Iraq: As Climate Threats Grow, Iraq Battles a New Enemy: Water Shortages

Dec 12, 2017 | Laurie Goering, Thomson Reuters Foundation
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After years battling Islamic State militants, Iraqi farmers – many of them military volunteers – are now returning to their homes and fields only to find a new threat: a shortage of water. Construction of dams and other water-holding facilities in upstream Turkey and Iran, combined with increasingly erratic rainfall across the region, mean the amount of water flowing in key Iraqi rivers has fallen by at least 40 percent in recent decades, said Hassan Janabi, the country's water resources minister.