Noor Hammad
The Middle East is the world’s most water-stressed region, making it a prime battleground for control of scarce water resources.
Middle Eastern states account for 16 of the 25 most water-stressed countries in the world. As a scarce, and therefore strategic, natural resource, shared waters are susceptible to monopolistic practices and inter-state disputes.
Water rights in shared river basins are contested across the region, with Iraq and Syria particularly affected in the Levant. Both countries are downstream states, making them vulnerable to unilateral changes in water supply from upstream states that may divert river water to prioritise domestic needs. Despite the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and decreasing tensions between Iraq and Turkiye, the resolution of long-standing water disputes in the Levant is proceeding at an uncertain pace.
The Levant’s disputed river basins
A 1987 agreement allocated water rights between Turkiye and Syria as well as, indirectly, Iraq through a subsequent Syrian–Iraqi treaty ratified in 1990. A 2009 memorandum of understanding supplemented this, providing for technical cooperation between the three riparian states.
Despite these agreements, Turkiye has altered river flows and built dams to the detriment of its downstream neighbours. For example, Turkiye’s Southeastern Anatolia Project, aimed at generating hydroelectric energy and irrigating over one million hectares of farmland in the southeast, comprises over 22 dams across the Tigris and Euphrates, both of which are key sources of water for Syria and Iraq. As a result, Iraqi and Syrian water flows have become heavily restricted. Iraq’s water supply from the two rivers has fallen by 30–40% since Turkiye began its dam-building projects in 1975; Syrian water flow has decreased by 40%. To make matters worse for Iraq, Iran has diverted water from the Little Zab (where water levels have dropped by 80% due to Iran’s Kolsa Dam) and Diyala rivers for its domestic agricultural and drinking water use.
Concrete action from Iraq on this issue has been stymied by internal discord. In 2021, Iraqi officials from the Ministry of Water Resources announced that they were prepared to sue Iran at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over its water policies, pending a decision from Iraq’s foreign ministry and central government. The case never reached the ICJ’s docket, however, likely due to Iranian influence over Iraqi politics, both through its funding of Iraqi militias and its status as a key supplier of natural gas to Iraq.
The Kurdistan Regional Government has taken matters into its own hands, building dams (nine since 2019) to generate electricity within Kurdish territories to the detriment of Iraq’s other provinces. During disputes with the central government, Kurdish officials have withheld water flows, further highlighting Iraq’s political fragmentation. Frustration over Turkish military operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Iraq, and Turkish–Kurdish oil agreements excluding the Iraqi government, have also complicated water cooperation between the two states.
Under the Turkiye-backed administration of President Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria may also find it challenging to press Turkiye on water security. Syria’s deputy energy minister, Osama Abu Zaid, recently complained of Turkish failures to release Iraqi and Syrian shares of the Euphrates. Water cooperation is complicated by the fact that key rivers, notably the Euphrates and the Khabur, pass through the Kurdish-held northeastern region of Syria, which Turkiye views as a strategic threat. Turkiye has bombed the Tishrin Dam near Aleppo, which was held under the control of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), multiple times this year.
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