From Libya to Iraq : Crisis Looms in Mideast Over Water

The city of Tobruk, poised on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea in eastern Libya, recently faced a terrifying prospect: After weeks of rationing, the city of 100,000 literally ran out of water.

The seepage of sea water into Tobruk’s wells had ruined the ancient pipes of the city’s water supply. There was no tap water, no showers, no working sewers.

“It’s a wonder the city was not swept by a cholera epidemic,” one Western diplomat here said.

Tobruk’s crisis, which began last month, is an isolated event, still rare even in the arid Middle East. But the nightmare of critical water shortages is becoming the region’s most significant long-range problem, overshadowing religious fundamentalism and ideological clashes in an area long prone to violent resolution of conflicts.

‘Suffering and Strife’

“By the year 2000, the major river systems in the Middle East will be suffering either acute water shortages and-or acute pollution,” said Dr. Joyce R. Starr of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who recently co-authored a widely praised report on the region’s water crisis. “This could lead to conflict, possibly even war, but no doubt to enormous suffering and strife.”

Water experts regard three areas of the region as most likely to suffer because of water shortages:

--The Nile Basin. Saved this year by heavy rains after an 11-year drought, the basin is threatened by a combination of burgeoning populations, changing weather patterns and an unstable political climate. The late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat once remarked that the only factor that could force Egypt to go to war again was water.

Turkish Water Project

--The Euphrates and Tigris rivers. A massive irrigation project in eastern Turkey promises to bring agricultural development to a large area of that country. But there has been no agreement with neighboring Syria and Iraq about the use of the water. In 1975, Iraq mobilized its army against Syria when Damascus began filling a reservoir from the Euphrates, and war was narrowly averted.

--Israel and its neighbors. Experts predict Israel will require 30% more water than will be available there in 10 years, Jordan 20% more. Nearly 40% of Israel’s water supply is drawn from an aquifer, a water-bearing geological stratum deep beneath the Earth’s surface--but the aquifer lies under the West Bank, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. A manifesto of the leading Likud Party, issued for the November national election campaign, named water as one of the major reasons that Israel should keep control of the West Bank.

‘A Time Bomb’

“The question is whether the nations in the area are going to face the problem or escape from answering,” said Meir Ben-Meir, a former Israeli water commissioner. “If our generation does not tackle the problem, within 50 years it will become a time bomb. Without cooperation, we will have to face a conflict.”

Starr, who has been advising Congress on the growing water crisis, warned that “the problem can’t be solved. It’s going to get worse. It can’t be solved by conflict either. You can’t solve something that is insolvable. You can only try to manage it.”

Arnon Sofer, a geographer at Israel’s Haifa University, noted that Mideast water supplies are not flexible, while population figures are expanding at phenomenal rates. In the Nile Basin, for example, the population is expected to increase by 100 million people in the next 12 years, while the water supply remains relatively constant.

More than 90% of the Nile’s water flows from Ethiopia’s mountains, Sofer noted--and how long Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world, will allow such a precious resource to drain away to Sudan and Egypt remains an open question.

In recent years, there have been repeated rumors of Ethiopian plans, with Soviet assistance, to build a dam across its tributary of the Nile. The other countries of the Nile Basin--Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Zaire, Rwanda, Kenya, the Sudan--are all politically unstable, casting a further shadow over the reliability of water supplies.

Egypt, which is entirely dependent on the Nile for its water, narrowly escaped catastrophe this year when heavy rains in Ethiopia relieved a decade-long drought. Before the rains, water in the High Aswan Dam had fallen so low that navigation on the Nile was impossible, and it was feared that electricity production would have to be curtailed. Changing weather patterns could keep the area in a cycle of drought, however.

And despite this year’s reprieve, Egypt still depends on irrigation methods that waste huge quantities of water. Indeed, one Western study suggested Egypt could face a shortfall of 4 billion cubic meters by 1990.

Turkey’s 13-Dam Project

In another sensitive area, along the path of the Euphrates and Tigris, Turkey is building a 13-dam project in a bold move to develop the relatively backward area of eastern Anatolia.

With the massive Ataturk dam scheduled for completion in 1990, Turkey has so far failed to reach agreement with Syria and Iraq about the sharing of water from the rivers.

Both Damascus and Baghdad have expressed concern that the Turkish project could seriously hinder the functioning of their own dams downstream, giving Turkey a political weapon and making them dependent on Turkey’s good will for electricity.

In addition, the three countries’ ambitious development plans for the Euphrates’ water suggest that if the proposals were carried out in full, the Euphrates could run dry.

Iraq set agricultural self-sufficiency as its No. 1 priority after the peace agreement in the Persian Gulf War last July, but agriculture depends directly on the water supply. Among its other problems, Baghdad faces enormous constraints in agriculture because its water supply is increasingly polluted by high salinity and chemicals.

Tripartite Commission

Syria is demanding that Turkey double the supply of water flowing south in the Euphrates, but the tripartite Euphrates River Commission, involving Iraq, Syria and Turkey, has not met for four years. Meanwhile, Turkey has said that even if it increases the water available to the Euphrates, there is no guarantee that Syria will let it pass on to Iraq.

In apparent recognition of this sensitivity, however, the Turkish government has proposed the construction of a “peace pipeline” to carry water that normally empties into the Mediterranean to arid Middle East countries to the south. But the estimated $20-billion price tag has left many water experts skeptical of the plan’s feasibility.

According to a study by Starr of Mideast water use, Israel consumes five times more water per capita than does its neighbors, largely because of the highly developed state of its agriculture. The water is drawn from rivers flowing southward from Syria and Jordan, as well as aquifers tapped by wells. As demand increases, the wells have been driven deeper and deeper into the Earth, raising questions about ownership of the water supplies.

Emotional Issue

As with other aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the dispute over water use in Israel remains emotionally charged, with the facts frequently difficult to obtain or verify.

According to Ben-Meir, the former water commissioner, the mountain aquifer lies directly under the imaginary “green line” that separates Israel from the West Bank, accounting for more than a third of Israel’s water supplies.

It is fiercely debated whether Israel is taking water belonging to the Arabs or merely using water that it makes available through high technology--a dispute that will propel the issue of water to the top of the agenda at any Israeli-Palestinian peace conference.

“It is very serious for both parties,” said Ibrahim Dekkak of the Arab Thought Forum, a Jerusalem-based think tank. “Taking water from the West Bank is preventing the Palestinians from using their own resources. The amount of water drained out of our aquifers still does not meet Israeli needs. This makes Israel highly dependent on West Bank and Gaza water, and this dependency creates a problem as far as a political solution is concerned.”

Three Key Places

Sofer, the Israeli geographer, noted that if a hostile Palestinian state came to power in the West Bank, it could destroy Israel simply by building oil refineries in three key places and allowing the wastes to drain downhill into Israel’s water system.

Israeli farming near the Mediterranean coast has severely over-pumped the aquifer paralleling the shoreline, threatening water supplies to such crowded areas as the Gaza Strip, according to Arab and Israeli officials.

Already, Israel is beginning to de-emphasize crops such as cotton, which require relatively huge amounts of water to thrive, in favor of crops that yield equal or greater revenues with less water.

Meanwhile, both Israel--and, to a lesser extent, Jordan--are concerned that Syria will attempt to alter the flow of the Yarmouk River, which provides for farming in Jordan’s eastern valleys and in areas of Israel.

Plans for ‘Unity’ Dam

Jordan and Syria are drawing up plans for a $400-million “unity” dam at their common border on the upper Yarmouk, which would provide electricity for Syria and significant new water for Jordan.

According to Elias Salameh, a geologist at the University of Jordan, his country faces a severe water crisis by the year 2000 because of shortages as well as problems with water quality.

For the past 15 years, according to Salameh, Israel’s pumping of salt water from Lake Tiberias has raised the salinity of the Jordan River to a point where its water it is no longer suitable for use in agriculture.

But because of the political conflict in the area, there have been no talks between Israel and its neighbors about cooperation in the field of water. The last effort produced a water-sharing formula in the 1950s that was never ratified but is unofficially followed by the three states.

Other Areas Affected

The water problem extends to other areas of the Middle East as well. In the Persian Gulf, for example, the huge fresh water Dammam Aquifer, stretching from Iraq in the north to Oman in the south, is being depleted.

Ahmed Adel Orabi, deputy director of the U.N. Environmental Program regional office in Bahrain, said that the pumping of water from the aquifer is not regulated by the six states in the region, causing the water table to decline every year.

He noted that because of the area’s emphasis on desalination plants to turn sea water into drinking water, a gallon of water now costs double the price of a gallon of gasoline, which is made from the region’s plentiful petroleum supplies.

Aquifer Threatened

Another problem, according to Orabi, is that fast-paced industrialization along the gulf has dramatically increased pollution of the Dammam Aquifer. In response, Environmental Program is in the process of drawing up a “plan of action” to stem the destruction of the aquifer, he said.

A similar problem exists in Yemen, where the sandstone aquifer that serves the capital of Sana is rapidly being depleted, and many wells have simply gone dry.

As the continuing crisis in Tobruk illustrates, Libya also faces severe water shortages because of the lowering water table along the coast and the incursion of salt water.

Libya’s leader, Col. Moammar Kadafi, has embarked on a $25-billion project to pipe water to the coast from aquifers 1,200 miles inland in the desert. The project was designed by an American engineering firm and is frequently described as one of the largest engineering projects in modern times.

The first phase of the Great Man-Made River, as Kadafi calls the project, is expected to begin supplying water next year to the city of Sirte, east of Tripoli.

For Tobruk, where the water pipes remain ruined, the news is not so good. A feeder from the pipeline to Tobruk is still on the drawing boards--and the earliest date that water could be delivered through such a feeder line is 1995.