If water is undoubtedly a factor in local and regional tensions, in reality it is only rarely that it has been the sole original cause of a war. History shows that water is not so much a cause of armed conflict as, more often, a pretext for opening hostilities. However, terrorist activity, and a new form of warfare using systematic air-strikes on infrastructure networks can make targets, directly or indirectly, of drinking-water supply systems. In this context, it is no longer a question of war about water, but of war by water, or against water.

Water—a Cause of Conflict?

Earlier articles have shown that water resources can be local or regional flashpoints, whether on the steppes of Central Asian, or on the Indian subcontinent, both high-risk areas demanding careful attention. Other hot spots across the world could have been included in those articles, as, for example, the Middle East, where water supply has been an enduring casus belli since September 1953. In that year, Israel started to dig a canal within the demilitarised zone bordering Syria, as the first stage of a national aqueduct programme designed to divert the waters of the Jordan to the south. It took a formal Syrian complaint to the UN Security Council, a deployment of Syrian armour and apparent stubbornness on the part of Israel to persuade President Eisenhower to take up the matter. To avoid bellicose escalation the American president insisted on the establishment of a Jordan water resources development plan, which has gone down in history as the Johnson Plan.

The example of the Johnson Plan is typical of water resource conflict-resolution. Human wisdom has managed, up to now, to avoid major conflicts over water. Aaron Wolf, international authority and founder of the database on cross-border conflict over water resources, has pointed out that, at the moment when a crisis threshold is crossed, a consultation mechanism is automatically set in motion, and generally manages to achieve either a status quo or a treaty settlement. His studies have noted more than 3,600 treaties signed throughout recorded history. According to this expert, the only war ever really linked totally to water goes back more than 4,500 years, between two Mesopotamian cities, Lagash and Umma, over the sharing of the Tigris and Euphrates waters in the south of present-day Iraq. Constant local flare-ups, usually the result of tribal conflicts using water as an excuse for making trouble, should not, however, be ignored. On 30 March 2004, in the Somali town of El Bur (360 km north-east of Mogadishu), a dispute over a well between the Murursade and the Duduble tribes cost 21 dead and 20 wounded.