In Nubia, Northern Sudan, there is growing anxiety about the planned construction of three dams on the Nile. The Sudanese government refuses to reveal the plans and claims that nothing has been decided upon as yet. But Nubians fear the dams will inundate most of their territory and force hundreds of thousands to leave their homeland.
|
|
Hostile evacuations
Nubians are still traumatized by the construction of the huge Aswan Dam by the Egyptian government in the 1960s. In a state of perplexity, 50,000 Nubians were evacuated from the region that had been theirs for thousands of years. Now, some 40 years later, it looks as if the tragedy is about to repeat itself.
Energy shortages in the booming capital, Khartoum, made the Sudanese government decide to build three dams on the Nile in Northern Sudan, at Merowe, Kajbar and Dal.
After contracts were signed with Chinese investors and construction companies, the building of the Merowe Dam, which lies south of Nubia, began in 2003. The dam will be finished soon and submerge the land of about 70,000 people.
Hope
The other two dams, however, had not been mentioned for years and many Nubians started to hope that the government had given up on the idea. But last December they were awoken by large numbers of Chinese workers and their equipment suddenly arriving at the site where the Kajbar Dam was planned.
The Kajbar Dam will not be as big as the one in Merowe, but the area it will inundate is much more densely populated. Nubians complain that the government refuses to inform them about the timing of its plans and the consequences of the dam. Inhabitants are told that the dam will inundate no more than nine villages, but opponents argue that the dam will almost certainly lead to the disappearance of hundreds of villages.
Opposition protests
Angry inhabitants of the region established the Rescue Nubia and Oppose Kajbar Committee. In April, the committee organised two demonstrations demanding the departure of the Chinese workers and their equipment. But the authorities reacted indifferently and the second demonstration was put down violently by security forces.
A third demonstration on June 13 turned into a bloodbath: police opened fire on the demonstrators, killing four and leaving 19 wounded, two of whom are still in critical condition. The incident shocked Sudanese public opinion. Two northern politicians stepped down in protest.
Frustration build-up
The protests are an outlet for frustrations that have built up for years. In the past two decades, lack of economic development and extreme taxation on agriculture have forced more than half of the 800,000 Nubians to leave the region and look for opportunities elsewhere, often in Khartoum or abroad.
Su'd Ibrahim Ahmed, a senior Nubian activist who played a leading role in the protests against the Aswan Dam in the 1960s, is convinced that it is part of a deliberate policy of the Islamic regime in Khartoum: "This regime believes that we are not good Muslims. Since they came to power in June 1989, they have implemented policies that are meant to empty our region of its people and obliterate us out of existence." Final blow
The dams in Kajbar and Dal, she thinks, will deal the final blow to the Nubian people:
"Together with the Aswan High Dam, the two new dams will inundate almost the whole of Nubia. Hundreds of thousands of Nubians in the region itself and living elsewhere will lose their homeland. That will mean the extinction of the Nubians as a distinct group with their own language and cultural heritage."
|
|
As it is officially denied that large numbers of people have to be evacuated, no relocation plans have been presented to the inhabitants of the region.
"But look what is happening to the people whose land will be inundated as a result of the Merowe dam. The government wants to relocate them, against their will, in the middle of the desert.We don´t want this to happen to us. We don´t want the dam to come and then find ourselves forced to discuss with the government where we are going to be relocated. We are not going to leave our homeland!"Peaceful resistance
Nubians in the Diaspora have meanwhile adopted the protest of the Rescue Nubia Committee. All over the world demonstrations were organised, mostly in front of Sudanese and Chinese embassies. Nuraddin Abdelmannan, spokesman of the Nubian community in Washington DC, emphasizes that the committee only wants peaceful resistance:
"We don't want war, because that will only further devastate the region. We want to prevent the construction of the dam by mobilizing the international community."
But that opinion is not shared by everybody. The Kush Liberation Front, a small splinter group whose leader Abdelwahab al-Mahassi resides in London, has already started to call for armed resistance. Yet, according to Su'ad Ibrahim, Nubians are unanimous about one thing: "We are definitely not prepared to repeat the experience of the Aswan High Dam."
Tags: Abdelwahab al-Mahassi, Aswan Hight Dam, bloodshed, dam, Egypt, evacuation, Kush, liberation, Nile, Nubia, Nubians, resistance, Sudan, water