As was mentioned in a previous post, water is one the major reasons that Israel is loath (to put it mildly) to return the Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty. It is impossible to see how a genuine Mideast peace can be crafted without the Golan reverting to Syria. It is very difficult to see how the Israelis will consent to this without somehow holding onto the water running through and from the place.
The Golan currently supplies around fifteen percent of Israel's agricultural water. This is water without which Israeli growers cannot continue. It is also water which cannot be replaced by simple conservation or expensive desalinization.
The Israel-Syria conundrum is a miniature of a growing dynamic across the Mideast. It is a dynamic which exists and will continue to fester regardless of the final outcome of the Great Stop Global Warming Campaign. The dynamic in play owes far less to changes in rain and snow fall than it does to increases in population and the reality of nationalism as the main drive of policy everywhere in the real, down-and-dirty world.
Iraq is caught in the water vise today. The squeeze is going to get worse--far worse in the next couple of decades. War as a consequence of the water shortfall is not at all improbable. Unless, of course, the major players--Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq--suddenly wake up bereft of nationalism, without any perceived need to take care of their own respective populations at the expense of all others if that is necessary.
Once upon a time Iraq was Mesopotamia, The Land Between Two Rivers. Its soil four thousand years ago was well watered, covered by a network of irrigation canals. The land all around, both above and below Baghdad was fertile. There were problems. Rivers silted. Canals were abandoned as kingdoms and empires rose and fell to the beat of the drums of war. Whole city-states such as Ur withered and died as a result of either the Tigris or Euphrates changing its main flow after a flood.
But, by and large Iraq stayed green. The desert was kept at bay by the billions of cubic meters of water flowing though the two great rivers. Until quite recently, that is.
The road to dryness was, if not paved by good intentions, at least started by them--way back in the glory days after World War II. The World Bank did a study on the floods which ravaged southern Iraq from time to time. The Euphrates had a nasty reputation in this regard, which was well established by the time Hammurabi posted his Code.
The answer was, quite unsurprisingly, considering the Bank was dominated by American technocrats, the building of dams. Dams would provide both flood control and electricity. It was a vision of the Tennessee Valley Authority translated to the cradle of agriculture.
The idea languished for decades. Then the Turks took to it like a deprived dieter attacking a chocolate shake. The Ankara government built dams on the upper reaches and tributaries of the Tigris as if concrete was soon to be prohibited. The South Eastern Anatolia Project was designed and intended to foster development and prosperity (to say nothing of political loyalty) on the part of the Kurds resident in the region.
Arguably, the Turks have been violating the UN Convention on the Law of Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses. The Iraqi position is that the Turks have been scarfing up water to the disadvantage of Iraq. Blandly, Ankara denies this.
Currently Iraq states it needs fifty billion cubic meters of water annually. Of that sixty percent must come from the Tigris with most of the balance being drawn from the Euphrates. The Iraqi water minister estimates the need will grow to seventy-five or more billion cubic meters by 2015.
Here is the catch. An impartial group, the European Water Association, has concluded that the available flow will drop to forty-three billion cubic meters by that time. Why the big drop?
The Turks aren't finished with their Anatolian project yet. More dams and diversion tunnels are under construction or planned as Ankara presses on with one the most ambitious and expensive civil engineering projects in history. The Turkish government has vowed to finish the project even if the three construction expense guarantee countries--Austria, Switzerland, and Germany--discontinue their participation.
This political resolve on the part of Ankara has blunted Iraq's most successful effort to date in reducing the size and impact of the Turkish project on Iraq's water needs. While it is a tad tough to see how Turkey is going to pull this off if the Western European states back out, the Turkish political will is strong and some new opportunities have emerged as Turkey becomes a crucial transit center for oil from the Central Asian fields. In a sense the 1.68 gigabucks in play is small when the value of Turkey as a transit area is considered.
Nor is Turkey alone in the impending parching of Iraq. Both Syria and Iran play a role as well.
The Iraqi's coreligionists across the border in the Land of the Mullahs have been building a new dam almost every time a dog raises its leg on the watersheds feeding the Tigris. In addition, the Iranians have dammed two rivers that formerly fed the marshlands in the deep south of Iraq. This, in turn, has hindered the effort to restore the marshes originally destroyed by Saddam's government in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Satellite imagery along with ground reports show that the net effect of Iran's dams has been to extend the desert of the Arabian Peninsula further north into portions of the former marshland.
In Faw, the southern most city in Iraq, water shortages have already resulted from the Iranian damming and diverting of the Karun River. This appears to be the shape of things to come. Without some very expensive and time consuming infrastructure construction, Faw is doomed to the fate of Ur.
Syria is a minor player--so far. Lake Assad, created by a dam on the upper Euphrates, filled over thirty years ago. However, Syria has a need for more water, so the potential of further dams being built either on the Euphrates or its tributaries must not be discounted.
Worsening the situation for Iraq are the results of bad planning, bad operation, and decades of war and neglect. As a result the salinity of water in Iraq as well as in its soil has increased. Silt deposition has retarded flow and decreased water quality to the point that it is unusable for most agarian purposes.
On top of those negatives, the Iraqi population has increased even with the losses through war and flight from war. Additionally, the push for industrialization as well as the requirements for water in the extraction sector have pushed down the amount of water needed for domestic and agricultural purposes.
Worse, there is no sign that the current government in Iraq can agree on either what needs to be done or how to do whatever might someday need to be done. Water has continually slipped down the ladder of national priorities--even as more land is subject to desertification and more former farmers are forced to the cities.
Having been bred and born in the American Southwest where water is mighty scarce, the Geek is well aware of the old reality--"who controls the water, controls the range."
Right now Turkey controls the water and thus is the dominant player in the power relations between itself and Iraq (and, to a lesser extent, Syria.) Whether the Turks are serious with the often whispered and occasionally shouted slogan, "a barrel of water for a barrel of oil," remains to be seen.
Whether Iraqi suspicions that Iran, Turkey, and Syria are throttling down the water flow so as to make Iraq dependent upon their agricultural exports is more than problematical and less than certain. In any event the capacity and will of each country to act to deprive Iraq of necessary water may be simply the consequence of safeguarding the interests and needs of each country's populations.
But, it may signify something darker. Something more sinister. Something far more likely to lead to conflict, to war.
Oh, well, as Allah wills.
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