Perveen Jawdat waited for hours overnight for water to flow through her bathroom pipes but to no avail. When she woke up the next morning, she saw a message on her mobile phone carrying news of an official notification that tap water is now to be supplied by the local authorities every other fifth day instead of on a twice a week basis.
Sulaimaniyeh, the second largest province in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region with a population of over a million people where Jawdat lives, is deemed to have abundant fresh water resources and two large reservoirs.
But as the country faces its worst drought in a century, residents of Sulaimaniyeh are increasingly feeling the rising threat of water scarcity, which puts them at risk in terms of health, agriculture, and electricity availability.
“We have to fill the roof tanks, store water in whatever pots, pans and even cups available, do laundry and have showers, all in two hours,” Jawdat told Al-Ahram Weekly by telephone.
Several other residents of Sulaimaniyeh talked on social media about how desperately they are searching for water tanks and hoarding every drop they can find.
Sulaimaniyeh’s worst water shortage in years is not just a local problem. Iraq’s water reservoirs have dropped to a historic low, with officials putting current levels at less than eight per cent in some provinces due to a sharp decline in the country’s water flows and the government’s failure to provide water security to the population.
In recent months, parts of Iraq have been thrust into the centre of an unfolding drought, one that could rival the country’s political and security crises in terms of its severity and long term impact.
Iraq is among the most water-scarce countries in the world, according to UN reports. By summer 2025, the worst drought in 80 years had hit the country after years of failed rainy seasons, cuts by upstream countries, and irrigation and domestic water mismanagement.
While households are grappling with one of the most severe water crises in the country’s recent history, farmland is disappearing across Iraq because of the reduced flow of water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that for centuries have irrigated an area that was the home of Ancient Mesopotamia.
According to 2021 World Bank data, Iraq then had 817 cubic metres of renewable freshwater resources per capita, but water availability has since dropped to lower rates triggering the current severe crises.
In a country where approximately 28 per cent of the population lives in rural areas and relies almost entirely on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for water, the agricultural sector, which alone accounts for 60 to 80 per cent of the total use of water resources, has been hit hard by the water crisis.
Water is a crucial issue for this oil-rich country of 46 million people that is facing acute power cuts compounded by plunging oil prices and a looming financial crisis that could affect the government’s ability to pay salaries and pensions to nearly 10 million people.
There are credible reports that water scarcity is harming the economy, especially by disrupting the agriculture sector and stirring up social troubles that could threaten Iraq’s security and stability.
Harvests of main crops, including of vegetables, legumes, dates and fruit, have been declining, and the country’s agricultural production is no longer able to meet market demands or secure the population’s needs.
Water mismanagement in Iraq, including in operating existing dams, outdated methods of flood irrigation, rundown canal networks, and the growing of uncontrolled crops, is worsening the water scarcity problem.
Given the rising demand, disputes in the hard-hit provinces in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers Basins risk turning into armed conflicts and the displacement of the population.
Many parts of southern Iraq have recently witnessed water scarcity-induced reactions, including armed clashes by locals affected by the shortages exacerbating long-standing tensions.
Urban unrest and violence related to water scarcity in Iraq’s southern provinces, which has left one in two Iraqi families with less land to cultivate, have increased dramatically in recent years, sparking internal migration and sometimes prolonged displacement.
Head of the Farmers Association in the Dhi Qar Governorate Miqddad Al-Yassiri told the local media last week that the water crisis in the province is driven by violations of water shares in the upstream provinces and the uneven distribution of water by the central government.
Last week, the autonomous Kurdistan Region Government (KRG) announced plans to build a pipeline on the Greater Zab, a main tributary to the Tigris, to supply Erbil, the KRG capital, with fresh water.
The $480 million project will include a water intake station, a main reservoir, and a water treatment plant and is expected to supply some 480,000 cubic metres of fresh water a day to Erbil to solve its water shortages.
The pipeline, which is expected to further reduce the flow of water to the country’s south and cause water shortages nationwide, seems to be being constructed without prior coordination with Baghdad.
Various studies of Iraq’s worsening drought are sounding warning bells and urging an immediate intervention as the oil-rich country faces dramatic population increases and dwindling revenues.
According to World Bank estimates, nearly one-third of the irrigated land in Iraq will have no water by the year 2050, with predictions of further severe repercussions on food, growth, health, and jobs.
Bank economic modelling showed that “real GDP in Iraq could drop by up to four per cent due to the severe impacts of water scarcity and the degradation of water quality. Demand for unskilled labour in the agricultural sector could fall by 11.8 per cent and by 5.4 per cent for non-agricultural activities,” it said.
While climate change, years of domestic mismanagement, and chronic neglect remain Iraq’s main water challenges, the water crisis is also the result of increasing upstream restrictions.
Water scarcity in Iraq is heavily influenced by upstream inflows that are controlled by Iran and Turkey whose water management and geopolitics are exacerbating the crisis in Iraq by reducing the supply of water, changing tributary paths, and building dams.
The two countries are significantly contributing to Iraq’s water crisis by constructing large-scale dams and water diversion projects on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which originate in their territories.
Even before Iran’s current water shortage problems, also exacerbated by poor management policies and overuse in agriculture, Iraq’s water crisis worsened as Iran built more dams near the border to hoard water in its reservoirs.
By redirecting the extra water to reservoirs across the country, Iran is diverting water away from the Sirwan, Little Zab, and Diyalah rivers. As a result, water levels have declined sharply behind the Darbandikhan, Adhaim, and Diyalah Dams in eastern Iraq that feed on water coming from Iran to the Tigris Basin.
Pleas by Iraqi farmers to treat the problem on a good neighbour basis have been falling on deaf ears in Tehran, while the Baghdad Government remains unable to assert Iraq’s right to the water in line with longstanding understandings and rights under international water-sharing laws on cross-border rivers.
Water flows to Iraq from Turkey have also been decreasing for nearly three decades after Turkey started building the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), a huge network of irrigation and electricity dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers without coordination with the two downstream countries of Iraq and Syria.
Around 90 per cent of Iraq’s water sources come from Turkey, and the impact of Turkey’s cuts in inflows has been devastating, with some estimating that the reduction in Iraq’s share of the Tigris water could be around 60 per cent, exacerbating drought, desertification, and environmental degradation.
Turkey has refused to abide by a 1920 protocol with Iraq under which it agreed not to build water projects without Iraq’s and Syria’s consent and a 2014 memorandum of understanding that stresses the need to fix a water quota for Iraq and joint work to evaluate regional water resources.
Both Iran and Turkey are believed to be using their advantage in water supplies to Iraq as a bargaining tool and as an instrument of political pressure for geopolitical objectives.
Although the Islamic republic is seemingly a close ally of the Shia-led government in Baghdad, its far-reaching goal is to keep the current balance of power between the two countries to its advantage.
In addition to making economic gains for itself by exporting approximately $12 billion in goods consisting primarily of agricultural products, Iran is trying to keep Iraq as part of its larger regional chessboard.
Turkey’s unilateral approach to the dispute is also undoubtedly meant to maintain its national control over the two rivers as a tool to pressure Iraq to pursue certain economic, political, and security goals.
Ankara’s exports to Baghdad are estimated at $20 billion, with Iraq becoming the largest importer of Turkish food products and accounting for 14 per cent of Turkey’s total food exports.
Turkey is eyeing Iraq’s lucrative oil revenues and is looking to expand trade exchanges and energy agreements with Iraq on favourable terms. Turkish Minister of Trade Omer Bolat said in early December that his country seeks to increase trade exchanges with Iraq to $30 billion.
Moreover, Turkey is using water to pressure the Iraqi government to achieve certain political and strategic goals, such as in its conflict with its Iraq-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the large number of Turkish military bases in Iraq.
Turkey, which was behind the Sunni rebel offensive that ousted former Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad in December, could be looking to expand its influence in the region, primarily in neighbouring Iraq.
Viewed from a foreign policy-making perspective, water could be a powerful tool that Iran and Turkey could use to consolidate its influence in Iraq, a country with a fragile political system and an inefficient leadership that has done nothing to challenge the two countries.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 25 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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