The Modern Middle East - A Political History Since World War I (Third Edition)

by Mehran Kamrava

  Regarding the role and importance of water in the future of the Middle East, two factors must be kept in mind. First, extremely high rates of population growth and inefficient water usage practices have aggravated and will continue to aggravate the scarcity of water supplies caused by the Middle East’s climate. Some of the main causes and consequences of rapid population growth in the Middle East were discussed in the last section. Further exacerbating the problems of water scarcity (as well as poor water quality) is the inadequate management of what little is available. Inefficient use of water for irrigation and industrial purposes is widespread throughout the Middle East. As one observer has noted, “Great quantities of water are lost through inefficient irrigation systems such as flood irrigation of fields, unlined or uncovered canals, and evaporation from reservoirs behind dams. Pollution from agriculture, including fertilizer and pesticide runoffs as well as increased salts, added to increasing amounts of industrial and toxic waste and urban pollutants, combine to lower the quality of water for countries downstream . . . increasing their costs, and provoke dissatisfaction and frustration, . . . creating irritations that can lead to conflicts.”25 In the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, ambitious development plans, often made possible by extraordinary state wealth, seldom take into account the region’s aridity and often feature the creation of tropical landscapes that are extremely harmful to the natural environment and especially to existing water resources.

  Table 19.Per Capita Water Availability and the Ratio of Supply and Demand in the Middle East

  SOURCE: Mostafa Dolatyar and Tim Gray, Water Politics in the Middle East:A Context for Conflict or Cooperation? (New York: Macmillan, 2000), p. 81.

  A second factor to consider is that except for the three countries of Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran, the countries of the Middle East are dependent on exogenous sources of water. Apart from rainfall, whose levels are almost uniformly low throughout the region, there are two other major sources of freshwater in the Middle East, namely rivers and aquifers (underground water formations). Both of these sources, especially rivers, at times traverse international boundaries, with one country having the ability to significantly influence the flow of water into neighboring countries.

  The significance of water is particularly magnified in Israel and the Occupied Territories, where close geographic locations and contending claims to the same pieces of land have given a special urgency to scarcity of water resources. This importance is far greater than there is room here to discuss. Briefly, however, a couple of points merit mentioning. Within the Occupied Territories, the average aggregate per capita water consumption for Jewish settlements ranges between 90 and 120 cubic meters, whereas for Palestinians it is 25 to 35 cubic meters. Israeli authorities do not allow Palestinians to dig new wells. Israeli settlers and military authorities, however, are allowed to dig new wells, which Palestinians claim are often deeper than existing ones and thus dry up Palestinian wells. Also, Israelis in general and Israeli settlers in particular pay a much lower price for water than do Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.26 Altogether, some 40 to 50 percent of Israel’s water is estimated to come from aquifers in the West Bank and Gaza, thus adding to the practical needs of the Jewish state to hold on to biblical “Judea and Samaria.”27 Another 20 percent of Israel’s water supply is estimated to come from the Golan Heights. Combined, Israel receives some two-thirds of its water from the areas it occupied in 1967.28

  The potential for international hostilities and cross-border conflicts over water is greatest, however, along the region’s three major river basins, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Nile, and the Jordan. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers originate in Turkey and flow down to Syria (only a small portion of the Tigris goes through Syria) and then Iraq, forming the Shatt al-Arab in the south and then pouring into the Persian Gulf. Up until the 1960s, all three countries shared the water resources without tension. However, in the 1960s and especially the 1970s, Syria and Turkey began exploiting water from the Euphrates in significant amounts, resulting in the initiation of a series of trilateral agreements among the countries. The easing of tensions did not last long, however, as in the mid-1980s Turkey announced the initiation of an ambitious plan to build twenty-two dams on the Euphrates under a scheme called the Southeast Anatolian Development Project (Turkish acronym GAP). If and when the GAP is completed, it is estimated to reduce the river’s flow to Syria by some 30 to 50 percent over the next fifty years.29

  As for the Nile basin, the stakes are especially high for Egypt, which is completely dependent on the Nile and whose population continues to grow at alarming rates. Over 95 percent of Egypt’s agricultural production is from irrigated land, but about 85 percent of the flow of the Nile into Egypt originates in the Ethiopian plateau.30 Ten different countries share the Nile or one of its two main tributaries—the Blue Nile and the White Nile—and chronic political instability in these countries, especially in Ethiopia and Sudan, is of particular concern to Egypt. Despite long-standing plans, Ethiopia has not been able to attract sufficient international investments and technical knowledge to fully exploit the Blue Nile’s potential, a failure about which Egypt has been quite happy so far. However, if and when Ethiopia’s development plans allow for its exploitation of the Blue Nile, the water situation for Egypt and the other countries concerned could greatly change for the worse.31

  Because of its strategic location and the long history of open hostilities among the countries that share its water, the Jordan River has received the most attention as a source of future conflict over water in the Middle East, even though it is actually more of a rivulet than a river in the proper sense of the word. In fact, the average intact flow of the Jordan River is less than 2 percent of the Nile, 5 percent of the Euphrates, and slightly more than 3 percent of the Tigris.32 The river is also subject to great seasonal fluctuations, carrying as much as 40 percent of its total annual flow in winter months and as little as 3 to 4 percent in the summer.33 From 1987 to 1991, the area surrounding the river experienced a severe drought that further reduced its annual discharge. Added to this were the adverse consequences of a series of development projects Syria started in the late 1980s in the upper Yarmuk River, a major tributary of the Jordan River, which in turn increased salinity in the Jordan and lowered water levels in the Dead Sea.34

  The potential for conflict over the waters of the Jordan River has been reduced in recent years since the signing of the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty in October 1994, a major aspect of which revolved around terms for sharing the river.35 Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 reduced previous water tensions between Israel and Lebanon as well, this time over the Litani River. Nevertheless, tensions over the water-rich Golan Heights and the Yarmuk River continue between Israel and Syria.

  The ongoing conflict between Syria and Israel over the Golan Heights tells us much about the larger issue of water in the Middle East. Throughout the region, water resources have been an afterthought in justifying larger military objectives and territorial ambitions once the conquests had already taken place. They have constituted additional benefits accrued to victorious parties, especially Israel, rather than serving as the original catalyst for a conflict. Rich underground water deposits or fertile river basins—as with the aquifers in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, or the land along the Nile, the Jordan, and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers—have made the stakes higher in conflicts whose genesis had little to do with water. The harsh rhetoric of many of the warring parties, who often happen to share a river, has muddled the distinction between water scarcity and water conflict. The crisis facing the Middle East today is one of water scarcity, not necessarily one of impending water conflict.

  In fact, given the Middle East’s long history of aridity and scarce water resources, the region has a rich tradition of cooperation rather than conflict over water. Such a cooperative tradition, as well as the calculated benefits of cooperation compared to the costs of conflict, is likely to foster fut
ure agreements and further cooperation among the contending parties. In the words of two observers of the issue: “Middle Eastern water problems are not inherently different from those in other parts of the globe, and the doom-laden hypotheses which represent the dominant view in the literature of hydropolitics are greatly exaggerated. . . . Far from leading to military conflict, increasing water scarcity will concentrate the minds of those involved to find sustainable solutions and, to achieve this goal, the concerned parties will increasingly resort to coordinated, cooperative, and conciliatory arrangements.”36

  Nevertheless, although the potential for international wars over water is not that great, the crisis of water scarcity continues, and it is projected to get more acute in the future as population levels rise and available freshwater sources decline. Numerous academic and practical solutions have been proposed, some more realistic and feasible than others.37 Each country has already embarked on ambitious water conservation schemes of its own, but it is unclear whether such measures are enough to address existing or impending scarcities. Averting a real crisis requires progress on a number of fronts, from lowering population growth rates to making water usage more efficient and ensuring more equitable access to all concerned. These are weighty tasks. The challenge lies in performing them.

  When I started researching for the first edition of this book, on a trip to Iran in 2003, I was struck by the pervasive gloom I witnessed among people of all colors, rich and poor, urban and rural. Although my trip took place some fifteen years after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, the awful memory of that bloody and devastating conflict continued to cast a dark shadow over many people. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and continued tensions between Iran, Israel, and the United States also weighed heavily on people’s minds. But most of the complaints I heard had to do with people’s more immediate circumstances: high prices, traffic, overcrowded cities and unaffordable housing, unemployment, air pollution, petty restrictions, arbitrary officials and unpredictable government policies, unavailability of certain goods and services, lack of real democracy and fear of the state, and so on. At least among a significant segment of the population, there was a palpable sense of hopelessness and despair. Although this was in Tehran, I could have been talking to an average person almost anywhere in the Middle East, whether in Cairo or Algiers, Rabat or Amman. After a while, I found the experience so dispiriting that I stopped asking people what issues concerned them the most.

  It was these very feelings of despair and despondency that sparked the Green Movement in Iran in 2009 and the Arab uprisings in 2011. As the second decade of the twenty-first century approaches its midway mark, the Middle East appears to be standing on the precipice of political change once again. In places where they have succeeded, antiauthoritarian movements may well result in the establishment of democratic political systems, a process, as history teaches us, that can be prolonged and often fraught with setbacks and difficulties. If that indeed happens, such revolutionary movements can become models for the rest of the region to follow, as democratic contagions are seldom easily preventable. But the lessons of history are not all that encouraging. While the 2011 uprisings may go the way of Europe’s so-called Velvet Revolutions in 1989, they are just as likely to follow the pattern of the European revolutions of 1848, ironically often called “Spring of Nations” or “Springtime of Peoples.” These earlier revolutions left tens of thousands dead and brought chaos to countless others without ultimately improving their lives politically or economically.38 History’s choices—between ultimately inconsequential chaos and a hard-fought democratic order—depend on combinations of structural factors such as economics, international relations, and the resiliency and functions of political parties and other institutions, as well as the purposive choices of political actors, drafters of new constitutions, and the founding figures of the new orders. History is made through the interplay of structures and agency, and, at this critical juncture of political fluidity and change in the Middle East, how the two mix to usher in new political orders remains to be seen.

  So far, the political history of the Middle East has been tormented and painful. And the challenges of the future are both formidable and numerous. But it does appear that the horrors of the past—though still possible to resurrect—are less and less likely to reemerge in the future. A quick glance at some of the challenges facing the region today and in the past is quite revealing. In the 1920s and 1930s, the primary task facing the elites and masses of the Middle East was to build viable territorial and political entities out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire or the carvings of European colonial powers. In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the region was torn by the forces of nationalism, military ascension and conquest, exile, defeat, and subjugation. The 1970s and 1980s brought more wars and chaos, capped by the devastation of the Second Gulf War in 1990–91 and America’s war and misadventure in Iraq beginning in 2003. The forces and dynamics that gave rise to these bloody conflicts have not fully died down. Also, as long as the occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel continues and central authority has not been established in postinvasion Iraq and Afghanistan, there is bound to be more violence and bloodshed. But the challenges facing the Middle East today are qualitatively different from those of the past. The great problems today concern the environment, sustainable economic development, scientific progress, global economic competition, overall quality of life, and the crafting of democracies. These are, of course, major challenges, and the ability or willingness of the current slate of Middle Eastern policy makers to adequately address them is far from certain. But they are unlikely to directly or even indirectly cause international wars and bloodshed. If anything, they may foster greater regionwide cooperation and consensus. The future is not nearly as bleak as the past. In fact, it looks much brighter.

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  1. Fouad Ajami, The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), p. 80.

  1. FROM ISLAM TO THE GREAT WAR

  1. Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 7.

  2. In the southern city of Mecca, where Islam first appeared, the three pagan goddesses Lat, Manat, and Uzza would later become sources of great controversy in Islamic history, inspiring, in the late twentieth century, a controversial novel entitled The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (New York: Viking Books, 1989).

  3. While viewing themselves as the defenders of Christianity in the East, the Byzantines are said to have held a more tolerant attitude toward Muslims and other “infidels” than their European coreligionists farther west. Sir Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 2.

  4. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1991), p. 128. For more on markets and trade in the ancient Middle East, see Morris Silver, Economic Structures of the Ancient Near East (London: Croom Helm, 1985), especially chs. 5 and 6.

  5. Fred M. Donner, “Muhammad and the Caliphate: Political History of the Islamic Empire up to the Mongol Conquest,” in The Oxford History of Islam, ed. John Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 13.

  6. The dog had been domesticated as early as twelve thousand years ago in Southwest Asia. The specific animals domesticated during the Neolithic Revolution included the sheep, pig, and cow. See David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), pp. 218–22.

  7. Archaeological evidence from ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) suggests that cities were first established and grew sometime between 3100 and 2800 B.C. Daniel Snell, Life in the Ancient Near East, 3100–332 B.C.E. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 19. Jericho, first a village and now a city in present-day Palestine, was the earliest continually occupied settlement, dating from 8000 B.C. to the present.

  8. Hourani, History of the Arab Peoples, p. 104.

  9. For the role of irri
gation in the rise of states, see Karl Wittfogel, “Hydraulic Civilizations,” in Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, ed. William Thomas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 152–64; Theodore Downing and McGuire Gibson, eds., Irrigation’s Impact on Society (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974); and Walter Coward, ed., Irrigation and Agricultural Development in Asia: Perspectives from the Social Sciences (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980).

  10. Works on the geography of the Middle East are few and far between. For three of the better examples, see Colbert C. Held, Middle East Patterns: Places, Peoples, and Politics, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994); Alasdair Drysdale and Gerald Blake, The Middle East and North Africa: A Political Geography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); and Graham Chapman and Kathleen Baker, eds., The Changing Geography of Africa and the Middle East (London: Routledge, 1992).