hydropolitics of the tigris - euphrates river basin with - ceris.be

Tharthar and the linking system of canals from which water could be shifted from the Tigris to the Euphrates
River basin. Due to poor land management and a weak delivery structure (many canals were leaking
heavily), irrigated lands were becoming more quickly saline and water-logged. Rather than improving
irrigation management the authorities, by habit, expanded the irrigation zones with the corresponding dams
and barrages. In the long-term this policy had limited success, with the total of effective irrigated land area
not really increasing. Consequently production did not kept pace with the country’s needs, with some areas
going out of production almost as fast as new areas are initiated. 36
The last major attempt to solve the problem of salination with hydrological structures was the construction
of the Third River which is in fact a canal running from Baghdad to Basra. The Canal was designed to
provide drainage for the lands between the two major rivers and freeing up previously unusable agricultural
land. Started in the 1950’s and finished in 1992, the canal was originally planned by Western engineers
(British engineer Fred Haigh), supported by Western aid and built by Western contractors. The perception of
this construction changed after the Gulf War of 1992. With the onset of sanctions, many contractors and all
Western funding were pulled out of Iraq, who then finished the project themselves at a cost of $ 2 billion
(USD). 37 There were, however, some changes to the original design.
The Third River has also been credited with being the means of draining the waters of the famous reed
marshes of southern Iraq, which were also home to many Shi’ite dissidents who rebelled against Saddam
Hussein after the Gulf War. During the 1970’s and the 1980’s the focus of the construction of the Third
River began to shift from being merely a drainage system to also include a system of marshland drainage
and reclamation. The main changes introduced by the Iraqi Government included the installation of dams
and diversions along the Tigris and Euphrates that served to divert flow around the Marshes either straight
into the Gulf or into the Shatt Al-Arab. Following the civil unrest in the south, the government worked
intensively for 9 months to construct the diversions. The original drainage system works effectively in
evacuating saline return flow and could conceivably improve water quality in the Marshlands. However by
effectively blocking any inflow to the Marshes, their destruction was inevitable. 38
This has had serious consequences for Iraq because, like Syria, it was originally an agricultural economy
capable of sustaining itself in terms of food security. As with Syria this situation changed rapidly and
agriculture dropped from 70% of Iraq’s GDP in the 1920’s to as low as 6% in 2001. A part of this GDP
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