The next major conflict in the Middle East
Water Wars
A Lecture by Adel Darwish- Geneva conference on Environment and
Quality of Life June 1994.
Oil has always been thought of as the traditional cause of conflict in
the Middle East past and present. Since the first Gulf oil well gushed in
Bahrain in 1932, countries have squabbled over borders in the hope that
ownership of a patch of desert or a sand bank might give them access to new
riches. No longer. Now, most borders have been set, oil fields mapped and
reserves accurately estimated - unlike the water resources, which are still
often unknown. WATER is taking over from oil as the likeliest cause of
conflict in the Middle East.
When President Anwar Sadat signed the peace treaty with Israel in
1979, he said Egypt will never go to war again, except to protect its water
resources. King Hussein of Jordan has said he will never go to war with
Israel again except over water and the Untied Nation Secretary General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali has warned bluntly that the next war in the area will
be over water.
From Turkey, the southern bastion of Nato, down to Oman, looking out
over the Indian Ocean, the countries of the Middle East are worrying today
about how they will satisfy the needs of their burgeoning industries, or
find drinking water for the extra millions born each year, not to mention
agriculture, the main cause of depleting water resources in the region.
All these nations depend on three great river systems, or vast
underground aquifers, some of which are of `fossil water' that cannot be
renewed.
Take the greatest source of water in the region, the Nile. Its basin
nations have one of the highest rate of population growth which are likely
to double in less than thirty years, yet the amount of water the Nile brings
is no more than it was when Moses was found in the bulrushes.
The shortage:
Although all natural water resources are replenished through the
natural hydrological cycle, their renewal rate ranges from days to
millennia. The average renewal rate for rivers are about 18 days - that is
to renew every drop taken out - while for large lakes and deep aquifer they
can span thousand years.
The world's oldest reserves such as the Nubian aquifer in North Africa
were filled when water infiltrated the earth's subsurface in past geological
years. When we refer to fossil water in an aquifer, it is water trapped
since the ice age and there is no certainty how long it would take to
replenish them, thus it safe to conclude that mining their water is only a
temporary solution.
The oil boom in the Gulf and other Middle Eastern states, desalination
became an industry. In 1990 over 13 million cubic meter were produced each
day world wide using 7,500 plants, yet this represents just under one
thousandth of fresh water consumption per day.
Water scarcity: In general a country with less than 1,700 cubic meter
per capita is regarded as experiencing water stress, while less than 1000
cubic meter is regarded as water shortage.
Water scarcity or availability is based on measurements of stream flow
within countries in question, with evaporation calculated based on local
climate and subtracted from the total. Dr Malin Falkenmark expresses the
thresholds as number of people per ``flow unit'' of water, a unit equal to
one million cubic meters per year. Dr Falkenmark uses 600 or more persons
per floe unit as an indicator of water stress, 1000 or more persons per flow
unit as an indicator of water scarcity and 2000 or more per flow unit as
absolute scarcity. But most reports - and the methods used in publications -
usually reverse the ratio of people per flow unit, expressing the figure as
the amount of water available per capita. So reversing the first two
equations yields fewer than 1,667 cubic meter per person per annum as an
indicator of water stress ( again this figure is rounded up to 1700) and
1000 or fewer cubic meters per person as an indicator of scarcity.
In the case of Renewable fresh water resources there is no universal
uniform on it since there is no international consensus on how to define and
measure renewable fresh water resources.
* The list of water-scarce countries in 1955 were seven including
three Middle Eastern countries : Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait.
By 1990, 13 were added among them eight from the Middle East :
Algeria, Israel/Palestine , Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tunisia, United
Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
UN studies anticipate to add another 10 countries by the year 2025
seven of them are from the Middle east : Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Libya,
Morocco, Oman and Syria. This mean that by the year 2025 some eighteen
countries in this troublesome region will suffer from water shortages.
* The Annual Renewable fresh water Available Per Person ranked by 1990
Availability in Cubic Metres
Country 1955 1990 2025
Kuwait 147 23 9
Qatar 808 75 57
Bahrain 1,427 117 68
Saudi Arabia 1,266 306 113
UAE 6,196 308 176
Jordan 906 327 121
Yemen 1,098 445 152
Israel 1,229 461 264
Tunisia 1,127 540 324
Algeria 1,770 689 332
Libya 4,105 1,017 359
Morocco 2,763 1,117 590
Egypt 2,561 1,123 630
Oman 4,240 1,266 410
Lebanon 3,088 1,818 1,113
Iran 6,203 2,203 816
Syria 6,500 2,087 732
Turkey 8,509 3,626 2,186
Iraq 18,441 6,029 2,356
Sudan 11,899 4,792 1,993
* Figures of population growth in the Middle East leaves little room
for optimism.
Israel's population is projected to grow from 4.7 millions in 1990 to
about 8 million in 2025. By that time Palestinians in the west bank -
because of their higher birth rate, are likely to reach just under seven
millions- the two peoples are to share the same water resources which they
both now say are not enough.
Jordan's population more than doubled from 1.5 millions in 1955 to 4
millions in 1990 and is projected to double again before 2010. Their annual
per capita water availability in 1990 was 327 cubic meters some 673 below
the bottom line of crisis.
Iran for example had 2,025 cubic meter per capita in 1990, the figure
projected for 2025 is between 776 and 860 cubic meter.
Libya's population of 4.5 million in 1990 is projected to increase to
12.9 million in 2025 and the oil revenues enabled the government to increase
dependency on desalination, but they diverted - or rather wasted massive
resources on a white elephant, the great man made river to mine fossil water
in the south.
Egypt's 58 Million in 1990 are projected to reach 101 Millions in 2025
and already approaching water scarcity: its per capita availability is 1,017
* The Middle East is also a region where figures of water withdrawal
as percentage of renewable water supplies are among the highest in the
world, while the renewal rate is rather slow because of the arid nature of
the land.
Withdrawal as a % years for country of renewable population to double
Water supplies
Libya 374% 20.4
Qatar 174% 33.0
UAE 140% 24.8
Yemen 135% 21.7
Jordan 110% 19.3
Israel 110% 46.2
Saudi Arabia 106% 21.7
Bahrain over 100% 28.9
Kuwait over 100% 23.1
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INADEQUACY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW:
See water laws
Middle Eastern nations in the past have illustrated their willingness
to resort to force in settling disputes over issues less serious than
shortage of water, which is not only the source of life, but also lies at
the heart of the basic beliefs of the majority who follow the three
monolithic religions of the region, as well as ancient beliefs and
mythologies that still the base of social life today - like Egypt and the
Nile, or the inhabitants of the marshes in southern Iraq.
Water sources in almost all cases, with few exceptions of underground
aquifers, crosses borders and in some cases involve as high as nine
sovereign states in the basin.
Percentage of renewable years for Countrywater supplies originating
population to double
outside national borders
Egypt 97 % 30.1
Syria 79 % 18.2
Sudan 77 % 22.4
Iraq 66 % 18.7
Few agreements have been reached about how the water should be shared;
most of those agreements are seen as un-just: upstream countries believe
that they should control the flow of the rivers, taking what they like, if
they can get away with it. Example Turkey. Downstream, where the states are
often more advanced and militarily stronger they have always challenged this
assumption, like Egypt and Israel. It is a recipe for confrontation.
International law is not clear on the shared water courses, rivers or
cross border aquifers. Water cannot be owned, but the methods by which an
individual, a group, a legal entity or a nation can store, transfer and
regulate the flow of water, makes this person in control. i.e. his hand on
the tap. Governments, organisations and individuals negotiate agreements
using a mixture of customary use, local and tradition laws, and the
established right of use over a period of time - not specified. Such mixture
is often contradictory and in itself a cause of conflict.
The Islamic laws - or shari'aa - and incidentally stem from a word
meaning the sharing of water-, of which many Arab countries based their
water use rules- predates the Mohammedan belief and is based on the harsh
rules of the desert: example the people who dig a well have the first right
of use, but they cannot deny the use - for drinking - to man or beast. A man
lowering a container into a well will have full possession of only the
amount of water that fills it at that precise moment...and so on.
When it came to sharing water courses, the situation is not clear.
Muslim Fundamentalists, currently active in the region, have recently
begun to include the water issue in their radical literature as they
interpret the laws of water sharing with non Muslims along Islamic lines in
a way designed to deploy water as another weapon to continue few ongoing
conflicts in the region.
The non clarity of international law is a matter of concern. There are
few, if any, precedents that the UN international law commission or the
International court of justice could be cited to establish some rules to
arbitrate on water sharing that is if neighbouring countries quarrelling
over water resort to arbitration; but so far no country has volunteered to
do so.
Only the world bank set a precedent in the late 1940's in financing a
dam project in India. The bank made it conditional that an agreement on
sharing the benefits of the dam between riparian nations should be reached
as well as commissioning independent studies to alter designs, and modify
plans in order to minimise the harm that the project might inflict on
neighbouring people. This only works when a nation approaches the world bank
for a loan to finance a water scheme - like in north Syria and south Turkey
in the 1950's.
But, as history have shown in the Middle East, nations that did not go
to the World Bank to finance their water schemes had no ombudsman or a
neutral observer to arbitrate between them and their neighbours. There was -
and still there is - no provision in international law to stop them imposing
their will on weaker or smaller neighbours, uprooting ethnic minorities by
force or by ending their way of life and even having far reaching and
lasting devastating effect on the environment, all because they carried out
their ambitious water scheme away from world supervision without any proper
studies while mankind helplessly looked on..
There are many examples of governmental water schemes that took little
notice of international laws, the effect on the environment and wildlife,
the interests of neighbouring nations or even the welfare of their own
population. Water policies in Jordan and Levant have, for generations, been
in the front line of the Middle East longest conflict. Turkey has an
alarming attitude to neighbouring Iraq and Syria, not to mention the effect
of its water politics on its own Kurdish population.
The Ba'ath dictatorship in Iraq is currently destroying the marshes
and thousands of years way of life.
The Egyptian dictator colonel Nasser refused to listen to any argument
but politics when he built the Aswan Dam - while the dam is providing
multiple benefits to farmers and generating electricity - it had other
devastating effects. Nasser imposed his will on Sudan - 1959 agreement gave
Egypt 84 cubic kilometre of water and Sudan 18 cubic kilometres, yet the
Egyptian `borrow' 60 percent of Sudan's water-, the lake the dam created
covered priceless archaeological sites, destroyed valuable ecosystems and
fishing grounds, eroded beaches and damaged nutrient and sediment balances
and uprooted the 100,000 people, by evacuating the majority of the Nubian
nation in the 1960's from the land they inhabited since the ancient Egyptian
state over 5000 years ago.
Even if we put the damage to the environment aside, undemocratic
governments - and the Middle East is full of them - argue that their water
schemes which have infringed the rights of ethnic minorities, are internal
matters. But again history proves that it is only a matter of time before
the aggrieved ethnic minorities take up arms to face such injustice in a
classical guerrilla war that on for years with even heavier price paid by
the population, the wild life and the environment.
****
WATER AND THE CURRENT PEACE ACCORDS:
As the Palestine Israel accord is heralding the end of one long
dispute, with its prospect of a general peace between Israel and her Arab
neighbours, it became obvious that water is in the heart of the dispute
since other issues that obscured water for years, proved to be of lesser
significance to the parties of the dispute. Multilateral talks group
concentrating on water - they met in Oman last month - still have reached no
agreement on sharing water after almost three years of starting the talks.
During the research for the book, both my co-author and I, discovered
that water was the hidden agenda for past conflicts and one major obstacle
to reach a lasting and final settlement in the region. The conflicts over
water is not just between Israel and her neighbours, but also conflicts
among Arabic speaking nations.
In the past Arab dictators stifled their own disputes and faced the
Jewish state as a common enemy. Soon, that constraint is likely to disappear
and all the long-suppressed enmities - like water sharing quarrels - will
come into the open.
Already water has played a part in causing wars, altering policies and
changing alliances. As late as in 1987 & 1989 Senegal and Mauritania fought
two limited wars across the Senegal river - when Mauritanian tribesmen
followed the shrinking vegetation and crossed to the other bank, violating
Senegalese sovereignty. As artillery exchanges raved across the river
Senegal, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia became directly and indirectly
involved.
Water was an early weapon deployed in the Arab Israeli conflict. In
the 1960s cross border raids on water schemes' machinery raved between
Israel, Syria and Jordan culminating in the Six Day war in 1967. In 1964, an
Arab summit conference in Amman decided to divert the headwaters of the
Jordan - in effect, depriving Israel of its main supply.
Few months before the 1964 Arab Summit, Israel built a giant pumping
station on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee and began to siphon water
into systems of pipes and canals known as the national water carrier, all
the way to the Negav Desert. By 1990, the carrier was diverting 440 million
cubic meter a year of water that used to pass through the Jordan all the way
to the Dead Sea. As a result the Dead Sea has now shrunk into a slain drying
two lakes.
When Yasser Arafat founded Fateh guerrilla organisation, the group's
baptism on new-year's-eve 1964/65 was an operation against the national
water carrier in Israel.
To implement the 1964 Arab summit resolution, work began on the Syrian
and Jordanian side of the border, despite Israel's warning that it would
consider it an infringement of national rights. And though all the work was
carried out on Arab or neutral land, battles, air raids and artillery duels
occurred. In the end, Israeli air strikes deep into Syria forced the Arabs
to call off their scheme by destroying the proposed dam site on the Yarmuk
river. Had the two dams al-Maquarin and Al-Makhiyabat been completed, they
would have deprived Israel of 550 million cubic meter per annum.( In fact
Jordan and Syria are proposing to build a new Dam the Unity Dam further
upstream, World bank linking the finance with an agreement with Israel,
which has not been reached yet.)
General Ariel Sharon, later an Israeli defence minister, had no doubt
what those skirmishes were all about. `People generally regard 5 June 1967
as the day the Six-day war began,' he said. `That is the official date. But,
in reality, it started two- and-a-half years earlier, on the day Israel
decided to act against the diversion of the Jordan.'
That brief conflict settled nothing, so once again war erupted in
1973. President Sadat of Egypt wanted to force Israel to the conference
table, and to conclude a lasting peace. With the help of Henry Kissinger a
peace treaty with Israel was reached in 1979, after the Camp David meetings
and accords in 1978.
As the various Israeli-Egyptian committees met to settle the details
of the treaty, Israeli delegates suggested that there should be co-operation
on water projects. In particular, they wanted about 1 per cent of the Nile
flow giving them about 800 million cubic meter to be diverted into a
pipeline extending from the peace canal which takes water from the Ismaelia
canal east of the delta to Sinai.
President Sadat saw this as providing a substitute for water from
aquifers of the west bank and the Jordan, thus reducing Israel's dependency
on the territories seen as Palestinian self rule areas. He also saw such
project as basis for regional co-operation, eventually extending the
pipeline to Lebanon or Jordan in later stages.
What president Sadat did not realise was the consternation that his
ideas would cause at home, where the Nile is held in almost mystical regard;
the prime duty of the Egyptian armed forces is to defend and preserve that
source of all Egyptian life.
Following Egyptian intelligence leaking the information to senior army
officers already restive at being forced to make peace with their old enemy,
plots to oust Mr Sadat were laid, and he was saved only when the CIA learned
of them - through an Egyptian officer who defected to the opposition in
London - and warned the Egyptian president. Amazed that the army could plot
against him, Mr Sadat questioned Field Marshal Abdel Halim Abu Ghazala, the
defence minister, who said the loyalty of the Egyptian army could not be
guaranteed if a coup was mounted `to stop Israel stealing the Nile'. The
president quickly dropped the water-sharing idea.
THE DAY THE TAP WAS TURNED-OFF:
More recently, Turkey seized an opportunity to demonstrate its ability
to control the flow of water to its neighbours, and provoked a remarkable
alliance between enemies. In January 1990, it stopped the flow of the
Euphrates. Officially, the interruption was to fill the vast lake in front
of the new Ataturk Dam; in fact, it was a demonstration to Syria of what
might happen if President Hafez al-Assad continued aiding the Kurdish rebels
in south-east Anatolia. Halting the flow of the Euphrates into Syria also
brought water shortages in Iraq. Turkish planners thought that would not
matter, as Syria and Iraq were bitter enemies.
Faced with this common threat, however, old antagonisms were instantly
forgotten; the Iraqi and Syrian media united in denouncing Turkey, and
military leaders from both countries drew up plans for armed retaliation.
After three weeks, the river was allowed to flow as usual, though the
stoppage had been planned to last a month.
Trouble between Turkey and Syria over water remains the likeliest
prospect today. So far, Turkey has completed only about half of the Gap
(South-east Anatolia) project to build 22 dams and reservoirs on the
Euphrates to reclaim 1.7 M Hectar. When the Gap is completed, the quantity
and quality of water flow to Syria will be reduced by an estimated 40
percent of its 1980 flow ( which was 7,000 bn gallons of water). Turkey says
the water will eventually return back to the river after watering its
fields, but water will be much saltier by then, the Syrians say. And as the
whole Western Alliance would be involved by a war between Turkey and Syria,
it is no surprise that American and European planners have been working on
contingency plans for such eventuality.
When all the Euphrates projects are complete, the Turks intend to
harness the Tigris. That will have a direct effect on Iraq ( about 90 per
cent of the current flow), again forcing Syria and Iraq into alliance -
though they almost went to war in 1975, when Syria built the Thawrah dam.
President Suleyman Demirel summed up the intransigent attitude of the
Turks: `Neither Syria nor Iraq can lay claim to Turkey's rivers, any more
than Ankara could claim their oil . . . We have a right to do anything we
like. The water resources are Turkey's, the oil resources are theirs. We
don't say we share the oil resources, and they cannot say they share our
water resources.'
Syria's answer has been to step up support for the Kurdish fighters of
the Kurdistan Workers' Party PKK, spreading devastation in Turkey. Part of
the Kurdish grievances is the GAP project in their home land. Between 1984
and 1993 the region became a battle ground, some 5000 people were killed as
the Kurdish revolt spread. Those who wanted to live peacefully were caught
between the hammer of the PKK and the anvil of Turkish security forces.
Iraq's answer as yet to be made.
The Tigris-Euphrates river basin is the scene not only of a bitter,
low-intensity war in eastern Turkey, but also of silent genocide where the
two great rivers unite in the Shatt-al-Arab ( which itself was a main cause
of eight year war between Iran and Iraq to move the borders from its middle
to the eastern bank ) and discharge themselves into the warm waters of the
Gulf. There, Saddam Hussein's engineers have built a `Third River' to drain
the marshes north of Basra, home for 3,000 years to the Marsh Arabs. This is
followed by another one `The Mother of All Battles River' Ostensibly an
irrigation project, it is really a way of suppressing forever the last
pocket of resistance to President Saddam in the south of the country.
The Shia, who answered the call by George Bush for a rebellion against
the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1991, took refuge there when they were
defeated, and have been supplied and joined by revolutionary guards and
Iraqi dissidents from Iran. Unable to flush them out of their reed- hidden
bases, the Iraqis first poisoned the waters, are now draining them - and are
destroying a whole people and their way of life which is estimated to
irreversibly disappear within the next 10 to 20 years if the Iraqi
government continues to drain them as indicated by a study of ecological and
environmental changes in the marsh region, an area slightly smaller than
Wales, carried out by a team of scientists.
Of 15,000 square kilometres of marsh and lake in 1985, 57 per cent had
been turned into dry land by 1992. [ Evidence for this claim comes from
detailed interpretation of satellite images of the region, obtained from
Landsat, NOAA and SPOT probes.] This transformation has irreversibly damaged
much of the wildlife of the marshland ecosystem, which is classified as of
global importance by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
CONFRONTATION IN THE NILE BASIN:
See The Nile basin
The Iraqi schemes might not shock many since the world has accepted
that Saddam Hussein is in the habit of pursuing such policies. But on the
other extreme where moderation is the norm, things don't look too bright
when it comes to water politics.
Today, Egypt is regarded as the most moderate and helpful of all
Middle Eastern nations. But it is as ready as any other country to use force
to protect its vital resources. It worries about dams that might be built in
the Ethiopian highlands, which will affect the flow of the Nile, and about
grandiose plans for a canal that could tap the sources of that great river
in central Africa.
In November 1989, the Ethiopian ambassador was called to the Foreign
Office in Cairo to provide an explanation on the presence of Israeli
hydrologists and surveyors studying the areas on the Blue Nile with the
possibility of building a number of dams to store 51 bn Cubic Meter. He was
left in no doubt about Egypt's stern response. In the same day Egyptian
members of Parliament lined up one speaker after the other saying they would
back the government in taking military action in Ethiopia. The Blue Nile
contributes about 85 percent of the annual flow that reaches Egypt. Two days
earlier the Egyptian intelligence leaked information to the press about the
issue and moving special forces near Ethiopia. Among the Egyptian special
forces is a unit that trains regularly in jungle warfare: there are no
jungles in Egypt.
Until couple of years ago, Egypt had no real worry about Ethiopia when
it was under the Marxist regime of Haile Mariam Mengistu and had little
chance of getting finance to build dams or little support world wide, the
story is now different, which makes the more hawkish trend in Egypt push for
a military solution at the first prospect of Ethiopia building dams on the
Blue Nile.
Above all, Egypt worries about Sudan, whose fundamentalist government
is increasingly friendly with Iran. Cairo blames extremists across the
border for the wave of terrorist attacks that have halved its tourist trade.
Egypt may seek an excuse to intervene in Sudan: any `unauthorised'
interference with the flow of the Nile would be an ideal pretext,' one
Egyptian official told me.
A more immediate danger to the Nile basin and the environmental
welfare of the valley is posed, in the eyes of the Egyptians, by Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi's `Great Man-made River' in neighbouring Libya. A huge
pipeline carries water from 120 wells, tapping the Kufrah aquifer in the
sparsely populated south of the country, to the arid, densely inhabited
coast in the north.
In addition to the white elephant nature of the project ( the final
cost could exceed $32 bn, the cost of a dozen desalination plants - while
the water which could be mined just once, is unlikely to last more than 15
years). According to some hydrologists, the rapid depletion of this aquifer
could lead to seepage from the Nile. Meanwhile some geologists fear a change
in the sub layers or rocks under the desert as a result of speedy pumping of
the water.
There is no agreement among geologists in Egypt on what effect that
might have, but some argue that such seepage could have a devastating effect
on the cavity of the rocks underneath the western deserts as the sudden drop
in temperature at night would cause the frozen water to expand cracking the
rocks and leading to irreparable damage.
However we have reasons to suspect that in the event of geologists
presenting the proof that mining water by the Libyans is having a direct
effect on the Nile bed, the Egyptian army will - directly or indirectly
pending a political decision - put an end to Gaddafi's man-made river.
Egyptian intelligence sources refuse to comment on whether they have
plans to slow down Gaddafi's project or even shut it down altogether before
the whole of the aquifer is totally depleted. But they confirmed another
plans for a massive military operation that would ` temporarily' take the
Egyptian army into southern Libya; although the term temporarily could mean
years here. That is to do with the Aswan High Dam, rather than the Gaddafi
project. Aswan High Dam was a controversial project.
Built by Egypt's former dictator colonel Gamal Abd el-Nasser as a
monument to his era of defying the west the dam has a lake stretches some
500 kilometre up streams and some 60 kilometres wide in certain places. The
lake can store two years of water of the annual flooding. The Aswan giant
turbines generate 2000 megawatts of hydroelectricity. But the harm that the
Aswan Dam did over the years is irreversible. Before the dam was built, the
annual flood used to bring 130 million tonnes of silt - mainly soil washed
down from the Ethiopian high mountains; 90 per cent used to be washed into
the Mediterranean and 15 million tonnes was deposited onto the Nile flood
plains accumulating in annual layers of 1 millimetre each - that what formed
Egypt's agricultural soil in the valley and Delta over the millennia.
Since the dam was built almost all the 130 million tonne are is
deposited in front of the dam. There are two possible scenarios as a result
of the accumulation of the silt, which, in low flood years mounts to hills
dried by the sun into mini brick dams. First scenario is a wall from dried
silt forms on the west bank of the lake, then it dries by the sun in a low
flood year; in a high flood year, the water will break through it and
billions of tonnes of water will gush westwards. In the event of the Nile
breaking its banks and creating streams going west, it would take months if
not years to repair some of the damage by directing the flow northward to
keep it within the Egyptian borders. The Egyptian High Command have plans to
occupy South East Libya, North Chad and parts of North Sudan for as long as
it takes to complete the construction of several dams to divert the newly
formed streams to the North, in order to prevent neighbouring nations from
establishing a right of use presence - since International law is not clear
in such cases but the right of use is recognised - by moving some of their
nationals into the newly formed streams inside their borders.
The second scenario, is more depressing and is based on study by Dr
Ibrahim Kamel. His theory is as the current slows, millions of tonnes of
silt fall into the bottom to form a small mound. In low flood season, the
dam dried by the sun, more silt accumulates on top of it year after year and
so on. The same process repeats itself several times every few hundred
kilometres upstream making another lake further south. In a year of high
flood - as happened with the Mississippi in the US last year, the pressure
of water will destroy the most southern of those silt dams, the water will
gather force destroying other dams as it gushes through; by the time the
massive wave reaches the Aswan dam, it would sweep the structure and flood
most of Egypt. We also have evidence that the Egyptian military are anxious
to have total control of Sudan to carry out necessary work to minimise the
possibility of such flood.
HOLY TROUBLE:
The third river system of the Middle East is tiny compared to the
others, but the danger of conflict over its water is just as great and even
more noticeable than the other two. The short, muddy Jordan flows through
the most hotly disputed territory of all, and is bordered by countries that
have history of using force to gain their ends.
The annual flow in the whole area controlled by Israel since 1967 is
just under 500 cubic meter per person. The 1991 figures indicate that
Israelis use 375 cubic meter apiece and Palestinians 180 cubic meter
assuming that 5 million Israeli citizens and settlers and 2 million
Palestinians and Golan heights residents). Looking at birth rates, the
population could double some time between 2010 & 2020. The flow of the river
Jordan cannot be improved either. Even less than 15 months after some
unusual heavy rain in 1991 that caused flood, water shortages were endemic
in Amman despite ongoing water rationing.
A study, in 1990, by Dan Zaslavsky, Israel's national water
commissioner found that 10 consecutive years of above average rainfall are
needed to replenish the heavily overtaxed underground resources. In the five
years since, it only happened in 1991, and partly early 1993.
In the Jordan basin of all, it is a zero-sum game. If Israel obtains
more Jordan will receive less, and vice versa.
One of the bitter sources of conflict, which Arabs never fail to
mention, that while the a Jordanian average use is 80 litres per day,
Israelis use 300 litres, of the same river and the same aquifers.
If you go to the west bank an area of 5,890 square kilometre occupied
by Israel, the difference are great and both sides' belief in their right to
water makes their ideological differences over land, religious
interpretation etc., seem moderate.
The presence of some 100 Israeli settlements (populated by over
100,000 Jews) on land occupied in the West Bank in 1967, is a thorny issue.
Water is very much in the heart of the conflict. The 100,000 settlers are
given ( 100 Million Cubic meter) almost as much water as the one million
Palestinians who live in the region ( given 137 million cubic meter). This
is a source of bitterness and a real obstacle for peace. `` All Israeli
settlements have water, lawns and swimming pools, while dozens of
Palestinian villages are with inadequate water supplies and suffer from
water shortage'' said Abdel Rahman Tamimi a ground water expert with the
Palestine Hydrology Group.
Figures published by PHG indicate that Israelis take 80 percent of the
annual flow of 615 million cubic meter of mountain aquifers that should be,
according to Mr Tamimi, `Palestinian water.' This means that one quarter of
water used by Israelis annually is seen by Arabs as `stolen water' which
they want back. ( according figures by Independent scholars like Professor
Thomas Naff of University of Pennsylvania, 40 per cent of Israel's water
comes from two aquifer. The early one within pre 1948 borders but the other
one supplies 20 per cent is from the occupied West bank ).
The PHG also accuse the Israeli occupation authority of forbidding
Palestinian civilians from drilling new wells or deepening existing wells
since 1967, while Israeli wells are six times deeper causing Palestinian
wells to totally dry for more than 5 month a year. As a result, the PHG
argue, irrigated Palestinian farmland declined from 27 per cent of all
agricultural land in 1967 to a meagre 4 per cent in 1990.
The Israeli counter argument is based on their military superiority
and a status quo that wont help peace, as well as the lack of provision on
water use in International law.
In theory, peace between the Arabs and Israel should end their rivalry
over water, but it is just as likely that water will delay, if not
altogether prevent, peace. In a final settlement, Israel would have to give
up the West Bank which gives it control of the southern portion of the
Jordan, the west bank of the river with its aquifers; the Golan Heights in
Syria which contains the headwaters of the Jordan and the strip of land
along the southern Lebanese border where the Zahrani and Litani rivers flow.
It seems unlikely that the Israelis would leave the land without
guarantees to water security, particularly as at least part of its motives
in invading and holding to south Lebanon - or so the Lebanese and other non
partisan sources say - was to have access to Litani and Hasbani rivers, and
the headsprings of the Jordan.
Before the six day war, Israel controlled less than 10 Kilometre or
6.25 Miles only of the Yarmuk river, now it has a de-facto control that
stops Syria and Jordan from diverting the headwaters if they chose to. A rep
ort was recently prepared by the Israeli Military warned Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin against pulling out of the Golan heights. Two reasons were
given, first water security and second the army intelligence gathering
operation.
Even if some generous compensation are to be paid to the settlers to
hand back settlements to the Palestinians, no electable Israeli government
is likely to let go of control of water supplies, unless alternative source
is found by some miracle.
In 1989 - just less than two years before the Arabs and Israelis met
in Madrid - an official publication issued by Israel's Ministry of
Agriculture, which was then headed by hardliner Rafael Eitan, concluded that
full control of the mountain aquifers are of vital necessity :`` It is hard
to conceive, of any political solution consistent with Israel's survival
that does not involve complete and continued Israeli control of the water
system.'' General Eitan argued later that, overriding any religious and even
security grounds for keeping the West bank is Israel's need to stay because
it must have the water. Mr Eitan has just ( In February ) been invited into
the labour coalition by Prime Minister Rabin, to strengthen his hand in
securing a vote to back the accord with Yasser Arafat. Now the price Mr
Eitan is demanding is holding into water resources for good.
When it comes to international law it is even more complicated. Unless
there is a legal entity called Palestine, there can be no international
arbitration, so this has to be between Jordan and Israel. Even though, the
two parties themselves must seek arbitration, which is unlikely.
If agreement is reached between Jordan and Israel, but without a
settlement between Syria and Israel, in decade or so Syria could face an
alliance of Jordan, the Palestinians and Israel aimed at maximising their
share of scarce water resources. Just as the old enemy Iraq, might side with
Syria against Turkey to demand more water, such alliance would even be
supported by Israel, just to emphasise the right of a down stream state to
confront an upstream state which exploits geography to the disadvantage of
other riparian states.
International law is not clear on the right of upstream countries to
control either surface or ground water. Israeli experts interpret the law in
practical hydrological terms according to the practices of centuries of
irrigation methods in the region:`` In hydrological terms water should be
harnessed in the foothills. The onus is on the people who live below to
arrange supply;'' a point welcomed by Egypt and Jordan and partly by Syria
in its dispute with Turkey.
LITTLE ROOM FOR OPTIMISM:
Optimists think that if a general peace is reached in the Middle East,
Arab oil money and Israeli technology may combine to help reduce the wastage
of water and revolutionise irrigation - since agriculture swallows up to 85
percent of water in the Middle East, while the world average figure is 69
per cent and in countries like Sudan the figure is 99 per cent - and also
find an economic, nuclear, solar or electric energy to desalinate seawater
like the red-to-dead-sea canal project, the Indongo pan-African electric
grid among the nine Nile riparian states, etc.).
But pessimists outnumber the optimists, among them are regional
statesmen, politicians, and world diplomats and technocrats too. Elias
Salamah, professor of water resources at the University of Amman has warned,
on several occasions, that, ``if the multilateral talks on water fail to
bring about a fairer distribution of water, some time between 1995 and 2005
there is high probability that Israel, Jordan and the west bank will face
such progressive worsening water shortages that there will be conflict.''
The issue of water security comes up almost once a month in Egyptian
Parliament, the all party water committee's 1993 report accuses Israel of
`stealing 1300, Million cubic meters of `Arab water' every year.
The inevitable serious shortage makes such a conflict seems likely. It
is estimated that the Middle East's population of 314 million will rise by
34 million within 30 years, with an annual water requirement of 470 billion
cubic metres annually - 132 billion more than the total available supplies
based on current level of consumption from both renewable and non renewable
sources and on the assumption that there will be an improvement in
conservation of about 2 percent annually. Arab Gulf states' water needs
jumped from 6 bn cubic meter in 1980 to 22.5 bn cubic meter in 1990 and
estimated to reach 35.5 bn by 2010.
In general the Middle East will need double the amount of water it
used in 1975. As it is, per capita water consumption in such comparatively
Arab countries as Jordan is only about 80 litres and Israel is 300 on a par
with the European average. Meanwhile, unless other projects are implemented,
water available in Israel would be half of what was available in 1985. Some
countries - like Oman - have already trimmed its development programme to
take account of highly population growth, and other countries will soon be
forced to follow suit.
But there are other political, ideological, social and historic
considerations making many Middle Eastern governments too reluctant to move
into a revolutionary consumption reduction methods. Egypt, the largest
nation in the region, is unwilling to see large migration from the country
to the urban areas, or to use modern technology in irrigation that would
create mass unemployment, or to replace high water consumption crops
unemployment, loss of hard currency earning form export or increase of
salinity of farm land.
Long history of antagonism and mistrust makes Middle Eastern leaders
reluctant to reform their agriculture policy, switching the subsidised home
produced with imported cheaper food. At present almost all grow cereal
crops - with little economic sense, not to mention the devastating effect on
both surface and underground water - since they are used to wars
interrupting the trade routs. ( The Saudi always argue that their project to
grow wheat in the desert was a decision taken by the late King Faisal
claiming that his 1973 oil embargo led hostile western powers to delay
delivery of wheat and flour to the kingdom !)
Iraq has gone full circle from paying subsidies to farmers to work in
industry and construction project back into embracing the land and raising
the slogans of the land of the two rivers being the cradle of the
agricultural civilisation, due to the political turmoil that this
unfortunate nation has been through.
Israeli agriculture policy too is ideologically motivated; `` making
the desert of Palestine bloom'' was, and still is, an entrenched Zionist
ideal. For some bizarre ideological motives a number of Israeli farms insist
on growing every fruit, vegetable or a crop of which they read in the bible,
even if that was not always economically feasible. ( subject to weather
condition and time of the year between 35 to 55 per-cent of all Israel's
energy goes to pumping and moving water).
In addition, when some governments showed willingness to invest in
water projects, they end up wasting their financial, economic and natural
resources by choosing the wrong scheme because they were ill advised. Some
irresponsible - even corrupt - western experts, academics and advisers to
western construction companies go on advising the Arabs to build White
elephants like Gaddafi's project or Saudi Arabia growing wheat in the desert
and depleting the water table below sea level increasing salinity. Those
experts and academics know they are giving wrong and dishonest advice. Their
greed for fees paid by construction companies or undemocratic governments in
the Middle East make them opt for projects that would make dictators' media
show water gushing in abundance, which is a short term solution. But such
projects by nature sharpen the water crisis on the long term, thus bring the
possibility of open conflict even closer.
The majority of Engineers and Hydrologists are honest, but in their
planning of dams, diversions and more desalination plants and trying to
improve water use and eliminate leaks and reduce evaporation ( the figures
are astronomical but 15 per cent of all water in the region is lost through
leaks and 20 per cent to evaporation ) and inefficient irrigation ( 60
percent is lost before reaching the crops and orchards to be watered).
Several discussion with some of those experts, and examining their
reports, indicated that they have lacked the political advice of
non-partisan specialist, while some also ignored the environmental and human
factors ( examples the Nubians in the Asswan Dam, the silt, As a result of
slowing the current, pollution is behind 40 percent of Kidney chronic
disorders in Egypt. The lack of silt resulted in an increase in the use
chemical fertilizers. The salinity in drainage has reached 340 in a million
that is seven times higher than the safety level. The Kurds in Turkey , the
Shia in Southern Iraq etc.).
They also either ignored, or misunderstood the factors and political
realities of the region, let alone their assumption that they can find the
will among politicians to allow cross-border co-operation. Their ideas could
work in other regions; but not in the Middle East, not just yet.
Most alarming, and perhaps most telling, was an off-the-record comment
by a leading politician about his country's water need. `` A time may well
come,'' he said,`` we have to calculate whether a small swift war might be
economically more rewarding than putting up with a drop in our water
supplies.''.
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