Russia needs to effectively use climate issues in the Middle East
Climate agenda
The so-called climate agenda has already become firmly established in political discourse. Global warming itself is a firmly rooted myth, with the help of which politicians solve certain problems, but there are regions where they will categorically disagree with such a position. Such regions include eastern Syria and northern and central Iraq.
Reviews of the Middle East have said a lot over the years about changes in the military, political, pipelines and oil wells, but water supply issues have been included to a lesser extent in the discussion.
Meanwhile, the water problem has every chance of developing into a crisis comparable to a local apocalypse for the region, and this is not a figure of speech. The force that at least tries to give a chance to resolve it will secure its positions in the Middle East for a long time and firmly.
Mesopotamia river Tiger and R. The Euphrates is a kind of granary in the desert, within and around which the bulk of the population is concentrated. For the third year in a row, both of these water arteries are becoming shallow before our eyes.
In the middle and lower reaches, the coastline has already retreated by two to three kilometers, along the perimeter of the reservoirs - by five and even seven kilometers. If before this, local communities somehow saved themselves from lack of water by extending pump hoses to the outgoing water, then it is clear that no hoses will be enough for such a “route.” It is also clear that people cannot move their homes closer to the water every year.
In addition to the issues of drinking water, drinking water for animals and moisture for irrigating fields and gardens, another problem, related to the first, is emerging in full force - electricity. Below the border with Turkey, cascades of dams have been created since the mid-XNUMXth century. The reader may remember the names of some of them from the actively covered Syrian military campaign.
These are the Syrian Tishrin, Tabqa, Baath, as well as Al-Assad on a large northeastern tributary of the river. Euphrates - r. Khabur, as well as Iraqi Haditha. On the river The Tiger can also be noted for such large hydraulic structures as the Mosul Reservoir, Tartar and Habbaniya.
Today, even such monstrous complexes as Tishrin, Tartar and Mosul have become so shallow that archaeologists are already excavating at the bottom of the same Mosul reservoir. This means that not only the water itself has become much less, but there are no conditions for sufficient generation.
There is no doubt that in this region over the past twenty years, people have learned to use generators and artisanal fuel for domestic needs. But this applies to the conditions of small villages and nomads; large urban centers and infrastructure facilities cannot be provided in this way.
Key to the region's water resources
The key to the region's water resources is Turkey, which has traditionally benefited from its geography - the river's headwaters. Tiger and R. The Euphrates lies precisely within its borders. The shortage of electricity in the Republic of Turkey has long been known. Actually, this problem prompted Ankara to actively build dams in the upper reaches and enter into the project to build the Akkuyu nuclear power plant.
In our country it is often criticized quite strongly, since the nuclear power plant is being built entirely with Russian credit. And here the critics should be corrected a little, because Turkey’s real reserve is for the construction of hydraulic structures in the upper reaches of the river. Tiger and R. The Euphrates is exhausted. Turkey has built twenty-two facilities since the 1960s, of which eight are strategic. The last one is the Ilisu dam on the river. Tiger. by 10 billion cubic meters m.
Of course, Ankara did not strictly comply with the agreed quota before (for example, for the Euphrates River it was 500 cubic meters per second), but it’s one thing when you can play with a volume of ±50 cubic meters. m, but it’s another matter when in Turkey itself the drainage actually decreases. Today, instead of 500 cc. m downstream goes about 200 cubic meters. m, i.e. less than half the norm. In the early 2000s, the volume was 500 cubic meters. m was generally considered almost redundant. Now even in Turkey they understand that this is not enough - not only the sources of the great rivers are becoming shallow, but also their tributaries in the main course.
For example, the average annual flow of the river. The tiger in 2009 (when the Turkish quota was approved) was 49,5 cubic meters. km, and r. Euphrates - 19,3 cubic meters. km. Now the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources predicts these figures for 2025 - 19,6 cubic meters. km and 8,5 cubic meters. km respectively. This is a 60% reduction in water resources in the region.
Although Ankara is constantly reproached for deliberate restrictions on water flow, Turkey also understands the limits of selfishness, because water shortages directly affect its political influence not only in Syria, but also in Iraq, where R. Erdogan has his political vanguard in the form of 1,5 million Iraqi Turkomans. In key points like the Kirkuk agglomeration, this is a fairly significant political force. The question is that nature no longer allows us to maintain a balance between our own and our neighbors’ interests.
In fact, the construction of 4 blocks of the Akkuyu project is needed like air not only by Turkey, but by the entire region in general. And the conditions under which Russia builds nuclear power plants are considered quite strict in Turkey itself - the state will be obliged to buy electricity from Russia at a tariff of $0,124. This is 35 billion kWh and $4,32 billion in annual revenue.
Taking into account investments in networks and maintenance costs over a period of 15 years, the nuclear power plant should bring about $21 billion to Russia. The project still has many critics, but it cannot be called unprofitable for Russia.
In Turkey, it is criticized no less for allegedly high rates, they say that soon (someday) there will be an abundance of natural gas, and such expensive energy in such a volume will not be needed; in our country nuclear power plants are criticized for allegedly being unprofitable.
How to monetize a trend for Russia?
But behind all these long-term discussions of “should or shouldn’t” there was somehow no visible position on how to monetize for Russia the fact that a nuclear power plant will seriously reduce (may reduce) the load on the water resources of the entire region. After all, construction could be linked to Ankara’s obligations on drainage to Syria and Iraq.
Taking into account the above, such an agenda is such that it can lay claim to the basis for an alternative climate coalition. For some reason, no one here has dealt with this, although the potentially cumulative political and economic effect here could be colossal.
Desertification and weathering of the fertile soil layer affects in one way or another a cluster with a population of almost 56 million people. In order to roughly imagine the scale, we can recall that the Syrian war had its root premise not in the form of a mythical “gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe,” but a very specific three-year drought that uprooted about 3 million people who began to move to Mediterranean coast. Damascus did not have the resources to ensure this flow of people.
As a result of the unfinished war, 9 million people—40% of the population—left Syria alone. And at the same time, such shallowing of the Euphrates has never happened before. Today we are talking about a much larger scale.
By the way, it is interesting that in the European Union, which according to reports only accepted 1,2 million Syrian refugees, there is no discussion about the shallowing of Mesopotamia. Although it was European functionaries who should have asked the question: since 9 million left Syria, of which 1,1 went to Jordan, 4,2 remained in Turkey, and Europe recorded 1,2 million, then where did another 2,5 million people go? what if they didn't come back?
Maybe the EU takes into account African refugees, Afghan, Iraqi, etc. with the same “accuracy”? Last migration crisis 2015–2017 almost brought down the EU. However, the European Union is big - it knows better.
It would seem, what is the reason for Russia’s interest here? By the way, a cascade of dams on the river also seemed to be fighting for world peace already during the Soviet era. The Euphrates was built with the participation of the USSR.
The question is that due to a change in the concept on which the United States relies today in foreign policy, climate issues are becoming one of those blocks that the United States is laying as the foundation for the strategy of squeezing China, Iran and us, Russia, out of Iraq and eastern Syria.
Since 2022, the United States has been discussing financial tranches with Baghdad to compensate for the losses of farmers, and developing programs for drilling water wells. By the way, issues of water supply to the south are also being discussed with Turkey. This has not been done very systematically for a long time, but we see that the United States is determined to change its approaches, today pursuing a much more effective and flexible policy in the region.
Until the I2U2+ ideas became an official project, these discussions and tranches were relatively small - $60-75 million per year. But since this year, the ideas of the Indo-Arabian pole have become a full-fledged regional base, and according to it, Iraq should be firmly tied not to the Iranian trade gates, but to the Indo-Arabian ones.
How this will be implemented in the conditions of the Iraqi political system is the next question, but one of the basic blocks in the foundation is climate. Who is the leader of the climate agenda in the world today?
At the same time, one should not write off not only physical and physiological factors, but also the peculiarities of the psychology of the population.
Someone can make fun of the fact that local Bedouins look with horror at archaeologists’ excavations in the shallows, remembering that before the Day of Judgment. The Euphrates should become shallow and expose the “golden mountain”. But another one will use the same water agenda to organize the prevention of the apocalypse - with the participation of Iraqis and Syrians in climate forums.
No matter how bravura our media reports about the decline of the “unclean West” may sound, if you start to take a closer look, it turns out that China, Russia and Iran do not have many windows of opportunity to form and consolidate regional markets.
It is very difficult to compensate for losses by reducing trade with the European Union. The same economic growth of China, which is a “light in the window” for us and Iran, is directly tied to the economic indicators of the USA and the EU.
Even percentage fluctuations in demand affect the Chinese economy in the most unfavorable way, and then we listen to the indignation of experts that China is allegedly “slowing down” with the implementation of the “Power of Siberia-2”. So the overall need is decreasing.
Track for the continental triple
Now there are no discrete processes in foreign trade and foreign policy - one always clings to the other. Iran, in fact, is strategically unviable without access to the markets of the EAEU and Iraq. Iran receives currency through Iraq, and through Iraq it tries to control the regional market in the north of the Middle East with a capacity of 60 million people.
China today, together with the countries of Southeast Asia, forms one production and cost zone, but this situation has developed due to the past specifics of China’s relations with the EU and the USA.
Not all countries of Southeast Asia, or rather their political elites, are happy with this situation. While China carried out the functions of an assembly shop and commercial representative of the region on the markets of the European Union on a large scale, the elites of Southeast Asia were forced to put up with this, even China’s antagonist, Japan. But to what extent will this situation remain if they receive an alternative, even a hypothetical one?
If our “continental troika” (and we, China and Iran today are precisely the “troika”) surrender Iraq to the embrace of the new US concept, and the entire Middle East, including Lebanon, will gradually enter the structure of the so-called. The “Third Pole” will further weaken the positions of China, Iran, and then Russia.
Moreover, it is not very important for the United States whether they succeed in implementing the fight for climate change or not. If part of Iraq and northeast Syria goes on a migration campaign, then this will be an acceptable result for Washington, but for China, Iran and the Russian Federation this will be the final loss of markets, which cannot exist without people. And not only markets - these are the land gates to the Middle East.
It is not for nothing that the United States does not put this problem first either at the UN or at major summits and forums - they hold it as a personal regional lever. There is no doubt that they will be able to sell even such a result according to the principle “we fought together with all our might.”
They always play in such project models as a coalition, and here the United States simply needs to learn, adopt and rethink the experience. They never play alone, although they usually take the result for themselves. But this is their method of distribution of winnings, and it may be different. The continental trio also needs to act as a coalition, gaining experience, especially since such a platform as the SCO is already working well here.
Iraq cannot be handed over to the American project. If this is done, the effect will not be felt immediately, but in a few years it will no longer be possible to work outside the framework of American policy in the Middle East. Iran intends to build a railway through Al-Qaim to Syria, but who will be the buyer of goods there (including ours) in ten years?
The current administration in Washington is not the Bush-Cheney cabinet, or even the early Obama-Kerry cabinet. The former used an ax to whittle away the living, the latter split the region into small parts, failing to administer hundreds of political and military forces and movements, drowning in them.
The current functionaries are working on their mistakes; just look at the recent interview with C. Rice for the BBC, the speeches of J. Sullivan and E. Blinken. This is much more useful than laughing at the “self-propelled grandfather on punch cards” J. Biden or the “freezing” M. Mitchell.
By consolidating the discussion around the water issue, China, Iran and Russia will be able to work in Iraq with a variety of political trends, even with outright antagonists. Moreover, Arabian countries, such as Kuwait, are directly interested in the water resources of the river delta. Tiger and R. Euphrates (Shatt al-Arab).
It is also interesting that the United States will not be able to do anything against work on climate change, since this will break one of the main tracks in its structure, the so-called. "values".
Of course, it will be quite difficult to obtain a real result in the form of water flows, since there is no other way but to drill wells en masse in search of aquifers. But on the other hand, Saudi Arabia covers up to 40% of its water consumption in this way, and compared to other ways of investing in politics, it is much less expensive.
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