In the middle of sweltering summer months, Iraqi Minister of Water Resources Mahdi Al-Hamadani abruptly announced last Sunday that the water flow from Iran had completely stopped, or more precisely, the water flow to Iraq reached “zero.”
For the first time in the history of the bilateral relations between Iran and Iraq, Al-Hamadani threatened to approach the international community if the current situation remains unchanged, in reference to Iran’s control over the flow of fresh water of the Sirwan, Karun, and Karkheh rivers, which provide the entire eastern Iraq with water, with the vast Diyala, as the most severely affected area, left facing a suffocating drought against the backdrop of Iran’s sudden halt of water flow which, consequently, affected agriculture.
The situation didn’t emerge just this week. Anticipating this growing water deficit, Iraq has proactively requested a meeting with the Iranian side to settle water issues and secure its water share that meets the needs of the Iraqi population. This bilateral meeting was supposed to take place in mid-June; however, Tehran adjourned it, citing the presidential elections as the reason for delaying the meeting, promising to hold it as soon as the elections are over. This has yet to occur, however.
Iraq reiterated its request recently. Iran disregarded it. To examine the crisis on the ground, Al-Hamadani paid a visit to Diyala, bordering Iran, where he made his notable statement, first-of-its-kind in the history of the exceptional relationship between the two neighbors. Al-Hamadani made reference to Iran’s refusal to comply with agreements of sharing damages of water scarcity, on the grounds that it showed no response to the Iraqi requests and proceeded with stopping water flow of the Sirwan, Karun and Karkheh rivers.
It is Iran’s behavior that has caused last year’s suppressed conflict between Iraq and Iran to come to the surface, leading to a visible Iraqi impatience and a more advanced government response. Iraq threatened resorting to international forums to secure its water share. While the Iraqi government is better poised this year to provide alternatives that would enable it to partially contain the crisis, facts on the ground draw a bleak picture of the near future, let alone Turkey’s similar behavior.
As a result, the Iraqi government raised the instant need to sign agreements with both Iran and Turkey, expressly declaring that it received no response from both countries, which portends ominous crises, setting the scene for a “water war” that has been imperceptibly targeting Iraq for years but only coming to light this year.
According to data released by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, the water coming from Iran accounts for 35 percent of the total annual water resources of Iraq, historically estimated at about 70 billion cubic meters. In 2015, the total water resources didn’t exceed 45 billion, with an expected attrition rate of 30 billion cubic meters by 2035.
The extensive damage Iraq suffered as a result of this complex war didn’t just affect water flow to Iraq – although that remained the main threat – but also resulted in an increase of salinity and pollution in many areas, which caused a significant decline in productivity and, by extension, land desertification.
The Turkish Southeastern Anatolia Project, comprising 22 medium and large dams, accounts for the largest deduction of water that used to flow to Iraq throughout history. Recently, however, Iran as well started implementing projects on rivers shared with Iraq to alter the course of some tributaries to its lands.
The water crisis started to come on strong amid the deteriorating situation this year. Also, there is the tide phenomenon in the Iraq-Iran Shatt al-Arab river, receiving water from the four major rivers of the Tigris, Euphrates, Karkheh, and Karun. All the time, Shatt Al-Arab waters remained threatened by the natural tide where its water mixes with the sea water, causing its water levels to rise or fall depending on this eternal phenomenon.
Historically, Shatt Al-Arab region has been a source of conflict between the two countries, with each of them considering the dispute a top decisive issue, in a time the relationship between the two countries wasn’t the way it is. In 1975, the two countries signed the “Algiers Agreement” to settle common border disputes and organize water sharing in southern Iraq, which, given the changing nature of the area, has become more vulnerable to water crises compared to other Iraqi lands today, thereby casting a shadow over the entire scene and pulling the parties into an undeclared war that is taking place in parallel with the water crisis.
Recently, armed militias, many of which have either direct or indirect ties with Iran, have systematically targeted infrastructure projects, particularly water and electrical installations, putting pressure on the Iraqi regime, as has been the case with the targeting of the power line feeding the Karkh water project, north of Baghdad, which resulted in cutting the supply of potable water for so long and great material losses which the government incurred. This is one of dozens of similar incidents that take place currently at an unusual rate.
That is why Iraqi observers suggest an underlying intrigue to embarrass the current regime in front of the citizens simultaneously with the start of the countdown to the upcoming elections; the government has been addressing past failures by carrying out the largest renovation of service networks across Iraq. That is why the regime left its reticence amid citizens’ questioning the strange coincidence between targeting service facilities and Tehran’s decision to cut off the water flow to eastern Iraq.
