British Political Ambitions 151 The Egyptian Army and Sudan Egypt is the gift of the Nile, and the army is the shield of the state. Modern Egypt has spent about 103 years casting thousands of its sons and vast sums of its wealth into the deserts of Sudan, to unite its Sudanese or Black Egyptian sons to its embrace, to bring them closer, bridge the distance, and secure its wealth and life. For Egypt and Sudan are sisters, nay, inseparable twins, bound by religion, language, the Nile, and common interests. The Nile alone sustains the kingdom stretching from the shores of the Mediterranean in the north to 200 kilometers south of Khartoum. South of this line, the Nile irrigates a narrow strip of land on its banks, while nine-tenths of the other lands are irrigated by the heavy rains that fall there. North of this line, where no rain falls, there is no plant, no animal, and no human. Life is entirely dependent on the Nile or proximity to the Nile. If you fly a plane over the Nile Valley from its mouth to its sources, the Nile Delta first appears to your eyes in a verdant green robe with sprawling edges. Beyond Cairo, the Nile Valley begins, narrow between two mountains. In the middle of this valley is a blue line, the Nile, and on its sides are two green lines, its banks, which gradually narrow until Khartoum. If you look along this distance to the east and west, you will see nothing beyond this blessed and fertile valley but barren, desolate sands. The area of Egypt is about one million square kilometers, approximately double the area of France, but nine-tenths of this area is infertile desert. Egypt's agricultural or arable land does not exceed the area of Belgium, which is about thirty thousand square kilometers. They estimate the population per square kilometer in Belgium