Quick Takes // By Ben FrankelWater Wars Are Here

In 2009, the U.K. intelligence services submitted their annual intelligence report to then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, warning of the coming threat of “water wars” between states vying for diminishing fresh-water resources.

In the last decades, few regions have become water hot spots:

·  The British intelligence services’ report pointed out that the Asian subcontinent will likely be the theater of the first such war. In 2011, the Nation, a Pakistani newspaper, charged that India was engaging in “water terrorism.” India is “rapidly moving towards its target of making Pakistan totally barren,” the paper said, by building dams on three major rivers including Chenab, Jhelum, and Indus flowing into Pakistan from the Indian side of the border. The paper said that the dams were being built in violation of international laws and Indus Water Treaty signed between the two countries to ensure equitable distribution of water resources.

·  Over the last five years, tensions have been rising between Ethiopia, on the hand, and Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, and Eritrea, on the other hand, over the massive Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam which Ethiopia has been building on the Blue Nile River. Its neighbors worry that Ethiopia will use the dam to deny them essential water from the Nile, on which their economies depend. Egypt has publicly said it would resort to military action to prevent this eventuality.

·  Iraq and Syria have voiced similar concerns over the twenty-two dams Turkey has been building on the Tigris and the Euphrates as part of its ambitious Southeastern Anatolia Project.

It appears that Turkey has began to use its dam system to deny water to the Kurdish region in northern Syria (see “Kurds in Northern Syria Warn of Water Crisis,” HSNW, 19 March 2021), and observers note that the Turkish move will lead to water shortages throughout Syria, increasing tensions and instability in the region.

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security News Wire