As Cairo insists that Red Sea affairs belong to coastal states while demanding recognition of its downstream interests on the Nile, a former senior U.S. diplomat is forcing an uncomfortable question back onto the regional agenda: if Ethiopia’s need for secure maritime access is legitimate, where does Berbera fit? 

Egypt’s long-running confrontation with Ethiopia over the Nile has always been about more than water. It is about power, geography, and who gets to define the rules of a changing region. Now the Red Sea has become part of the same argument.

From the Nile to Berbera

In an interview with Pulse of Africa published on September 3, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy challenged Cairo on both fronts. Egypt, he argued, must adjust to a new regional balance in which Ethiopia is larger, more assertive and increasingly unwilling to accept arrangements inherited from an earlier colonial era.

But Nagy’s most important intervention was not his criticism of Egypt’s Nile policy. It was the connection he drew between the Nile and Ethiopia’s search for access to the Red Sea. Egypt has repeatedly argued that the security and governance of the Red Sea should remain the responsibility of its littoral states. Egypt’s State Information Service has reiterated that position in reporting on Cairo’s regional diplomacy. Egypt State Information Service.

Nagy turned that logic around. If Egypt argues that only countries physically bordering the Red Sea should determine its affairs, he suggested, then by the same reasoning downstream states should not be able to dictate how upstream countries use the waters they contribute to the Nile. He called the contradiction “sheer hypocrisy.” Read the Pulse of Africa interview. It is a provocative comparison. It is also politically difficult for Cairo to dismiss.

Two strategic disputes are becoming one

The Nile and the Red Sea are governed by different bodies of international law, so Nagy’s analogy should not be mistaken for legal equivalence.

Egypt is a Nile basin state and has legitimate water-security concerns as a downstream country. Likewise, coastal states have sovereign rights and particular security responsibilities in the Red Sea. But Nagy is making a political argument rather than writing a legal judgment.

Cairo seeks acknowledgement that geography does not extinguish Egypt’s interests simply because the Nile’s most important headwaters are located beyond its territory. Yet when Ethiopia invokes its economic dependence on maritime trade and its historic relationship with the Red Sea, Egypt adopts a much narrower geographical principle: Ethiopia is landlocked, therefore Red Sea security and governance should remain in the hands of coastal states.

Those positions are not necessarily........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)