Global Policy Forum

By Abdelazeem Hammad

As much as the water crisis in the Middle East has been discussed over the last 20 years, one aspect of this severe shortage hasn't had its fair share of attention. This can be summarized in the fact that public awareness of the water problem (and consequently, the mobilization of political will to find a solution for it) has been linked to the transformation of the Arab-Israeli conflict from armed confrontation to peace negotiations.

It was rare for anyone -- whether in the Middle East or outside -- to speak about a water crisis in the 1980s, for example, much less discuss the possibility of a war breaking out over this scarce resource as is happening now.

Now, though, people are talking about water being not only the most likely cause of future wars, but quite possibly the only cause.

Taking into consideration that the peace process as we know it began with the U.S.-sponsored Camp David agreements between Egypt and Israel in 1978, what conclusions should be drawn from this linkage of the water problem to the conflict in the Middle East?

The issue that comes to mind is that finding a solution to the water problem in the context of the Middle East peace process is part and parcel of plans for regional cooperation after the achievement of a peace settlement.

But the problem is far more complex than this cozy assumption favored by advocates of Middle East regional cooperation.

The predominant tendency in diagnosing and finding solutions to the problem is based on two glaring but functionally complementary contradictions, the acceptance of which will inevitably lead to grave dangers to the future existence of the Arab world as a political entity. These contradictions are:

1. Shifts in the concepts and rules governing the ways water resources have been divided between the countries of the region, and between them and neighboring countries. 2. An exaggerated emphasis on a path of conflict rather than cooperation in predicting the future course of events, the objective of this being to make the abovementioned shifts more easily acceptable for fear of possible conflict over what is undoubtedly the most valuable of resources for life -- and what is for Arab countries a particularly sensitive issue since more than 65 percent of Arab water resources originate outside Arab borders.

Let us begin this discourse by pinpointing the features and consequences of the changes taking place in the concepts and rules regulating the distribution of water resources.

Foremost and most serious of these is the adoption by Turkey (from within whose borders originate both the Tigris and Euphrates, on which downstream Syria and Iraq depend) and Ethiopia (from whose territories spring the waters of the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the lifeblood of both Egypt and Sudan) of the principle of "transboundary" rather than "international" (more recently "International Drainage Basin") rivers.

The theory of "transboundary" rivers has always been rejected by most jurists of international law, and was buried by the UN Convention on the Non -Navigational Uses of International Waterways, a framework agreement initialed in 1997 and due to be implemented as soon as 35 UN member countries sign up to it. According to this convention, all waterways that traverse the borders of two or more countries (or lies between two or more countries) are "international" waterways. The agreement never uses the term "transboundary" at all.

Nevertheless, all Turks, from the highest-ranking official on down never refer to the Tigris and the Euphrates except as "transboundary" rivers. In fact, the office in the Turkish foreign ministry's water department responsible for the affairs of the two rivers is called the "Bureau of Transboundary Waterways.

The conclusion that inevitably springs from such a concept is that the Tigris and Euphrates -- the catchments of both of which arise in Turkey -- are purely Turkish rivers. In other words, they are Turkish national resources and not a resource to be shared with Syria and Iraq. Consequently, the waters (up to 88.7 percent of the Euphrates and 60 percent of the Tigris) are subject to full Turkish sovereign rights -- or, as Turkey's former president Suleyman Demirel put it when he was prime minister, "since this natural resource springs from our country, we have the absolute right to exploit it in the way we dee fit. Syria and Iraq have absolutely no rights in the waters of Turkey."

Taking this way of thinking to its logical conclusion, not only will Turkey deny any acquired rights Syria and Iraq may have in the two rivers, it will also affirm its sole right to do with the waters of the two rivers at it pleases -- including storing it, selling it to third parties, and generally depriving the Syrians and Iraqis of any share in it.

Yet acquired rights in "international" waterways are recognized by all texts of international law, including the new UN convention mentioned above. In short, Turkey is denying what is established in international law while adhering to points which have no basis whatsoever in order to alter the way the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates are distributed between itself and Syria and Iraq.

I recall engaging in an argument on this very subject during an international seminar in Cairo last February with Dr. Ali Ihsan Bagis, who teaches at Hacettepe University and heads a water research institute in Ankara.

Dr. Bagis was trying to reassure the Iraqis and Syrians present of Turkey's intentions regarding the water issue. He said his country was fully aware of the fact that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were "transboundary" waterways, and that it intended to continue releasing water to its two neighbors.

My reply to this was that the real danger lies not in the measures and projects Turkey was implementing in the upper reaches of the two waterways now. While admitting that the Turkish government had indeed complied with almost all its commitments in releasing the volumes of water it had agreed to with Syria and Iraq in 1987, at the height of the crisis which erupted over the filling of the Ataturk Dam, the real danger lay in the way the rules have been changed, making the future fraught -- not only concerning the Tigris and Euphrates basins, but also concerning the Nile basin.

If the "transboundary" theory found credence, together with the inevitable corollary that countries have sovereign rights on the sources of "international" waterways, I argued, what would prevent Ethiopia and Uganda from applying the same principles in future on the headwaters of the Nile? In fact, something similar has been mentioned already.

During the seminar, I asked all the experts in international law present whether the concept of a "transboundary" river existed in international law. The experts unanimously replied that no such thing had ever been mentioned in any international treaty, court decision, or any other reference in international law.

After the deliberations were over, Dr. Bagis approached me and said that he realized Egypt's special sensitivity regarding the Nile, and suggested that I refrain from comparing the importance of the Nile to Egypt with that of the Tigris and Euphrates to Iraq and Syria.

Egypt, he said, depended on the Nile totally, while the case was different with Syria and Iraq since they had other sources of water. Bagis added that Turkey, which is technologically and economically capable of building water projects, cannot be compared to Ethiopia which can't.

I disagreed with Bagis on this point as well, for what is to prevent Ethiopia from acquiring the necessary economic and technological potential enabling it to build projects on the Nile similar to Turkey's? Is the fact that Turkey is able to build such projects now reason enough to change the rules of international law in such a blatant fashion, making it the only country on earth advocating the theory of "transboundary" rivers?

Sure enough, the very next day the Ethiopian delegate very clearly said his country was not concerned with so-called Arab water security, and that it had the right to exploit "its" Blue Nile waters as it pleased. Ethiopia, he said, will not accept that it would keep on exporting 85 percent of its water forever, while all it received was one percent.

Notwithstanding the fact that neither I personally, nor my understanding of Egyptian water policy, object to Ethiopia having the right to make use of the waters of the Nile to the utmost in cooperation with other countries of the Nile basin in order to develop the river's resources, what concerns us here is the Ethiopians talking of the Blue Nile as it was their private property and not a resource to be shared with Sudan and Egypt. Thus, we are again confronted with this new and serious concept.

Uganda has gone even further than Ethiopia. During a meeting of a technical organization bringing together all countries of the Nile basin, the Ugandans demanded that both Egypt and Sudan compensate it financially for acting as a natural reservoir for the waters of the Nile, since the equatorial lakes from which the White Nile originates lie in its territory. Thus Uganda too sees water as a national resource which should be subject to the conditions of commercial exchange.

This contrived change in the legal framework for the distribution of the waters of the Nile as well as the Tigris and Euphrates rivers -- in addition to the rising demand for water in the Middle East which is suffering from a severe shortage -- is the gateway for introducing new rules for water distribution in the region. This is the second -- and more important -- way of changing the rules and concepts of water sharing.

Instead of promoting the idea of selfless cooperation among nations of the same river basin within international law for increasing water resources, foreign (particularly American) policies and literature, as well as those of the World Bank, have been spreading such totally new concepts as water pricing, water bourses, and water banks. The real beginning, however, was in Israel.

Professor Gideon Fishelson says in the introduction to his book "Water and Peace -- Water Resources and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process" that the water map of the Middle East is full of geographic surprises. This phenomenon, Fishelson says, abrogates the concept of ownership and the legitimacy of domestic usage of water (in marked contrast to the Turkish and Ethiopian attachment to the idea of water ownership) and emphasizes the need for agreements regulating the transport of water to areas not fortunate enough to have enough resources of their own.

This is only one of dozens of Israeli proposals designed to change the way water is distributed in the Middle East -- but it represents the theoretical basis of these proposals. The Israelis have other excuses -- some economic, others political. For example, the foremost expert of transporting Nile water to Israel says that Egypt wastes 10 billion cubic meters of Nile water a year. The Egyptians would gain by selling this surplus water to Israel because Israeli farmers can produce nine times the amount of cotton as their Egyptian counterparts.

It has now been proven that the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat didn't in fact offer to provide Israel with Nile water. He was only articulating a plan put to him by Israeli water expert Shaul Orlosorov during the 1979 Egyptian -Israeli peace talks. Orlosorov was deputy director of the Israeli Water Authority.

Egypt dismissed the idea of providing Israel with water completely in the later stages of Sadat's rule, and subsequently succeeded in keeping the Nile issue outside the scope of the multilateral Middle East peace talks -- which included a subcommittee for water issues. Yet Israel never abandoned its old dream. When former Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu assumed office, he instructed the Israeli Water Authority to come up with an estimate of the costs of transporting one percent of the waters of the Nile to Israel.

Israel, Turkey's strategic ally and friend of Ethiopia, is trying hard to wreck the concept of national ownership of water resources. In contrast, both the Turks and Ethiopians are trying to establish this concept which flies in the face of international law. So how can these two apparently contradictory positions be reconciled, given Israel's cooperation with both these countries in the field of water?

The only plausible explanation -- notwithstanding the details -- is that the objective is to change the established rules. No harm in adopting American and World Bank proposals to solve the paradox by establishing water banks and bourses in the Middle East, such that "water owners" can sell surplus water to those countries who by "geographic coincidence" are deprived of resources of their own.

But just what are these proposals? When a team at Harvard together with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Near East Corporate Council (created by Joyce Starr -- another famous name in the world of Middle East water and author of "Covenant Over Middle East Waters") were promoting the idea of an impending water catastrophe in the region, the World Bank issued a report entitled "From Scarcity to Security" in 1997. This report outlined a far-reaching plan for the administration of water in the Middle East. It concluded that the best solution would be to establish international and regional water markets. Harvard adopted the same proposal.

The seriousness of this proposal lies in the fact that it fulfills the needs of Turkey, Ethiopia, and Israel at the expense of the historical acquired rights of the Arab states of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates basins. The only option left open to them to avoid future wars over water would be to accept to transport their surplus water to Israel in deals that would fly in the face of international law. Otherwise, these countries themselves could lose their water rights.

Thanks to these deals, Israel would become a full participant in projects to develop the resources of the great rivers of the region through its water alliances with the source countries. These countries (Turkey and Ethiopia) would link the issue of transporting water to Israel with that of cooperation with other riparian states (Syria, Iraq, Sudan and Egypt).

Which brings us to the second fallacy -- the exaggerated emphasis on a path of conflict rather than cooperation in predicting the future course of events. It is worth mentioning that the Turks never contemplated confrontation with their Arab neighbors over water until the Israelis and the Americans jumped on the bandwagon. In January 1990, the late Turkish president Turgut Ozal said, "rumors of an impending conflict between Turkey and its neighbors over water express a mistaken and misleading view. We can't accept the allegations that the Ataturk Dam is going to have a negative impact on Syria and Iraq. On the contrary, it will be a source of prosperity for both countries."

Ozal was leading a policy of openness towards the Arab world, and was one of the Turkish leaders with the least links to Israel. He was also a devout Moslem. Significantly, Turkey's modern water projects were all begun during his tenure. Therefore, and as far as Turkey's own interests are concerned, there is no reason for Ankara to adopt positions of confrontation with Syria and Iraq over the Euphrates. But Ozal's approach was not appropriate for changing the rules of the game concerning water distribution in order to provide water to countries which "by geographic coincidence" didn't have resources of their own -- a.k.a Israel.

Despite Ozal's early efforts to reject the idea of conflicts over water, American think tanks and research centers continued promoting the idea of water wars in the Middle East. Then came the World Bank report titled "From Scarcity to Security."

In addition to Joyce Starr's CSIS and Harvard, two other American institutions also entered the fray: the CIA and the International Herald Tribune.

Late in 1993, the CIA issued a report pinpointing 10 regions around the world it believed would witness conflicts over water. Most were in the Middle East. The CIA report also classified these regions according to the gravity of the water problem:

1. Regions were war over water is likely: Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. 2. Regions fraught with danger: the Tigris and Euphrates basins and the Gulf. 3. Regions of tensions over water, tipped to become dangerous in 20-25 years: Egypt and Sudan.

The International Herald Tribune, with U.S. government assistance and the cooperation of the Turkish authorities, sponsored an international water conference in Istanbul in September 1997. Among the participants were the World Bank, the IMF, and a number of American and Canadian aid agencies. The conference adopted the international water market model and recommended that finances be set aside to finance future water projects.

The Middle East is undoubtedly suffering from a water shortage. Per capita allocation of water is far less than the world average. This is due to the arid climate in the region and rapid population growth. But this shortage is one thing; the proposals now on the table to deal with it are something else altogether. The natural way of going about finding a solution to the problem is through cooperation between riparian countries -- as Turgut Ozal suggested.

This is also the way the Iraqis, Syrians, and Egyptians used to see it, until the rules started to change in order to put pressure primarily on Arab countries on the one hand, and serve Israel on the other. And this is the real source of danger because it complements other Israeli threats to the very existence of the pan-Arab nation.

When all is said, one question remains: Are the Americans only trying to invent new enemies by stressing the inevitability of water wars in the Middle East? Will the idea of conflicts breaking out over water fill the vacuum which will inevitably form when the Arab-Israeli conflict is finally settled? Will the Arabs be forced to find a new enemy to replace Israel?

Another related question: Is the shortage of water the most immediate threat to Arab national security? Or is it life under the shadow of overwhelming Israeli strategic superiority in the absence of a regional security order that imposes the same requirements on Israel as on other regional states?