Nubian dream

"Photo, money, come!" pleaded 80-year-old Raseema, who doesn't speak Arabic or English, except for these few words. She only speaks Nubian. Raseema was born in the village of Gharb Sohil to a father who works as a fisherman and has lived there all her life. 

 

Eighty years ago, this Nubian island was no more than quiet homes and small ports for trading between Egypt, Sudan and other ports of the Nile River. Now, the place attracts only tourists coming to see "authentic Nubian life."

Tourists arrive in motor and sailing boats, in groups with tour leaders that tell them a bit about the history of this Nubian village that lies on an island off the southern city of Aswan. They enjoy tea and biscuits in one of the houses and they get to take photos with Nubian families.

Raseema and others of her village are among the few lucky Nubians who were not relocated after the building of the Aswan High Dam and who did not lose their Nubian lands. Their grandparents were forced to move when the first Aswan dam was built--in 1905--to an island close to their homeland. So they didn't suffer like others who moved much farther north and away from the river.

"I was born here," said Mohammed Abdel Aziz, 69, a car mechanic. "But my father was born in the old Ballana [a Nubian village]. It was much more beautiful. The land was full of fruit and palm trees. Now we have the mountains and the Nile," added Abdel Aziz.

Abdel Aziz has two sons that work in tourism. They own a small bazaar. He laments that tourism has changed the nature of his family and neighbors. "People were much better before. They were much more kindhearted and less materialistic," he said.

Sadeya, his wife, interrupts, saying: "Whenever someone cooked, they used to send some of the vegetables or meat to their neighbors. At tea time, you would see groups of people gathering outside their homes sipping tea and eating cookies."

"Now everything is expensive," said Abdel Aziz. "Marriage has become impossible. Our men could marry from outside, but our girls have to marry Nubians.  The whole thing used to cost us LE90, now the prices have gone up and most of the men are unemployed."

A few blocks away from there home lies the spacious house of Mohamed Dakroun, who used to work as a fisherman, a boat driver and a cook in both Egypt and Sudan. Dakroun was born in 1933. He now has a vast, architecturally interesting house. He has three sons and one daughter, all married. The boys live with him in the house, each with their own room.

"Gharb Sohail is the most beautiful place in the world," said Dakroun.

But residents of Gharb Sohail are the lucky ones.  The majority of Nubians who were forced to give up their homes and land almost 50 years ago were mostly resettled among 46 villages in the Nasr el-Nuba district. Although Nasr el-Nuba was built specifically as compensation for those uprooted by the Aswan High Dam, none of the Nubians actually own the houses they live in or the land they work on--and many received no compensation at all.

The 46 villages have retained the same names as the old ones. Kalabsha, Daboud, Dihmeet, Dokka and Siala are all names of the villages. There is also Ibreem, famous for its dates and the subject of a song by Nubian pop star Mohamed Mounir.

These villages kept the old names, but they lack the character of the old Nubia. They look much like any other village in the Delta or in Upper Egypt.

The first village is called Ballana. Most people here speak the Kenzi dialect of the Nubian language and Arabic. The small houses host very big families.

In one of these small houses lives Youssef el-Omda, the son of the mayor. He is dressed in a traditional Nubian gallabeya and a head scarf. He insists that the village is now modern and comfortable.

"You didn't see this village when we first moved. It was desert, full of deadly snakes and insects. Many people died," el-omda said.

But even el-Omda misses the old villages' close proximity to the Nile.

"The Nile was our source of life. It was sacred. It was a source for healing every sickness. Those with a headache would drink Nile water and they would be fine. Now people die of cancer from polluted water," he lamented.

But Mohamed and Naglaa, Youssef's son and daughter, seem happy about some aspects of the migration. They enjoy electricity, television and computers. Their father insists that this is bad for their health and their eyes. "Nubians never went to doctors before," he said. "Now these technological devices are doing more damage than good."

El-Omda's brother, Mohammed Tawfeek, lives in a more spacious house. He is flipping through photo albums of him with his father, the mayor of Ballana, in the old Nubia. The mayor's house may be more spacious, but it looks nothing like the old house in the black and white pictures. We saw the mayor and his two sons' pictures with late president Gamal Abdel Nasser, along with ambassadors and officials from all over the world. He even has greeting cards from the late king Farouk.

The two brothers believe that nothing can compensate them for losing the "Land of Gold," as they refer to their old home. They still expect the government to recognize their sacrifice and show some appreciation. But the two brothers--along with almost one million other Nubians--don't seem to be high on the government's agenda.

Moustafa el-Sayed, governor of Aswan, says that "there are much poorer areas in Egypt that I'm worried about. As far as I'm concerned, the Nubians were compensated by the government, and there is a plan to relocate Nubians that are scattered all over Egypt and who were not compensated when the dam was built." 

El-Sayed denied allegations that Nubians had not received fair compensation. "Fifty years ago, the ministry of social affairs did a count and found that there are some 1800 Nubian families, so 1800 houses were built in Nasr el-Nouba, which is the best neighborhood in Upper Egypt," he said. "It has infrastructure, schools and hospitals and enjoys access to all public services. They moved from a village that had no public services to a city that boasts all the amenities of modernity."

After decades of mourning the loss of their villages, Nubians have not given up on the dream of reclaiming their long-lost Land of Gold. But at the very least, they say, they should be fairly compensated.

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AIDS in Egypt

While the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Egypt is low, its treatment, care and support are in need of a bolster. This is because a combination of factors - overpopulation, poverty and illiteracy - increase the risks of an epidemic, say human rights and public health workers.

The United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has estimated the rate of HIV in Egypt at less than 0.1 percent, or the equivalent of roughly 10,000 infected people. However, according to the National AIDS Program, just 2612 cases of HIV/AIDS were detected between 1986 and 2006. 722 of these were foreigners, mainly Africans, and were deported. The first case of HIV/AIDS was detected in 1986. Official accounts put heterosexual intercourse as the main mode transmission of the disease for those cases detected, followed by homosexual intercourse.

The National AIDS Program is responding to the current situation through both prevention and care, via anonymous voluntary counseling and testing sites, pilot sexually transmitted infections clinics, and awareness campaigns. However a number of gaps remain, which mainly make the life of HIV/AIDS patients more difficult.

Follow up is one of the main gaps highlighted by HIV/AIDS activists. "More support is needed at all levels," says Raguia el-Garzawy, a medic and the head of the public health and discrimination unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. "There is not enough follow up for people living with HIV/AIDS. There is no scheme organized for follow up. There is a problem with medication for example - if the treatment received by someone does not work, he will not know what to do."

El-Garzawy adds that the Government Fevers Hospital, the main site where people living with HIV/AIDS receive their medication, has certain drawbacks such as a shortage of medication and failures in testing devices.

Zein el-Abedin el-Taher, manager of the National AIDS Program, cites action taken by the program in the context of follow-up operations, such as easy access to free drugs, psycho-social support and the prevention of mother to child transmission of the disease. "At the beginning, we thought there was no need for more than one site for drugs distribution in Cairo. Now there are four sites, in Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta and Minya," he says.

He adds that there are now CD4 and viral load tests every six months, which had not previously been available at such a frequency. These tests detect the development of the virus in the patient's body. The main medication line is locally manufactured and the Ministry of Health has made it permanently available. "There was a shortage only once in 2007 because of a problem with the company providing the main drug," says el-Taher. Roche, the Swiss manufacturer of Viracept, one of the main medication lines, had to recall the product from all markets as it had been accidentally contaminated with a carcinogenic substance.

While the official national response can be described as active in finding adequate interventions, the stigmatization of HIV/AIDS on a social level remains a predicament for people affected by the disease in Egypt. "The Tumors Institute refuses to receive cases living with HIV/AIDS even if they come with a tumor diagnosis," says el-Garzawy. The institute is the only national center that tackles tumor diseases.

"There are no proper places where they [people living with HIV/AIDS] can go to seek treatment if something happens to them," says el-Garzawy, which, according her, is a clear instance of discrimination against HIV/AIDS patients. "Doctors and nurses have an exaggerated fear of people living with HIV/AIDS which makes their work very difficult," she says, basing her information on testimonials by patients she works with.

El-Taher does not accept such criticism. "This cannot be a problem with trained hospitals and clinics under the National AIDS Program. This could be the case in private hospitals or in university hospitals that have not been trained well enough to deal with HIV/AIDS patients," he says. The program, according to el-Taher, has been active in raising awareness amongst religious leaders as well as high-risk groups with whom the majority of organizations are hesitant to work due to their illegal practices.

Another problem identified by the HIV/AIDS Theme Group, a coalition of Egyptian and international agencies working on the issue is lack of solid information about risk factors and HIV serology, within a surveillance system that contains significant gaps. This stands in the way of making realistic predictions about the status of an epidemic and any necessary response.

The National AIDS Program is supported by international donors such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has been involved both financially and technically.

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Egyptian fish dishes

The civilization of Ancient Egypt was a shining light amid the darkness of the rest of the world. At this society's center was the Nile River. It was on the banks of the Nile that Ancient Egypt grew and prospered. The river provided ancient Egyptians with transportation, irrigation and drinking water. But the Nile was also a major source of food.

Pharaonic inscriptions depict ancient Egyptians catching eel, tilapia, mullet and catfish from the Nile. These fish became a staple of the people living in Ancient Egypt. Fish were eaten in a variety of ways, and the ancient Egyptians were skilled at drying and salting fish, as well as extracting roe.

Below are two recipes for freshwater fish as they were eaten during the time of the Pharaohs.

Tilapia with naan bread (serves six):

Ingredients:

6 whole tilapias

1 medium onion

1 liter of water

2 tablespoons of oil

1 dried and ground lemon

1 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of pepper

2 loaves of naan bread

Preparation:

Scale and gut the fish, if this hasn't been done already. Wash the fish well with cold water. Chop the onion into cubes and fry in oil until golden. Add water and bring to a boil.

Season the scaled, gutted fish with salt, pepper, and ground lemon powder and then add the fish to the boiling water.

After ten minutes take the fish from boiling water and remove bones. Reserve the broth.

Soak the naan bread in the broth and serve with the fish.

Roasted catfish with crushed wheat:

Ingredients:

1/2 kilo of onions

1/2 cup of oil

1 kilo tomatoes

1/2 bunch of parsley

1/2 bunch of dill

1/2 bunch of coriander

1 cup of crushed wheat

4 whole catfish

4 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon chili

1 cup of water

Preparation:

Wash the crushed wheat and soak in water for one hour. Mince onion and fry in oil until golden.

Chop tomatoes into cubes, add to the frying onion, and stir on low heat until brown. Chop up the parsley, coriander and dill and add to the fried mix. Stir well.

Scale and gut the fish, then wash well with cold water. Mince garlic and mix with the salt and chili. Stuff the fish with this mixture.

Strain the crushed wheat, and line the bottom of a dish with half the wheat. Put in the fish, then cover  with the remaining wheat. Add tomato-onion mixture to this dish.

Place the dish in an oven at medium heat until the fish is brown.

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Drive in Cairo

If you can drive in Cairo, you can drive anywhere.  But, the experience is not as daunting as it first appears to be. In fact, it could be fun.  I have driven in Cairo several times, and have also been in the front seat of taxis and private cars.  Apart from the odd moment when something I did not expect actually happened, I felt reasonably safe both as a driver and passenger.  Once I got the hang of it, it was fun

I have not witnessed any serious car accidents in Cairo, most incidents are minor nudges to the paint work, that ended up with drivers saying "Ma'lesh" and drove off.  These incidents usually involved novices who could not control their cars even at slow motion.  Car insurance is a requirement in Egypt, but many drivers drive without.  This may change soon, as the government is planning tough measures to control bad driving habits and also protect the environment from old obsolete cars.

There is a kind of common understanding amongst drivers in Cairo. They all seem to agree that there is no lane discipline, and no rules for pedestrians.  Traffic lights are optional when a warden waves you on, and double parking is no offense.  Horns are used at all occasions, and are not meant to anger anybody.  To a Cairo driver, pedestrians are mere nuisance, to be avoided but only as long as they do not slow the car down, or make it stop.   Zebra crossings, therefore, are not safe havens, and should be used only when the road is clear

The first few moments behind the wheel in Cairo are worse than sitting for a driving test.  Take it slowly and carefully and just go with the traffic.  Sometimes, you can not help but go to the lane that happen to be vacant at the time.  If that happens, and you suddenly want to turn right, across three lanes of traffic, do it carefully by double signal: that is an indicator and your hand at the same time.  It seems an impossible task but is usually managed with ease by consummate drivers.  In the first journey, though, you may have to go the end of the road and back.

On the rare occasion when you have the road to yourself, do not speed up.  Some cars come up from side roads without stopping.  At night, some cars go without lights.  On those upper roads cress crossing Cairo, beware of the youngsters with powerful cars.  If you see one in your rear mirror, swerving from one lane to another, just get out of their way.  The same applies to buses and army trucks.  If you want to argue your right of way, please choose a Fiat 500, or a Suzuki.

The only driving lesson you need in Cairo is taking a taxi journey as a passenger watching the road and the driver's reactions.  You will notice  a fierce competition for the limited space,  with cars edging closer and closer but whoever has a car nose in front has the right of way.

The horns would be going mad, the stern expressions  of drivers would rattle the inexperienced.  But, the situation is soon diffused by one driver following another, as if he was planning that manoeuvre all along.  You would notice also that drivers rarely look at each other, for if they did they would be obliged  to give way.  The same rule applies to pedestrians.  If they cross the road looking at the wrong direction, they are more likely to get away with if than if they look at drivers.  If a driver knows you can see him, he will not stop.

Your international license gives you the right to drive in Egypt.  Most international car hire  companies operate at the major airports and hotels.  The rates are comparable to those applicable in Europe, and are slightly more expensive than in the US.  But before you hire a car, make sure that you have a parking place for it.  Parking may be easy if you are staying in a hotel out of town, say in Heliopolis or the Pyramids district or Maadi, but in the centre of Cairo, a car is a liability.

However, the risks increase considerably outside Cairo, on the roads to Alexandria and the Red sea resorts.  Care must be exercised at all times.  The pitfalls are many: pot holes, sudden turns, bad lighting, lorries overtaking, poor driving abilities and speeding motorists.  There are plans in the pipeline to make Egyptian roads outside Cairo safer, until these are in place, it would be wiser to take a coach or a train journey and leave the car behind.  I have driven on some of those roads, and have seen bad accidents.

The main factor which makes driving in Cairo relatively safe is the slow pace of traffic.  After a nervous start of driving  in Cairo , a driver would be inclined to unbuckle his seat belt and try the horn a few times.  You may indulge your horn, but never be tempted to compromise your safety even if most others do.  Belt up, drive carefully and keep a watchful eye on both sides of the car as much as to the front.

Driving in Cairo is an experience to be proud of, just as much as seeing the Pyramids or doing the Nile cruise.  In fact, those who have driven in Cairo deserve a certificate of advanced motoring that would entitle them to an insurance discount.

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Waiting for biggest middle east war

There are many sensitive issues in Egypt, with one of the most sensitive of all being the issue of water. Egypt is the gift of the Nile, as Herodotus tells us. What he said sounds all too sweet, even romantic. But the reality is starkly different. Egypt is very jealous of its Nile water quota for the simple reason that its population is 

constantly growing. At the same time, the populations of the other Nile Basin countries are growing too. Everyone needs water. This week, Pete Willows and Hugh Nicol take a closer look at a problem which, we must all admit, won’t be suddenly disappearing any time soon.

Egypt and Sudan dominate contemporary Nile Basin water allocation policy. This is partly because both nations are signatory to the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement (NWA), which apportions the river’s water flow between the two countries. 
   From a macro-economic perspective, Egypt’s economy dwarfs all other Nile Basin nations in terms of Gross National Income (GNI): with Ethiopia at only $100 per capita, Egypt crests at over fourteen times that amount, around $1,490 per capita. Sudan’s livestock population also prevails among riparian nations.

The Nile Waters Agreement

   Out of a total of 84 billion cubic metres (b m3) of water flow per annum, Egypt gets 55.5b m3 and Sudan gets 18.5b m3. An estimated 10b m3 is lost to evaporation from the Aswan Dam reservoir on the Egypt-Sudan border. Every day, 300 million cubic metres of water is discharged into the Mediterranean.

The Nile Basin Initiative

   The NBI is a programme by organisation of the countries in the Nile Basin, which is intended to co-operatively manage and negotiate water policy in this region. The NBI member nations are:

1. Burundi
2. DR Congo
3. Egypt
4. Ethiopia
5. Kenya
6. Rwanda
7. Sudan 
8. Tanzania
9. Uganda
10. Eritrea (in an observing capacity)

Nile water resource management

   The media are fond of portraying the issues at stake in Nile Basin water management as potential for outright warfare among the NBI nations, and this is often presented in apposition with ongoing international petroleum conflicts. 
   However, both recent data and historical relations between NBI nations present a comparatively co-operative and stable relationship on Nile water management issues.
Analysis of water management issues requires hard data regarding:
1. Need. Generally, a threshold of 1,000 m3 is needed per capita, per annum.
2. Growth. Substantial population growth has encouraged groundwater abstraction. More than 5 per cent of water used in Egypt is groundwater. In Sudan, groundwater is drawn from aquifers beneath wadi beds, like the Gash, Howare and Nyala. These are essential sources of water for small rural communities, but will not provide Basin-wide solutions for larger sectors like livestock and agriculture.
3. Food production. Egypt no longer relies exclusively on water resources in combination with farming to produce food and instead imports significant quantities of food. This is considered to be ‘virtual water’ in an abstract perception of water consumption. 
   Al-Ahram Weekly wrote in early June 2009 that the per capita share of water in Egypt has fallen to 750 m3 per annum. The water poverty line is recognised at 1,000 m3 of water per capita. By 2017, it is expected this figure for Egypt will plummet to 582 m3. Comparatively, Canada’s water consumption was at 1,494 m3 in 2000, while the United States, the highest in the world, was over 1,680 m3.

The year 2050

   The collective population of the Nile Basin nations is today estimated at some 300 million persons. However, the year 2050 is on projection for an alarming increase in these teeming populations. Egypt is very much included in these population growth estimates.
   A 1947 census put Egypt’s population at 19 million. According to the 2006 census conducted by the Egyptian Government’s Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), the population of Egypt had shot up to over 72 million, with a growth rate of 2 per cent per annum in the past decade. 
   Today, the population is estimated at 80 million. In about 60 years, Egypt’s population has more than quadrupled. According to the projections, Egypt’s population could reach over 120 million by 2050.
   There has been a similar trend in Sudan, where the population climbed from 9 million in 1950 to 39 million in 2007, a more than fourfold increase. Population growth Sudan is at about 2.15 per cent. Sudan’s population is projected to reach 73 million by 2050.
   In Ethiopia, the population is already large at 83 million, but it could well reach 183 million by 2050, if current trends continue.

Co-operation among riparian nations

   The 1990s saw the beginning of a positive co-operative initiative among the riparian nations in the Nile Basin. This marks the third of three significant eras in the last 150 years of Nile water management.
1. Late 19th Century to the 1950s (when Africa began to break from colonial rule): Nile Basin water management was entirely dominated by European socio-economic policy.
2. World War II to the late 1980s: departure from colonialism to independent rule led to state ideologies and policies having been heavily influenced by Cold War partisan politics. This era saw many newly independent states exerting nationalist bravado.
3. The late 1980s onwards: distillation of world dominance into one superpower engendered an economic shift in the Nile Basin states to a more open, free-market economic agenda. It was in this era that the NBI emerged, as the independent states began to seek self-resolution to regional disputes and issues.

Geography of the Nile Basin

   In The River War, published in 1902, Winston Churchill wrote the following:
"The north-eastern quarter of the continent of Africa is drained and watered by the Nile. Among and about the headstreams and tributaries of this mighty river lie the wide and fertile provinces of the Egyptian Soudan. Situated in the very centre of the land, these remote regions are on every side divided from the seas by five hundred miles of mountain, swamp or desert.
   "The great river is their only means of growth, their only channel of progress. It is by the Nile alone that their commerce can reach the outer markets, or European civilisation can penetrate the inner darkness. The Soudan is joined to Egypt by the Nile, as a diver is connected with the surface by his air-pipe. Without it there is only suffocation. Aut Nilus, aut nihil!"
   The Nile is generally regarded as the longest river in the world. The Blue Nile flows from Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and the White Nile flows from Lake Victoria in Uganda. 
They meet in Khartoum at Al-Morgan (‘The Confluence’) to form the Nile proper. There are other tributaries, like the Atbara River, which runs seasonally from Ethiopia to join the Nile proper, north of Khartoum.
   As for geographic diversity in the Nile Basin, add the following to Churchill’s poetic narrative: highlands in the Ethiopian Plateau, lush African Savannah, snow-capped mountains, tropical vegetation, pastoral plains in Sudan, rainforest below the Tropic of Cancer and the sparse, lunar, solitary beauty of the Sahara Desert above. 
   One of the more dramatic environmental features of the Nile Basin is the wetlands area of the Sudd in South Sudan, one of the largest wetlands in the world, at 30,000 km2.

Swimming upstream

   Egypt has had a historic right to claim the Nile for herself since time immemorial, and continues to militate against diversions in the river’s water flow. But today, upstream, there are domestic concerns in the countries from where the Blue Nile and White Nile flow: Ethiopia and Sudan. 
   Agriculture accounts for 86 per cent of water withdrawal in Ethiopia, and 94 per cent in Sudan. Irrigation has become critical to food security in riparian nations and the Sudanese are claiming they have almost entirely consumed their allocated share of Nile waters.  
   In Egypt 50 per cent of the population is dependent on agriculture, whereas 70 per cent of Sudanese are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. After the 1959 agreement with Egypt over water-sharing rights, dams were built in Sudan to store water for flood control and irrigation purposes.
   Sudan is currently building new dams for food security and other essential needs like hydroelectric power generators. 
   Egypt vehemently opposes agricultural diversion of water resources upstream, but considers Sudan’s hydropower facilities beneficial, as the dams act as siltation basins, stopping much of the sediment load before it reaches Lake Nasser, while the hydropower stations do not reduce water flow. 
   Additionally, the increase in hydropower would putatively assist Sudan in extracting her groundwater resources.
   Ethiopia, however, poses an immense challenge to Egypt’s water management policy interests. Agriculture represents 40 per cent of Ethiopia’s GNP and 90 per cent of its exports, as well as employing 85 per cent of the population. And Ethiopia’s population is growing faster than Egypt’s. 
   Ethiopia presents a larger and more complicated equation for Egypt’s water nabobs to solve than Sudan. Ethiopia, unlike oil-rich Sudan, cannot simply expend capital to purchase food when food shortages occur. And there have been many well-publicised famines in Ethiopia. 
   Although Egypt opposes water diversion in Ethiopia for irrigation purposes, they have been flexible in allowing hydropower development, as in Sudan, as this is expected to arrest sedimentation.
   The NBI’s progress is due much to its focus on the entire Basin, rather than on the core riparian nations, which has engendered a sort of glasnost, or thawing of relations, between the previously bellicose Basin nations. 
   Much positive development in diplomacy and policy negotiation has emerged. But the NBI modestly considers itself a ‘transitional arrangement until a permanent legal and institutional framework is in place’.
   And the NBI has set neither specific goals nor dates by which to achieve resolution on these pressing water management issues. 
   Further, the NBI’s almost complete dependence on outside funding from organisations like the World Bank, inter alia, for both its inception and operating costs, raises questions about long-term sustainability. Funding for this programme will not be indefinite.

Co-operative Framework Agreement

   Negotiations for a Nile Co-operative Framework Agreement (CFA) started in 1997. After almost a decade, the draft of the CFA was submitted to a meeting of the Nile Council of Ministers for Water Affairs (Nile-COM) for their consideration in June 2007.
   Following extensive discussions, the Nile-COM concluded that the CFA should be passed along to heads of state to resolve sticking points. The signing and ratification of the CFA is today, more than ever before, a critically urgent action necessary for a future of riparian co-operation in the Nile Basin.
   Talks were held in Kinshasa in May 2009, then additional talks in the form of the 17th Nile Council of Ministers Meeting were held in late July 2009 in Alexandria. 
On 28 to 29 September last year, a follow-up meeting was held in Kampala. Dr Mohamed Nasr Eddin Allam, Minister of Water and Irrigation of Egypt and Chairman of the Nile Council of Ministers, opened the first meeting between the members of the Nile Technical Advisory Committee and the negotiators.
   At the time of going to press, there had been no comprehensive agreement reached in these talks.
   At the meeting in Alexandria last summer, Egypt and Sudan threatened to withdraw from the NBI, if their interests were ignored, while signing the CFA. In an interview on July 7 2009 with the Egyptian independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, Minister Allam reiterated Egypt’s three demands:
1. Water security
2. Advance notification of projects in the Upper Nile 
3. Veto power for projects in other countries.
Potable water supplies are not expected to increase accordingly, to meet the impending demands of increased livestock, agricultural development and populations on the Nile Basin’s already strained water resources. 
   Recorded trends in rainfall and river flow in Sub-Saharan Africa may have been considered large in the 20th Century, but hydrometeorological studies on this region of the world have data going back for only about one hundred years. 
   And with climate change dramatically disrupting weather patterns, it would be difficult to say with any certainty what future rainfall and river flow patterns will look like. Water management issues cannot remain unresolved, and a water war is certainly in nobody’s best interests.

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Suicide in front of passing Cairo Underground trains

WITHIN this week, two young Egyptian men threw themselves in front of passing Cairo Underground trains to put an end to their lives that became miserable either after the death of beloved ones, or because of poverty.

Fate is the only explanation for what happened to these two unfortunate young men,” says Hassan Khalil, a passer-by near el-Maasara and el-Khalafawi Metro
  Stations in northern Cairo, where the separate incidents have occurred on Monday and Tuesday.
  These two incidents should prompt sociologists and psychologists to explain why committing suicide under the wheels of Cairo's Underground Metro trains is becoming the most common method among the desperate young men and women, say the public.
  Some persons would say these suicides are a result of pressure, while others are of the view that they have occurred because the victims believed that “a swift death is the only solution to their chronic problems”.
  “There are elements within the life of these two young men, which compelled them and left death as their only option,” Naguib Ashaam Allah, a pharmacist in the Cairo neighbourhood of Hadayek el-Qubba, said, adding the issue must also be seen in the context of economic and emotional hardships against young people and their status in society.
  According to police reports, the victims, who were both unemployed and in their mid twenties, could have committed suicide due to emotional and economic reasons.
  "There is economic and emotional pressure on the young people. They can't make their own decisions, and limits are imposed on them," Ashaam Allah said.
  Commentators from private TV channels blamed economic hardships and frustration that permeates the whole society for El-Khalafawi and el-Maasara suicide incidents, which grabbed headlines.
  "The Government should be held responsible for these two incidents because it failed to provide the youth with appropriate living and economic conditions," one angry young man told a talk show aired by a private TV channel on Tuesday night.
  He also accused the Government of over looking the problems of the young people.
  "These problems such as unemployment put the young people under constant stress that drives them into despair, fleeing out of the country, extremism, doing drugs, or committing suicide under the wheels of the metro, which is more merciful than this harsh life," he said. 

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ElBaradei in Egypt

The plane carrying the former UN nuclear agency head Mohamed ElBaradei landed in Cairo as hundreds of Egyptians gathered at Cairo airport Friday to welcome him.

ElBaradei is seen as a possible future presidential candidate since he announced last year he would not rule out running for the country's presidential elections.

 

   Around 500 people were waiting at the airport for hours to welcome ElBaradei, whose plane was delayed for around two hours in Vienna. 

   While waiting, they chanted the national anthem as well as shouted slogans such as    'ElBaradei for Egypt' and 'ElBaradei, teach them a lesson - Free Egypt is not for succession.' 

   A report  Al-Shorouk independent daily quoted an anonymous security source as saying that some 6,000 police officers were deployed at the airport on Friday, adding that some of them were wearing civilian clothes, and had been ordered to break up any riots. 

   However, witnesses said that there was no apparent extra security at the airport early on Friday. Earlier this week Egyptian security officials warned against any illegal gatherings to welcome ElBaradei. 

   In Egypt, large public gatherings are illegal and can be broken up by police according to the emergency laws. 

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hello Asmahan

A lot of policy news in Egypt suitable for display in the Jokes 
And wonders, or even in Believe it or not 
Although this is customary for a long time especially from our party, which does not tire of 
Talk about sharing power, each of which divides the divorce was that if 
Genuine democratic elections would have won without a doubt it is by 99% 
Not less than nothing, and in the National As descendants of the pharaohs, we may not be 
To win less than this percentage 

Because these parties compete for the presidency of the republic fiercely difference 

According to the latest opinion polls a few points between these parties, the 

Electoral battle a very difficult .... so spread in their newspapers 

But on the ground do not hear anything about them only through their newspapers, which 

Issued a government subsidy and the share of government paper being sold and printing 

Lower-quality paper to solicit some profit to finance (the activities of the party) 

Parties and because each of them chose the slogan and mark or trade 

(Code quality) of its own, there are the so-called on President (Mujahid larger) 

For example, without knowing why he did that most struggling 

As long as we come to the biography of Mujahid no less than the largest stop 

By the Labor party, which began a socialist then offered him a contract of employment Brotherhood 

He joined them and became the party using the same literature of socialism after 

Translation vocabulary to vocabulary Brotherhood ... Let the important 

News News as orally says: 

Selected Asmahan Ibrahim Shukri, the daughter of the leader and founder of the Labor Party 

The late President of the party, as a prelude to the revival and resumption of activity of the party 

Frozen since 2000 

The Supreme Committee of the party held a preparatory meeting, yesterday 

I «Thursday», at the home of the late Ibrahim Shukri, the presence of leaders 

The party, including Khalid, Salah Za'farani cage chairman of the Bar Gharbia 

And be ready for a Muslim, and Drs Abdel Fattah Al Ahmadi, Dean of the Faculty 

Fundamentals of Religion, and captain Ahmed Zayed doctors Qalubiyya, Husseini basil 

And Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and Mustafa structure, and the three sons of Ibrahim Shukri 

«Asmahan and Ahmed Ismail», and the gift Shaalan, the former chairman of the Bar 

Lake 

This was the text of the news and the latest manifestation of the party, but noticed a few things first 

Planned by red on (the three sons of Ibrahim Shukri) without 

One mentioned that there are inherited their father's work 

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