Turkey Blamed For Looming Crop Disaster In Iraq

Turkey Blamed For Looming Crop Disaster In Iraq

Iraq faces an agricultural "disaster" this summer if Turkey continues to retain waters from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which have sustained Iraqi agriculture for millennia, experts say.
The controversy over the sharing of the mighty rivers at the root of Iraq's ancient name of Mesopotamia -- meaning "between the rivers" in Greek -- is almost as old as the country itself.

But for Baghdad, the current shortage demands an urgent response from Turkey.

The reserves of all Iraqi dams at the beginning of May totalled 11 billion cubic metres (388 billion cubic feet) of water, compared to over 40 billion three years ago, although rain has not been below normal levels this winter.

The Euphrates is the most worrying situation.

Reserves at Haditha dam in the country's west, the first on the river, amounted to just 1.5 billion cubic metres on May 1, compared to eight billion two years ago.

"If the water level in the Euphrates continues to decrease, there will be a disaster in July because it will not be possible to irrigate crops," warned Aoun Thiab Abdullah, director of the National Centre for Water Resources.

"The drought will cause displacement," he said, noting that Iraqi agriculture depends on river water for 90 percent of its irrigation.

The negative impact on farming is already being felt in some provinces, including Najaf in the south that has banned its farmers from planting rice because it requires heavy irrigation.

"We will focus this year on the provision of drinking water and irrigation for other crops demanding less water," the director of the Centre for Water Resources in Najaf, Modhar al-Bakaa, told AFP at a water seminar.

The situation worsens as one moves down the Euphrates, according to Karim al-Yakubi, chairman of the agriculture and water committee in Iraq's parliament.

Yakubi said he fears an environmental disaster in the marshes of Nasiriyah farther south and notes that the lower water quantities increase the salinity of the river.

Iraqi experts say the problem is the many dams Turkey has built over the past 30 years to irrigate its agricultural lands in the southeast. These dams allow Turkey to regulate the flow of rivers according to its needs.

The flow speed of the Euphrates, which runs from Turkey through Syria, is currently only 230 cubic metres (8,100 cubic feet) per second, down from the 2000 level of 950 cubic metres per second.

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Mutant Seeds For Mesopotamia

Hmm, do you think Monsanto thought about this when they forced Order 81 on Iraqi farmers thus forcing them to plant their GM terminator seeds, and calling their centuries old natural seeds the "infringing varieties?" Apart from the water issues that clearly now put Iraqis at a dangerous crossroads regarding their ability to feed themselves, you now have Monsanto growing their evil in Iraq. You really must read this article. It will blow your mind. After all of the times we heard "we went there to give them Democracy", you now see Democracy was not at all the reason for the US govt. invading Iraq. Corporate profit at the point of a gun was the reason, and Monsanto is now just one multinational reaping the profits.

Here are some of my previous entries regarding dams in Turkey/Iraq:

Germany Suspends Funding For Ilisu Dam Project

The Ilisu Dam Controversy