In a stinging attack on the two countries, the deputy speaker of the Iraqi parliament, a leader in the Sadrist movement, Hakim al-Zamili, threatened to boycott Turkish and Iranian goods if water continued to be cut off from his country.
The Iraqi official explained that Turkey has started cutting water from Iraq by 80%, while Iran has cut it off completely, that is, by 100%.
In a conference held at the Ministry of Water Resources, Thursday, he threatened, in the event of continued cutting from neighbors, to work with the House of Representatives to boycott Turkish and Iranian goods.
He also saw that political differences, non-compliance with international agreements regarding water releases, as well as the absence of laws from the government that put pressure on the two countries had caused the water cuts.
Stopping $20 billion from trade exchange
He pointed out that Iraq’s two neighbors are self-sufficient in water levels, but they insist on cutting it off from Iraq, threatening to respond by stopping 20 billion dollars of money that Iraq pays to the two countries as a trade exchange.
He also added that Baghdad would stop these funds if the water cuts continued, and would also support local factories.
In a related context, he confirmed the existence of problems in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, starting from Baghdad to the southern provinces, explaining that the citizens’ transgressions floated on the course of the two rivers.
He called on the Ministry of Materials and government agencies to pressure Turkey and Iran to reach a solution formula that would get the country out of this crisis.
The crisis is getting worse
It is noteworthy that the salinity of the water has caused, in the past years, the transformation of thousands of hectares of land into wasteland, and the admission of 100,000 people to hospitals in the summer of 2018.
During the past months, Iraq experienced a severe water crisis in a number of its cities, after the quantities of water received from Turkey and Iran decreased by a large percentage as a result of the construction of many dams and projects at the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
According to government statistics, Iraq’s population of 40 million now consumes 71 billion cubic meters of water.
While in 2035 the population will reach more than 50 million, and it is expected that the surface water will decrease to 51 billion cubic meters annually after the completion of all off-border projects.