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Regional Events
Introduction
I am going to use the pronoun (we) in some parts of this essay; it is not the Royal We, though. The (we) I am to use here indicates only to myself and to those readers who agree and identify with what they are reading, with these I may have the right to speak in their name and say (We), just as any one them may represent me and say (We), and he have all the same rights. I have, in the past, admonished, though obliquely, for using this style of writing. Those who mocked and played the cunning at the time wanted that readers fall into their trap of making them confuse this (we) with other (we)’s, including the Royal one, where, specially there, no claim was laid for such an honor; this is exclusive, of course, to our tyrant who when using the we, is not using my (we), but the Imperial We. This is what I want to make clear before you, reader, go on reading, and come across one of those (we) s and then keep wondering, leaving yourself a comfortable pray for the Hyenas infesting the bush around us. I saved you effort and time! Now, there is here another concern, which should be addressed as well. It is that this article may lead the naive to believe that in it, is implied a claim that Eritrea is historically part of Ethiopia. This is not true, because this writer knows that Nation-States in modern Africa appeared only after World War II. Besides, it was always an exaggeration to say that Abyssinia was more than a geographic term for an Area inhabited by a mosaic of ethnic groups ruled by Degesmatchs and Rasses some times calling themselves kings and perpetually waging wars of pillaging and plundering on each other like any war lord realm. The description by the Scotsman James Bruce of Abyssinia of the 18th century is evidence to this and a showcase that the states we are speaking now about are a different type of Nations, the Nation State an invention of the great French Revolution. Perhaps a glimmer of truth strikes the mind at hearing Ras Mikael the powerful vizier of king Teclehaimanot say to Bruce “Safety! Where is this safety? I find myself forced to fight daily only to survive.” No doubt that the central part, including parts of Eritrea, may have a blurred memory of a common great Empire in the distant past, that of Axum. But then, due to its remoteness in time it was like a sweet dream for some and a wishful thinking to others, but in both cases it was so remote as to offer ancestry to those who wanted to claim its legacy in our time, and were forced to stay orphans. There is simply not much of information beyond what one may find from the obelisks of Axum and the ruins at Yeha and Metera. There is, so far, nothing of what historians and archeologists call primary sources or documents to corroborate any of the claims. The decline of Axum gave way to new entities of which what we call now Eritrea, except the central highland, took no part, and in fact western Eritrea was part of the successive kingdoms and Empires which originated in what we now call Sudan, the latest of which was the Funj Empire which continued until the year 1821 and ruled as far as beyond Keren. The irrational theories of some Ethiopians, claiming that Eritrea, should have stayed part of Ethiopia, on the basis of History is what it is; self-serving irrational claim and can’t stand any degree of serious scrutiny. Even if, for the sake of argument, the historicity of some time unity is accepted as a fact, it will not prove anything matching and standing equal and in par to the Eritrean peoples’ choice. If these Ethiopian unionists are speaking in the language of history and modern political logic, then what they are saying implies effectively that Sweden should claim Norway which was part of it until 1905, and it also calls for Germany to claim Austria and that Indonesia should claim the Phlippines, Singapore, and Malaysia as all were part of the great Malayan Empires and kingdoms before the arrival of the Portuguese, their logic implies also that Ghana should claim the whole of west Africa to be integrated to it as the entire area, once part of the great ancient Empire of Ghana; A claim for chaos to ascend throne. The firm stand of this writer is that the Eritrean people have chosen modern Eritrea apart of Ethiopia and that is what counts, and in there is all the legitimacy of the Eritrean State; the will of the people, gives the Eritrean State all the legitimacy it requires, all of it, and that is the end of the Story. The important thing here to remember is that although Eritrea and Ethiopia are two different political entities, the affinities which bind their interests is much more strong than say the relations between Eritrea and Egypt. In fact there is no reason, any reason that makes Eritrea or Ethiopia sacrifice these relations for momentary and passing gains, the way the PFDJ and the rulers of Ethiopia are now doing. A further concern is also embedded in this essay. Because here is in this essay, there is a walk for us down and along a fast lane of history; this, comes with its anxieties and, of course, a concern lest some one misinterpret the writer’s intentions and take the wrong impression of him that he is trying to make the reader draw all-encompassing conclusions from historical events. Let the reader be assured that there are no sweeping judgments driven here, actually it believed here that it is the safer view that one which asserts that sweeping judgments built upon induction and enumeration, however great the number of samples may reach, they will still remain too small to generalize from and unify the human experience in time in one single capsule. There are those, like Ato G. Ande, who may brandish their red cards to our faces and attempt forcing us into a paradise of the idiot, by just sitting back calm and believing in the maxim History Is As You Tell It. To these gentlemen we say this; your word is either a piece of sophistry or else you couldn’t have said it; For what one says after he says it, is history, and what are you then going to do if the advice of “History is as you tell it” is well taken and applied to itself with all sincerity by others who would choose, as the maxim advocates, to believe that what you said was only “History Is Not As You Tell it”? It is as you can see a barren, self-defeating doctrine. But its real danger doesn’t lie here. It lies in that it is the word and Gospel of oppressors of all time. Why? Because, it justifies all injustices by reducing those to only points of view, it justifies all wars, it justifies enslavement, human sacrifices, and it justifies pogroms, holocausts and all sorts of atrocities. It also can be seen that those who adhere to this doctrine are willing to go as far as saying “why not, my history is as my historians tell me, better even as I am telling it myself here and now”. This shall not then concern us as we first reckoned, their tool is self-contradicting and barren. In studying history, it is best and more meaningful to believe that there are, certainly, and away from sweeping generalizations, usefulness for it in the life of nations. One of the great utility to history is, that it: “Enlarges the imagination, and suggests possibilities of action and feelings which would not have occurred to an uninstructed mind. It selects from past lives the elements, which were significant and important; it fills our thoughts with splendid examples and with the desire of for greater ends than unaided reflection would have discovered. It relates the present to the past, and thereby the future to the present. It makes visible and living the growth and greatness of nations, enabling us to expand our hopes beyond the span of our own lives. In all these ways, the knowledge of history is capable of giving to statesmanship, and to our daily thoughts, a breadth and scope unattainable by those whose view is limited to the present.”[i] Phantasmagoria and Partnership This is part of what Shabait.com said about the paper presented by the dictator to his cabinet on April 6, 2006: “Moreover, the President’s paper dealt with the national reconciliation process in the Sudan and Eritrea’s positive role in the peace process in East, West and South Sudan, Eritrean-Sudanese relations and future programs, the Somalia issue and the TPLF regime’s destructive role under the blessing of the big powers, Eritrea’s strategy in building a united Somalia, Eritrean-Egyptian relations in the political, socio-economic, cultural domains and bilateral cooperation in the fields of trade and economy, as well as political and security affairs concerning Yemen.” This guy must be living in his own remote planet; the Eritrean Cabinet discusses the Sudanese National reconciliation? Isn’t it more suitable that this cabinet discusses the other reconciliation? The one, which never had a chance to take off, only because of a man, who now is shamelessly singing for Reconciliation in foreign lands, stood in the way! But it is not this entry only that came into this paper. We are now told that the Eritrean-Egyptian relations are to be looked at in the context of a strategy and that is besides the building of a united Somalia. The latter, of course, is only symptomatic of an inferiority complex ridden mind, feeding, no wonder, self-aggrandizement on a megalomania inflicted small dictator. This is the only explanation available unless one chooses the alternative and believe a man, who couldn’t build a united Eritrean house when he had the power and the chance, and extend credence to his boasts of ability now, to the extent of hosting dreams of a mission, one superpower, armed with international legitimacy, found, practically, unrealistic to achieve. The other explanation is that all these can’t be taken with any degree of seriousness outside the fact that the tyrant feeling vulnerability and weakness, is responding with illusory show of force; the act of projecting an image of a non existent maximum strength and ability to cover the reality of his weakness and impotency, is a trick as old as tyranny itself, and is never in short supply from the tool-kit of Dictators, brandishing it willy-nilly in time of weakness and imminent decline. There is only one element in the paper which should blow all the bells and whistles in our minds. This is the upgrading of relations between Egypt and the PFDJ regime to a strategic one. Of course this is not what Eritreans would want. Eritreans would not accept for their nation to play the role of a glove for a remote power against their neighbors. This kind of policies should be condemned and through that make it be known to those who are showing enough shortsighted to believe that their strategic interests could be better served by entering into a partnership of oppression and enslavement of our people, are in the wrong side of history, and let it be known to them that their friend, no matter how long it takes, will definitely fall, and that when the time of reckoning comes their interests will be looked at with much less than sympathy. . Free will or Insinuation? This policy of strategic partnership with Egypt at this time is, of course, a bad idea and involves the sacrifice of the long term interests of Eritrea for the short term personal interests of the tyrant in protecting and securing his position as the hangman of the Eritrean people. We don’t know what the Egyptians’ role in developing this drama is, it, also, is not known what they may think if they indeed are not the main player behind, but they would, most likely, welcome such a development as this type of relations between any of the neighbors of Ethiopia and Egypt would be a thorn in Ethiopia’s flank and would, most certainly, introduce a degree of discouragement in pursuing its struggle for a fair share of the Nile waters which Egypt, it seems, thinks that the river and its waters, from its sources to its mouth belongs exclusively to her and that countries like Ethiopia and Uganda are only huge tanks for its water reserves[ii]. If this relation is insinuated by the Egyptians as a bulwark to deter Ethiopian demands by using Eritrea as their tool, then they are reiterating a policy that failed some one hundred and thirty years ago; a policy which brought their Army to Gundet and Gura in our modern Eritrea, and to their defeat and destruction, in spite of their modern equipment and the expertise of commanders and generals of the veterans of the American civil war’s confederate ranks. This is a policy which brought bankruptcy to Egypt and fall into debts un-payable taken bellicose by Britain to militarily occupy Egypt and confiscate its sovereignty for the next seventy years. History of Egyptian Imperialism
The Egyptian interest in the Nile basin south of its borders is not a new development neither is the fact that Egypt is incapable of seeing itself less than an Imperial power surprising. The latter has nothing to do with the facts on the ground: it is a psychological state of mind pervading all the strata of the Egyptian elite. There is no ruler of consequence to the Egyptian modern history who didn’t see his country as a hegemonic power over its neighbors east or South. This has its roots in the history of the Egyptian State established subsequent to the retreat of the French occupation army of Napoleon Bonaparte from Egypt. Mohammad Ali, a commander of the Albanian regiment of the Ottoman Turkish Army, was appointed a viceroy to Egypt from the Sultan in Istanbul. Quickly, he established himself as independent from the authorities in Istanbul in everything but name. For this reason and many other reasons he is considered, rightly, the founder of the Modern Egyptian State. Mohammed Ali’s time was a time for Egypt often described by Egyptian Historians as the time of urgency, and truly it was. Egypt was still in the grip of the trauma of the French occupation, yet the occupation was not in its entirety as bad as it seemed. It was the first encounter of Egypt with Europe since the end of the crusade wars. The occupation offered Egypt a mirror to see itself on it, and a standard against which it measures itself. What it saw after that was the main catalyst that helped create a sense of urgency to modernize itself. Egypt, at that time, was infected with the virus of ‘catching up’ as an Arab modern commentator once wrote.[iii] The Pasha of Egypt perceived that in order for Egypt to modernize itself, education in the European style should be introduced and as such He carried out an education development plan; He sent educational missions abroad particularly to France and invited many European experts. He also approved the establishment of secular schools. In his reign, a massive upgrade and extension of the irrigation system took place. Medical and technical schools were opened to serve both the army and the people. Translation of European literature became so common, a pace that enriched the Egyptian literature and knowledge. In 1820, Mohamed Ali approved the development of long-staple cotton plantations. In few years, he began to sell cotton to European countries, which were in need of raw materials because of the enlarged industrial capacity caused by the emerged industrial revolution. The crop became Egypt's principal export and money began to flow to Egypt. The other tier of Mohammed Ali’s reform and enrichment plan was that of the Army’s recreation along the western school of military and this, in the end gave him and Egypt extensive capabilities and an effective tool in service of his ambitious project of Empire building for Egypt, himself at the helm. Consequently, Egypt expanded itself to the east, west and the south and started exerting its hegemony. Mohammed Ali conquered Libya in 1820 and annexed parts of what is now known as the Egyptian Western Desert including the famous SIWA oasis. Starting 1820 and until 1822 he conquered and subjugated Nubian, and Sudan up to Sinner in the South and Kurd fan in the west where extraction of gold immediately thereafter began. At the same time the Sultan in Istanbul granted him the governorship of Crete. The Egyptian control of the red sea, now, after earlier conquest of the 1815 of Honjas and central Arabia and the collapse of the Sahibs, was now complete. But the European powers of the time (France and Britain) were uneasy about this and he was later forced to sign a treaty upon which he had to give Syria up and to pledge not to expand to the east. Muhammad Ali’s reign, as mentioned here- above was also marked by the introduction of western methods of Education, Medicine, Agriculture, and Engineering beside other reforming measures were introduced. To this end he sent students to Europe, mainly France, to cultivate the expertise required to raise his idea of empire to a realistic level. Accompanying one of this student delegates, in the capacity of the spiritual guide to the students, was the famous Sheikh Rifa’a Al Tahtawi of whom we will talk about later on in this essay. When Mohammed Ali died, three of his descendents followed him on the throne. None of them had the will to pursue their grandfather’s projects and in fact they were weaker than to do any of that. The fourth in line, Ismail, was the one who had the will and the chance. He took it and he tried his hands.
The Khedive Ismail, a grandson of Muhammad Ali came to the throne in the year 1863. He was the next Empire builder. Egypt in his time was thriving at the expense of exporting cotton, which was short in the markets of Europe as the American cotton was prevented from reaching it courtesy of the raging civil war in America. It was also during the reign of Ismail that the French engineer De Lessepes built the Suez Canal, with Britain and France being the biggest shareholders. Khedive Ismail, bound by the pledge of his grandfather of not facing the eastern side of his borders in search of achieving any imperialistic ambitions, has his mind, now, set to build the Empire by incorporating into his domain the Nile valley south, until the final sources of the waters. The year Ismail ascended the throne, the American Civil war was in its second year. Europe has already replaced its American Cotton imports by the Egyptian cotton and thus Money started to flow to Egypt; a bonanza was created advancing the day of Egyptian re-entry into Empire building business. The inauguration of the Suez Canal in 1869 was a tell tale of what was coming ahead. Khdeive Ismail invited almost all European royals and dignitaries of Europe including Empress Eugene of Austria, the representative of the French royals and many Others, he threw a party of few days length, a copy of the famous Arabian Nights at the Canal City of Ismailia, and continued for a month in the whole of Egypt which was hosting, many of those European dignitaries, expenses paid. In anticipation to his Empire building, Ismail, hired European adventurers to scout and explore along the Nile valley. Some of those adventurers sent by Ismail were Gordon of Khartoum, Baker of the Nile and Slatin Captive of the Mahdi. Meanwhile the ottomans conceded to him to administer the Red sea littoral including Sawakin, Massawa and Zeila’ a. Now that those who matter, Britain and France, are his business partners in the Suez project, he calculated that they will not mind his imperialistic adventure and thus he made his mind to visit his grandfather’s dream of imposing conquest and hegemony on his neighbors to the south. The eastern wing was still protected by Mohammed Ali’s Treaty. Ismail’s adventures were different than his grandfather’s, for his now carry its philosophic justification, that of civilizing the savages. The philosophic cover here was offered by no other than his indirect mentor the famous Sheikh Rifa’a al Tahtawi’s theories of the virtues and the nobleness of civilizing the black savage as came in his book “Takhlis Al-Ibriz fi Talkhis Bariz”, the Arabic for “The Extraction of Gold in Summarizing Paris”. Ismail recruited American mercenaries from the ranks of the confederate army following the American Civil War, for his great project of building the Egyptian Empire. The Egyptians had Massawa since 1865. In 1875 they destroyed the Islamic principality of Harar and occupied it. The tough nut to crack was the highlands of Abyssinia and the mission he prepared for conquering Abyssinia, was sent there under the leadership of the Swiss mercenary Munzinger Pasha. Munzinger’s Army occupied Keren in December 1847. Earlier in October of the same year Colonel Arendup, a Dane mercenary in the service of Ismail’s project, Occupied Ginda without resistance, and the irony here is that he sent Naib Mohammed of Hargigo to Yohannes with an ultimatum for the delimitation of the borders. Yohannes locked up the messenger. In the meantime, reports reached the Ethiopians that the Egyptians had crossed the frontier into Ethiopian territory on the way to Gonder. This force under the command of Munzinger consisted of about 2,000 men. They were ambushed, and tribesmen killed Munzinger and nearly all his followers. In the other direction of the stage, Colonel Arendup’s force was attacked at Gundet in November 16th 1875. His column consisted of 2,500 infantry, armed with Remington rifles, and 12 mountain guns. There were a number of European and American officers under his command. Possibly, due to overconfidence at the victory at Ginda, without any resistance, Colonel Arendup was not ready for an attack, and the fact that the Ethiopians had rifles was a complete surprise. The Egyptian force was practically annihilated, among those killed were Colonel Arendup, Arakel Bey Nubar (nephew of the Egyptian Prime Minister), Count Zichy (brother of the austrian envoy minister to The ottoman court), and Rustum Bey an Egyptian Prince. An American officer collected the survivors, and managed to reach Massawa. Retaliation in his mind Ismail prepared a larger Army. This was sent again to Gura in what is now Eritrea. The Army was commanded by the Egyptian General Ratib Pasha having in his staff many Americans the most prominent of which was General Loring. In March 7, 1876 the Egyptian Army was decimated and forced to retreat never to come back. The war of Abyssinia and Ismail’s extravagancy caused the bankruptcy of Egypt a situation that led to the exile of Ismail and the occupation of the country by the British. There are one or two lessons to drawn from this history. Most important between these are that the Egyptian elite is spasmodically aware of imperial objectives to be achieved to satisfy its vanity, a compound engrained in the foundations of the modern Egyptian State starting with Mohammed Ali. It is here worthy to observe that the history of Egypt in the last century and half century was surprisingly dialectical, for we see Mohammed Ali and his attempts to build his Empire by incorporating his Eastern Arab Neighbors’s. He took Industrialization of his country central to his project. Few years after the failure of his project his ambitious grandson, Is mail, revived the ambitions of the grandfather to build the Empire facing up south Along the Nile, his failure brought Egypt, a seventy years of occupation, and loss of sovereignty. At the end of these came the Mohammed-Ali like Gamal Abdul Nasser. He faced east (like Mohammed Ali to build the Empire and was close to achieving it when he was ruled Egypt and Syrian 1958-1961 but like Mohammed Ali he was forced to abandon the project. Industrialization was also at the heart of his project. His heir Sadat was more like Ismail even in, he looked away from the east and tried his hands in Africa. His Air force showed in the Congo war at one point of time and his Nile policy, thinly veiled Imperial, was all too clear as exemplified in the open polemic which took place between Sadat and Menghistu Hailemariam. Is it then wise for Eritrea to have a policy upgraded to a strategy with a State addicted to the illusion of Empire? After all to coin a policy at a level of Strategy between nations is to bind the policies of the nations in question obligingly towards promoting the interests of each other. But this turns tricky, when it takes place between the weaker and the strong. Is it wise to tie the urgent and easier issue of border (if it is a border issue), to the grand designs of controlling the Nile and the Empire building of another nation. There are two winners in this bargain, certainly Eritrea is not one of them: the tyrant is a winner in the narrow sense; and even then he is not a real winner because what he thinks he will get from the Egyptians, that of Protecting his regime, is limited, insecure, and dependant on circumstances and international political effects, in the other hand Egypt wins in this relationship because it contributes to tying Ethiopia’s hands when it comes to the plans of controlling the Nile and this comes almost for free. The alliance between Ratib Pasha, the Egyptian General Commandeering the Egyptian Army in Gura, and Ras woldemikael was not an alliance from the point of view of Ratib, it was an act of avoiding the exposure of his Army to the enmity of the local population at the cost of few yards of clothes and a title of Pasha conferred at Ras woldemikael. A full account of this is in the book “Moslem Egypt and Christian Abyssinia” by the veteran of the American Civil War’s confederacy colonel and a commander of the Egptian Army of Ismail Pasha-Colonel William McEntyre Dye. Sheikh Rifa’a Rafi’I Al Tahtawi In July 2005, Ustaz Salih Yunis wrote an article in which he, as it appeared to this writer, seemed to be inclined to the approval of Sheikh Rifa’a Al Tahtawi as per the evaluation of Bernard Lewis, the famous Orientalist. Unfortunately B.Lewis is more of an ideologue and less of a scholar when commenting on his subject matter of specialization, Islam and the Islamic world. There are many names, no less learned than him who pointed to his flawed logic and partisan methods of this Middle Eastern expertise. Many of them find his instructions and teachings and describe them as less than scholarly. A review of one of his latest books “What Went Wrong” by Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan is a case in point. This review, it seems, is a very lenient if compared to others who accused Lewis of doing away with the supposed neutrality and indifference of a scholar to the outcome of his. This discipline of the researcher not affecting the outcome beyond what the data suggests, is expected from any honest researcher. Professor Lewis’s assertions of objectivity, according to his critics are in serious doubt. The late Professor Edward Said has this to say bout Bernard Lewis long time ago: “The core of Lewis's ideology about Islam is that it never changes, and his whole mission is to inform conservative segments of the Jewish reading public, and anyone else who cares to listen, that any political, historical, and scholarly account of Muslims must begin and end with the fact that Muslims are Muslims.” Professor Shahid Alam of Northeastern University has also this to write in: “Although Lewis's objectives are ominous, his methods are quite subtle; he prefers to work "by suggestion and insinuation." In order to disarm his readers and win their trust and admiration, he delivers frequent "sermons on the objectivity, the fairness, the impartiality of a real historian." This is only a cover, a camouflage, for his political propaganda. Once he is seated on his high Orientalist perch, he goes about cleverly insinuating how Islam is deficient in and opposed to universal values, which, of course, always originate in the West. It is because of this deficiency in values that Arabs have trouble accepting a democratic Israel-it is always "democratic" Israel” One, under such circumstances, finds it prudent to steer away from Bernard Lewis’s controversial personality and find for oneself and verify by having a quick glance at the sheikh himself and evaluate him accordingly. Sheikh Rifa’a Tahtawi was an intellectual of his time, but one who sincerely accepted the colonial discourse and in the end, as his book “Takhlis Al Ibriz Fi Talkhis Bariz” reveals, identified himself with it. In this book, Tahtawi recorded his French experience. His Obsession of seeing things in religious light obliged him to assure the reader about how this or that French quality, which he experienced and favored is in accordance with Islam. The troubling part of the book comes when the author started describing Egypt through a French eye. The author seems to have taken this his turning point when he himself started to see himself and his Country through the same French eye. For instance he speaks of the French occupation to Algeria not as conquest, which was that even in the modern sense, but he calls it a ‘Fath’ a favorable medieval word describing the wars and acquisition of non Muslim lands by the Muslims, “With some twist, similar to that described by Fanon about Caribbean children reading comics glorifying cowboys, Tahtawi identifies with the French officer's helmet despite his own turban and gown, notwithstanding that a short time ago he was just in the shoes of the Algerians when Napoleon was invading Cairo. Tahtawi turns to India and terms the Colonialism imposed on it as a mission to civilize its nations. He didn’t forget to poke the Arab role in these missions and he characterized as efforts of the white Arabs, indicating to the Egyptians, the Albanians and Turkish soldiers of Mohammed Ali, to civilize the barbaric, black Sudanese. His other book, less known but no less controversial, is "Manahij Al-Albab al-Misriyya fi Mabahij al-Adab al-Asriyya," Arabic for “The Guide of Egyptian Hearts to the Joys of Contemporary Arts”, is more vocal in its acceptance and identification with the colonial discourse of its time, Such being the messages included in the writings of Tahtawi, Orientalist centers saw his legacy favorably, and no wonder Professor Lewis endorsed him. His works and philosophy, however, took root in the collective mind of the Egyptian elite. It is no accident then, to see the Egyptian cinema industry contributing to the attempt of resurrecting that attitude of civilizing the blacks, by releasing recently a movie by the name of “Africano” embodying all the hubris of Mohammed Ali and Tahtawi. And what is Eritrea to gain from the Egyptians for the heavy price it is to pay from its future except the renowned expertise of the Egyptian State, that of torturing its dissidents. Its small industry of arms is very expensive considering its quality, unless they give it for free, but that is near impossibility. Egypt is not economically significant as to adopt the Eritrea dictatorship; in fact, without the yearly US aid of $2 billion the country would hardly stand on its feet. It has multiple problems of its own to attend with its seventy or so million population; no extra strain on its economy is tolerable. It is not geographically adjacent to Eritrea to make a difference in trade of the type that existed between Eritrea and Sudan. But even without all these inconveniences, Eritrea has a stake in the future of the Nile, which ‘accidentally but irreversibly’ is identical with that of Ethiopia and Uganda rather than with Egypt. Burhan Ali | |
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