The Rise of Hydro-politics in the Middle East

The Middle East faces an existential water crisis and is running out of time to fix it. According to NASA data, the 2020-2021 rainfall season in the region was the second driest in 40 years. Groundwater storage is at the lowest level ever recorded, and sandstorms have been blanketing much of the region with unprecedented frequency – almost weekly. Not only is there insufficient water for crop irrigation, quite frankly there is often not enough water for household use. Yet despite these grave circumstances, approximately 82 percent of the water in the Middle East continues to be used inefficiently. As a result, and because it is already the world’s most water scarce region with 11 of the 17 driest countries in the world, water scarcity will emerge as the Middle East’s foremost challenge. Unless Middle Eastern countries find a way to build sustainable infrastructure and to cooperate with their neighbors to combat water scarcity, water – and the resulting “hydro-politics” – will become the driving force of conflict in the Middle East in the coming decades. This is evident in the political and environmental repercussions already wrought by the water crisis in the region.

In a 2010 resolution, the United Nations General Assembly declared access to clean water a human right. But water is becoming an increasingly politicized issue in the Middle East. Shortages across the region fuel protests about government mismanagement or hoarding of water. This politicization of water known as hydro-politics aggravates other conflicts in the region like those between Iran and Iraq and between Turkey and Syria.

Take, for example, the “Uprising of the Thirsty” in 2021 led by Iranian citizens frustrated over water shortages. Iran blamed Afghanistan for limiting its water supply through the Kamal Khan Dam on the Helmand River. Ironically, however, Iran built its own dam on the Helmand and Tigris Rivers that limits water supply to its neighbor, Iraq. This illustrates a common practice in the region: shifting the blame to other countries instead of confronting domestic water management.

Iraq is now pointing the finger at Iran and claiming that Iran is not considering Iraq’s own water needs. In recent months, Iraq has declared that it will take its fight to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. It claims that Iran has violated agreements between the countries to allocate Iraq a fair share of water. Iraq further alleges that Iran is using water as a political tool to influence Iraqi presidential elections. Iran in return claims that Iraq has just poorly managed its own water resources.

The political conflict over the Middle Eastern water crisis has sped up the decay of the region’s natural environment. The Iraqi water deficit, heightened by drought and climate change, is expected to only increase in severity. The deficit is estimated at about 11 billion cubic meters a year and will continue to grow as the country’s population grows. Summer temperatures have reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit, making it even harder for crops to grow. Specifically, for the 2021-2022 harvest, 25 percent of about 1,300 households surveyed by the Norwegian Refugee Council observed over 90 percent of wheat crop failure. And, Iraqi experts have announced that if the Iraqi water crisis is not confronted, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, from which Iraq receives most of its water, will dry up by 2040. 

In addition to the lack of water for personal use and farming, the lack of water contributes to dust storms. Salam Abdulrahman, a lecturer at Iraq’s University of Human Development, posits that Iraq’s dust storms are not just caused by lack of water – they lead to a lack of water as well. “After every dust storm,” he said, “people need to wash [the dust from] their house, yard, cars, and gardens.” But, the supply of water is simply not adequate. This vicious cycle has placed Iraqis at a disadvantage to live normal lives. After all, water is a human right, and lack of water has dire consequences.

Conflict between Iran and Iraq is not new – it reaches back to the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War in the latter 20^th century. But new water disputes have intensified old tensions, a paradigm that is also witnessed in the nearby Turkey-Syria conflict.

Syria’s north, which is semi-autonomous and controlled by Kurds, receives water from a plant whose power is controlled by Kurdish forces. The Kurds claim that Turkey interferes in management of the plant, specifically by cutting off its power. Turkey, with its long-standing animosity toward the Kurdish people, claims in turn that the Kurdish forces cut off power to the plant to pursue a political agenda.

Tens of thousands of Syrians in this region do not have access to tap water or even enough water to irrigate crops because of the contentious and unreliable operation of the plant. In Raqqa, for example, the flow of water has decreased from 600 cubic meters a second to under 200. This means that the 400,000 people living in Raqqa do not have access to enough water. 

Along with Turkey’s alleged interference in northern Syrian water infrastructure, the Syrian water crisis is exacerbated by drought, poor maintenance of infrastructure, and lack of thoughtful planning for future water-related complications. Syria’s crisis is representative of other nations in the region that, left as is, can only get worse. Abetting this forthcoming disaster is the violent civil war that has been ravaging Syria for the last decade, and such destruction has not spared the  infrastructure that regulated water use.

The Middle Eastern water crisis must be addressed to avoid a catastrophic future. And, based on examples from other countries, it can and should be addressed. Nearby, India and Pakistan collaborated to form the Indus Water Treaty in 1960, which annually allocates water of the countries’ shared rivers to each country. The two countries continued to collaborate even when nuclear war between them was imminent. In Eastern Europe, Balkan countries formed an agreement regarding shared water resources of the Danube, which helped create stability in the region after the Yugoslav Wars ended in 2001. The agreement launched trade activities between countries as well as inspired reconstruction of resources after war.

Hydro-politics, in short, is nothing if not existential. If not confronted and addressed, the Middle East cannot thrive or even survive. Climate change, drought, resource mismanagement, and political skirmishes all contribute to the current water crisis. Thankfully, some countries have begun to take this issue seriously.

Iraq has decided to rehabilitate ten oases in its Western Desert to help combat dust storms. It has even launched The Iraq Vision for Sustainable Development 2030 to protect its environment from climate change, according to a spokesman for its Ministry of Planning. Saudi Arabia announced that it will plant 10 billion trees in the region during the next decade and will collaborate with other Arab nations to plant 40 billion more. These trees will break up the mostly flat landscape of the region and supposedly hinder the path of the sandstorms.

It is possible for the water crisis to be addressed. The Middle East, however, does not have limitless time. Climate change looms now. Water infrastructure is being mishandled now. The sharing of water has become a political game now. Thus, now is the time to confront the water crisis. If not – and if the region stays as is – the Middle East’s biggest problem in the future will surely be its scarcity of water.