Wadi Halfa Salient
Coordinates: 22 ° 5 ′ 27 ″ N , 31 ° 24 ′ 16 ″ E
Wadi Halfa Salient (from Wadi Halfa , Arabic وادي حلفا, DMG Wādī Ḥalfā , a nearby Sudanese city 22 kilometers south of the border, and Engl. salient = bulge) is the unofficial name of a bulge on the international border between Sudan and Egypt along the Nile to the north.
history
In 1899 the border between was Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Egypt in the Anglo-Egyptian condominium - Convention established at the 22nd parallel. However, access to Wadi Halfa Salient and thus the administration of the local population from Sudan was easier, so that in 1902, in an additional treaty to the original agreement of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, a new administrative border, extended to the north, was established, the Wadi Halfa Salient included in the Sudanese administrative area.
In addition to the Wadi Halfa Salient, the Hala'ib triangle on the Red Sea coast deviates from the original border to the north in favor of Sudan, and immediately to the west of it the much smaller area around Bir Tawil , which deviates from the original border to the south .
Political situation
Egypt insists on the original demarcation of 1899 along the parallel of 22 degrees north, which is more favorable for itself, and therefore claims the Hala'ib triangle in addition to Wadi Halfa Salient, while it does not make any claims on Bir Tawil south of the original border. Conversely, since Sudan claims the administrative border of 1902, it claims the same areas as Egypt. The three areas deviating from latitude 22 degrees north are affected differently by the claims. While the comparatively large Hala'ib triangle, with its seashore, was militarily occupied by Egypt and Bir Tawil is not claimed by either country, there were no conflicts in Wadi Halfa Salient due to the extensive flooding.
geography
The Wadi Halfa Salient with a total area of 210 square kilometers is about nine kilometers wide and extends finger-like on both sides of the original course of the Nile 25 kilometers to the north into Egyptian territory. The construction of the Aswan Dam and the flooding of Lake Nasser (which is called Lake Nubia on the Sudanese side ) flooded a large part of the banks of the Nile in this area. Most of the villages in the area as well as the ancient city of Faras (where Faras Cathedral stood) went under. Some of the people were relocated to New Halfa in the Butana region.
According to a detailed map from 1953, i.e. before the flooding, a total of 52 villages could be counted in the area, 24 of them west of the Nile (but only 17 named), 29 east of the Nile (twelve named) and one unnamed village on the what was then Faras Island in the Nile. The largest place and the only one with more than 2000 inhabitants was Dubaira /دبيرة.
Since the damming of the lake, a land area of only around 30 to 40 square kilometers has remained in Wadi Halfa Salient, for the most part on the eastern shore of Lake Nasser. It is an inhospitable, almost vegetation-free rocky desert. An overlay of the map with current satellite images from NASA World Wind shows the extent of the flooding in the area of Wadi Halfa Salient. All of the villages on the map disappeared without exception in the floods.
Web links
- Sudan - Egypt (United Arab Republic) Boundary. (PDF, 256 kB) International Boundary Study - No. 18. Bureau of Intelligence and Research, July 27, 1962, p. 7 , archived from the original January 13, 2014 ; accessed on February 5, 2017 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/north_africa/txu-oclc-6949452-nf36-5.jpg Detailed map from the time before the flooding
