LAKE DUKAN, Iraq — Farmers in
Iraqi Kurdistan seeking to irrigate crops face seeing
their economic lifeline slip away as the waters of Lake Dukan recede and dams
upstream in Iran stem the flow.
اضافة اعلان
Bapir Kalkani,
who is also a trade unionist, farms near the picturesque lake but has seen
marked changes over the past three years as Iraq suffers prolonged drought.
“There was water
where I’m standing now” in 2019, the 56-year-old said. “It used to go 3km
further, but the level has retreated.”
Sesame and beans
are being grown on the plain under a blazing sun, adjacent to the lake which is
fed by a Tigris tributary, the Lower Zab river which has its source in Iran.
The large
artificial lake was created in the 1950s following construction of the Dukan
dam, to supply irrigation and drinking water for the region, as well as to generate
electricity.
But for several
years both the lake and the river have been shrinking — as have all of the
rivers in Iraq.
The country is classified as one of the five nations
most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and desertification.
Its water
reserves have fallen by 60 percent compared with last year, the government
says.
Rainfall becoming
rare
With rainfall becoming a rarity and after three successive years of
drought, Iraq has been forced to halve the area it devotes to agriculture.
“If we hadn’t
had a little rain in late spring, there would have been no crops in Kurdistan
this year,” Kalkani said.
Farmers in the
area used to dig shallow wells fed by the Dukan so they could irrigate their
crops. But not any more.
“The wells have
lost 70 percent of their water,” he said.
Sesame farmer
Shirko Aziz Ahmed had to dig a well several meters deep so he could access
water and raise it using a diesel-powered pump.
“Sesame needs a
lot of watering, so I’m going to have to dig even deeper as the water level
goes down,” he said.
Drought is not
the only source of the farmer’s water problems.
Iran has built
several dams on the Lower Zab, notably the Kolsa barrage.
“The Kolsa dam
has caused at least an 80 percent drop in the water levels” of the Lower Zab,
said Banafsheh Keynoush of the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
She said Iran is
going through one of the worst droughts in its history and has had to revise
its irrigation policy.
Iran ‘dam-building spree’
“Iran is on a dam-building
spree, and many of its dams are small,” she told AFP.
The Dukan dam in Iraq has also been badly affected
by the reduced river flow, said its director Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq.
“Now we have only 41 percent, below half of the
capacity” of the dam, he said.
It supplies drinking water for “about three million
people in Sulaymaniyah and Kirkuk”, two major cities downstream, he said.
But at just 300mm of rainfall last year — half the
previous annual average — the skies have not been generous. And Tawfeeq said
2022 is on track to mirror last year’s figures.
“We are releasing 90 cubic meters per second,” the
director said. “When the reservoir is full, we release 200 to 250.”
Tawfeeq said farmers were being told “not to grow
crops that need too much water”.
He said Baghdad had sent teams to Iran to discuss
the reduced flow of the Lower Zab river, but “there’s no cooperation from the
Iranians”.
Iran contends its
river flow contribution into the Tigris and Euphrates basin is only about six
percent, according to Keynoush.
“What Iran is trying to say is: ‘The Euphrates and
Tigris problems you have are really between you and Turkey’,” where the two
main rivers have their sources, she added.
But Iraq itself is not above criticism, said Azzam
Alwash, founder of the Nature Iraq non-government organization and presidential
adviser.
Iraqi Kurdistan in the north plans to construct new
dams but the projects lack any coordination with Baghdad, Alwash said.
Downstream, in central and south Iraq, the situation
is being exasperated by a lack of modernization of water resources and could
result in disaster, he warned.
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