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Managing the Waters of Baՙth Country: The Politics of Water Scarcity in Syria

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14650040802694117

1557-3028

Jessica Barnes,

Transboundary Water Resource Management

Abstract The Syrian government and international development agencies commonly present water scarcity as being one of Syria's main development challenges. This paper draws on a set of international reports, written in consultation with Syrian officials, to reveal the politics of this scarcity. I show how water scarcity is constructed and ordered through spatial representations. Rather than accepting the common explanation that scarcity is the result of population pressure, I argue that Syria's water scarcity is a consequence of the ruling Baՙth party's continuous promotion of water-intensive agriculture. This support for the agricultural sector, motivated in part by a desire for food self-sufficiency and growth through an expansion in irrigated agriculture, is linked to the rural roots of the Baՙth party and the influential Peasants Union. In revealing these key national politics, this analysis highlights how geopolitical studies of water in the Middle East must move beyond a focus on inter-state dynamics and pay critical attention to the politics operating around water distribution and use on a range of scalar levels. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank Timothy Mitchell, Paige West, Samer Alatout, Leila Harris and Scott Prudham for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. Notes 1. J. A. Allan, 'Middle Eastern Hydropolitics: Interpreting Constructed Knowledge', Geopolitics 3/2 (1998) p. 125. 2. See, for example, John Bullock and Adel Darwish, Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East (London: Victor Gollancz Press 1993); Peter Gleick, 'Water, War, and Peace in the Middle East', Environment 36/3 (1994) p. 6; Daniel Hillel, Rivers of Eden. The Struggle for Water and the Quest for Peace in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1994); Nurit Kliot, Water Resources and Conflict in the Middle East (London: Routledge 1994); Miriam Lowi, Water and Power: The Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995); W. Scheumann and M. Schiffler (eds.), Water in the Middle East. Potential for Conflicts and Prospects for Cooperation (Berlin: Springer 1998); A. Soffer, Rivers of Fire: The Conflict over Water in the Middle East (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc 1999). 3. In Kevin Freeman's analysis of the potential for water wars in the Tigris-Euphrates basin, for example, he pays little attention to the internal political dynamics of each of the basin countries, which contribute to the water management priorities they set and the negotiating positions which they adopt. See Kevin Freeman, 'Water Wars? Inequalities in the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin', Geopolitics 6/2 (2001) pp. 127–140. 4. Samer Alatout has shown how scarcity and abundance have been politically constructed and linked to subjectivity in Palestine/Israel. He identifies a shift from Mandate Palestine (mid-1930s–1948), when water abundance was used to justify Jewish immigration and settlement in the territory, to the early years of the Israeli state (1948 to the late 1950s) when this notion of abundance was gradually replaced with one of scarcity, used to justify a strong interventionist state. See Samer Alatout, 'From Water Abundance to Water Scarcity (1936–1956): A 'Fluid' History of Jewish Subjectivity in Historic Palestine', in M. LeVine and S. Sufian (eds.), Reapproaching the Border: New Perspective on the Study of Palestine/Israel (New York: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers 2007). For other discussions of how scarcity is constructed see Lyla Mehta, The Politics and Poetics of Water: Naturalizing Scarcity in Western India (Delhi: Orient Longman 2006) and L. Yapam, 'Improved Seeds and Constructed Scarcity', in Richard Peet and Michael Watts (eds.), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements (New York: Routledge 1996) pp. 69–86. 5. Leila Harris highlights the importance of considering the politics surrounding water on multiple shifting temporal and spatial scales, while Sneddon and Fox discuss how those scales themselves are constructed by various actors in transboundary basins. See Leila Harris, 'Water and Conflict Geographies of the Southeastern Anatolia Project', Society and Natural Resources 15 (2002) pp. 743–759 and Chris Sneddon and Coleen Fox, 'Rethinking Transboundary Waters: A Critical Hydropolitics of the Mekong Basin', Political Geography 25 (2006) pp. 181–202. 6. Hanna Batatu, Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of its Lesser Rural Notables, and their Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999); Ray Hinnebusch, Peasant and Bureaucracy in Baՙthist Syria: The Political Economy of Rural Development (London: Westview Press, Inc. 1989). 7. During two periods of fieldwork (June–July 2005 and June–July 2006) I conducted interviews with development practitioners, scientists and local government officials. In addition, I carried out a field survey in the Khabour Basin in northeastern Syria. In this paper, I also draw on four reports written by international agencies: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ), Initial Assessment Study of Water Sector Management in the Syrian Arab Republic. Final Report, compiled by J. Bickert, S. Holtkemper, G. Gersner, and D. Plöthner (Bonn, Germany: Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development 2004); Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Syrian Agriculture at the Crossroads, FAO Agricultural Policy and Economic Development Series, ed. by C. Fiorillo, and J. Vercueil (Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations 2003); Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Final Report on Agricultural Water Use, report written by C. Varela-Ortega and J. Sagardoy (Damascus: FAO/Government of Italy Cooperative Programme 2001); World Bank, Syrian Arab Republic Irrigation Sector Report, report compiled by S. Shetty, S. Ueda, S. Abdel-Dayem, and M. Moench (Washington: World Bank, Report No. 22602, 2001). These reports were all based on fieldwork in Syria, interviews carried out with representatives of government ministries (the Ministry of Irrigation, Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, and State Planning Commission) and review of government documents. The report writing process also included national stakeholder review. It is thus assumed that to some extent these reports represent both the government's and international agencies' perspectives on water resources management in Syria. 8. For example, Samer Alatout, 'From Water Abundance' (note 4) links the policies and institutions that were developed around addressing water scarcity with the building of a strongly centralised Israeli state during the late 1940s/1950s. However, limited access to government documents and employees during my fieldwork in Syria prevents a fuller exploration of these themes in this paper. 9. Jan Selby suggests that this perception is linked to the Orientalist association of the Middle East with deserts and camels. See Jan Selby, 'The Geopolitics of Water in the Middle East: Fantasies and Realities', Third World Quarterly 26/2 (2005) p. 344. 10. Many experts link water scarcity to a certain level of water availability at a national scale. Judged in this way using the Falkenmark classification, Syria's per capita availability of 1400 m3/capita places it within the category of 'water stress' (1000–1600 m3/capita) but not 'chronic water scarcity' (500–1000 m3/capita). However, what is perhaps more significant than such national level figures is the patterns of water access which create pockets of scarcity, experienced differently by different sectors of the population. See Samer Alatout 'Water Balances in Palestine, Regional Cooperation, and the Politics of Numbers', in David Brooks and Ozay Mehmet (eds.), Water Balances in the Eastern Mediterranean (Ottawa: IDRC Books 2000). For water availability statistics, see FAO, Water Resources Statistics, Syria (FAO Aquastat 2001). For the water scarcity classification, see M. Falkenmark, J. Lundqvist, and C. Widstrand, 'Macro-Scale Water Scarcity Requires Micro-Scale Approaches: Aspects of Vulnerability in Semi-Arid Development', Natural Resources Forum 13/4 (1989) pp. 258–267. 11. The drying up of the lower reaches of the Khabour is thought to have been due to expansion in the number of wells tapping the groundwater resources that feed the river and a string of particularly dry years in the 1990s. See Ben Zaitchik, Frank Hole, and Ronald Smith, Spatial Analysis of Agricultural Land Use Changes in the Khabour River Basin of Northeastern Syria (Denver: 15th Annual Pecora Conference 2002). From my field survey in 2005, it was also clear that the drying up of the Lower Khabour has been linked to the construction of the Basel dam (completed in 1997), just south of Hassakeh, which completely cuts off the flow of the river. The government only releases water from the dam once every ten days or so, depending on its assessment of irrigation needs. On a warm day in June 2006 I sat in a two-room mud brick house by the Khabour River, a tributary to the Euphrates in northeastern Syria. The room was empty save for straw mats on the floor, a pile of sturdy pillows, a small television in the corner, a few pegs to hang clothes on, and two pictures of the president's family. Talking to a widowed mother of five, who has lived by the Khabour River all her life, she told me how back in the 1980s, their lives were very comfortable, 'better than those in the Gulf.' (In a country where so many people migrate to the Gulf for better work opportunities, this reference alludes to the comfortable lifestyle which many Syrians associate with the Gulf countries.) They had fertile soil and plenty of water to grow cotton, wheat, and vegetables. Then the Khabour River stopped flowing. 'When the river stopped, we lived like dogs,' she told me, the bitterness evident on her face. Now lacking sufficient irrigation water to support her family through agricultural production, every few months she takes her children out of school and travels 500 km to the rural surroundingsof Damascus to work as an agricultural labourer, staying in a tent and earning three dollars a day. 12. Notably, the amount of water available to Syria is likely to change – and most probably to decrease – in coming years due to climate change impacts on rainfall patterns in the region. See P. C. Milly, K. A. Dunne, and A. V. Vecchia, 'Global Patterns of Trends in Streamflow and Water Availability in a Changing Climate', Nature 438 (2005) pp. 347–350. Figures of water availability and demand from BMZ (note 7) p. 35. 13. FAO, Final Report (note 7) p. 343. 14. FAO, Syrian Agriculture (note 7) p. 342. 15. Timothy Mitchell, The Rule of Experts: Egypt, Technopolitics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press 2002) p. 210. 16. Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1999) p. 53. 17. This paper analyses just one type of explanation for water scarcity: that put forward by a number of international agencies in reports drawn up through consultation with key government ministries. The way in which water availability is framed and understood in other forums – scientific reports, the media, popular consciousness – may well be conflicting. For example, when talking to Syrian friends and scientists at the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dryland Areas during my 2005 fieldwork, I noticed that the most common response when I stated an interest in water management in Syria, and in particular in the drying up of the Khabour River, was reference to Turkey's water use. Nobody ever mentioned to me a link between water scarcity and population increase. One scientist commented to me, in a sarcastic tone, 'Our friends from Turkey got all the water.' Many referred to Turkey's dam building. As one friend said, 'All the problems come from Turkey. There are lots of dams.' Even though there are not in fact any Turkish dams on the Khabour, the dams being built upstream from Syria on the Tigris and Euphrates through Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Project have received considerable attention in the media. 18. FAO, Syrian Agriculture (note 7) p. 355. 19. UNFPA, 'Syrian Arab Republic', in Country Profiles for Population and Reproductive Health, Policy Developments and Indicators 2005 (New York: UNFPA 2005). 20. Mitchell (note 15) pp. 209–221. 21. BMZ (note 7) p. 27, emphasis added. 22. World Bank (note 7) p. 13. 23. National Agricultural Policy Center, Syrian Agricultural Database (2006), available at . 24. USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, 'Syria: Wheat Production in 2008/09 Declines Owing to Season-Long Drought', Commodity Intelligence Report, 9 May 2008, p. 4. 25. Theib Oweis, Supplemental Irrigation: A Highly Water-Efficient Practice (Aleppo: ICARDA 1997) p. 8. 26. World Bank (note 7) pp. 6–9. 27. National Agricultural Policy Center, Syrian Agricultural Database (note 23). 28. For discussion of how administrative boundaries are reconfigured through mapping, see Francis Harvey, 'Reconfiguring Administrative Geographies in the United States', Acme 4/1 (2006) pp. 57–79. 29. Ministry of Irrigation, Meteorological Observations in Syria – Review, compiled by P. Papanov (Damascus, Syria: Directorate of Irrigation and Water Resources 2003). Cited by BMZ (note 7) p. 80. 30. National Agricultural Policy Center (NAPC), Farming Systems of the Syrian Arab Republic, compiled by Horst Wattenbach (Damascus, Syria: Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform 2006) p. 15. 31. Interview, 26 June 2006, Deir ez Zor. 32. Zaitchik et al. (note 11) p. 4. 33. FAO, Final Report (note 7) p. 345. 34. The precise origin and date of this map is unknown, but the Ministry of Irrigation has adopted it as the basis for structuring a level of bureaucracy within the ministry. 35. BMZ (note 7) p. 31 and World Bank (note 7) p. 2. 36. Mitchell (note 15) p. 117. 37. For a discussion of how legibility is a central part of state building, see James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press 1998) pp. 2, 9–81. 38. Unlike the case of other resources, such as oil, for which conditions of scarcity may be advantageous as they drive up prices, water scarcity is obviously not a goal in itself. 39. For the reference to 'Baՙth Country' in this paper's title, I owe credit to Omar Amiralay, Syrian director of the 2004 documentary A Flood in Baՙth Country (AMIP/Arte France) for inspiration. 40. Hinnebusch (note 6) p. 19. 41. Notably, the core of the Baՙth elite came from particular regions, especially Lattakia and Tartus provinces. Ibid., p. 20. 42. Batatu (note 6) p. 162. 43. R. Springborg, 'Baՙthism in Practice: Agriculture, Politics, and Political Culture in Syria and Iraq', Middle Eastern Studies 17/2 (1981) pp. 191–209. 44. Hinnebusch (note 6) p. 23. 45. Cited in Batatu (note 6) p. 193. 46. Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1999) p. 27. 47. James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1994). 48. Hinnebusch (note 6) p. 26. 49. Ibid., p. 65. The top-down origin of this Peasants Union is an important contrast to the way in which unions often evolve from the bottom up. Rather than representing the peasants' needs, from the outset this Union was designed to serve the state's needs, despite its façade of peasant participation. 50. Springborg (note 43) p. 202. 51. Batatu (note 6) p. 251. 52. Interview, 15 June 2005, International Center for Agricultural Research in Dryland Areas, Aleppo. 53. World Bank (note 7) p. 4. 54. Hinnebusch (note 6) p. 41. 55. FAO, Syrian Agriculture (note 7) p. 92. 56. For analysis of the tensions over liberalisation policy between the reformists and the senior ranks of the old guard within the Baՙth administration under Bashar Al Asad, see Eyal Zizzer, 'Does Bashar al-Assad Rule Syria?', Middle East Quarterly 10/1 (2003) pp. 15–23. 57. M. Ahmad, A. Rodriguez, and A. Braslavaskaya, 'Food and Water Insecurity: Re-assessing the Value of Rainfed Agriculture', Water and Science Technology: Water Supply 5/1 (2005) pp. 109–116. 58. Ferguson (note 47) p. 65. 59. FAO, Syrian Agriculture (note 7) p. 94. 60. National Agricultural Policy Center, Syrian Agricultural Database (note 23). 61. Ibid. 62. J. Cotillon, Water from Dams in Syria, Brochure prepared by J. Cotillon, Secretary General, International Commission on Large Dams, with assistance from the Syrian Committee on Large Dams and the Ministry of Irrigation in Syria, to coincide with the 61st Executive Meeting, Cairo, Nov. 1993 (Paris: Commission Internationale des Grands Barrages 1993). 63. BMZ (note 7) p. 56. 64. World Bank (note 7) p. 5. 65. Mitchell (note 15) p. 21. 66. FAO, Syrian Agriculture (note 7) p. 96. 67. USDA (note 24) p. 4. 68. I therefore disagree with Jan Selby's assertion that 'water is simply not that important to the region's economies, states or ruling classes.' Selby (note 9) p. 345. 69. European Union, The EU's Relations with Syria, online report of the European Union (2005), available at . 70. Selby (note 9) p. 343. 71. Harris (note 5). 72. In Sneddon and Fox's vision of a critical hydropolitics, they argue for a shift from a focus just on the role of states in transboundary river management to identification of non-state actors and consideration of the river itself as an actor. Sneddon and Fox (note 5) p. 184.