With experts warning that Iraq is entering its third successive year of drought, concerns are being raised at the economic and political fall-out, writes Salah Hemeid For centuries, Iraqis only needed to dig small channels and use simple pumps to irrigate the green fields of Iraq that span tens of thousands of acres of fertile land. The ancient Greeks and Romans called the region now occupied by the modern state of Iraq "Mesopotamia", or the Land of the Two Rivers, and during the Islamic period the country was renowned as the "Black Land", a reference to the plantations that history books say then fed some 30 million people. However, despite this history in today's Iraq it is not only irrigation water that is in short supply. The water resources needed to generate electricity and even tap water are equally lacking, and many experts believe that this is a situation that will only get worse over the years to come. Even so, unlike the news of the violence that today dominates the international coverage of Iraq, little or no attention is being paid to this tragic situation that threatens the very existence of one of the world's oldest civilisations. Experts at a conference held in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra last week warned that below- average rainfall and insufficient water in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers have left Iraq bone dry for a third year in a row. Drought has wrecked swaths of farm land, cut power supplies in most Iraqi cities, threatened drinking-water supplies and increased desertification, the experts said, the latter leading to the fierce sandstorms that in recent years have coated much of the country in brown dust. Governor of Basra Hamid Sheltagh told the conference that only 30 cubic metres of water is currently flowing into the Shat Al-Arab waterway, which Iraq's second-largest city relies on for irrigation and drinking water. The shortage is threatening human health, agriculture and livestock, he told Iraqi and international delegates at the conference, with Basra having to "bear the unbearable". The drought can be felt across the country, and on a recent trip to Iraq hundreds of thousands of acres of once-fertile areas could be seen from plane windows, all now turned into brown-coloured sand. Satellite images show that the drought-affected area stretches in an arc from the north-western border with Syria to the south-eastern border with Iran. The most affected area is northern Iraq, the country's historic breadbasket where rain-fed wheat is grown. Several recent studies have warned that the drought has dealt a harsh blow to hopes that reductions in sectarian violence over the last year would fuel economic recovery. Instead, the Iraqi government's finances have suffered a double whammy, with lower-than-expected oil prices crimping state revenues and the scarcity of water forcing the country to spend more on food imports, especially imports of wheat and rice. However, these are only the short-term effects of the drought, the reports warn. Over the longer term the country's prospects may be even more alarming. Desertification has been accelerating, especially in central and southern Iraq, and agricultural lands that were once green in the north and west have now turned into desert. According to experts with the US Department of Agriculture's foreign agriculture service, this year's grain harvest in Iraq is forecast to be among the worst in a decade, virtually unchanged from last year and down by some 45 per cent on a normal year's harvest. Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture officials say that more than 50 percent of families working as farmers in the country have left their villages and migrated to Iraqi cities in recent years. Some international organisations are even warning that with time Iraq could become as barren as much of neighbouring Saudi Arabia. The consequences of such changes are expected to be severe. In 2009, less than 50 per cent of the land was in use, and most yields were marginal. According to official estimates, Iraq now cannot cover even 40 per cent of its demand for fruit and vegetables, and next year alone it will need to import some four million tonnes of wheat at a cost of $1.4 billion. Overall, Iraq will have to buy some 80 per cent of its food needs next year. The drought in the country is also leading to significant shifts in population, with 3,000 people around Basra having left their homes because of rising salt levels in agricultural land. According to Iraqi minister of water Abdel-Latif Rashid, up to 300,000 marshland residents are on the move, many of them newly uprooted and heading for nearby towns and cities that can do little to support them. In the Ninewa province alone, 60 out of 150 villages in the Al-Tal district are deserted in what was once the province's most-productive wheat and barley area. Many Iraqi provinces are today suffering from severe shortages of drinking water, exposing millions to serious and long-term health hazards. Adding to health problems such as diarrhoea, dwindling supplies of freshwater are also contaminated with high levels of salt. A decline in agricultural areas where plant roots once knitted the soil together has only increased the severity of sandstorms, which now blow across Iraq with increased frequency, sometimes leaving dozens of people dead in their wake. Historically, Iraq has depended largely on water from the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which originate in neighbouring Turkey with tributaries flowing in from Iran. The severity of today's drought has thus largely been due to cuts in the water supplies reaching Iraq in these two rivers, as a result of Turkey's building five dams along the Euphrates upstream from where it enters western Iraq. Iraq needs at least 750 cubic metres of water flow a second in the Euphrates -- nearly double the current level -- if it is to meet its needs in the south of the country, especially in areas where rice is grown. Syria, which shares the Euphrates basin with Iraq, has also built new dams on the river. At the same time, water in the Tigris river, which has historically provided bountiful supplies to northern and central provinces, has also dwindled because of the dams built by Turkey and a shortage of rainfall. Iran, which shares the Tigris basin and the river's small tributaries, has also built dams and diverted water for its internal use, depriving Iraq of considerable resources. The resulting damage has been enormous, with a large number of the branches of the Tigris that Iraq shares with Iran now being either low in water volumes or completely dried up. Surface water in the Iraqi marshlands that feed on water coming from Iran is now around 20 per cent of what it has been. The effect of all this has been to starve the Land of the Two Rivers of water, which throughout the ages has benefited from bountiful water supplies, even during periods of drought. Today the country's water resources have become not only serious, but even critical, and, with little government planning, little money to support farmers, minimal international aid and a lack of cooperation from its neighbours, Iraq's water situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. Many observers stress that remedying the country's worsening water shortage would be a way for Iraq's neighbours to act together to help stabilise the country's war-torn economy and its rebuilding, which raises the question of why they are not doing more to assist the country at a time when it is in dire need of help in reducing its food bill and improving its agricultural production. Could the water issue be a lever these countries are using to steer events in Iraq in directions that best serve their own interests, such observers ask. A quick look at the figures for Iraqi food imports show that the country is currently paying billions of dollars to meet its need for agricultural and other food commodities, as well as for bottled drinking water, much of which benefits its neighbours, especially Iran, Syria and Turkey. There is increasing concern among many Iraqis about what they see as the politics involved in pushing their country to the limit of its water security. Water resources have long helped to define political relations between nations, and there are certainly ample opportunities for Iraq's neighbours to use their abundant water resources to exercise political influence over a bone-dry country. The water policies coming from the capitals of Iraq's neighbours certainly suggest that these are not about scarcity of resources or water- management alone, but are instead about how these countries can best exert influence in Iraq, a country that many of them have often looked at as being in their own backyards.
