America’s Colonialist Role in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)
(Translated)
Al-Rayah Newspaper - Issue 590 - 11/03/2026
By: Ustaadh Nasser Ridha*

Since the end of the last century, global political strategists have been saying that the 21st century will be the century of water wars. Therefore, the major colonialist powers prepared plans and programs to control vital water resources around the world, and America’s role, along with the Jewish entity, was in controlling one of the greatest water resources on earth, namely the Nile River Basin, which flows into the Mediterranean via Sudan and Egypt, during Haile Selassie's rule in Ethiopia.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, between 1956 and 1964, identified the final site for the Renaissance Dam, whose foundation stone was laid by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on April 2, 2011, and which Ethiopia claims is for electricity generation with a production capacity of 6,450 megawatts. Construction continued for 14 years, with its inauguration announced on September 9, 2025, at a cost of $4.8 billion, and an American research study had been issued in 1988 titled "Strategy for Enhancing the American Presence Throughout the Entire Basin Region," stating that whoever controls the water can impose their policy on the rest of the countries.

On July 15, 2025, BBC Arabic reported U.S. President Trump’s statement on the Renaissance Dam, during a dinner at the White House with GOP Senators in July 2025, in which he said, “Ethiopia built a dam with United States money largely... and it has one little problem: it doesn't allow much water going into the Nile River... And, anyway, that should have never sort of happened the way it happened. But financed by the United States of America.” Then his meeting on 21 January 2026, with President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, he said, “We were all set to make a deal. We were going to do a joint venture of sorts and it would have been good... I’m going to try bringing the two of you together, see if we can make a deal.” El-Sisi and al-Burhan quickly welcomed this mediation on the Nile waters.

As for the Jewish entity’s role in the Renaissance Dam issue, its Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s visit to several African countries in 2009, in which he visited nine Nile Basin countries accompanied by 100 water experts, confirmed its role. The visit was announcing several dams and water projects with those countries, and undoubtedly his visit to Ethiopia was regarding the Renaissance Dam.
America did not stop at the Renaissance Dam but provided studies for four other dams on the Blue Nile course: Karadobi, Mendaya, Mabil, and Mota, with a total storage capacity of 200 billion cubic meters of water, and Ethiopia has already begun constructing these dams.

Facts about the Renaissance Dam:

1. It is located 9 to 20 km from Sudan's eastern borders, with a storage capacity of 74 to 76 billion cubic meters, and it is a timed water bomb. If this dam were to collapse, it would sweep away 20 km on both sides of the river course and destroy the dams in its path, increasing the force of the rushing water and threatening the lives of more than 100 million people living on the riverbanks in Sudan and Egypt.

2. The claim that the purpose of building the dam is electricity production is false, as the water drop at the dam is 6,000 feet only, meaning that with a far smaller amount of water, multiples of the current electricity output could be produced. In comparison, China’s Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, with a storage capacity of 39.3 billion cubic meters produces 22.5 gigawatts. This means that, with half the water volume of the Renaissance Dam, China produces four times the electricity it does.

3. The initial studies in 1964 for the Renaissance Dam indicated a storage capacity of 11 billion cubic meters, so what changed the study to 74 or 76 billion cubic meters? The claim behind that is climate change and global warming, which doubled the need for water.

4. Despite the 1902 agreement signed by Britain between Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia, which prevents Ethiopia from any action on the Blue Nile except with written approval from Sudan and Egypt, Ethiopia built the dam, and the agent rulers of Egypt and Sudan endorsed this catastrophic dam by signing what is called the Declaration of Principles in 2015, which gives Ethiopia the right to dispose of Blue Nile waters as it wishes.

5. Ethiopia rejected any right for Sudan and Egypt to intervene in the dam’s management, threatening both countries with either flooding, which occurred in October 2025 when Ethiopia opened the dam gates after the end of the autumn period, increasing water flows in an already full river and causing massive floods that inundated large areas in Sudan and even Upper Egypt, or drought when Ethiopia closed the gates and withheld water to fill the dam, causing the Blue Nile waters to recede into disconnected pools, with water pumps unable to lift water for drinking, causing a state of thirst for millions in Sudan.

6. Building the dam with this massive storage capacity in the Great African Rift region, which experiences seismic activity, doubles the earthquake risk in the area and thereby increases the danger of the dam’s own collapse; geological experts and international survey centers monitored the seismic activity rate in the region before the dam’s construction, when Ethiopia’s earthquake rate ranged from five to six per year. After the dam was built and at the start of filling operations, the numbers rose sharply, reaching about 38 earthquakes in 2023, rising to around 90 in 2024, and recording more than 250 earth tremors of varying strength in 2025, including a series of violent earthquakes in October 2025, the period when Ethiopia announced the completion of filling operations, forcing it to open the gates to relieve water pressure on the earth’s crust, which caused the aforementioned flooding. With the beginning of 2026, seismic activity continued at a high rate with repeated tremors reaching 5.5 on the Richter scale, a dangerous phase threatening people’s lives.

We conclude from all this that America’s role and that of the Jewish entity is as the maker of the crisis, not a mediator in it, and they would not have been able to muzzle the Ummah through the Renaissance Dam and other dams along the Nile River Basin course except with the help of treacherous rulers and the queue of agent journalists, politicians, and experts who drummed and applauded for these colonial projects.

Islam has made water at its sources public property, with people as partners in it, according to the saying of the Prophet (saw), «النَّاسُ شُرَكَاءُ فِي ثَلَاثٍ، الْمَاءِ وَالنَّارِ وَالْكَلَأِ» “People are partners in three things: water, fire, and pasture” [reported by Ahmad and Abu Dawud] and in the narration of Anas (ra), «وَثَمَنُهَا حَرَامٌ» “and their price is forbidden.” The Shariah has also made the issue of drinking water a priority in utilization, and therefore controlling the drinking water source for people in Sudan and Egypt is prohibited, and any dam on the river that prevents people from drinking and irrigation must be dismantled and removed.

Given that it has been established that the Renaissance Dam is a hostile dam on the lifeline of the people of Sudan and Egypt, a decisive action of life and death must be taken toward it, as it is an existential issue for both peoples. It is what drove the Uthmani Khilafah (Ottoman Caliphate) to dispatch military campaigns in what was known as the discovery of the Nile sources, reaching Lake Albert Nyanza in Rwanda, 50 miles from Masindi in present-day Uganda, all to secure water and food sources for the Ummah, and it is what the returning Khilafah (Caliphate) will do soon, inshaa Allah.

* Chair of the Central Contact Committee of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Sudan