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This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?22199
Wednesday, March 28, 2001
Dam construction
an act of war?
Turkey, Iraq, Britain battle over life's most precious resource
Editor's note: WorldNetDaily.com international correspondent Anthony C. LoBaido has
traveled through Kurdistan and reported on events in that turbulent region of the
world. In this update, LoBaido examines the scramble for control of the water
resources in the region.
By Anthony C. LoBaido
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
KARS, Turkey -- The planet's most precious resource -- water -- has become the latest
point of conflict in the Middle East, as the UK and Arab nations in the area battle
over a proposed dam in Turkey, a facility that coul
d cause the perpetual flooding of countless Kurdish villages in the region.
It has long been thought that oil would bring about the next great war in the Middle
East. In reality, however, the next conflagration will most likely be fought over
something more basic to survival and prosperity in the
region -- water resources.
Some nations, like Iraq and Turkey, are rich in water resources. Others in the region,
like the Jordanians and Palestinians, lack water. Israel also is rapidly running out
of water.
Now, a new development is emerging in the area. After interviewing scores of Iraqi
and Kurdish dissidents in Scandinavian refugee camps, WorldNetDaily has identified one
of the pillars undergirding Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein's intentions in Kurdistan -- it involves the construction of a dam.
Kurdistan is a dangerous and rugged place. The Kurds are persecuted by Iran, Turkey
and Iraq. They have no homeland. The area is believed to be home to the biblical
Noah's Ark, yet the Kurds can find no safe refuge, as di
d Noah and his family. The U.S./UK bombings of Iraq and the northern "No Fly Zone," as
well as United Nations sanctions and other actions to help the Kurds, have proven
futile. Saddam's mega corporation "Asia" has made hi
m a billionaire as he sends consumer goods, oil and water through Turkey via Kurdistan
to beat the ineffective U.N. sanctions on Baghdad. There is also uranium in the
region. The Iraqis seek control of both uranium and w
ater resources.
Turkey wants to build dams on the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. Those rivers are the
keys to the water supply of the entire Middle East. One of those dams will be called
Ilisu Dam, near the border to Syria and Iraq.
According to Anna Van Meter, a Scandinavia Red Cross worker currently working in
Kurdistan, "When the dam is completed, it will flood over many Kurdish cities,
including one of Kurdistan's oldest cities. But that is just
one of many water dams which Turkey has planned over the next 20 years."
Van Meter continued: "Turkey will make electricity, and lots of it, at plants it hopes
to construct on the river. The financiers of the project are from Great Britain. And
Norwegian engineers will bring the project to li
fe. Syria, Iraq, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have now made an official
complaint to Great Britain and warned Turkey that the construction of this dam is an
act of war. Some of the Christian Kurds told me this is
the fulfillment of a prophecy of the book of Revelation, that the Euphrates River will
be tied up so the 200-million-man armies of China and south Asia will enter into the
Middle East."
The Socialist Labor government of Tony Blair has been criticized by some members of
Parliament over the UK's backing of the Ilisu dam project.
According to The Guardian -- a British newspaper that shocked Parliament by exposing
the existence of the project and that the UK would fund it -- members of the Trade and
Industry Select Committee said plans to spend £20
0 million of taxpayers' money on the dam would have to be dropped unless the Turkish
government agreed to certain guarantees.
The main stumbling block is trade secretary Stephen Byers' insistence that Turkey
consult Syria and Iraq on its proposal to restrict the flow of the Tigris into their
territory. Turkey will not do so, according to Olcay U
nver, president of the Turkish administration in charge of the project.
The British Parliament seems to have conceded that British commercial interests in
Turkey and political relations between the two countries would be damaged if Britain
did not pledge the £200 million.
"At the same time, it would be quite wrong to go ahead regardless of the potential ill
effects of the dam in the hope that matters would sort themselves out," said one
committee member.
The committee demanded that Byers obtain assurances from the Turkish authorities that
they had consulted downstream neighbors before agreeing to the project.
"Objections from neighboring states, however charged in the political context, deserve
to be taken seriously," the committee stated.
MPs said their worst fears were for the Kurdish people whose homes would be drowned
and their livelihoods lost. The failure to consult even the mayors of the affected
towns was "lamentable."
The committee said: "The principal result of the dam will be the movement of yet more
people from the land to overcrowded cities ... and the absence of remedies in the
courts for those aggrieved will leave many people wit
hout access to justice."
The committee "shares the view of ministers that the greatest remaining obstacle to
granting export credit for the dam is the prospect of a program of displacing
thousands of local residents without proper consultation, c
ompensation and resettlement."
On the issue of secrecy, some Parliament members demand that those involved in the
scheme "address the deplorable and counter-productive lack of transparency in the way
in which documentation has been kept from the public
on the Ilisu dam project."
Some MPs also criticized the government's delayed publication of environmental and
resettlement reports until just before Parliament adjourned for the Christmas recess
so MPs could not raise any issues involved.
Tony Juniper, policy director of Friends of the Earth, said: "This report highlights
how the government's commitments to the environment, human rights and democracy and
ethical foreign policy are not reflected in the poli
cies of the ECGD. Mr. Byers should refuse support for the Ilisu dam and instead
concentrate on overhauling the rules that decided which British companies gain
taxpayers' assistance for their work overseas."
An Iraqi delegation is attending a summit of Arab nations this week in Amman, Jordan.
Saddam Hussein sent a message to the summit yesterday, offering to send Iraqi troops
to liberate "all of Palestine." In the past, fundi
ng for the Palestinian Authority has been promised by many Arab regimes, but has been
delivered only in dribs and drabs. The PA is calling for a large and immediate
infusion of arms and cash from her Arab neighbors, perh
aps in anticipation of a war with Israel.
Last week, Ezer Weizman, a former dovish president of Israel, said, "Yasser Arafat is
a liar. It is as simple and tragic as that." Weizman, 77, was a brilliant commander
in the Israeli air force.
"I have explained to foreign leaders that Arafat is just a liar, and I clarify to them
that he is responsible for the ongoing killings," said Weizman.
Another prominent Israel leader, Yitzhak Molcho, who engaged in hundreds of hours of
negotiations with Arafat, called him "a seven-headed snake."
Concluded Van Meter, "Turkey always wanted to go inside the European Union and
solidify her position in NATO. This is why Turkey has entered into war games with
her archenemy Greece -- it is all because Turkey knows a war may be coming with her
Arab neighbors. This is a great story that is now just unfolding."
The following websites feature information about the Ilisu dam issue:
>>Linques at site<<
Kurdish Human Rights Project
Kurdish Media
Friends of the Earth UK
Berne Declaration, Ilisu campaign, Switzerland
International Rivers Network
Keith Parkins' site on the Ilisu Dam
Related stories:
Will water precipitate next Mideast war?
LoBaido: Saddam Hussein's defiant reign
Saddam's female assassin squads
Getting free from Saddam
Anthony C. LoBaido is an international correspondent for WorldNetDaily.
End<{{
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The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
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