Sudan will harness the Nile but widen conflict
By Andrew England
March 8 2007 (NAIROBI) — For some months, Hassan Ahmed Omar suspected he was being trailed by Sudan’s feared security agencies. One December evening his fears were confirmed at a friend’s wedding party. An agent butted in on the celebrations, told him he was “wanted” and escorted him to a car outside. He was taken to an office in Khartoum where he says a six-month saga of imprisonment, interrogation and occasional beatings began.
Mr Omar’s transgression was to be associated with a campaign against Khartoum’s $2bn (£1bn, €1.5bn) hydroelectric dam project on the fourth cataract of the Nile. The project is the largest of its kind under way in Africa and, when completed in 2008 or 2009, should produce 1,250 megawatts, doubling Sudan’s electricity generation.
Sudanese officials say building the dam is crucial to development as the country’s economy expands, on the back of oil revenues and rising investment from Arab states. Not only will it provide electricity for industry but it will also create a 170km-long reservoir that will help irrigate desert terrain, they say.
Yet for many, such as Mr Omar, the Merowe dam has so far brought grief, becoming the latest in a long line of contentious schemes around the world that call into question the benefits of hydroelectric power. It will displace up to 50,000 people and flood areas rich in archaeological sites, some dating back to the Stone Age. Unease about the dam is also fuelled by Khartoum’s poor human rights record and its failure in the past to distribute the benefits of development equitably.
This is compounded by the involvement in the dam of a German company blacklisted by the World Bank for alleged corruption on another African project – and of companies from China, which has close ties to Khartoum and helped develop Sudan’s oil industry. It has played an important role in supporting the government during the past decade while other nations have attempted to bring Khartoum to book over atrocities in Darfur and southern sudan.
Mr Omar, aged 39, was one of four members of a committee representing the Manasir tribe who were detained from December 2004 to the end of June 2005. The men were released without being charged but are prepared to square up to the government again.
“We feel this state is a terrorist state . . . it started the problem and does not want to solve the problem, therefore we expect there will be a confrontation with the state any time,” Mr Omar told the Financial Times. “We feel our tribe is being targeted by the state. We believe they want our land and are displacing the community for it.”
In sub-Saharan Africa the shortfall in electricity remains a key obstacle to development. Three out of four households do not have access to power. Excluding South Africa, installed generation capacity is only 20,000MW, roughly equivalent to that of Poland, according to the World Bank. Africa uses a meagre 5 per cent of its hydroelectric potential, compared with 40 per cent in Asia and 80 per cent in Europe, the Washington-based institution says.
The solutions, however, are rarely straightforward. In the late 1990s, as the debate surrounding dams mounted, the World Bank and the World Conservation Union set up the World Commission on Dams to conduct a review into large dams and propose guidelines for future decision-making. In 2000 the commission released its report, saying dams had made a “significant contribution to human development”.
But it added that in too many cases an “unacceptable and often unnecessary price has been paid to secure those benefits, especially in social and environmental terms, by people displaced, by communities downstream, by taxpayers and by the natural environment”. It added: “Lack of equity in the distribution of benefits has called into question the value of many dams in meeting water and energy development needs when compared with alternatives.”
To build its dam, the Sudanese government is providing $575m and receiving nearly $1bn from Arab states and lending institutions, according to a government website. The government is also receiving $520m in financing from China, the main player in the country’s oil sector.
China itself has one of the more questionable records when it comes to dam construction. The $25bn Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze River has drawn criticism over corruption, the resettlement of more than 1m displaced people and the environmental impact. In Africa, Chinese banks and companies are involved in dam projects in at least six countries, according to the International Rivers Network, a US-based advocacy group.
Peter Bosshard, policy director at the rivers group, maintains: “If China continues to neglect international environmental and human rights standards in the projects it funds, poor people around the world will see it as an exploiter rather than the partner it could be.”
Germany’s Lahmeyer International, which is acting as consultant on the construction at Merowe, has also been tainted by controversy. Last November, the World Bank sanctioned the group because of “corrupt activities” in connection with a multi-billion-dollar water transfer and hydroelectric project ordered by the governments of Lesotho and South Africa, making it ineligible for Bank-financed contracts for seven years.
Its role in the Merowe project has also attracted criticism, with Eawag, a Swiss federal aquatic research institute, saying Lahmeyer’s environmental impact assessment report “was far from meeting European or international standards”. Eawag’s 2006 review of the report said no serious attempt was made to use “the vast scientific knowledge base on the effects of large dams”. It concluded that the dam would draw sediment and that it was likely to lose more than 30 per cent of its capacity over the next 50 years.
The dam was once a dream for the Manasir, Amri and Hamadab tribes who for centuries have survived growing dates, wheat, beans and sorghum on narrow strips of fertile land that straddle the Nile banks around the Merowe area where the river loops south before returning north towards Egypt.
It is a tough existence: the land is rocky and harsh and there has been little development in the area, which lies 350km north of Khartoum. Most houses are traditional huts made of mud and many lack electricity.
Talk of a dam in their area has been doing the rounds since the 1940s, when Sudan’s Anglo-Egyptian rulers discussed the possibility of the project as a means to control floods in the Nile valley. It did not get off the ground and in the 1960s Gamal Abdel Nasser built the Aswan High Dam, which enables Egypt to regulate the Nile’s flow from the Sudanese border. That project displaced some 90,000 people, mainly Nubians, including Sudanese living in the border region.
Still, successive Sudanese governments continued to tout the idea of the Merowe dam, while the Manasir and others waited expectantly. For them, the idea of a massive project on their doorstep had generated dreams of prosperity, even inspiring songs, with choruses along the lines of “God bring us the dam”. But once the project finally moved from drawing boards to the ground, frustration surfaced. Rather than being able to settle on the shores of the reservoir and gaining access to irrigated land, the government decided those living in the area should be resettled to villages it is building in the desert, in some cases more than 40km from the Nile.
Around 800 families of the Hamadab community – less than 10 per cent of the total number of people being relocated – were resettled in 2003. Last August, just under half the Amri were relocated – they claim forcibly – when dam authorities flooded their area, affecting scores of homes.
Just three months earlier, hundreds of Amri had held a meeting in the compound of a school to discuss the resettlement. They wanted to bar the dam authorities from carrying out a survey, because they were unhappy with the land and number of new homes being made available. But they ended up in confrontation with security forces, who fired on the crowd and killed three people.
A police statement accused the villagers of “harassing” police and throwing stones at them. “The police regret the death of the three people and pray to Allah to accept them,” the statement said. The Amri insist the security forces fired without provocation. After that incident, followed by the flooding, the partial resettlement took place.
“People were left with no option. The dam authority started with people who wanted to go and this undermined the will of those who wanted to stay,” says Abdulmuttalab Hadallah, a member of the Amri committee. “Seventy per cent of the people did want to go. They would have been happy to move if all the services had been in place and they had been able to farm.”
Unlike the Manasir, members of the Hamadab and Amri say they would be content to relocate if they felt they were provided with decent farming land and adequate compensation. But Mr Hadallah complains that little of the new desert land is arable, despite promises of irrigation schemes, and accuses the government of failing to provide the services they need to settle there. “For those who have been moved we are trying to push the government to improve the situation, for the other half they will not move unless we get all the entitlements,” he says.
A member of the Hamadab in Khartoum also has complaints, saying that while the new concrete houses – which have electricity and water – are decent, there has been little support to help the community settle down. “There was no local participation in selecting resettlement areas – people have no trust in the government,” he says. “There are no institutions to manage the transfer of life: even the money they get for compensation they don’t know how to use effectively.”
The Dams Implementation Unit refused to grant the FT the necessary permit to visit the dam site or the resettlement areas. Nor were officials from the unit made available to talk, in spite of a formal request. However, Abdulhalim Aimutaafi, Khartoum’s governor, was happy to share his views.
“They had the deal of their lives,” Mr Aimutaafi says of the relocated communities. The authorities “give them big pieces of land; they build new houses for them. You know the resettlement programme is costing 25 per cent of the dam costs – more than $500m. But people always know that when there’s a new development project they have to scream at the government to get the maximum and this is what they did. It’s a political game.”
He says electricity consumption in Khartoum alone is already heading towards 1,000MW, with demand rising by more than 20 per cent a year and the prospect of rationing this year. Merowe, he says, can be the catalyst for future development.
“If you want to generate 1,000MW from thermal generators . . . you need 4,000 tonnes of fuel a day: this is $2m a day,” he says. “If you use that money in the right way you can build a dam every year, so this dam is going to be the start of the chain of development of dams for the future. This is the value to the Sudanese economy.”
But conspiracy theories abound that the government plans to sell the local land around the dam to large-scale investors – even the Chinese. There is no hard evidence to support the rumours, but those accessing the Dams Implementation Unit’s website are welcomed by a picturesque scene of the sun setting over palm trees and a large lake, surrounded by high-rise buildings rather than small dwellings.
Left mulling their next move are the Manasir, who represent more than 60 per cent of those the government wants to relocate. Last June, they reached an agreement with state authorities under which an independent study is being carried out into the viability of the Manasir being resettled in six locations around the reservoir. It will then be up to the irrigation and agriculture ministries and Nile State authorities to make a decision on whether to accept the proposals.
If they agree it could ward off further confrontation. But the two sides remain deeply distrustful. During a recent meeting of the Manasir’s committee, tempers frayed as its members haggled over the best course of action, raised voices only dying down after the muezzin’s call to prayer. At the close, they agreed to implement the first phase of an “emergency plan”, which entails the Manasir unilaterally building six new sites around the reservoir – and being prepared to fight.
Initially, they will set up camps and provisions at the sites while waiting for the authorities’ response to the survey’s findings, committee members say. “If they try to resettle us by force we will resist and fight,” says Mohamed Abdullah, one of them. “To die on your land is better than to be defeated and compelled to leave.”
It is unclear how much of the Manasir’s talk is bluster. Mr Abdullah, an affable 63-year-old retired civil servant, seems an unlikely candidate for a rebellion. But Sudan is no stranger to conflict and Manasir committee members insist they are not bluffing. They even claim that some of their community’s younger men went to neighbouring Eritrea in 2004 to train with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, a former rebel movement that fought a decades-long civil war in southern Sudan.
“Electricity and a house? What use is it if it is in the desert?” Mr Abdullah asks.
A RACE AGAINST TIME TO UNEARTH CLUES TO THE PAST
By the time the dam at Merowe in northern Sudan reaches its final height of 60m some time in late 2008, thousands of years of Sudanese history will already be drowned under the waters of the Nile, write William Wallis and Andrew England.
Among remnants of cemeteries, towns, pyramids and monasteries buried under desert sands and among rocky islands in the river are clues of the role Sudan’s ancient Nilotic cultures played in civilisations that at one point stretched through Egypt as far as Palestine.
The irony, readily acknowledged by archaeologists, is that the dam itself has focused attention on the area in an unprecedented way, bringing to light its significance during a five-year race against time. Teams from across the world have scrambled to the remote and harsh terrain in the 170 sq km area that will eventually be submerged, gathering artefacts that date back as far as 150,000 years.
There is nothing as dramatic to capture the public imagination as Abu Simbel – the temple that helped galvanise archaeological rescue efforts when Egypt built the Aswan dam in the 1960s and that was eventually moved by Unesco into the desert. But archaeologists say the richness of past cultures discovered so far has revolutionised the understanding of an area that until then was considered peripheral to the great African civilisations of the Nile.
While they lament the speed at which excavations have had to take place – and the inevitability that important chapters of Sudan’s past will be hidden – some also recognise that without the dam they might not have been there at all.
“There is no doubt that we have been able to raise more money and do more intense work than we would have done were it not for the Merowe Dam. But the bad side is that when the water is flooded, it’s gone forever,” says Derek Welsby, Sudan expert at the British Museum, who has led some of the digging.
There has been sporadic talk of building a hydroelectric dam at Merowe, some 350km north of Khartoum at the fourth cataract of the Nile, for more than half a century. But the Sudanese government’s status as an international pariah during the 1990s, when it was harbouring Osama bin Laden and fighting a civil war in the country’s south, put plans on hold. By the time the government started turning talk into reality in 2002 – partly thanks to its strengthening ties with China – most archaeologists were caught unawares.
A campaign launched by Sudan’s own National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums changed that, bringing together teams from 14 countries in what is the country’s largest excavation project. Salah Ahmed, fieldwork director for the corporation in Khartoum, says the work will provide “a real representative idea about the history of the region”.
Some local activists, however, are less happy with the results. In the past year they have sent teams of archaeologists packing, most recently preventing a German group from digging on one of the many islands within the Nile that turn out, against previous expectations, to have been inhabited thousands of years ago.
Among other grievances, the activists claim that the government has failed to honour an agreement to build a museum in the area. Some local groups also appear to believe that if they can stop the archaeologists, they will also be able to halt the building of the dam.
As it continues to go up in the coming months, however, the waters will begin to rise with it. By then the villagers will themselves be forced to move and the evidence their forebears left behind will be gone.
(Financial Times)