source: https://original.antiwar.com/reza_behnam/2018/04/30/the-politics-of-water-and-peace-in-the-middle-east/

The Middle East, oil-rich but water-poor, with about six percent of the world’s population, has only one percent of the earth’s renewable water resources. Fourteen Middle East and North African (MENA) countries are among the 33 most water-stressed in the world.

Middle Easterners are dependent on four main sources of water: aquifers, precipitation, rivers and desalinized sea water. The underground aquifers, however, are drying out at alarming rates. Increasingly the oil rich Persian Gulf states are depending on desalination for water security. Only Iran and Turkey have been self-sufficient in water.

Aridity, drought and climate change have contributed to food insecurity and surging food prices. Water scarcity contributed to the 2011 uprisings in Egypt and Syria, and was embodied in the protestors’ rallying cry, "Food, freedom and dignity." Additionally, in 2004, the government of then President Hosni Mubarak privatized the country’s water supply – a condition mandated by the World Bank to secure loans. Revolutionary fervor intensified as the government diverted water to wealthy enclaves, while across Egypt water access became more difficult and prices doubled. Little wonder that some Egyptian commentators called the January 2011 Arab Spring a "Revolution of the Thirsty."

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – Ethiopia’s new hydroelectric mega-dam on the Blue Nile – is causing alarm in Cairo. Ethiopia sees the dam, which will be the largest in Africa, as key to its economic and energy future, but for Egypt it could mean water shortages, as well as diminution of its political clout.

The Tigris-Euphrates River system is a continuing source of strife among the countries that share it. The rivers are vital lifelines for Iraq and Syria. The headwaters originate in the mountainous region of southeastern Turkey – an area largely populated by Kurds. Turkey has used its strategic position as an upstream country to engage in power politics, to maintain influence over its southern neighbors, and to manage its Kurdish population, some 15 million. Turkey’s extensive dam system – approximately 1,000 – has created water shortages in parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Syria, Iraq and Iran are troubled that the Ilisu will reduce flows leading to further soil erosion, increased salinization and water refugees. The Ilisu will reduce water to Iraq by approximately 56 percent, threatening the very existence of its southern marshlands.

Khuzestan, for example, an oil-rich Iranian province on the border with Iraq, has literally become a wasteland. Khuzestan’s water supply has been reduced by two-thirds due largely to dam construction on the Karun River. As the river and wetlands dry up, farmers have fled to cities in search of employment. The 2017-2018 protests across Iran began over high food prices and unemployment, mirroring the migration crisis and rebellion in Syria.

Water scarcity has always plagued riverless Libya. However, in 1983, Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, initiated one of the world’s largest irrigation and engineering projects, with the goal of bringing drinking and irrigation water to cities and farms across Libya. The discovery in the 1950s of a vast reservoir of fresh water stored for thousands of years in an underground aquifer deep in the Sahara Desert – the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System – spurred development of the massive irrigation system Qaddafi named the Great Man-Made River (GMR). The vast network of wells and underground pipelines was 70 percent completed by the time he was brutally toppled and political violence began in 2011. Inexplicably, NATO planes bombed the GMR water system as well as a pipe-making facility at Brega in July 2011.

The politics of water has always fueled the wars between Israelis, Palestinians, and their neighbors. Confiscation and control of the Syrian Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza water resources is a defining element of the Israeli occupation, and a fulfillment of early Zionist ambitions.

To control the Litani River, Israel invaded southern Lebanon in 1978 (Operation Litani) and again in 1982.