One of the most important of these dams is the Tabqa Dam. The Tabqa Dam is an earth-fill dam on the Euphrates, located 40 kilometres (25 mi) upstream from the city of Ar-Raqqah in Ar-Raqqah Governorate, Syria, the Daesh headquarters. The dam is 60 metres (200 ft) high and 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) long and is the largest dam in Syria. Its construction led to the creation of Lake Assad, Syria's largest water reservoir. The dam was constructed between 1968 and 1973 with help from the Soviet Union. It was one of the first Syrian assets seized by Daesh. Its flow, however, can be regulated by the Keban Dam north of it in Turkey and, with a diminished flow, its salinity is increasing. Lake Assad is now almost empty.
Daesh fought the Iraqi Army over the Fallujah Dam and took it over. With monstrous incompetence Daesh immediately closed the dam and stopped the water flow downstream. This left towns such as Karbala and Najaf without water. But it also caused the reservoir behind the dam to overflow east, flooding some 500 square kilometres of farmland and thousands of homes as far as Abu Ghraib, about 40 kilometres away on the outskirts of Baghdad. Later, Daesh suddenly reopened the dam, causing major flooding downstream. They then began the attack on the critical Haditha Dam; the dam seized by U.S. Rangers in 2003 to stop Saddam's attempt to engage in hydrological warfare. The Iraqis resisted Daesh but it is still a conflicted area.
By far the most difficult challenge in the water wars is the battle for Mosul Dam. For several weeks in July and August 2014, Daesh captured and held Mosul Dam from the Peshmerga. On August 17, 2014, the Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army launched a successful operation to retake control of the dam from Daesh. United States airstrikes assisted the Kurdish and Iraqi military, damaging or destroying nineteen vehicles belonging to Daesh, as well as striking a Daesh checkpoint near the dam. Mosul Dam is the largest in Iraq. It barricades the Tigris about 40 kilometres upstream of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.
The Mosul Dam is an engineering disaster waiting to happen. Back in 2007, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called it "the most dangerous dam in the world." Its foundations are built on porous gypsum that is constantly being dissolved by water in the reservoir, creating sinkholes that threaten to collapse the foundations. To keep it stable, hundreds of employees have to work around the clock, pumping a cement mixture into the earth below. Without continuous maintenance, the rock beneath will wash away, causing the dam to sink and then break apart. But Iraq's recent history has not been conducive to that kind of vigilance. The U.S. Corps of Engineers outlined a worst-case scenario, in which a collapse of the dam would flood Mosul under 65 feet (20 m) of water and Baghdad, a city of 7 million, to 15 feet (4.6 m), with an estimated death toll of 500,000.
When Daesh fighters took the dam, in 2014, they drove away the overwhelming majority of the dam's workers and also captured the main cement grout-manufacturing plant in Mosul. Much of the dam's equipment was destroyed, some by ISIS and some by American air strikes. The grouting came to a standstill--but the passage of water underneath the dam did not. The Iraqis are worried that the time gap between the takeover by Daesh and the restoration of control of the dam by Iraq allowed new sinkholes to form under the dam and that they will not be able to fill them in time to prevent the dam's collapse. There is currently fighting between Iraqi Special Forces and the Peshmerga trying to take over Mosul and Daesh periodically tries to mortar the Mosul Dam to destroy it.
The water situation in Damascus is different. Water doesn't come from the Tigris-Euphrates complex, it comes from two springs; the Fijeh and Barada springs. The Fijeh springs are a group of three large karstic springs - The Fijeh main spring, the Fijeh side spring and the Harouch spring - in the Barada gorge. The three springs used to contribute half the flow of the Barada River. The Barada spring is located North of the Fijeh springs close to the Lebanese border. The entire flow of all these springs is captured through wells positioned around the springs. Water from the Barada and Fijeh springs is transferred to a mixing station near Dummar where it is chlorinated and distributed to the city. The city's water supply is complemented by small wells in the plains around the city.
During the drought, which began in 2005 the waters which fed Damascus were also affected. The water volumes diminished by almost half. However, that was not Syria's biggest challenge. The suburbs north of Damascus are controlled by rebel groups, not by Assad's forces. The Wadi Barada valley is a rebel-held pocket of territory northwest of Damascus that the Syrian army and its allies have been trying to recapture, but with little success. In the fighting the water supplies in the Wadi Barada were deliberately targeted and the pro-Assad forces bombed a key water pumping station. At least four million people in Damascus were without safe drinking water supplies for more than a week in late December after springs outside the Syrian capital were deliberately targeted.
The cut off of the pumping allowed waste water and chemicals to pollute the water supplies and it took over a week to clean the system and begin pumping again, but with only a severely diminished flow. Wadi Barada lies on a road from Damascus to the Lebanese border that is a supply line for the powerful Iranian-backed Hezbollah group which is why the rebels continue to bomb the installations and the Hezbollah bomb the rebels without consulting their Syrian commanders.
As a result of the drought the agricultural industry in Syria is in shambles. In cities like Aleppo which were heavily bombed, the water supplies were deliberately cut. The Assad regime cut off and destroyed the water system in East Aleppo and the various rebel groups did the same in West Aleppo. With the priority of providing safe drinking water to the fifteen million Syrians who are only irregularly supplied with water the irrigation systems for agriculture have been almost abandoned. Food production is very low and the internal transport system is in shambles with roads cut, snipers of the various factions lining the roads and severely reduced fuel supplies. Syria is a logistics nightmare which is growing worse as the drought continues and the bombing continues near Al-Bab and the Wadi Barada.
Despite the putative ceasefire brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran the Free Syrian Army hold Damascus to ransom as they continue their control of the Damascus water supply. As the Assad forces continue their bombing campaign in the Wadi Barada they run the risk of doing even more damage to the Fijeh and Barada springs; the Hezbollah are continuing their bombing of the region without reference to the ceasefire or the Syrian Army.
The use of water in Syria and Iraq has caused few, if any, military battlefield casualties. However, the water weapon has certainly taken its toll on vulnerable non-combatants. This can be measured both by the suffering caused by mass migration and by outbreaks of waterborne disease, which come from water contamination and the lack of basic water sanitation and hygiene facilities in refugee camps. The water weapon has proven relatively useless as a tactical military weapon but effective as a tool of political control. However, the humanitarian consequences of diminished water supply due to weaponization are likely to last longer into the future, whatever the immediate outcome of the war. [v]
In fact, the water weapon is a key element of Daesh warfare, both threatening the population with a cut-off of services or by a massive flooding of whole regions with the destruction of dams. These questions are not addressed by the 'peacemakers' of Russia, Turkey and Iran. In fact, by picking and choosing which areas are able to be bombed with impunity, the 'peacemakers' have prepared the way for the failure of any meaningful or lasting peace. The Free Syrian Army and its YPG allies are clear that they will not settle for a 'peace' which allows the continued bombing of the Al-Bab and Wadi Barada areas. This is a strange sort of peace they are proposing -- a peace with continued bombing. It is like being "just a little pregnant".
The environmental clock is ticking for Syria; a long and continued drought as far ahead as a decade. There is no 'political' way to solve these environmental constraints and each nation will have to decide how much of the humanitarian burden of refugees, ill health and food shortages in Syria they are willing to bear. More importantly even than that, they will have to decide who will get the water and who will remain dry.
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