Iraq Suffers as the Euphrates River Dwindles

[thecrow]

Source: NYT

The Euphrates is drying up. Strangled by the water policies of Iraq’s neighbors, Turkey and Syria; a two-year drought; and years of misuse by Iraq and its farmers, the river is significantly smaller than it was just a few years ago. Some officials worry that it could soon be half of what it is now.

The shrinking of the Euphrates, a river so crucial to the birth of civilization that the Book of Revelation prophesied its drying up as a sign of the end times, has decimated farms along its banks, has left fishermen impoverished and has depleted riverside towns as farmers flee to the cities looking for work.

<snip>

The drought is widespread in Iraq. The area sown with wheat and barley in the rain-fed north is down roughly 95 percent from the usual, and the date palm and citrus orchards of the east are parched. For two years rainfall has been far below normal, leaving the reservoirs dry, and American officials predict that wheat and barley output will be a little over half of what it was two years ago.

It is a crisis that threatens the roots of Iraq’s identity, not only as the land between two rivers but as a nation that was once the largest exporter of dates in the world, that once supplied German beer with barley and that takes patriotic pride in its expensive Anbar rice.

<much more>

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/world/middleeast/14euphrates.html?_r=1&partner=EXCITE&ei=5043

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This is a really sad story!

[dipsydoodle]

1. Drought aside

there were some issues a while about the river being run off up stream preventing it reaching Irag in its full capacity.

I suppose in some respects this is similar to issues with the Colorado reaching Mexico.