Iraqi minister says Syria has started blocking flow of water to Iraq

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s Minister of Water Resources Aoun Diab said on Thursday that Syria has joined neighbouring Turkey and Iran in obstructing the flow of water into Iraq. He also accused Ankara of failing to comply with its agreement with Baghdad.

Diab told Rudaw’s Nwenar Fatih on Thursday that “Syria has also seized water from the Tabqa dam” in Raqqa province which is mostly under the control of Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). 

“The water level of their dam has dropped and they want to fill it. We have contacted them and sent a message to the [Syrian] foreign ministry to resolve the issue through diplomatic means and we have made some phone calls with officials of the Syrian ministry of water [resources] and told them that this development is strange and Syria has never blocked the flow of water to Iraq. I suggested to the [Iraqi] foreign ministry that I visit Syria and meet with its officials to discuss this specific point,” added the Iraqi minister. 

Iraq and Syria enjoy good relations and Baghdad was among countries which kept its ties with Damascus despite an international siege on Syria due to President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on 2011 uprising protesters.

Iraq is already suffering from water shortage, partly blamed on obstruction of the flow of water from Turkey and Iran. 

Diab said as per an agreement with Ankara, the Turkish government is “required to release 500 cubic metres of water per second as a minimum and of this 260 cubic metres should reach Iraq.”

The minister charged that the flow of water from Turkey to Iraq has dramatically decreased in recent years, especially in 2022. Iraq only received 180 cubic metres of water in that year. 
 
“From that year [2022] to last year, Iraq has lost about 10 billion cubic meters of water that did not come because neighboring Turkey did not comply with the agreement and did not return the requested amount to the Syrian-Turkish border,” Diab stated. 

Iraqi and Turkish authorities have held several meetings regarding the water issue but have not reached any concrete agreements. 

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani said last year that his government would implement measures to regulate the consumption and wastage of water after a Turkey visit where he sought to increase the release of water downstream into Iraq. 

“Our government will continue to implement the priorities of its plans to enhance water storage and reduce waste,” Sudani said at the time, adding that his government is working to ensure Iraq’s fair share of the resource through negotiations and dialogue with neighboring Turkey and calling the visit “an example of the success of the government’s directions.” 

Water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers – shared by Iraq, Syria, and Turkey – have dropped considerably in recent years. In the latest stark warning of the threats a heating climate poses to the country, a report by Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources towards the end of 2022 predicted that unless urgent action is taken to combat declining water levels, Iraq’s two main rivers will be entirely dry by 2040.

Water scarcity is a severe issue in 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 UN. 

However, the issue is exacerbated by Turkish and Iranian damming of rivers that flow into Iraq, cutting off the increasingly dry nation from much-needed water relief. Ankara has built a mega-dam on the Tigris River. 

Much of Iraq's agricultural lands depend on irrigation, but dams and reservoirs were at record-low levels this summer.

The UN Environment Program (UNEP) has long warned that water availability in Iraq is set to decrease by around 20 percent by 2025, threatening the long-term stability of Iraq’s agriculture and industry.
 
The Iraqi water minister said in his Thursday interview with Rudaw that “About 90 percent of the Euphrates comes to Iraq from Turkey and Iran has nothing to do with it.”

Diab said the increase in waterfall and snowfall in the Kurdistan Region will contribute to an increase of water level in the rest of the country. 

“In general, in recent years, we had drought and desertification, our water levels dropped significantly; This year the signs are that it will be a wet one. Although there was no good rainfall in the central and southern regions, there was heavy rainfall in the northern regions. With unprecedented snowfall, especially in the Zap River areas where record snowfall was recorded. Meanwhile, there has been a lot of snow in Sulaimani, which has changed the equation to some extent,” he noted. 

“Because of the rain waves, we have resumed water storage proportionately. In fact, even if we have not reached a very advanced level, about three billion cubic metres of water has been absorbed and we continue to build more water reservoirs, because the amount of water going to the dams of Mosul, Dukan and Darbandikhan. It means that the water has risen in these dams,” the minister elaborated. “The water situation is now changing positively and we hope and expect the snowfall waves in the spring to collect more water in the dams.”

However, the minister warned that the increase in the consumption of the underground water in provinces like Erbil is alarming because the depth of wells has increased from 180 metres to 300 metres. “So we need to be aware of groundwater.”

According to data provided by Kurdistan Region’s ministry of municipalities and tourism in 2022, in order to dig a well with sufficient water supply, in 2003, one would need to dig 200 metres deep into the ground in Erbil, while in 2022, a well has to go as deep as 700 metres.

Most of the newly-built neighbourhoods in Erbil rely on underground water. 

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