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Al Jazeera (English)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Turkish, Syrian Water Projects Squeezing Iraq Dry
(Thomas R. Stauffer, wrmea.com, May 2004)
Iraq, the historic Fertile Crescent, is being squeezed dry. More and more of the country's irrigated lands inevitably will be abandoned, because the flow of water to Iraq is destined to decline to little more than a trickle. Not only is the flow being squeezed off, moreover, but what water does reach Iraq is of ever decreasing quality--a true "double whammy." In the near future, the only water that will pass the border of Iraq will be the drainage from upstream--increasingly saline, contaminated with pesticides and loaded with fertilizer residues from farm runoff. . . . The process of diverting all useful water from the Euphrates upstream of Iraq already has begun, and is progressing rapidly. The diversion of the Tigris has just begun. Principally responsible is Turkey, whose "GAP" (Guney Anadolu Projesi) Project will capture within Turkey most of the Euphrates' water and probably all of that from the northern reaches of the Tigris. Syria will take whatever usable Euphrates water remains, leaving some five billion to eight billion cubic meters of water for Iraq--compared with an average of some 33 billion cubic meters per year since the days of Babylon. That residual water flow, however, will be unusable--neither potable nor fit for irrigation. . . . Controlling the spigot is GAP. The project is as grandiose for Turkey as it is ominous for Iraq: it embraces five world-scale dams and dozens of minor dams or barrages. Like the Tennessee Valley Authority launched by President Roosevelt in the 1930s, it was advertised as the key to regional development in Turkey's poorest and most neglected, heavily Kurdish southeastern vilayets. Hidden in the agenda, however, is Ankara's plan to settle the newly irrigated areas with ethnic Turks. This would offset the local Kurdish and Arab populations in that very sensitive border area--a policy not of ethnic cleansing, but of ethnic dilution, akin to the Han Chinese settlement programs in Tibet and Eastern Turkestan. . . . The GAP scheme is a sword of Damocles hanging over Iraq, but the day of reckoning has been deferred by at least 10 years, because of delays in the implementation of Turkey’s irrigation schemes and similar lags in completion of Syria's smaller diversions based upon the Tabqa dam. Had the original construction schedules been feasible--the original, and unrealistic, completion date originally had been circa 2002--Iraq already would have lost all usable water in the Euphrates. But the extractions upstream, even if partial, have resulted in a steady increase in the salinity of what water does still flow to Iraq. Baghdad thus far has been able to offset some of this effect by diverting sweet water from the middle reaches of the Tigris into the Euphrates via a canal. That option, however, now is all but exhausted. . . . What are Iraq's options? Short of war, there seem to be none. . . . The situation is dire. Iraq is destined to lose--short of war--about three-quarters of its total flow irrigation-quality water. In addition, it will need to dispose of large volumes of saline and contaminated drainage water in both rivers coming from the GAP operations in Turkey and, secondarily, from Syria's projects. . . . The water balance could become even worse: Iraq is under pressure from well-funded politico-environmentalist groups to reflood the southern marshes. Draining those swamps and recovering the lost water has been planned since the 1930s, and the central drains--most notably the "Third River"--were almost complete when the first Gulf war was launched. This positive step may be reversed. If Israeli and American forces prevail, even less water will be available for agriculture, and extensive areas in the south again will become waterlogged and saline, still further reducing agricultural output.

posted by LoZo 8:49 PM