Toward a Secure and Sustainable Water Future for Kurdistan and Iraq

MONTREAL, Canada – As tensions between Erbil and Baghdad resumed earlier this year, some voices in the Kurdistan Region called for waging a “water war” against the central government by blocking Kurdish rivers that water Iraqi farms.

Water wars are a possibility. But there are many examples of cooperation showing that water wars are the exception. Countries sharing water resources find ways of cooperating.

‘’Evidence shows that throughout history armed conflicts over water tend to be the exception rather than the rule,” said Dr. Therese Sjomander Magnusson, Director of Transboundary Water Management at the Stockholm International Water Institute. “Cooperation over water is the recurring norm,’’ Magnusson told  Rudaw in a telephone interview from Sweden.

Dr. William Cosgrove, a water expert at the International Institute for Applied System Analysis and former president of the World Water Council, explained that countries reach common ground on water, even those at odds.

‘’There are far more agreements about the use of trans-boundary waters than conflicts,” Cosgrove told Rudaw. “For example, in the Middle East, between Palestine and Israel there is only one detailed agreement, and it is an agreement on the use of water. Amongst all the things that they could fight about or disagree about, the only one on which they reached an agreement is that the water is a common good.” Cosgrove told Rudaw from his home in Montreal, Canada.

It was after Baghdad blocked monthly budget payments to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that some Kurdish officials advocated Kurdistan could trump Baghdad by cutting the flow of waters to southern Iraq.

Baghdad’s need for northern waters is clear: Numerous times, the central government has placed demands before the KRG for greater water supplies, which irrigate farms in Diyala and Kirkuk.

Water from Kurdistan, water warriors had suggested, could be turned down through major dams like Dukan.

Dukan and Darbandikhan are two major dams which bring these rivers to a halt to turn turbines and produce electricity. The surplus is released daily to the central parts of Iraq, to irrigate farmlands.

A number of rivers, mainly the Greater and Lower Zab originate from the Kurdish mountains. Sirwan River as well passes through the Kurdistan Region, though it starts from Iran.

Research has shown that upstream countries, which have water, often are disinterested in cooperating with downstream areas. That is also true of Kurdistan and Iraq.  

‘’The precipitation falls on their country and they would like to keep it there. They do not want to reach agreements on sharing with other people who don’t have any rainfall or do not have as much rainfall,’’

Cosgrove explained about upstream regions.

But should Kurdistan plan to cut water to southern Iraq, that would become a case for the International Court of Justice, he told Rudaw.

‘’They don’t have the right to cut water. If they were to do it, it would become a case before the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands,” Cosgrove said.

In the case of Kurdistan, the stream from which it takes its water flows in from Syria, which in turn flows in from Turkey.

‘’In fact, the biggest debate is in Turkey” noted Cosgrove.  ’They are building new dams in Turkey and the amount of water that is coming down, all the way downstream to Iraq, is threatened by dams that are being built. That can have an effect on everybody downstream, all the way to Iraq.’’

For water issues in a regional context, cooperation is key, experts told Rudaw. Tensions amongst countries being interdependent on water can be relieved through active cooperation.

‘’If they want to deal with it peacefully, they would start by sharing information, and by working together to find the way to have the best economic results, to optimize the economic results for all of the countries that share the river,” Cosgrove said.

For Kurdistan, which is working to offer an attractive environment to pull investors, water issues will need to be taken into account. Water access and water stability is in fact an incentive that attracts corporations looking for new opportunities internationally. 

On World Water Day in 2002, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned that, “Fierce national competition over water resources has prompted fears that water issues contain the seeds of violent conflict.” But he also noted that, “If all the world’s peoples work together, a secure and sustainable water future can be ours.”