A sharpening dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia about Nile River water reminds the world how much does not change across the centuries in international politics and conflict.
The plot of "Aida," the Giuseppe Verdi opera currently being presented by the Pittsburgh Opera, is set in ancient Egypt and turns on a war between Egypt and Ethiopia. Today the two countries don't even have a common border, but the crux of a serious problem lies in the fact that the Nile River rises in part in Ethiopia. That country has already completed 30 percent of the work on a dam that, according to the Egyptians, will draw heavily on water that feeds the Nile.
Egypt's population of 84 million draws an estimated 95 percent of its water from the Nile. It is generally agreed that without the Nile, there is no Egypt, dependent as its agriculture and general life are on the river. Egypt's claim to Nile water comes, first, from a 1959 treaty which recognizes its "natural and historic rights" to it; second, from Egypt's centuries-old pre-eminence; and, third, from its massive dependence on the river.
