IUCN Water Programme SHARE Toolkit: Case Studies The Tigris-Euphrates Joint Technical Committee – deadlocked By Christina Leb 1. Origin and Background The Euphrates and Tigris rivers both rise in the highlands of southeastern Turkey and after passing through the territory and along the border of Syria they join north of the Iraqi town of Basra to form the Shatt al-Arab water way, which empties into the Persian Gulf. Even though the waters of the two rivers flow most of their long journey to sea in two separate streams they are regarded as forming one system. Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq are the four main riparian countries.1 Most of the waters in the two rivers is drawn from Turkey. The Euphrates River is formed by two rivers, the Kara and Murat Rivers, at their confluence in Kharput, Turkey. Turkey contributes 95% of its waters; the remaining 5% derive from Syrian territory, where two main tributaries the Khabur and Balikh join the main river bed. Iraq, which controls 1,060 km of the approximately 2,800 km long main channel of the Euphrates River, does not contribute any measurable quantities of water. The Tigris River also draws a large part of its total discharge (about 58%) from the Turkish highlands. It rises near Diyarbakir and is joined by the Batman River on its 100 km journey through Southeastern Turkey; it forms the border between Syria and Turkey for about 44 km before it enters Iraq, and finally joins the Euphrates River to form the Shatt al-Arab. Its total length is about 1,750 km. Iraq contributes about 30% of the Tigris discharge. Most of Iran’s contributions to the system take place after the two rivers united through discharge from the Kharun River, which adds about 20-25 km3 annually to the Shatt al-Arab. Annual mean flow of the entire system is about 70-80 billion km3.2 Both rivers have high seasonal and multi-annual variances in their flow, yet the danger from flooding is far more pronounced in the Tigris basin; Iraq controls the infamous Tigris floods by diverting water to the Euphrates basin. Large parts of the floodplains and marshes north of the Persian Gulf have become victim to politics; they were drained by the Iraqi regime to permit military access and control the largely Shiite population. Some of the damage could be reversed in the last years, through the destruction of dykes and dams, as result of military activity in the current crisis. The River system is also referred to as the cradle of Mesopotamian civilization. Historically, infrastructure development occurred downstream. The rivers’ waters were occasionally used as weapon by creating artificial droughts and floods. Today, infrastructure development occurs largely upstream, the corner stone being the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) of Turkey. The water resources of the system are primarily used for agriculture and hydropower development in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Turkey is the only country of the three that is considered self-sufficient in terms of food production.3 Iran has abundant water resources outside the basin, which pose less of a technical challenge to develop and utilize, and therefore has no major water development programs under implementation on its tributaries to the Tigris (Diyalah and Lesser Zab) nor on the Kharun. The Euphrates is navigable only by very light rafts up to the Iraqi city of Hit, further upstream rapids and shoals pose a major challenges to navigation. The Tigris River is navigable by larger vessels to Baghdad and by light rafts all the way upstream to Mosul. While the water resources have not yet caused armed conflict, part of the river system, the Shatt al-Arab was object of the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. The differing claims with respect to the 1 delimitation of the two countries’ territories along the river were one of the reasons for this conflict. When the completion and filling of the reservoirs of two large dams, the Keban dam in Turkey and the al-Thawra dam in Syria, coincided with a particularly dry period, this brought Syria and Iraq to the brink of armed conflict. Iraq blamed Syria for the release of unacceptably low amounts of water, while Syria transferred the blame on Turkey. It was only through third party facilitation by Saudi Arabia that war could be avoided. Other than that, conflicts and tensions in the region had their sources in events and realities unrelated to water; e.g. Arab-Turkish tensions caused by Arab Revolt in the early 20th century which led to the downfall of the Ottoman empire; Syrian-Iraqi tensions because of the split between the Syrian and Iraqi Ba’ath parties in the 1960s; and tensions among all four main riparians due to the presence of the Kurds in their territories and their use/abuse as destabilizing forces by all four riparian countries. Nevertheless, the issues of quantity and control over water resources add to these historic conflicts and further spoil the atmosphere for cooperation in the region. In terms of positions, Iraq claims historical rights to water, Syrian as the mid-stream and smallest riparian favors equal over equitable distribution, while Turkey as the most upstream and most powerful riparian sees little reason to commit itself to legally binding water allocation agreements.4 2. Legal Frameworks for Trans-boundary Management Due to the above mentioned hindrances, the legal framework for trans-boundary water management in the Euphrates-Tigris system remains weak. There is no multi-lateral or basin- wide agreement, yet a small number of bilateral accords5 have emerged to resolve occasional questions with respect to water discharge. On the occasion of the construction of the Atatürk Dam, the largest dam in Turkey with a reservoir about the size of that behind the Hoover Dam in the United States, Turkey and Syria signed a protocol in 1987 in which Turkey agrees to a monthly minimum release of a bit more than half the Euphrate’s mean volume at the border between the two countries. According to Article 6 of this protocol, Turkey guarantees a minimum release of 500 m3/second to Syria and in cases where monthly flow falls below this level, the difference of flow will be made up in the following month.6 This clause, which allows for a time lag in the release of the agreed minimum amount, has been referred to by Turkey when it claimed that it had fulfilled its obligations under the agreement by making up for the stoppage of the water flow between January 13 and February 12, 1990 during the filling of the reservoir behind the Ataturk dam in subsequent months. Yet due to this arrest of the flow of the Euphrates river, Syria had to temporary halt hydropower production and Iraq lost and estimated 15 percent of agricultural production. There is no a commitment to the Tigris river waters in the 1987 agreement. In 1990 Syria and Iraq entered into a bilateral agreement according to which the two countries share the waters received from Turkey on a 58% (Iraq) and 42% (Syria) basis.7 Those who closely follow the politics of cooperation in the basin are skeptical as to whether these occasional agreements have been honored by the countries over time.8 3. Institutions for Trans-boundary Management A Joint Technical Committee (JTC) was set up with the protocol9 from the Joint Economic Committee meeting held between Turkey and Iraq in 1980; Syria joined the JTC in 1983. The Committee was set up as a purely technical committee of experts with the mandate to determine methods that would lead to the definition of the reasonable amount of water each country would need. After sixteen meetings, the work of the JTC deadlocked in 1992. The parties were not able to reach consensus on basic principles and definitions, nor was it possible to produce even produce an outline for a report.10 One of the key reasons for the impasse was the inability of the three countries to reach an agreement as to whether the Euphrates and Tigris rivers had to be considered as one single system, and therefore the entire basin water discharge would have 2 formed the point of reference for any calculation effort, or whether discussions could be limited to the Euphrates basin.11 Some consider tri-lateral cooperation under this Committee as a failure, while others attribute moderate success to this body. Those who criticize the work of the Committee blame the failure of this forum on the countries’ differing views on the purpose of the Committee, which hampered the work of the JTC from the outset. While Turkey considered it as a merely consultative body, Syria and Iraq would have liked to see the work of the Commission focus on the development of a water sharing agreement. They further point to deficiencies of effectiveness that are on the one hand due to the fact that on occasional basis the Committee met as mere bilateral body, because depending on the issues on the agenda and/or the prevailing political situation of the time, one or the other party refused to attend; and on the other hand they claim that the absence of Iran, which as an important contributor to the Euphrates-Tigris water system would add another 30-35 km3 to any allocation equation discussed in this forum, undermined the effectiveness of allocation negotiations. Those who have a more positive outlook on the work of the Joint Technical Committee see it as a forum, which despite its irregular meetings provided at least for some level of consultation and cooperation among the riparian countries.