British Policy Studies 137 and its area is 200,000 feddans where fish are raised and cannot be converted into agricultural land. It is well known that the people desire a large number of fallow lands for agriculture, but the government does not find enough water to irrigate these lands, despite knowing that the population increases each year from 200,000 to 250,000, and that there is an urgent need to reclaim 60,000 feddans of fallow land to ensure water remains available for the people, lest they face hardship and distress. Sir Garstin, in his reports after the reconquest of Sudan and before the emergence of great ambitions, used to say that Sudan should not be given a single drop of water before all the dams and reservoirs in Egypt were completed. The money required for these dams and reservoirs was estimated at that time at 22 million pounds. However, the Sudan government began in 1902 to choose to cultivate cotton in Sudan. When the success of the harvest and the benefits were proven, they handed the matter over to a company, granting it in 1903 a concession to cultivate only ten thousand feddans. If they said that a morsel is the key to the mouth, the company soon requested another ten thousand feddans. Their argument for taking water was that the Aswan Dam had abundant water for Egypt, and that this water would be used for the ten thousand feddans in the Gezira. When the dam was raised in 1912, they said that its raising would enable the Sudan government to reclaim another ten thousand feddans. This dam was built for a different purpose, namely to supply summer agriculture. It stores only 2,400 million cubic meters, which is not enough. As for the Makwar Dam, it was estimated to hold 500 million cubic meters to irrigate 300,000 feddans. We will not go into detail here, but we express our concern from two aspects: First, diverting a portion of the irrigation water, while Egypt does not have enough water for itself. Second, diverting the water of the rice crop to the Gezira, and thus Egypt's fertile land would be thirsty. If they said that Egypt needs 50 billion cubic meters of water, and Sudan, if it reclaims 18