UpstreamDownstream:
Dams, marshes and politics on the
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
Water
► No substitutes
► Imposition of borders
 Watersheds are a threat to national sovereignty
► Unlike other resources,
► Upstream-Downstream




it flows
Power difference
Temporal difference
Pollution/evaporation exacerbated by extraction
Infrastructure development for self-sufficiency
exacerbates tension
► Dams
as “weapons”
Transboundary Rivers
►
Regulation and management
are difficult, and in many
systems there is no
substantive agreement over
water rights or use.
►
The natural geographical and
management unit of water, the
watershed, strains both
institutional and legal
capabilities often past capacity.
Transboundary River Management
►
Interstate watershed management is in itself largely
theoretical.
►
Also inherently problematic.
 ‘Equitable use’ is the concern of upstream states; it permits
consumption and production throughout the system, not
acknowledging the downstream effects of upstream use.
 ‘Obligation not to cause appreciable harm’ is the concern of
downstream states; it implies that they should receive water of the
same quality that upstream states do, which would in all likelihood
place substantial constraints on upstream states’ abilities to pursue
their interests.
Interstate Water War Hot Spots in
the Middle East
 Nile- Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt
 Tigris/Euphrates- Turkey, Syria, Iraq
 Jordan/Litani- Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan
►
At the dawn of the new millennium, the tragic loss of the
Mesopotamian marshlands stands out as one of the world’s
greatest environmental disasters. Dams and drainage
schemes have transformed one of the finest wetlands, the
fabled Eden of the Fertile Crescent that has inspired
humanity for millennia, into salt-encrusted desert. The
ecological life-support system of a distinct indigenous
people dwelling in a rare water-world of dense reed beds
and teeming wildlife has collapsed. Humanity’s impact on
the planet’s fragile ecosystems could not be more
dramatically illustrated. This Mesopotamian story is yet
another wake-up call alerting us to the fraying fabric of
spaceship earth. We are again reminded that we need to
act now to restore ecosystems on a global scale.
►
-UNEP, 2001: viii (italics added)
Marsh Literature
►
Thesiger, Wilfred. 1964. The Marsh Arabs. London: Longmans, Green
and Co. Ltd.
►
Salim, Shakir Mustafa. 1964. Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta.
London: The Athlone Press at the University of London.
►
Young, Gavin. 1977. Return to the Marshes: Life with the Marsh Arabs
of Iraq. London: Collins.
►
Nicholson, Emma and Peter Clark, Eds. 2002. The Iraqi Marshlands.
London: Politico’s Publishing.
►
France, Robert. 2007. The Iraqi Marshlands: Restoration and
Management. Sussex Academic Press.
►
-The Marshes circa 1973-1976. UNEP, 2001.
►
NASA satellite imagery of the Marshes circa 1973 (left) and 2000 (right). Deep purple signifies permanent marsh. Red signifies irrigated
agriculture. Dark blue signifies permanent lakes. Light blue signifies seasonal lakes. Gray signifies barren or dry land.
Local-Global
► Global
actors frame ‘local’ issues.
 Activist groups, NGOs, engineers, economists, social
scientists
 If the problem is X, then the solution is NOT X, provided
through some function of expertise.
► No
water? – Engineer builds a dam.
► No water? – Economist assigns water rights.
► No water? – Human rights group blames rights abuser.
 Who and where you are influences whether you see X
or Y.
► Multiple
partial ‘truths’ emerge
► No guarantee that local voice is ‘truth’ either
The Marshes: Place, Origin, and
Change
►
15,000-20,000km2 (extent fluctuated greatly)
►
Garden of Eden, flood of Gilgamesh and Genesis, the birthplace of Abraham (links with
"origins of civilization" are interwoven into almost every account of degradation and
restoration)
►
Geologically “recent” system
►
Basra “narrowing”; alluvial fans descend from mountains and plateau, width of the plain
is 45km
►
Seawater trapped following most recent glacial recession (consistent with early written
sources that Ur and Eridu were in intimate proximity to the shoreline)
►
Sediment deposits pushed the coastal shore southeastward, contributing to “a slow and
progressive filling up of lakes and Marshes and ultimately to their long-term
disappearance” (Sanlaville, 2002: 145)
►
Marshes have grown and retracted “according to the amount of control exercised over
the flood water and the amount of water used for irrigation in the north” (Encyclopedia
of Islam, al-Batïha)
►
The future survival of the marshes must, therefore, be in
question merely as a result of the changes which have
occurred, or are likely to occur, in the upper parts of the
basin in Turkey, Syria and Iraq… Given the political
standing of Saddam Hussein in the West it is not surprising
that many Western commentators have placed all the
blame on Iraq for the potential disruption of the ecology of
the marshes of the Shatt al-Arab. This is, however, a
rather extreme view of the situation as the future of the
marshes has already been threatened by the major new
irrigation works in the upper part of the basin. In reality,
the Iraqi actions have merely exacerbated what was
already a critical situation.
-Beaumont, 1998: 182
Four Dangers
► Simultaneous
Marshes
► The
Globalization and Localization of the
Exaggerated Agency of Saddam Hussein
► Homogenization
Inhabitants
► Arbitrary
and Victimization of the Marsh
Time and “Nature”
Simultaneous Globalization and
Localization of the Marshes
► “Mesopotamian
Marshlands” binds a regional
concern with a distant audience by creating a
global or “civilizational” ownership.
► Mesopotamia,
the “cradle of civilization,” is no
longer a real place, but an imagined ancestral
home for most cultures of the Middle East and
Europe.
► Implications
of “Eden”
Simultaneous Globalization and
Localization of the Marshes
►
►
►
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All told... recreating Iraq's marshes will be an even bigger challenge
than restoring Florida's Everglades.. The key difference... is that the
Everglades already has both a robust inflow of water and an agreedupon plan to fix the mess. For now, Iraq has neither.
-Jacobson, The Washington Post, 04/28/03
Before Hussein's drainage project, Iraq's marshes were the Middle
East's largest wetland, covering about 7,500 square miles. By the late
1990s, satellite images indicated that less than 10 percent of Iraq's
marshland had any water.
-Chandrasekaran, The Washington Post, 10/11/03
Few places on Earth have a stronger hold on the imagination than do
the Iraq marshes... Those marshes exist mostly in... memory,
however; in an unprecedented ecological and human disaster, some
90% of the famed Iraqi wetlands were destroyed by 2000.
--Lawler, Science, 02/05
The Exaggerated Agency of Saddam
Hussein
►
In one of the greatest ecological crimes of the 20th century, Saddam Hussein managed
to drain, poison, and desiccate the lush wetlands that were home to 250,000 Ma’adanis,
as well as a crucial stopover for birds… Saddam launched a punitive assault in 1991 that
brought desertification to one of the world’s most valuable delta regions.

►
Saddam Hussein launched an attack on the wetlands and their inhabitants…the Iraqi
leader’s method of revenge not only forced the mass migration of the marsh dwellers
into the cities, but triggered an environmental catastrophe.

►
Daniel Del Castillo, Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/03
The sheer scale of the destruction is of biblical proportions…Three wars and one
insurrection played a big role, as did a concerted effort in the 1990s by Saddam Hussein
to drain the marshes.

►
Pat McDonnell Twair, Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, 9/03
Andrew Lawler, Science, 02/05
For almost 5000 years, people in southern Iraq have been living in marshes, their
livelihood depending on the waters, the buffalo and fishing. Saddam destroyed their way
of life in a campaign between 1992 and 1993.

Iraqi Prospect Organisation, www.iprospect.org.uk
The Exaggerated Agency of Saddam
Hussein
►
Saddam Hussein was destined to forget the history of this cradle of civilization and did
everything in his power to neglect the agricultural industry of his country. Iraqi
agriculture research, improvements to infrastructure and advancements in technology
were essentially nonexistent during Saddam’s tenure…Saddam also destroyed one of the
world’s largest wetland ecosystems when he drained the marshlands of southern Iraq,
displacing thousands of Iraqi farmers.
 -U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte, “Review Iraq Agriculture”, 06/04
►
What is important to understand about this situation is that this disaster was manmade.
It was the product of the corrupt, terror-ridden government of Saddam Hussein. This
region, known as the “Eden of Iraq,” was destroyed…Saddam did more than evict
thousands of people from their homes. He brought ecological devastation to this ancient
area… Now that Saddam Hussein and his criminal regime are par of an unhappy history,
attention must turn to restoring the marshlands.
 -U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, “United States and the Iraqi Marshlands:
An Environmental Response”, 02/04
The Exaggerated Agency of Saddam
Hussein
 “In little more than a decade, the regime of
Saddam Hussein nearly destroyed one of the
largest and most important wetlands in the
world” (USAID’s Iraqi Marshlands Restoration
Program, 2004: 13).
Homogenization and Victimization of
the Marsh Inhabitants
► “…new
opportunities and aspirations make
subsistence existence completely unattractive to
those with better prospects. Technology has
moved on, making the old-fashioned
way…painfully burdensome and unrewarding.
 Ochsenschlager, 2004
► “the
people of al-Naser… are now fed up. They
would rather, they say, stay put and carry on
farming- provided local services are improvedthen return to a rehabilitated marsh”
 Economist, 2003
Arbitrary Time and “Nature”
► 1973
= “pre-Husseinian”= Nature
need to try to allow nature to reclaim the
area…If you’ve ever been in the Marsh the way it
was, you’d know that it’s a temple to God, it’s a
temple to nature.”
► “You
 Azzam Alwash, quoted in Foreign Correspondent, 2004
 The presumption that follows is that the Marshes
existed in a “climax” form until the influence of the
unnatural disturbance of Saddam Hussein.
Table 1.1- Expected Reduction of Waters in the Tigris and Euphrates System
Tigris River
Annual Flow to the
Shatt Al-Arab,
Mm3/yr
Euphrates
“Natural”
49,200
“Natural” (at Hit)
32,720
Pre-Project (circa
1970)
24,300
Pre-Keban Dam
(circa 1974)
16,800
2000+
9,700
2000+
-6,441
Annual Flow in the
Shatt Al-Arab,
Mm3/yr
- Reproduced from Kolars, 1992: 107-108
Salination
► “Irrigation
has been practiced in
Mesopotamia for 6,000 years and already an
ancient text of 2,000 B.C. mentions that ‘the
earth turned white’” (Rzoska, 1980: 6).
► “This
highly dynamic ecosystem is therefore
dependent on spring floods for its
replenishment and very existence” (UNEP,
2001: 12).
2003-2006
► Bush
replaced
Hussein
► Dykes were broken
down and dried
marsh flooded.
► 70% of original
footprint?
► Water quality
concerns.
2006-present
► Drought,
climate change and Turkey
► Growing realization that solutions to the
marshes will not be found in the marshes
alone.
► Growing realization that marsh management
will require technological solutions – dozens
of water control structures to regulate water
levels.
What’s to learn from all this?
► Rivers
flow downstream. That means
problems and solutions flow downstream as
well.
► Loud is not the same as right.
► “Nature” and permanence are dangerous
concepts.