The war to its west would be against Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) which threatens to extend itself from west Libya to the Egyptian border. The war to its south would be against Ethiopia which will soon start to fill its Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) with Nil water that Egypt needs to survive.

The GNA in Libya, supported by Turkey and Qatar, wants to move out of its Tripoli and Misrata area to take Sirte and the oil installations east of it. Sirte is currently held by the Libyan National Army (LNA) under General Haftar.

As we wrote two weeks ago:

Egypt has started to position heavy military equipment on its western border. It does not want a Muslim Brotherhood controlled Libya as its neighbor. The buffer Haftar’s LNA provides is a priority for its own security. Egypt together with France, Greece, Cyprus and the UAE also rejected the Turkish aspirations in the eastern Mediterranean.

If Russia would pull back its support and completely give up on Haftar Egypt would see a necessity to intervene in Libya. A Turkish-Egyptian war on Libyan grounds would then become likely.

On Saturday the Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi inspected the troops at Egypt’s western border. The highest officers of the Egyptian military were also there. The number of deployed troops shows that they mean buiness.

Sisi threatened that Egypt would directly intervene:

In a televised address, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Sirte is a "red line" for Egypt, citing the need to protect its porous border as grounds for "direct intervention" in Libya.

"If the Libyan people asked us to intervene, it is a signal to the world that Egypt and Libya share ... common interests, security and stability," Sisi said on Saturday.

Egypt has support from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. But fighting in Libya would include a war against Turkey which has troops as well as 14,000 mercenary Jihadis from Syria deployed with the GNA. A war between the two biggest armies in the eastern Mediterranean could easily escalate.

Next month Ethiopia will start to fill its great new dam on the Blue Nil river.

It has been build since 2010 and the $4.8 billion project will turn Ethiopia into an electricity exporter. Egypt fears that the filling of the dam and its later management will leave too little water flowing down the Nil where Egypt needs it to feed its 100 million people.

Negotiations between Egypt and Ethiopia, moderated by the United States and the World Bank, have failed to find a solution. Egypt has called on (pdf, slow) the UN Security Council to intervene.

The issue is existential for both countries:

The years-long conflict pits Ethiopia’s desire to become a significant power exporter in the region against Egypt’s concern that the dam will significantly reduce its water supply if filled too quickly.

Egypt is expected to lose at least 22% of water flow, and is concerned that up to 30% of its agricultural land might turn into desert.

Both Egypt and Ethiopia have hinted at the possibility of taking military steps to protect their interests, and experts fear a breakdown in talks could lead to conflict.

Sudan, another party to this squabble, has long been caught between the competing interests.

The arrival of the rainy season is bringing more water to the Blue Nile, the main branch of the Nile. Addis Ababa considers next month would be an ideal time to begin filling the dam’s reservoir.

The basin was designed for a gigantic 74 billion cubic meters of water.

When finished and filled the dam will produce 6,450 MW of electrical power, more than triple as much as Ethiopia can currently generate. Much of the new generated electricity will be exported to Sudan which is the reason why Sudan has not taken Egypt’s side.

No Egyptian ruler can allow a situation in which 30% of Egypt’s agriculture dies off. Tens of millions of small farmers would lose their income and a famine would become a distinct possibility.

A military attack on the dam would be complicate. The land route for an army attack would need to go through Sudan. It is very long and lacks infrastructure. A large scale air attack coming from the Red Sea seems to be the most likely operation. But that would be risky and would not solve Egypt’s problem. The dam would be repaired and the operation would have to be repeated.

Ethiopia needs the electricity from the dam to develop the country and to pay back the loans it has taken up to build it. It wants to completely fill the dam over the next seven years. A prolongation of that time frame would lessen the immediate impact on Egypt. But Ethiopia is poor and someone else would have to pay for the losses it would incur. 

Could Egypt handle two wars at the same time? For a short period that would likely be possible. But both potential conflicts, the one in Libya and the one with Ethiopia, would likely become prolonged and would take years to settle. Egypt does not have the money to pay for them.

Sisi will now have to take quite difficult decisions. How will he decide?