Water War
Why water could be the next major cause of an international conflict
In June 2013, a broadcast on live state television starts. The Egyptian presidential palace is discussing a covert action against its neighbor, Ethiopia. Rumors of airstrikes will be spread, rebels will be financed and sabotage was proposed, all for the sake of one matter, protection of their water.
The mistakenly broadcasted reunion exposes the deep tensions over the Nile river, on which the Ethiopian government planned to build one of the largest dams in the world. Egyptian civilization is heavily dependent on the river. Over 97% of the country’s fresh water comes from there, and more than 100 million Egyptians are clustered in less than 5% of the national territory, along the river's delta and riverbank, completely isolated by desert. For decades, Egyptian leaders have emphasized that water was their red line. President Anwar Sadad in 1979 stated that water was the only reason that could force Egypt back to war, and later on, Boutros Boutros-Ghalu, an UN Secretary General predicted that the region's next war would likely be over the
Nile rather than political conflicts.
Over 85% of the Nile's water originates in Ethiopian mountains. But, colonial agreements from 1929 to 1959 do not grant any water rights to Ethiopia, with Egypt having veto power over projects and dividing the river between themselves and its neighbor Sudan, excluding the mountainous country. Historically, Ethiopia is one of the poorest nations, where over 60 million residents lack electricity, which has caused them to view the agreement as deeply unfair, and determined to fix the historical imbalance.
In 2011, Egypt was experiencing political instability after the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Ethiopia decided to take advantage of it, and announced the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) new the Sudanese Border in the Blue Nile. Despite the country's poor population, the project was centrally financed through public bonds, donations, and civil servant salary deductions because no international financial institution was willing to sacrifice their relations with Egypt. Ethiopian identity was now built around GERD, a grandiosity symbol with a 145-meter-high wall, and extending nearly 2 kilometers, capable of storing 74 billion cubic meters, equivalent to two and a half Itaipu reservoirs. This gave Ethiopia gigantic power of the giver, controlling, theoretically, an entire year of Egypt's water budget, and Egypt was unable to take action because of its internal political conflict.
President of Egypt Mahomed Morsi, after the construction, in 2013, warned that if the Dam resulted in the Nile losing a single drop of water, there would be no alternative but to draw blood. Later, in 2019, the Ethiopian prime minister declared that no force would stop the dam, and that they were prepared for war if necessary. 2020 starts with the US president Donald Trump suggesting publicly that Egypt blows up the dam, and in 2021, the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-SIsi declared that Egyptian water supply was an uncrossable line. Ethiopia continued to utilize the dam without any international agreement between 2020 and 2024, which resulted in the loss of any formal negotiations between the involved nations by the end of 2023.
GERD was officially inaugurated on September 9, 2025, and Egyptian authorities filed a formal complaint to the UN Security Council, claiming the right to defend its existence. Ethiopia insisted on remaining silent on the matter, even after Donald Trump in January of 2026, offered to mediate a river division agreement, which Egypt accepted. In March 2026, Ethiopia broke their silence with the announcement to build 3 more dams on the Blue Nile, with no negotiation of governing rules.
The window for Egypt to act against the Ethiopian dam was over. A direct airstrike was off limits, with the nearest Egyptian airbase sitting 1,200 kilometers away from the dam, and the Sudanese civil war eliminating the country as a nearer operational base. Ethiopia had also planned to protect themselves, fortifying the area surrounding the dam with anti-aircraft systems built over many years. Apart from political and military reasons, destroying the dam would result in a catastrophic wave that would call up Sudanese dams, Egypt's main regional ally, transforming the country's capital into a lake within a few days. The water inside GERD was now practically a shield against an attack, ruling out Egyptian opportunities to destroy the dam.
Geopolitics experts consider the region a ticking time bomb. A possible water conflict is rising, even though historically, formal water wars are extremely rare. The last known formal war over war occurred 4,500 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, since then, international river cooperations outpacing conflict by two to one. However, very recent historical trends are pressuring this pattern to break. In 2025, India severed the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, which had survived three wars, which resulted in missiles and drone strikes from both sides. China has constructed gigantic dams on the Mekong River, and is now building the largest hydroelectric project in Tibet, in a river that leads to India. In response, India is planning to build an even bigger dam downstream as a countermeasure.
The overall increase of water-related violent incidents have risen from 24 per year since the start of this century, to over 400 just in 2025. The Nile River dispute has influenced experts to analyze 4 possible pathways that could lead to a major conflict, involving over 10 countries.
The first possible path is strategic Maritime Encirclements. Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world, and views it as a geographic prison. Egyptian post access is crucial to its survival which is now under threat with a military pact being signed between Egypt, Somalia, and Eritrea, sending troops and weapons to Magadishi, securing port access in Djibouti and Eritrea, finally, resulting in the alliance declaring that Red Sea security belongs solely to littoral states.
In 2020, Egyptian nationalists, rumored to have been financed by the government, promoted cyber attacks on Ethiopian government websites, signaling the possibility of an attack to the dam's control system, triggering artificial flood, severe stirrings and "accidents". Right beside this, Egypt was also accused of funding proxy warfare, with rebel groups operating near the dam's site.
The last, and most probable possibility is a severe drought. During normal years, water flows through the dam's turbines without any impact to Egypt. But, during years that rain is scarce, both Ethiopian and Egyptian reservoirs would dry up at the same time. By the time rainfall returns, a conflict would emerge over which country should fill their reservoir first, pushing Egypt that already normally operating is under severe water scarcity, to go into complete desperation. The major problem is that this situation has never been tested in real life, and there are no protocols to manage the filling of two reservoirs at the same time.
Water has evolved into a high-value target, a strategic cause for war even though it is rarely declared as an official reason for it. The world's first modern-day water war would likely not be declared as one, being disguised as port disputes, treaty disputes, covert actions and dam droughts.
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