Farmers, workers in Syria’s Jarabulus suffer from Turkey’s seizure of Euphrates water

World 01:37 PM - 2021-06-08

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Maher al-Nassir (a pseudonym), a farmer in the countryside of Jarabulus, northern Syria, is working hard to compensate his loss of the wheat crop this year after Turkey’s seizure of the Euphrates River and the city’s Local Council’s prevented farmers from irrigating their crops due to the low level of the water.

 

Al-Nassir sowed his wheat seeds in December, hoping to pay off his accumulated debts. However, his debts have only increased after he lost his crop this year.   

 

He says that Turkey’s continuation seizure of water and the shortage of rainfall in the winter have greatly affected the life of those in the city and its countryside in all aspects, not only agriculturally.

 

“The residents have nothing to do with Turkey’s dispute with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) [and shouldn’t be] punished…thousands of families of those regions have been affected by the seizure of water and the Local Council’s prevention of farmers from irrigating their lands from the Euphrates River,” al-Nassir stated.

 

After his displacement from the countryside of Homs to Jarabulus, Salim al-Khalid bought a small car to sell vegetables within the city.

 

However, he said his work is not fruitful because of the high prices of vegetables this year due to the high costs that the farmers bear after the water cut off and reliance on the private wells.

 

“What is happening to the Euphrates is similar to what is happening to the Nile River in Egypt,” Rami al-Mahmoud (a pseudonym), an official in the service office of the Local Council affiliated with opposition factions in Jarabulus, said.

 

“Building dams, generating power, and other projects carried out by a source country without paying attention to the disasters that it creates can cause its neighbors problems such as drought and have a significant impact on the economic and social life,” he added.

 

He believes that the agreements happening in Syria are made to protect the interests of its sponsor.

 

For more than three months, Turkey has limited the flow of the Euphrates into Syria, depriving large numbers of people of usable water. Turkey reduced the flow of water from the Euphrates River into northeast Syria’s dam gradually, reducing the amount of water received to unprecedented lows.

 

Turkey keeps water in six dams, the largest of which is Ataturk Dam, the second largest in the Middle East, with a storage capacity of 48 billion m³, violating the international agreement they signed with Syria in 1987 which stated that Syria’s share of water coming from Turkey should be a minimum of 500 m³ per second.

 

The water flow to the Euphrates River is now limited to less than 200 cubic meters per second, according to the General Administration of Dams in Northeastern Syria.

 

 

 

PUKmedia/ North Press Agency