Dystopia in the making: what the future holds if we don’t share water.
Rivers of Discord:
Iraq’s Water Crisis
Southern Iraq is a place of wonders. The confluence of the two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, gave rise to the Sumerians (one of the world’s earliest civilizations), irrigated agriculture, 70% of Iraq’s oil reserves, the Mesopotamian Marshes (a UNESCO Heritage Site), and the city of Basra. Basra, once crowned “the Venice of the Middle East”, was Iraq’s only port city; an international hub, famous for its parties, canals and palm groves. This is where tales of Sinbad the Sailor were born. Water gave life to legends.
But all the recent wars rolled through here too.
The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) deforested the palm groves. The Gulf War (1991) brought tons of depleted uranium residue and the world’s largest oil spill. The US/UK-led sanctions (1991-2003) forbade the import of water sanitation equipment. The Shia uprising (1991) led Saddam Hussein to drain the Mesopotamian Marshes. The US invasion (2003) and the rise of IS devastated the already decrepit water infrastructure. And in the meantime, Iraq’s neighbours, primarily Turkey, built a system of dams cutting off 2/3 of the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Today’s Southern Iraq is anything but magical. The summer of 2018 saw over 150,000 reported cases of water poisoning followed by weeks of riots, which have become a sad and desperate tradition since clean water became scarce and sanitation services began to break down.
Amidst the crisis, Dr. Azzam Alwash and Dr. Jassim al-Asadi of "Nature Iraq" are scrambling for solutions.
