Flood Prospect Sparks Violent Opposition To Dam Project

"Despite the intense local opposition, Sudan's government is moving forward with preliminary work on the project, known as the Kijbar Dam."

"The tensions over Kijbar echo a struggle hundreds of miles to the south, where members of a river tribe have refused to make way for the Chinese-built hydroelectric Merowe Dam, which is scheduled to begin operation in late 2008."

"For the Kijbar protestors, however, the true touchstone is the Nile's Aswan High Dam in neighboring Egypt (map of Egypt)."

"Egypt's construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s flooded Nubian villages on both sides of the Sudan-Egypt border and forced more than 90,000 people into new settlements-most of them in Sudan's eastern desert."

"On April 24 some 3,000 residents occupied and shut down the work site, where workers were drilling test holes to determine the composition of the bedrock beneath the region's date palm orchards and fields."