“There are families that are around 15 members, and their living depends on this [farm land]. They don’t have a monthly [government] salary or anything,” said Ibrahim, a farmer in the Qaladze area of northern Sulaimani.
Ibrahim’s lands are watered by the Lesser Zab River, Zei Bchuk in Kurdish, that originates in northwestern Iran’s Zagros Mountain range and follows a roughly 400-kilometer long course, marking a stretch of the border before turning into the Kurdistan Region where it fills the Dukan reservoir, and eventually flows into the Tigris River.
Iran has been damming the river since 2011.
Local authorities have tried to raise the issue with the Iranians.
“What is on us is that we have spoken to the supervisor of Raparin administration and the director of water of Raparin, and they are on the line with the Iranian [authorities], but we have not received any response yet,” said Abubakir Bayz, mayor of Pishdar district.
Water scarcity is a severe issue in drought-stricken Iraq. The country is the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity, according to the United Nations.
The issue is exacerbated by Turkish and Iranian dams on rivers that flow into Iraq, cutting off the increasingly dry nation from much-needed water. Some 70% of Iraq’s water comes from outside its borders.
Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources late last year predicted that unless urgent action is taken to combat declining water levels, the two main Tigris and Euphrates rivers will be entirely dry by 2040.
Ten years ago, the Iraqi government proposed to build a $600 million dam on the Lesser Zab River. The dam would hold 100 million cubic meters of water, but was never built.
Water levels in the three main dams in the Kurdistan Region are all far below capacity. Dukan dam is 35% full and Duhok dam is at 40%. Only Darbandikhan dam is more than half full, at over 60% capacity. In 2021 it was even worse and officials then appealed for the government to work out a water-sharing agreement with Iran.
With reporting by Abubakir Ismail.
