Why Iraq's great rivers are dying

  This is the Shatt al-Arab. 

    The river that winds through the city of Basra, here, in Southern Iraq. It was once one of the most important waterways in the Middle East: Here lies the great port of Basra, at the cross-roads of the world’s trade. It fed dozens of canals throughout Basra and earned the city the nickname, The Venice of the Middle East. It made Basra the symbol of Iraq’s growth and prosperity.

        Today it's the second largest city with over 4 million people. And with these oil fields and the only deep-water port in the country, it's also the economic center. About 80% of Iraq's revenue comes from here. But this is what Basra’s canals look like today. In the summer of 2018, they were choked with debris, raw sewage and rotting garbage that was poisoning the city’s residents. About 100,000 people were hospitalized because of water-related illnesses. Basra now represents a crisis that's been looming over Iraq for decades: 

    The country is running out of water. That's because it neither controls the flow of its rivers, nor has the infrastructure to clean them. It's standing in the way of Iraq's recovery. "The waters of the two great rivers, Tigris and the Euphrates, are indeed the waters of life." Almost all of Iraq's water comes from two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Which run down most of the country then converge here to form the Shatt al-Arab before emptying into the Persian Gulf.

    Along the way these rivers provide drinking water to these cities and irrigate farms and marshlands here. The rest of the country is mostly desert. A vast network of infrastructure is used to generate power, distribute the water, and clean it. That includes Dams, canals, and water treatment facilities. But this system is delicate. Anything that affects the amount of water flowing down these rivers or the infrastructure around it can have massive consequences. Over the last few decades, both have taken a hit. Iraq relies heavily on these rivers, but it doesn’t control them. Both rivers begin in Turkey. About 71% of Iraq’s water comes from there, while Syria and Iran add another 10% as the rivers move south. Which means 81% of Iraq’s water is controlled by its neighbors. And they’ve been keeping more and more of it for themselves. Since the 1970s, Turkey has built at least 20 dams on the Euphrates and the tributaries that feed it, including the Ataturk dam - the 5th largest in the world - to provide electricity and water to its growing population. Syria has built several dams too. Both countries are holding the river hostage.  only a quarter of the Euphrates' normal flow reaches Iraq.

    The same thing is happening on the Tigris. Turkey is building a number of dams here, including the Ilisu dam. When it was close to completion in 2018, it blocked so much water that residents all the way down in Baghdad could cross the Tigris by foot. To make matters worse, many of the tributaries that feed the Tigris begin in Iran. And there, they’ve built 600 hundred dams in the last 30 years and dozens are under construction. 

    All of this means that Iraq, the furthest country downstream, isn't getting enough water. There’s less to drink, irrigate crops and generate electricity. It also means the rivers are more contaminated. At a normal flow, water can dilute a lot of the toxins and sewage that get dumped into the river. 

    But when levels are low, these pollutants become more potent. Plus, the weaker flow allows salt water to move upstream from the Persian gulf - which kills fish and crops.

   

    All of this puts more pressure on Iraq’s infrastructure to distribute and clean the water. 

The problem is - much of this infrastructure has been destroyed - and Iraq hasn’t been able to rebuild it. There have been 3 devastating wars in Iraq in the last three decades Just 2 hours ago, allied airforces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. The Gulf war began when Iraq’s ruler, Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait - a US ally. The US led a coalition to retaliate with airstrikes. "We are determined to knock out Saddam Hussein's nuclear bomb potential, destroy his chemical weapons facilities. Much of Saddam’s artillery and tanks will be destroyed. But they also bombed Iraq’s infrastructure. Including 4 hydro-electric dams. Which in turn, disabled the water treatment facilities that relied on electricity. A sewage treatment plant in Baghdad was also bombed - causing sewage to flow into the Tigris - poisoning the water supply for Southern Iraq.

    This UN report said the war reduced [Iraq] to the “pre-industrial age” and that the 

country would face a “imminent catastrophe”. Saddam survived the war, but the UN imposed strict sanctions, freezing Iraq’s bank accounts and restricting what it could import. Including construction supplies and water purification chemicals. Then Saddam made things even worse. In 1993, he was fighting rebels in these marshlands. Despite the post-war water crisis he weaponized the water here by diverting the rivers away from the marshes.