The Sudan Handbook

268 thE sudan handbook

There are also plans to link up the growing hydro-electric potential of

Ethiopia with Sudan, whose electrical consumption has dramatically

increased following the development brought by oil exploitation. This is,

of course, contingent to some extent on the evolution of the diplomatic

relations between Addis Ababa and Cairo. Egypt is extremely wary of

Ethiopia undertaking any sort of Nile Basin water management, fearing

loss of water through upstream irrigation; the 2010 decision by the

riparian states led by Addis Ababa to reject the 1959 Nile Waters Treaty

has only increased these fears. Khartoum used to be unbothered by such

prospects but is now beginning to reconsider its previous unconditional

support of the Egyptian position.

Eritrea

The Eritrean state is only seventeen years old at the time of writing, and

so its relations with Sudan are a very modern phenomenon. Neverthe-

less, they precede the birth of the Eritrean state by some thirty years

as Khartoum provided the main support and foreign backing for the

Eritrean revolt from the beginning. The first Eritrean guerillas belonged

to the Beni Amer tribe of the Beja who live on both sides of the border,

many of whom could have been considered Sudanese. In spite of the

strong left-wing orientation of the guerrillas, Sudanese support had no

ideological political dimension. It was simply a modern extension of

the age-old Muslim–Christian rivalry between the Sudanese lowlanders

and the Abyssinian highlanders. The early rebels were almost uniformly

western Eritrean Muslim lowlanders from Barka and Gash-Setit. The

rebellion was even described as an Arab movement, a definite misnomer

but one the rebels themselves were happy to let fly while it brought them

support from the Arab world.

Eritrean independence was a victory for the Sudanese, if it is seen

in the perspective of the ancient rivalries between the two opposing

cultural and political spheres. But the Islamist regime in Khartoum,

then still in its expansionist revolutionary phase, had plans to go further

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors and supported a coalition of three Muslim fundamentalist movements

(www.riftvalley.net).