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Syria: Uncertainty Following the Damascus Water Crisis
January 25th, 2017
Courtesy of Future Directions International, commentary on the Damascus water crisis: In late December 2016, the main water supply for Damascus and its surrounding region was cut off. The supply was reportedly cut off in the Wadi Barada area west of Damascus due to intense fighting between rebels and government forces over the area. Other […]
Read more »‘Water war’ Threatens Syria
January 3rd, 2017
Via Al Jazeera, a report on recent accusations from Damascus that rebels are polluting water supplies: Authorities in Syria say they have been forced to cut water supplies to the capital after rebels reportedly contaminated drinking water with diesel. The Damascus water authority said late on Friday that it had resorted to using water reserves […]
Read more »Water Governance in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin
September 22nd, 2016
Via Future Directions International, a report on water governance in the Tigris-Euphrates basin: Key Points The states that share the water resources of the Tigris-Euphrates Basin have come close to creating a water sharing agreement in the past, but narrow self-interest derailed the project. Current regional political crises were caused, in part, by heightened food […]
Read more »Watching Weak Nation States Wilt Away
July 13th, 2016
Via Bloomberg, commentary on how environmental stress can tip weak nations into catastrophe: Venezuela was unraveling even before Hugo Chávez died in 2013. The situation has only gotten worse since. Despite having the world’s largest oil reserves, inflation has soared to 500 percent, the murder rate is the highest in the world, and chronic shortages of […]
Read more »How Assad Keeps The Water Running In The Islamic State
April 14th, 2016
Via Bellingcat, an interesting look at how the Islamic State is providing water services in Syria: The so-called Islamic State is said to be behaving like a conventional state in many ways. However, this open source investigation will show that the Syrian government — not Islamic State — keeps the water running in Islamic State’s de facto capital Raqqa […]
Read more »The Water Wars Waged By The Islamic State
November 25th, 2015
Courtesy of STRATFOR (subscription required), detailed analysis of the Islamic State’s use of water in its fight to establish a caliphate: The Islamic State’s use of natural resources to achieve its strategic goals is nothing new. Oil, one of the group’s biggest sources of funding, plays an especially important role in its calculations — something […]
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