WATER AND CONFLICT IN THE MIDDLE EAST: THREATS AND OPPORTUNITIES

By MARY E. MORRIS

Source: Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Jan-Mar97, Vol. 20 Issue 1, p1, 13p.

Water ownership, management, and use are among the most critical problems confronting the modern Middle East. These water problems have become interwoven with deep-seated political, demographic, economic, and even religious conflicts, making it difficult to isolate technological and legal issues that, on their own, might be equitably resolved Reducing regional political tensions is thus a prerequisite for reaching agreements and promoting cooperative efforts among states sharing mutual resources. The Jordanian-Israeli agreements on water sharing may set an important precedent for the region, inspiring confidence that cooperation rather than conflict can relieve tensions and resolve long-standing problems.

1998: Continued Syrian development on the upper Yarmuk leads to increased salinity in the lower Yarmuk and Jordan Rivers, lower water levels in the Dead Sea, and reduced irrigation water for Jordan's East Ghor development project. In addition, up to 40 percent of the Yarmuk's waters have been diverted. Jordan's access to the Yarmuk, one of its principal sources for irrigating the Jordan Valley, is threatened, as is Israel's downstream flow. Jordan faces a devastating crop failure as a result. Jordanian diplomatic protests, echoed by Israel, are ignored by Syria, which threatens military action against Jordan if its development plans suffer interference.

2005: Turkey has fully implemented its GAP (Southeastern Anatolia Project) project, with disastrous impact on Syria's available Euphrates water, the flow of which is reduced by 40 percent. The impact on Iraq is even worse--it now receives only one-eighth of its 1989 supply. An increasing rate of population growth in both Syria and Iraq, agricultural catastrophe in the form of crop failure in Syria, and increased indebtedness on the part of both countries, leads to a destabilization of domestic political and strategic positions. The deprivation of Euphrates water is the last straw for Iraq and Syria: They see Turkish dams built to improve the Turkish economy as a major security threat as well as an attempt by the West to use its ally, Turkey, as a weapon against Arabs. In addition, focus on Turkey serves internal purposes for both Syria and Iraq as a means of solidifying internal support against an external enemy.

Thus, despite their mutual antagonism, Syria and Iraq form an uneasy alliance against Turkey. They pursue a series of diplomatic and military actions to isolate Turkey, citing human rights violations as well as water exploitation and misuse to gain support from both Turkey's NATO allies and from Arab states who may be willing to support an oil embargo against any NATO state coming to Turkey's aid. Reports are received that a joint Iraqi-Syrian force is planning an attack on Turkey's southernmost dams.

These scenarios are not as fanciful as they might appear. In a region where water ranks above oil as the most precious resource, water ownership, management, and use are some of the most difficult and serious problems that the modem Middle East confronts. They are eminently solvable if considered and resolved on their own terms as legal and technological problems. In the Middle East, however, water problems are entangled with unresolved border issues, massive population increases, diminishing agricultural resources, increasing industrialization, and changing living standards, in addition to geographic reality and issues of religion, culture, politics, and tradition. All of these elements complicate a difficult multinational resource management problem in a region where inter- and intrastate hostilities prevail. With no binding international law regarding shared resources and no measures of enforcement, water is already a fundamental political weapon in this region. It has also been used as a military weapon, a dangerous precedent for a region plagued by long-standing, corrosive differences.

Destruction or spoliation of natural resources has been a military tool throughout history. Armies have poisoned wells, salted the earth, and destroyed crops, from the Punic Wars to the Gulf War. Not surprisingly, then, the militarization of water conflicts in the Middle East has occurred in the past and may well continue into the future. Armistice agreements signed in 1949 between Israel and the Arab states, for example, did not deal with water, nor was the postwar atmosphere congenial to cooperation. Each of the riparians along the Jordan River system moved to utilize the water unilaterally. In the absence of cooperative efforts and in the presence of unresolved political and security disputes among riparians, the only viable means to access or secure water rights was frequently seen as military force. The 1994 agreements between Israel and Jordan over ownership and use of mutually shared water resources may point the way toward future resolution of water problems, but vast areas of disagreement remain throughout the region.

While water issues in the Middle East are primarily matters of scarcity, allocation, use, and management--and thus most properly internal state matters--water has become both a legitimate source of friction between regional states and a mask for other underlying tensions. Syrian, Jordanian, and Israeli disputes in the 1950s and 1960s, for example, illustrate instances where water was a primary source of conflict. Iraq's 1980 attack on Iran over the control of the Shatt al-Arab, a disputed boundary between the two countries since 1639, illustrates the use of water as a surrogate issue. Competition for fresh water factors into many regional political controversies as well, including the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma, tensions among Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, and potential problems among Ethiopia, the Sudan, and Egypt.

Three separate sets of water problems persist in the Middle East, each with different players and different issues: The first problem set involves the Jordan and Yarmuk River systems, as well as the West Bank and Gaza aquifers. Countries involved include Jordan, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories, and the major issues are water flow and diversion and ownership of water sources. Israel and Jordan are at imminent risk, because of full utilization by both parties of available water resources. The situation is complicated by occasional drought situations that exacerbate the resource problem.

The second set of problems involves the Tigris and Euphrates River systems, with Syria, Turkey, and Iraq playing roles in issues as diverse as reduced water flow, salinization, constraints on irrigation, and hydropower. The third problem area is the Nile region, comprising Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Here, the issues are flooding, siltation, water flow, and diversion. Associated problems for all areas are pollution, especially for downstream riparians, water borne disease, and degradation of the soil through irrigation and fertilization. Ignoring these multiple problems will result in further reduction of available water resources, and existing sources, including ground water, are likely to fall below usable standards.[1] Indeed, many recent reports indicate that water in the Gaza Strip has already deteriorated to seriously substandard conditions as a result of seawater seepage into Gaza's fresh water aquifer and the entry of sewage into underground water supplies due to inadequate sewage infrastructure.[2]

Climate warming is also likely to have a disastrous long term ecological effect. In the Middle East, a projected one-meter sea level rise could affect over 40 percent of Egypt's productive capacity and result in salt water intrusion into major water supplies.[3] Models also project that temperatures will rise an average of 5 to 8 degrees Celsius in the Middle East over the next century, leading to a 10-20 percent drop in precipitation, an increase in evaporation, and a corresponding decrease in available fresh water. The escalation of environmental problems in the near- to mid-term will be especially severe for countries such as Jordan and Israel, whose demand already exceeds supply, and for other countries in the Middle East already plagued by economic and demographic stresses.

In times of ecological distress, aggravated by unresolved political friction, water may become either a deterrent, a weapon, or a target. For example, upstream states can build, or threaten to build, dams impairing downstream flow. Downstream states can, in turn, threaten to sabotage upstream diversions. Hydraulic installations such as dams, diversion tunnels, pipelines, and desalination plants can become vulnerable to sabotage, as were desalination plants in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. In addition, water shortages, especially if combined with food shortages, may precipitate population movement and migration and contribute to local unrest and regional instability.[4]

In both Turkey and Syria, dam projects that will potentially increase the amount of cultivable land and increase electrical power capabilities are underway. In Syria, for example, the Euphrates dam project is directed toward the irrigation of a million additional acres of land on the arid eastern steppes of the country, while Turkey's Southeast Anatolia project, now nearing completion, is intended to revitalize the Harran Plain and generate 9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year. However, both projects are the cause of grave concern from neighboring states. Since there is no legally binding obligation for upstream nations to provide water downstream--although downstream nations can claim historical rights of use and press for fair treatment--states that are in uneasy relations with each other, or that are engaged in outright hostility, tend to perceive the withholding of water as either a weapon or a threat. During the Gulf War of 1991, for example, armed guards were posted at dams in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq to prevent sabotage.

Suspicion among states runs deep in the Middle East, based on memories of the past and apprehension of the future. Proposals by the late President Turqat Ozal of Turkey to construct a "Peace Water Pipeline" running from Turkey to Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia were greeted with outright hostility by many Arab states, which saw Ozal's offer as a thinly veiled plot to reimpose Turkish power over the Arabs. Despite political, religious, and cultural interconnections in the Middle East, interdependence remains a foreign concept that connotes potentially fatal weakness to one's enemies.

Agriculture and Demographic Factors

Agriculture consumes between 75 and 90 percent of water in the Middle East. At the same time, agricultural practices and cultural values frequently have combined to produce water shortages. In addition, most Middle Eastern states emphasize the development of industry and manufacturing, and have allowed agricultural wages to lag so far behind other sectors that "only the very young, the very old, and the unemployable are involved in food production."[5] Land reform has generally been ineffective, while outdated and ineffective irrigation systems, such as open canals and surface irrigation, are prevalent.

Because of water scarcity, generally arid conditions, and poor or outdated technologies for delivering available water, agriculture has failed to meet increasing demands placed on it by expanding populations. As a consequence, the Middle East is rapidly becoming one of the least agriculturally self-sufficient regions in the world, a trend that is destabilizing in the extreme in an area where little regional trade is conducted and where great, if not disproportionate, value is put on self-sufficiency. Governments are wary of dependency on food imports because of the heavy financial burdens they entail and the potential for strategic vulnerability that they imply. National security thus translates into food security, and food security translates into water security.

Much effort has been expended by individual states in the Middle East to increase the availability of water resources for irrigation and water reuse, but broad extension of current systems will require major investment of already scarce capital, in addition to meeting escalating costs of construction and maintenance that would not necessarily be offset by rising agricultural prices.[6] In some states, such as Sudan, there is potential for the expansion of cultivation and farming in new regions, but this goal requires the transformation of existing traditional farming systems and infrastructures, and large amounts of capital. In Sudan's case, an additional critical factor would be the increased use of Nile waters, which will affect its relations with Egypt.[7]

As water scarcities increase, food production is declining in relation to an annual 2-4 percent increase in demand. For the most part, Middle Eastern governments are not able to fully support growing populations that are expected to double within the next 20 years. The population growth rate in Syria alone, for example, is 3.8 percent, compared to an average of less than 1 percent in the West. General dissatisfaction with ineffective government actions and political unrest are the consequences. Disruptive population moves, both within countries and across borders, aggravate already volatile regional tensions; increased desertification and degradation of food resources contribute substantially to the numbers of regional refugees in both the Middle East and Africa. Food deficits resulting from insufficient agricultural production also increase the risk of political unrest and regional tension among countries sharing precious water resources.

Israel and the Palestinians

The success of ongoing peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as with Syria and Lebanon, rests almost certainly on successful negotiation of water issues. Israel's main sources of water lie outside its pre-1967 borders, in the Arab lands it now holds under military occupation. Thus, Israel cannot simply trade land for peace without ironclad assurances of resource, as well as political, security; to do so, in the case of the West Bank alone, would require the surrender of 30-40 percent of Israel's current water supply and possibly more than 50 percent of its future supply. This is a frightening prospect given projections that, by the year 2000, Israel's water needs may exceed supply by 30 percent--even without any transfer of territory and associated water rights. Israel fears that the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank could lead to future water deprivation if the new state pursues a policy of deep pumping of aquifers, a practice now forbidden to both Jews and Arabs because water tables are so low, or if unresolved hostilities led to sabotage or diversion of Israeli water supplies.

Resources are the means of survival and development, and are essential to self rule. Thus, one of the major items to be agreed upon between Israel and the Palestinians in final negotiations over either a Palestinian entity or a Palestinian state will be control of water resources. The influx of Soviet immigrants has also had an impact on the competition for already contested resources. To the present time, Israel, whose settlers in the West Bank use at least three times as much water per capita as Arab inhabitants, has insisted on retaining administrative control of water sources in the Occupied Territories, especially the ancient aquifers from which both Israel and the West Bank draw most of their water. Indeed, the limited proposals for autonomy in the West Bank offered by Israel do not, to date, extend to the estimated 68.5 percent of territory that Israel occupies, but only to the Arabs residing on the land. The recently elected government of Benjamin Netanyahu also appears to be committed to an expansion of Jewish settlements in the Territories, which can only exacerbate the existing problem.

The Arab population of the West Bank is entirely dependent on spring water and ground water aquifers. While all Israeli settlements and military outposts in the West Bank have piped water, 70--80 percent of Arab villages are supplied by water tank from Israel by Mekorot Ltd.[8] Since 1967, only 34 permits for well drilling have been issued to Palestinians, all for domestic rather than irrigation uses, and all with a restriction on depth of drilling, primarily due to the low water table and because the mountainous areas of the West Bank cannot sustain intensive agriculture, partially because the aquifer is too deep for viable irrigation wells. In addition, Israel has periodically shut off water to both Gaza and the West Bank as a form of collective punishment, adding a further political element to the problem.

Ground water abstraction by Israelis has also lowered the water table in some Arab villages, and there are signs of contamination of the Yarkon-Taninim aquifer by sewage effluents from Israeli settlements.[9] Water consumption in the Golan Heights is similarly restricted, while pressure on water resources in the Gaza Strip has reached crisis proportions. There, the aquifer has been so overdrawn that there is significant evidence of seawater intrusion, making the water brackish and unusable for either domestic or agricultural use, and posing a near-term threat to the survival of Gazan farms. Lack of water has thus become a major economic constraint, as well as a source of political and bureaucratic stalemate. Egypt and Israel blame each other for practices that have endangered the entire water supply in Gaza. Indeed, the problems with Gaza's water supply did not originate with Israeli control, but began in prior years, when chronic overpumping depleted local supplies.[10]

Political and bureaucratic impediments imposed by both the Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority have made villages in the Occupied Territories increasingly dependent on cesspools to dispose of wastewater. As cesspools become overloaded they leak raw sewage, pollute groundwater sources, and create long term health risks.

Israel, Jordan, and Syria

The Jordan River system has witnessed more severe international conflict over water than any other river system in the Middle East.[11] Prior to the signing of the Jordanian-Israeli peace accord in 1994, the Jordan River area was the most likely water conflict flashpoint in the region, since both Israel and Jordan had moved into full use--and subsequent shortage conditions. The 1994 agreements, however, have, at least for the present, defused the situation, replacing confrontation with negotiation.

The main source of water for Jordan is the Yarmuk River, a major tributary of the Jordan River that flows through the East Ghor Canal. Other sources of water for Jordan include aquifers of limited potential, such as the now nearly depleted Azraq Oasis that supplies Amman. The East Ghor Canal, designed by Jordan in 1957, was to be the first section of an ambitious plan, the Greater Yarmuk Project, itself an outgrowth of the water sharing agreement developed in the early 1950s by U.S. envoy Eric Johnston. The project was to include the construction of two dams on the Yarmuk, including the Unity Dam on the border between Jordan and Syria, construction of a West Ghor Canal with a siphon across the Jordan River to connect it with the East Ghor, construction of seven dams to utilize seasonal flow on side wadis flowing into the Jordan, and drainage facilities. The United States agreed to finance the building of the Unity dam and the two irrigation canals, as well as Israel's National Water Carrier system, which was to divert water from the Jordan River as well. Israel was to provide Jordan annually with 100 million cubic meters of water from the Sea of Galilee.

In 1964, however, Israel effectively annexed the waters of the Sea of Galilee by damming its southern outlet without international agreement and extending the National Water Carrier to the south. In retaliation, an Arab League summit conference decided to divert the northern Jordan River's tributaries, the Hasbani River and Wazzani springs in south Lebanon and the Banias River on Syria's Golan Heights, through Syria and down to the Yarmuk. The Arab headwater diversion project began in 1965; Israel responded with a series of aircraft and artillery attacks on the diversion project, which in 1967 culminated in raids into Syria and an increase in water related hostility that set the stage for the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Israel's search for water security can be considered one of the principal causes of the 1967 war.

The 1967 Arab-Israeli War resulted in an Israeli victory that increased existing Israeli fresh water reserves and ground aquifers (in the West Bank) and riparian rights over upstream tributaries to the Jordan by almost 50 percent.[12] It disrupted work on the East Ghor Canal as well, since the ceasefire lines gave Israel control over half of the length of the Yarmuk River, compared to 10 km before the war. Further development of the Yarmuk was thus dependent upon Israeli consent. The Jordanian-Israeli peace accord of 1994, however, may alleviate much of this problem, since it provides for the building of the East Ghor Canal and the reapportionment of at least some of the disputed water between the two countries.

With the emergence of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) after the 1967 war, the struggle for water took on an increasingly political cast. The PLO mounted intensive campaigns against Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley, peaking in 1968-1969 with raids against Israeli water installations. Israel's initial response was a series of military efforts to stop PLO activities. By 1969, however, the Israeli cabinet changed its methods: In an attempt to pressure King Hussein to move against the PLO, Israel attacked the East Ghor Canal several times, causing extensive damage to Jordanian irrigation.[13] In 1970-1971, King Hussein expelled the PLO from Jordan and the Canal was rebuilt, although the master plan has never been implemented. While perceptions of mutual interest between Jordan and Israel have led to amicable resolution of potential crises in the last 20 years, further development work on the East and West Ghor Canals effectively has come to a standstill. Full utilization of the Canal has been hampered by the presence of silt and debris; past efforts to remove the debris have been halted by Israel for fear that the level of the Jordan River would be affected. Even if the East Ghor Canal was fully utilized, however, it could not meet the needs of Jordan's rapidly increasing population, which is doubling every 18 years.

In addition to water received from the Yarmuk River and West Bank aquifers, Israel derives over 20 percent of its water from the disputed Golan Heights, which contains the headwaters of the Jordan River that supplies both Jordan and Israel. Together, the West Bank and the Golan Heights contain up to two-thirds of the water Israel uses. Israeli and Syrian negotiations over the Golan Heights thus involve more than strategic issues; for both countries, access to scarce water resources is also a consideration.

Israel's military presence since 1978 in south Lebanon also has real or perceived water implications: The Israeli presence guarantees the uninterrupted flow of the Wazzani Springs and the Hasbani River, which originate in Lebanon and flow into Israel. Lebanon has also long suspected Israel of designs on the Litani River, which originates in Lebanon's central mountains and flows into the sea 40 miles south of Beirut. Despite consistent Israeli denials of interest in the Litani because of the expense involved to successfully divert Litani waters into Israel, many Lebanese remain convinced that the Litani is the real reason for the continued Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. However, the waterway of real issue to Israel is not so much the Litani (which has a much reduced flow by the time it reaches southern Lebanon), but the Wazzani Springs, which feed into the Hasbani River. The Hasbani, along with the Banias Springs, empties into Lake Tiberias (Lake Kinneret), providing water for the Negev Desert via the Israeli National Water Carrier.

Syria, Turkey, and Iraq

The intertwining of Israeli and Arab water needs is but one example of how water is a security as well as a resource problem in the Middle East. Syria and Iraq have a long history of enmity, much of it rooted in political differences manifested in conflicting claims to resources. One of the most serious disputes between the neighboring states occurred in 1974-1975 when Iraq accused Syria of reducing the Euphrates River's flow to a trickle, thereby endangering the lives of 3 million Iraqi farmers dependent on river irrigation water. After trading accusations of duplicity, Syria closed its airspace to all Iraqi aircraft, suspended Syrian flights to Baghdad, and transferred troops from the Israeli border to the Iraqi border, where it claimed that Iraqi troops were massing. In return, the Iraqis threatened to bomb the Syrian dam at al-Tabqa. Saudi Arabian and Soviet intervention resulted in eventual mediation of the dispute, much of which was the consequence of the Iran-Iraq accord of 1975, which ended Iranian support for the Kurdish rebellion in Iraq and raised Syrian fears that rival Ba'athists in Baghdad would promote unrest in Syria. A second dispute over water between Syria and Iraq arose during the Gulf crisis and war of 1990-1991, when Iraq placed human shields at the al-Thawra dam in northern Iraq to prevent potential Syrian sabotage.

Saddam Hussein used water as a weapon both during the Gulf War and since its end. Before Iraqis torched the Kuwaiti wellheads on their retreat from Kuwait, they deliberately released stored crude oil into the Persian Gulf in January of 1991. These spills, from two sources, combined to leave an oil slick of more than 3 million barrels, exceeding by ten times the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 and covering some 600 square miles of sea surface and 300 miles of coastline? Tens of thousands of birds died, other marine life was badly affected, coral reefs were destroyed, and the Saudi shrimp and fishing industry was wiped out for years to come. The oil slick alone irreparably damaged a fragile marine ecosystem and threatened seepage of oil into groundwater supplies. Saddam Hussein's actions in Kuwait have been characterized as "indiscriminate environmental warfare" by the U.S. State Department.[15] Desalination plants at Jubail and further south, the major sources of fresh drinking water for most Gulf states, was also placed at risk, and 26 gathering centers that separated oil, gas, and water from one another were either damaged or destroyed.

Since the end of the Gulf War, Iraq has pursued a major water diversion scheme, known as the Third River, which was completed in December 1992. This project aims to reclaim up to 150 million hectares of land for agriculture in southern Iraq, and includes a new canal from Baghdad to Basra to drain salt from the water and make it suitable for irrigation. However, the plan has also drained large areas of the southern marshes, destroying the traditional habitat of the Marsh Arabs who have been in consistent low level rebellion against the central Iraqi government since the end of the Gulf War. The marshes are now being eroded, and Marsh Arabs are thus more vulnerable to ground attacks from Saddam's forces despite the allied "no-fly" zone that protects them from air attack.[16]

Turkey, Iraq, and Syria have had territorial and political disputes dating back to the end of World War I. At that time, the founder of modem Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, turned his nation westward, toward Europe. Since that time, Turkey has repeatedly rejected the demands of its downstream neighbors for a guaranteed share of water from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, both of which originate in Turkey. Because it owned the source, Turkey contended, it had the right to decide how much water its neighbors would receive. In addition to the amount of water received, Syrians and Iraqis also worry about the quality of the water, fearing that the used irrigation water that backwashes into the rivers may carry salts, fertilizers, and pesticides. For the Syrians, the Euphrates River is the single main source of drinking, irrigation, and industrial water. Syria faces a potential loss of 40 percent of its Euphrates water because of Turkey's ambitious Southeast Anatolia (GAP) project. Iraq may lose even more.

Turkey has consistently accused both Syria and Iraq of aiding the radical Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), in its campaign against the central government; while Syria has just as consistently issued official denials of its involvement, there is strong regional feeling that such support is a just payback to Turkey for what Damascus considers its high-handed use of Euphrates waters. In January 1990, for example, Turkey reduced the flow of the Euphrates to fill the Ataturk Dam, depriving Syria and Iraq of 500 cubic meters of water per second, leaving a trickle with which to irrigate land and generate power. Water and electrical rationing as well as crop failures in Syria and Iraq followed the Turkish action. Turkey claimed that the water blockage was only coincidental to suspected Syrian support for increased Kurdish terrorist activities in southeastern Anatolia. Regardless of Syria's responsibility for PKK activities, however, the Turkish action served to remind both Syria and Iraq that Ankara has immense leverage over its neighbors, and that downstream states are vulnerable to extortion.

After decades of wrangling with Syria and Iraq over water ownership and use, Turkey disregarded its neighbors' longstanding objections and pushed ahead with a massive hydroelectric and irrigation project in 1983. Intended to harness the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers to generate electricity and transform semiarid land into a Middle Eastern breadbasket, the GAP project was initiated without negotiating an international water use agreement with either Syria or Iraq. The $33 billion project is due for completion in 2005; it will include 19 irrigation projects to irrigate 2.5 million acres as well as 14 hydroelectric power stations and 15 dams, with the gigantic Ataturk Dam, the world's fifth largest, as its centerpiece.

Complicating Turkey's relations with its neighbors over the GAP project is both history and Turkey's choice of friends: 500 years of Ottoman domination of the Arab world, Ankara's NATO membership, and its relationship with Israel have resulted in an extreme Arab wariness of Turkish actions. Even within Turkey there are biting criticisms of the GAP project, which has consumed a disproportionate part of the development budget and fueled Turkey's annual inflation rate as well as soured regional relations. Increasing costs of the GAP project may, in the end, prove the most effective moderator to Turkey's policy with regard to its neighbors: Financing from the World Bank or other international institutions requires agreement by all neighboring parties to projects affecting more than one state. In the absence of Iraqi and Syrian agreement on GAP, Turkey initially decided to finance the project alone. However, mounting costs as well as domestic priorities in Turkey make it likely that Turkey will have to seek international funding if it is to complete the project. To receive that funding, they will, in the end, have to make a deal with Iraq and Syria. Thus, the most intense period of water negotiation among Turkey, Syria, and Iraq is likely to begin in the near future.

Egypt and the Nile River

Egypt, the chief beneficiary of Nile waters, shares the river with eight other states. Egypt is the downstream state, and is thus subject to potential risk from economic or political policy shifts in other riparian states. The Nile River provides the vast majority of water to irrigate the 3 percent of Egyptian land within the Nile Valley and delta region that can be farmed. Double and triple cropping of existing fields has brought Egypt to the limits of its farm production, even as it faces enormous population increases that will bring the number of Egyptians to 100 million early in the next century? Egypt is particularly at the mercy of Sudan, which controls the flow of the Nile into Egypt, and with whom political relations have steadily deteriorated as fundamentalists gain power in Sudan and Egyptian fundamentalists increasingly challenge Hosni Mubarak's regime.

Egypt has complained that Israeli engineers have assisted Ethiopia, Uganda, and Sudan in the design of new irrigation systems that could impede the flow of the Nile and imperil the Egyptian population. While these efforts have apparently ceased because of Sudan's internal turmoil, future political settlements in the south could conceivably work against Egypt's interests and again increase tensions over water use. The population of Sudan is growing rapidly as well, and desertification and land degradation have become increasing problems.

Ethiopia's development plans could also have a significant impact on both Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia provides more than 82 percent of the Nile's water; with its own rapid population growth, increasing food demands, and soil erosion and desertification problems, changes in Ethiopian water policies seem inevitable. Indeed, the Ethiopian government has reportedly contemplated plans to reduce the discharge of the Blue Nile to Sudan and Egypt by as much as 4 billion cubic meters per year.[18] Ethiopia, like Turkey, has maintained its sovereign right to develop any resources within its own borders.

At present, the only regulatory instrument among Nile riparians is a 1959 agreement between Egypt and Sudan. This agreement, drawn up after the building of the Aswan Dam, does not take into account either projected needs or the present political situation, and necessary cooperation among states seems unlikely in the current climate. Competition for Nile water is thus likely to increase, as is the potential for future conflict.

In addition to potential problems with neighbors over future water supplies, Egypt also faces severe internal problems over water use and management. In Cairo, for example, an open canal of effluent runs through residential areas to a large lake converted into an open cesspit. It is drained by a further canal into the Mediterranean Sea, contaminating both the Mediterranean and its beaches, and killing fish and wildlife.[19]

The Potential for Conflict or Cooperation

States of the Middle East share similar environmental conditions and face common water problems. These problems can be the incentive for further divisions between states. They can also be an impetus toward regional cooperation that could underpin agreements on political, social, and economic problems. The provision and protection of water is unquestionably a major challenge for Middle Eastern governments. Decisions made today through peace negotiations or through region-wide agreements, or through their failures, will have a profound impact on future generations. Indeed, current disputes over borders, religion, and ethnicity may pale in comparison to potential water conflicts.

At the same time, however, water issues provide a potential opportunity for regional cooperation. Egypt and Israel, for example, have discussed collaboration on a half-billion dollar desalinization plant on the border between the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. A potential Israeli-Jordanian joint venture would channel Red Sea water from near Aqaba to the Dead Sea, generating mutually beneficial electricity and using reverse osmosis to desalinate Red Sea water as it drops into the Dead Sea.[20] Other regional efforts could include development of low cost desalinization and pumping techniques, expanded water recycling, development of salt resistant crops, improvement of drip irrigation processes using Israeli developed techniques, conservation of water, and repairs to existing water carrier systems.

Economies can also be restructured away from water intensive processes, such as agriculture, and existing water supplies can be supplemented by wastewater reclamation. Suggested guidelines offered by various international bodies such as the International Law Association and the International Law Commission can also be put into effect. These guidelines, based on the principles of good neighborliness, include injunctions on the diversion of water by upstream states without consultation with other riparians, joint environmental monitoring, and the development of a body of international law to deal with issues of shared water resources.[21]

The resolution of existing and potential water conflicts in the Middle East, however, depends on two critical factors: First, population growth must be contained to relieve future pressures on scarce resources. While this is absolutely essential, it must also be realized that population control, even if rigorously pursued from today onward, is a long term goal--it will not reduce the numbers of people currently stressing regional systems.

A more immediate goal is the reduction of regional political tensions and suspicions that impede cooperative efforts of states sharing mutual resources. In this regard, the multilateral discussions on water that are part of the current Arab-Israeli peace talks, and especially the Jordanian-Israeli agreements on water sharing, can set a vitally important precedent for the region as a whole. In addition to providing a framework for a range of cooperative efforts and having an immediate impact on one set of water issues, successful peace negotiations can establish a pattern of dialogue and communication that is now lacking in the Middle East. It can inspire confidence that cooperation, rather than conflict, can solve deep seated problems and improve, if not ensure, the quality of life for future generations.

Received 3 August 1996; accepted 24 September 1996.

Address correspondence to Mary E. Morris, Morris & Morris, 8001 Kittyhawk Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA.

Notes

1. Thomas Naff and Ruth C. Matson, Water in the Middle East: Conflict or Cooperation? Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984, p. 228.

2. Sara Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development, Washington, D.C., Institute for Palestine Studies, 1995, pp. 161-175.

3. Stephen Lonergan, Climate Warming, Water Resources, and Geopolitical Conflict: A Study of Nations Dependent on the Nile, Litani, and Jordan River Systems, Extra-Mural Paper No. 55, Ottawa, Canada: Operational Research and Analysis Establishment, March 1991, p. viii.

4. Natasha Beschorner, Water and Instability in the Middle East. International Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Paper 173, London: Brassey's, 1992, p. 7.

5. Peter Beaumont, "The Agricultural Environment: An Overview," in Peter Beau-mont and Keith McLachlan (eds.), Agricultural Development in the Middle East, Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 1985, p. 35.

6. Beaumont, p. 10.

7. Lonergan, p. 71.

8. Beschorner, 1992, p. 13.

9. Ibid., p. 14.

10. Roy, p. 162.

11. Naff and Matson, p. 43.

12. Lonergan, p. 78.

13. Naff and Matson, p. 45.

14. Lois Ember, "War Devastates Ecology of Persian Gulf Region," Chemical and Engineering News, March 11, 1991, p. 5.

15. Department of the Navy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, The U.S. Navy in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Appendix A, 1991, p. 44.

16. "Power and Water," Middle East Economic Digest, January 31, 1992.

17. John Kolars, "The Course of Water in the Middle East," American-Arab Affairs, Spring 1990, p. 62.

18. Lonergan, p. 56; Lloyd Timberlake and Jon Tinker, "The Environmental Origins of Conflict," The Socialist Review, Vol. 16, No. 6, 1985, p. 57.

19. Edmund O'Sullivan, "Environment Debate Gathers Momentum," Middle East Economic Digest, May 29, 1992, p. 19.

20. John Kolars, "Trickle of Hope," The Sciences, November/December 1992, p. 21.

21. Natasha Beschorner, "The Problem of Regional Rivalry," Middle East Economic Digest, January 29, 1993, p. 12.

 

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