CAIRO<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Overwhelmed by cascading economic and political problems since the overthrow of\u00a0Hosni Mubarak<\/a>, this nation teeters from within even as it biggest threat may lie hundreds of miles away in the African highlands. Buried in the headlines is the future of the\u00a0Nile River<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and thus the fate ofEgypt<\/a>\u00a0itself.<\/p>\n Mubarak long neglected the security danger posed by other nations’ claims to the timeless pulse that provides 95% of this desert country’s water, without which its delta farmlands would wither and its economy die. As poor\u00a0African<\/a>\u00a0capitals increasingly challenge Cairo, however, the struggle has become one of the most pressing foreign policy tests for Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi.<\/p>\n African countries at the river’s source, notably\u00a0Ethiopia<\/a>, no longer feel bound by colonial-era agreements on water rights and are moving to siphon away larger shares of water for electricity, irrigation and business to meet demands of burgeoning populations.<\/p>\n It is a skirmish involving diplomats, engineers and veiled threats of war over geography’s blessings and slights and how nations in a new century will divvy up a river on whose banks civilizations have risen and tumbled.<\/p>\n “All of Egyptian life is based on the Nile. Without it there is nothing,” said Moujahed Achouri, the representative for theUnited Nations<\/a>‘ Food and Agricultural Organization in Egypt.<\/p>\n Morsi’s acknowledgment of the water crisis and his desire to reach a compromise to protect his country’s strategic and historical claim is evident: The Islamist leader has visited key Nile countries twice since his inauguration in June, and his prime minister, Hesham Kandil, is a former water and irrigation minister with connections to officials in African governments. An Egyptian delegation recently toured the region, listening to how Cairo might help build hospitals and schools in villages and jungles.<\/p>\n An advisor to the president quoted in Al Ahram Weekly said this of Morsi: “The man was shocked when he received a review about the state of ties we have with Nile basin countries. The previous regime should be tried for overlooking such a strategic interest.”<\/p>\n For decades, Egypt had concentrated on problems closer to home, including keeping the Arab-Israeli peace and tending to wars from Lebanon to Iraq. Mubarak, who survived a 1995 assassination attempt by Islamic extremists in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, had paid little attention to East Africa. But his regime was adamant \u2014 at one point hinting at military action \u2014 in preserving the existing Nile treaties.<\/p>\n That echoed a warning from his predecessor, President Anwar Sadat, in 1979: “The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.”<\/p>\n In a 1929 treaty and through other pacts, Egypt and its southern neighbor, Sudan, were granted the bulk of the Nile’s flow. The logic \u2014 filtered through decades of politics and power struggles \u2014 was that Egypt could not survive without the river. Nile basin countries, including Ethiopia,\u00a0Uganda<\/a>, Kenya and Tanzania, have seasonal rains and other water sources.<\/p>\n But economic pressure and increasing demand for energy and development have turned African countries’ attention to the Nile. Since 2010, Ethiopia, which now gets only 3% of its water from the Nile, and five other upstream countries have indicated they would divert more water and no longer honor Egypt’s veto power over building projects on the river.<\/p>\n
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Egyptians sit near the Nile River at sunset in Cairo. Neighboring African countries at the river\u2019s source, notably Ethiopia, no longer feel bound by colonial-era agreements and are moving to siphon away larger shares of water for electricity, irrigation and business to meet demands of burgeoning populations.\u00a0(John Moore \/ Getty Images\u00a0\/\u00a0February\u00a05, 2011)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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