a hit-and-run offence, which he has always denied he was responsible for. Many regard the jail sentence as a politically motivated move by Ethiopia’s authoritarian government, and a reaction to his 2005 album Yasteseryal, released in the year of a hotly disputed election. The lead single, whose video featured archive footage of the former emperor Haile Selassie and the bloody revolution that followed his reign, was interpreted by many as an indictment of everything that followed the emperor’s demise, including the current regime.
He became, perhaps somewhat unintentionally, a flag-waver for the Ethiopian opposition, a reputation he has maintained. The song is still, for all practical purposes, banned.
He makes for an unlikely political radical, and indeed his manager makes clear from the outset that politics is off the agenda. But he is nonetheless keen to explain the new album’s message. Lyrics are everything in Ethiopian music, and his – rich in idiom, allusion and wordplay – have excited his fans ever since he broke on to the scene in the early 00s. He argues that the country, under a state of emergency after violent anti-government protests last year, is slipping backwards. “We used to be a model for Africa,” he says, “but, because of our government, our country is divided.” The album is a call for unity and the rehabilitation of Ethiopia’s glorious past. “This younger generation is in a dilemma about their history,” he continues. “I feel a responsibility to teach them about the good things from their history. They should be proud of their achievements.”
Teddy Afro on stage in New York. Photograph: Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images
Glancing references to the government aside, this is fairly inoffensive stuff. But in fact the politics are tricky. At the centre of the album is the story of Emperor Tewodros II, a 19th-century warrior-king whose rule is often seen as marking the beginning of modern Ethiopian history. “He fought and died for this country,” says Teddy, gesturing at a painting of the monarch on the living room wall, and pointing out that they share the same name. But the problem for many of Teddy’s critics is that his is a fiercely disputed view of that history. To many modern Ethiopians, Tewodros represents feudalism and imperialism. To some, his rule was characterised by the conquest and subjugation of other ethnic groups. But to his supporters, he united the country and resisted European colonialism.
Teddy’s previous album, Tikur Sew, released in 2012, did something similar for an even more controversial figure, Emperor Menelik II, hero of the Battle of Adwa in 1896, which saw the defeat of the invading Italians, but also the man responsible for the conquest of much of modern-day Ethiopia. Teddy, like Tewodros, Menelik and Selassie, hails from the Amhara region; his critics see him as peddling a sort of nostalgic Amhara nationalism. His living room also contains an original sword belonging to Menelik, the old imperial flag, and a photograph of Selassie. “The younger generation need to know what our fathers did for this country,” he says. “It is clear that Menelik fought for Ethiopia, for unity, and against colonialism.”
Teddy Afro – Semberé
Although the album Ethiopia contains an eclectic mix of influences (the second track, Semberé, could be by Manu Chao), and lyrics in several of Ethiopia’s 88 languages, Teddy remains in many ways an Amhara musician. He recalls sitting as a young child on the knee of Hirut Bekele, a popular Amhara vocalist from the 60s and 70s, as she performed in small clubs in Addis Ababa. “She was like a queen,” he remembers. His early work was reggae-infused but in his recent albums he has returned to a more recognisably Ethiopian sound, though funkier and insistently catchy. Traditional vibrato vocals, the itchy triplets of traditional Amharan rhythms, highly polished synth-heavy production: all this is the language of modern Ethiopian pop.
The latter has often been a source of frustration to Ethiopia’s musical old guard, who lament the lack of instrumentation among the younger generation, although Teddy points out that a live band plays on the album’s final track. He is a child of two musicians – his mother was a dancer who toured the world, his father a songwriter for a police orchestra in 50s Addis Ababa – but he came of age in the 80s under the military regime known as the Derg, when live music all but disappeared as a result of a strict overnight curfew that lasted for 16 years. Like most pop stars of his generation who began their career amid the heady post-Derg optimism of the late-90s club circuit, Teddy sings and plays keyboard.
It is perhaps for this reason that Teddy is almost unheard of beyond Ethiopia and its diaspora. Despite its distinctly Ethiopian vernacular, his music is still pop: cosmopolitan and perfect for dancing to. Musicians such as Mahmoud Ahmed or Mulatu Astatke (the father of Ethiopian jazz) appeal to western audiences drawn to a more exotic sound, complete with live bands. Teddy doesn’t offer that. But in any case, his focus is closer to home. “This is a dangerous time,” he says. “My priority now is Ethiopia.”
The Oromo extremist elites have repeatedly told us that their vision for Ethiopia is as follows:
Option 1: Recreate/restructure Ethiopia under the domination of Oromos’ in which:
– Oromo language and culture to be dominant with “Wake Fatah” as dominant religion.
– New name and flag for Ethiopia
– Addis Ababa (Finfine) the center for Oromia
– Every Ethiopian to be under their dominion
Option 2: Free/independent Oromia (including Finfine) after disintegrating Ethiopia -this is a fall back scenario, if they could not achieve Option 1
As they know very well that Option 2 is impractical and not feasible, they are working very hard to realize Option 1 in an incremental manner. More than 20 years ago, they secured the “Oromo land” with Latin alphabet written language and they have been busy to create a unique non-Ethiopian identity for themselves. Their next move is to strengthen their foothold on Addis Ababa, wait for an opportune time when the Federal Government is destabilized/weak, and declare their dominance. They have been asking for our arms and legs so far but they will not be satisfied until they fully swallowed all of our body. Actually, the Oromo extremist elites are never satisfied until they “Oromize” the whole Ethiopia.
The Oromo extremist elites have the following myths and false concepts in their mindset, which have shaped their vision of their future role/position in Ethiopia.
They perceive themselves as a majority ethnic group( that is not true they need at least 51% share among the Ethiopian population to be majority even in that case it is unconstitutional to claim dominance )
They contribute higher share to the GDP( that is true but they are also getting the biggest share of the Federal Government Budget support and Foreign Direct Investment and the Oromo population have been enjoying better economic dividend than other regions as most of investments and job creation are around Addis Ababa). However, as industrialization and economic development expands throughout the country and natural resources(such as oil and gas) start to be exploited in various regions, the GDP variation among the regions will narrow
They claim that they have been marginalized economically, socially and politically( that may have been true until Emperor Haile Selassie time but after that it is not true, actually EPRDF allowed them to have their own territory ( 1st time in their history, under unified Oromia) and they were allowed to freely develop their language, culture and religious practices over the last 26 years(including the recent registration of Irrecha annual anniversary by UNESCO as intangible asset)
They feel that they have higher negotiation power than other regions on the Federal government and they should use that to arm-twist the Federal government to achieve their Option 1 vision (They have the myth that Ethiopia cannot survive without Oromia or if Oromos’ revolt Ethiopia will be paralyzed). However, the fact is that even though they have tried to paralyze Ethiopia over the last two years, they have failed and they shall continue fail.
They have the victim mindset claiming that Emperor Menelik had killed huge number of Oromos’ who resisted his expansion agenda, however they tend to forget the atrocities committed by their nomadic ancestors on the original citizens of today Oromia, some 400 and 500 years ago. It is recorded in history that the nomadic Oromos’ expanded their ‘territories to the northern part of Ethiopia through war and domination but failed to fully dominate it ( actually they were ultimately swallowed and melted into the Ethiopian time tested and sophisticated governance system). It looks the Oromo extremist elites are again trying to fulfill the unrealized dream of their ancestors to dominate Ethiopia.
For those Ethiopians who may feel my views, I reflected above on Oromo extremists are too exaggerated or not true, below is the front picture of the Oromia Cultural Center in Addis Ababa, which was inaugurated about two years ago, as proof. See how the widely spoken and constitutionally recognized working language of Ethiopia is written intentionally below both the Oromifa and English and with very small letters. This is the reflection of what they intend to do to anything non-Oromia Ethiopian assets and heritages. For your information if you write Amharic name of your business over/prior to the Oromifa name in the Oromia State, you will be immediately forced to change it. Why did the Addis Ababa city administration and the Federal Government have given blind eye to this gross violation of the constitution on the naming of the Oromo Cultural Center? Could it be to appease the Oromo extremist elites?
As a conclusion I strongly oppose most of the Council of Ministers approved draft legislation on Oromos rights on Addis Ababa, as summarized below
Provision in Draft Law
Reason for Rejection/Opposing
Culture, language and arts:● To ensure that Oromo residents in the city can benefit from the “special interest” provisions stipulated in this proclamation, Afaan Oromo shall serve as a working language of the City Administration.
● To reflect Oromo people’s identity and to commemorate historical events relevant to the region’s people, the original names of public squares, roads and neighborhoods.
● The city administration will facilitate conditions for the construction and promotion of theaters, entertainment venues, and cultural and art centers that reflect Oromo culture and history in the city.
● The city administration will work with Oromia state authorities to make sure that museums in the city carrybooks and other artifacts on Oromo history and culture.
● With relation to Oromia state, the city’s previous Oromo name, Finfine, will have equal legal recognition as the name Addis Ababa. The particulars on the usage of the two names will be determined by a regulation
Land provision:
● The Oromia state will be given land on which it can erect buildings for government activities and public services free of lease payment.
Job opportunity:
● Youth residents of Oromia towns and rural areas surrounding Addis Ababa will be made beneficiaries of the job opportunities in the city.
● Youth residents of Oromia towns and rural areas surrounding Addis Ababa will be made beneficiaries of the job opportunities that arise from water development, waste disposal, recycling, basin development, transport services and the likes.
● Health care: Oromo residents of towns and rural areas surrounding Addis Ababa shall be entitled to access health care services at government hospitals and medical facilities like any resident of the city.
Provision of Market places:
● The city administration shall establish market places, covering the cost, where farmers’ cooperatives from Oromia can sell their produce.
Condominium housing provision:
● Officials and employees of Oromia will be included, having a certain quota, in the lottery drawings of government-owned condominium housing in Addis Ababa.
Compensation and permanent rehabilitation
● Farmers in the city administration, who are displaced due to development activities, shall be entitled to compensation adequate for “permanent rehabilitation”.
– What if other citizens in Addis Ababa ask to be served in their languages, we need to minimize issues that divide us rather than expand them. What about the rights of non-Oromo speaking but majority population in Adama (Nathret), Bishoftu (Debre Zeit) etc?
– It is clear that this provision has no any historical merit, as there were no squares, roads and other sites in Addis Ababa during Minilik time. This decision will further bring division and conflict.
– We have only 20% of the population in Addis Ababa as Oromo. What about the history, heritage and culture of the remaining 80% population who have worked hard to bring Addis Ababa where it is today?
– Same as above
– Using two legal names for Addis Ababa (Addis Ababa is a unifying melting pot for all Ethiopians and an anchor for the Federal government) will be confusing and no need to give it two names/brands. Imposed change of name/brand will be the source of perpetual conflict. If required, Oromia state could issue a law to recognize Finfine equal to Addis Ababa in it own territory.
– As of today, Oromia has no constitutional right to use Addis Ababa as its base.
– Unless the Ethiopian government is unknowingly facilitating the creation of an apartheid system, job opportunities anywhere in Ethiopia should be available equally to all Ethiopians based on competency. This provision is against the Constitution.
– Does that mean Ethiopians form other than Addis Ababa & its surrounding will be discriminated?
– What about Farmers Cooperatives from other parts of Ethiopia (Southern Ethiopia, Gojjam, Afar, Debre Berhan etc). This will create an apartheid system where one Ethnic group having undue comparative/competitive advantage. A potential for conflict!
– Officials in Oromia have been acquiring and selling lands in different parts of Oromia. This is an additional gateway for corruption.(The practice have been an Oromia official from Bishoftu/Dukem will swap land with an Oromo official in Shashemene or Adama and through that arrangement so many of the Oromia officials are now investors).
Well, the entire world was changed. A lot of monarchies and empires fell and a lot of new countries appeared – Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, etc in Europe. And many new countries around the world, including the US in its form! Big changes in 100 years, right?
Now, here is Europe today:
and the world:
Big changes in 100 years?
Well, yes – you can see the European Union, there is no USSR, many new countries appeared in Africa and Middle East, etc.
Now, you can see big changes in every 100 years – do you know what the situation would be in the next century?
I guess no one knows.
Maybe there will be no country by 2100, but a one world government?
There are three big determinants: population, how productive your citizens are, and will your country remain intact.
The first depends strongly on your population. More so as population growth in most places is slowing towards a rate of zero.
The second depends on how long you’ve been growing, and whether your cultures institutions support growth. By then, most countries will have been growing for a while. And better institutions seem to be something many cultures have been willing to choose (think East Asia).
Put those two together, and India will be the largest, China second, and the U.S. probably third. America could be passed by some other countries with large populations (Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, for example) but I think the American lead is too big. In the long-run, net immigration and Americans having more kids than other rich countries will win out.
The third point is tougher. Will India and China stick together? America tried that, and I don’t see it happening again.
I think a lot of parts will peal off of China. But I don’t think they’re large parts, so China’s population will stay quite large. There might be some south/north split, and that would clearly make a difference. That seems unlikely.
I would not be at all surprised if India fractured a bit. So many changes are coming their way from having a large economy that no one will know how to react.
So there you have it: India, China, America, with a possible flip-flop in the first two.
Yvan Testu, want to understand the world, study history economy and international relations
A country is just a recent concept mainly developed after 1918
Historically the main political tool used to organise the land was the Empire, at the beginning empires were limited to powerful cities protected by great walls from the tribes migrating into the surronding lands.
Then empires extented their control and projected power to much distant land, eventually some imperial powers were in competition for intermediary lands ( called Marshes )
Empires were divided, others cooperated, others have been challenged with modernisation and were unable to project power anymore so they just vanished, others had overtly conflictual interests that led to millenium long war
The treaty of Tordesillas divided the world in two, the west, spanish, and the east, portuguese
After the franco english confrontation that led to the independence of America, a doctrine later institutionalized by Monroe, rationalized the two hemispheres division, the Western hemisphere composed of north and south american continents will be under Washington supervision and the Eastern hemisphere encompassing all Europe, Asia and Africa continents will be under supervision of the main european powers, later called the colonial powers
As recently as 1910 the eastern hemisphere was still led by empires, most famous being the french empire, Britain, the dual germanic empires Austria and Prussia, the Russian empire, the Ottoman empire labelled Sick Man of Europe, the Japanese empire, the Dutch empire in Indonesia, the Chinese empire although profoundly in decay, some rests of the Portuguese and Spanish empires and a huge islamic zone stretching from Morocco to Indonesia divided between Persian, Turks and Turko mongols divided into Khanate and Sultanate
The reorganisation made in Paris after WW I started with the dismantlement of the Germanic, Austrian and Ottoman empires and a reorganisation of the British Raj Government of India Act, 1919 which were broken into economic entities called Nations, transnational institutions were created, most famous being the open and permanent diplomatic infrastructure called the League of Nations but they organized also large scale surveillance and established the control of human migration ( passport, visa,ID, custom control )
WW II precipited events, there is now almost 200 nations into the United Nations and America launch others transnational entities to help the international trade and to ease global finance ( OECD and IMF )
But this is only half of the story, Britain demonstrated that empires can be organized around water, rivers, sea, oceans that are the real trading lanes, harbors the real capital and straits ( Oresun, Dover, Gibraltar, Ormuz, Suez, Mallaca ) and Isles ( Malta, Cyprus ) the real strategic spots to protect.
Planes and stratospheric shuttles confirm the trend, human genius is less and less constrained by the tyranny of the land owners and warlords, even geography does not rule anymore, Switzerland recently opened an efficient tunnel breaking the Mont Blanc Massif obstacle
History has been written around the Land, the future will be written around the Water, nations inherited from the Land competition is now meaningless
Humanity will be divided into civilizations, but trading will be done around rivers, watersheds and seas
Here are the main watersheds in Europe
We can expect a creation of a danubian entity, an integration of the baltic states with the Dniepr watershed, and a breakup of the complex russian system
Concerning Europe the most possible scenario is a Greater Europe encompassing all hinterland of the Baltic, Northand Mediterranean sea
EU is already a rich entity but inside this entity some are blessed by the geography ( flat land, abondant rivers and lot of renewables energy ), the group Belgium, Netherland, Switzerland and Germany is still dominating the world economy and it is only a start
I’m surprised that everyone’s mentioning China and India. I know population counts a lot in the economy but China and India are the most populous now.
A hundred years is a lot. Just look at the technological innovations and the steady shifting in the world maps that have taken place in the last century. Empires were broken down, colonies gained independence, China rose to prominence…a lot has gone down.
Now imagine a hundred years later taking history into account. There are lots of possibilities. Endless, really. A little event could radically change the world order.
Personally I have my money on African nation. Africa has the numbers, diversity , resources, market- it’s all there. In a hundred years, an African state(s) might get leaders who care about the nations that were thrust upon them by the colonisers, stand up to the West and uplift his people.
After that, it’s easy to imagine other African countries going the same way or the aforementioned state conquering neighbouring nations or just persuading them to form some union. God knows Africa has too many countries, each with it’s own leeches( politicians).
This could happen sooner than you think.
Arni Highfield, former Police officer at Hong Kong Police Force (1974-2005)
The United States
China has picked the low-hanging fruit. It will be difficult for them to continue the growth of recent decades. They have also entered the ‘Middle Income Trap’, but arrogantly are in denial, claiming that the rules of economics that apply to everybody else don’t apply to them.
Unless they get over this attitude, they will never fully realise their potential.
Europe is far too socialist and fragmented, and protectionist to take the lead. Russia is going backwards, and India, the last possible contender, has far too much ground to make up and intractable problems to solve. (Germany and Japan are just not big enough, same applies to UK. Brazil and Indonesia have, like India, too many institutional problems that are not easily resolved. )
Mathew Cherian, Economics was my core specialization for my MBA from WMU, USA.
You are asking for a forecast 83 years ahead, to give a deterministic answer, it will be the world economy, assuming we might have inhabitants in other part of space who will be still young.
On the other hand, how technology is increasing the entropy of human lives existential demands, those who are around may be in particle state and economy may not be the way things work, then science would have reached its culmination of maintaining intelligence just by energy available from sun light.
For millennia, the Nile River has served as the backbone of Egypt, the lifeblood of its people. Gradually, though, the land of the pharaohs is losing its grip.
Late last month, Uganda hosted the first ever heads-of-state summit aimed at resolving disagreements over the waters of the Nile. But it produced no major breakthrough and appeared to be a flop. In coming months, the opening of a major dam in Ethiopia will truly test Egypt’s anxieties that countries upstream are refusing to bow to its demands. The dam’s opening will reveal just how much leverage Egypt has lost.
Egypt has a strong historical and legal claim to the Nile dating back to the colonial era, but that framework is being undercut by rapid development and population growth upstream. Currently, more than 430 million people live across the 11 countries that make up the Nile Basin: Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Eritrea. The population of the Nile Basin is likely to jump to nearly 1 billion by 2050.
The upstream countries “can’t wait forever for Egypt to get onboard,” says Aaron Wolf, a professor of geosciences at Oregon State University. At the same time, he adds, the river is being valued less for its water supply and more as a means of producing electricity. “That whole conversation is shifting both the power balance and the interest to upstream states.”
Under a 1959 agreement, rights to virtually all of the Nile’s water was split between Egypt, which is entitled to 55.5 billion cubic meters, and Sudan, with 18.5 billion. Egyptians and Sudanese depend on the water much more than their upstream neighbors; Egypt in particular receives practically no rainfall, and relies on the mighty river for 97 percent of its water. But over the years, upstream countries have taken issue with the terms of that decades-old agreement, to which they were never parties.
In 1999, nine riparian countries formed the Nile Basin Initiative to try and manage the waters. South Sudan became the 10th member after it gained independence in 2011; Eritrea sits as an observer. The initiative began work on a new framework for governing the river, but Egypt and Sudan refused to sign on to a deal reached by other nations in 2010, known as the Entebbe Agreement. Egypt subsequently froze its participation in the initiative and has held out ever since, insisting it won’t return unless it is guaranteed notification before the construction of any new project on the river and until all decisions are made by consensus.
Other nations are loath to give Cairo de facto veto power over their domestic infrastructure plans. But to hear Egypt tell it, any major change to the framework and its historical water rights could leave it dying of thirst.
Sissi has made a noticeable push toward greater engagement with his African neighbors south of the Sahara, but the dispute over the Nile is proving to be a stubborn obstacle.
That position inspired Egypt’s initial opposition to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is scheduled to open along the Blue Nile at some point in the next three or four months. Ethiopians view the dam, which will be Africa’s largest hydroelectric facility, as a source of national pride that they hope will power the continent’s fastest-growing economy. When construction is complete, the dam will stand more than a mile wide and 570 feet tall, and will more than double the country’s current capacity to generate energy. Waters from the Blue Nile comprise roughly 80 percent of the river that traces its way into Egypt.
For decades, Egyptian politicians have discussed any interference with the Nile’s waters as an existential threat. In 2013, Egyptian politicians unknowingly mused about sabotaging the Ethiopian dam on live television. Before construction began in 2011, Egypt reportedly considered a military response to block Ethiopia from interfering with the river’s flow. Decades earlier, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat declared that water was “the only matter that could take Egypt to war again.”
Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan—where the Blue and White Niles meet to form the great river—signed a deal to resolve their dispute in 2015. Egypt has since offered grumbling support for the dam, suggesting it recognizes the need to support upstream nations’ demands. Once the dam opens, no one expects Egypt to take a rash step and follow up on Sadat’s old threat.
But Egypt’s internal politics have made it difficult to back down entirely, so some amount of posturing is likely. Yet Cairo has few cards to play.
The more apocalyptic predictions about the dam’s impact on Egypt’s waters are likely overstated, says Kevin Wheeler of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute. “There’s a lot of hyperbole, ranging from some believing it’ll do nothing, to others claiming that it will devastate Egypt,” Wheeler says. “Neither of those two extremes are accurate, and there’s a lot of space in the middle for reality.” If anything, the dam could help regulate water flowing into Egypt and keep the country supplied during times of drought.
The biggest test will be in the first few years, as Ethiopia plugs up the Blue Nile to fill a vast new reservoir. If Egypt and Ethiopia are on the same page, Wheeler says, they will be best positioned to mitigate any droughts or water shortages. After that, water is likely to flow downstream at a constant pace.
The Ethiopian dam was not explicitly on the agenda during the recent Nile summit. But Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi were the only two foreign leaders who bothered to show up, suggesting that other nations want them to resolve their differences before anything else can be accomplished.
The summit began inauspiciously, when presidential guards for Sissi and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni got into a shoving match inside the State House, Uganda’s presidential residence. It didn’t get much better when technical teams from multiple countries reportedly walked out at one point during the discussions. Analysts said little of consequence had been achieved.
Sissi has made a noticeable push toward greater engagement with his African neighbors south of the Sahara, but the dispute over the Nile is proving to be a stubborn obstacle. Still, his presence in Kampala suggests that he recognizes Egypt’s changing position and is trying to maintain some authority.
With Egypt’s population set to grow by nearly 30 million by 2030, its own demand for water will increase. All the while, climate change will increase the variability of the river’s flow by 50 percent, according to a recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Nile’s volume is likely to rise by 10 to 15 percent, researchers predict, but there will also be more years of drought as well as years of surplus. All that instability might make it more appealing to rely on a system of dams that regularize and control the river’s flow.
The passage of time will force Egypt into signing on to a new or modified river management agreement, predicts Salman M. A. Salman, a consultant and former water law adviser for the World Bank. “Egypt will look right and left and will find that the dam is completed, that Ethiopia is trying to build other dams and the only alternative left for them is to cooperate,” Salman says. “Time is not on their side.”
Julian Hattem is a journalist based in Kampala, Uganda. You can follow him on Twitter at @jmhattem.
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