Shutting Off The Tap

The most frequently mentioned reason for the IGC's balking at the prospect of Turkish troops coming into Iraq to shoulder some of the security burden is Turkish - Kurdish tension. No mystery there. Second seems to be the long memory still holding nearly 500 years of Ottoman rule in sharp focus. But damn, seems the Turks cut off the water of the Euphrates to irrigate their southeastern provinces not too long ago. Damming their river will tend to make desert-dwellers a little suspicious of your agenda, all right. Last thing you'd want to do is let them have a stronger hand in the development your oil resources.

Rivers couldn't care less about international boundaries. Neither do infectious diseases, toxic wastes, migratory animals, greenhouse gasses, or - increasingly - fundamentalist zealots.

So how do you figure this stuff out? Apparently 75% of the water in the Euphrates comes from Turkey (rainier, more springs.) Does that mean that the Turks can dam the river and use 75% of the water for economic development in their highlands regardless of the fact that for the 6000+ years of civilization the vast majority of the water flowed into the (hence) fertile lowlands of the Tigris & Euphrates valley (ie Iraq) where agriculture friggin' started? Well, no, that doesn't sound right.

I hate to keep harping on this, but our most pressing issues as a species right now are environmental conservation, public health, violent fanaticism, and festering ethnic conflict. To all of these problems international boundaries are either irrelevant or an exacerbation. And not one of them will be more than feebly dealt with unless done so with strong international efforts via strong international institutions.

So there.