TAIZ, Yemen — I am in the Yemen International Hospital in Taiz, the Yemeni city in the central highlands that is suffering from such an acute water shortage that people get to run their taps for only 36 hours every 30 days or so. They have to fill up as much as they can and then rely on water trucks that come through neighborhoods and sell water like a precious commodity.
I am visiting Mohamed Qaid, a 25-year-old laborer from the nearby village of Qaradh who was struck the night before in the hand and chest by three bullets fired by a sniper from Marzouh, the village next door. The two villages have been fighting over the rapidly dwindling water supply from their shared mountain springs. Six people have been killed and many more wounded in clashes since 2000 that have heated up of late. One was killed a night ago. Qaid is in pain, but he wanted to tell people about what is happening here.
I have one question: “Were you really shot in a fight over water?”
He winces out his answer: “It wasn’t about politics. It wasn’t about the Muslim Brotherhood. It was about water.”
While we here in America rest secure in our homes, largely free from the scourge of want or shortage, we’ve become immune from and blissfully ignorant of what may well be the cause of future wars around the world: water. Joe Sixpack, when he turns on the faucet at his kitchen sink, doesn’t often think about what a precious commodity water is. We can do without many things- beer, chocolate, Fox News Channel- but no human will last long without water. In some parts of the world, particularly the Middle East, the scarcity of water is about to become an issue that exceeds religion and ideology in terms of its potential to foment armed conflict.
The bellwether in this scenario is Yemen, a country few Americans could find on a map if their life depended on it. Yemen’s inability to manage its growth, politics, and natural resources has left the country’s water supply in grave danger. The early returns are not good; in Yemen the conflicts are no longer about ideology or religion; they’re about water. In that sense, Yemen represents what the future holds for the Middle East, as regimes who have mismanaged their natural resources will soon find themselves unable to supply the water their populations require in sufficient quantity.
The next wars in the Middle East won’t be religious conflicts; they’ll be about survival.
I came to Taiz to write my column and film a Showtime documentary on climate and the Arab awakening. We flew down on a Yemeni air force helicopter with Abdul Rahman al-Eryani, Yemen’s former minister of water and environment, who minces no words.
“In Sanaa, the capital, in the 1980s, you had to drill about 60 meters to find water. Today, you have to drill 850 to 1,000 meters to find water. Yemen has 15 aquifers, and only two today are self-sustaining; all the others are being steadily depleted. And wherever in Yemen you see aquifers depleting, you have the worst conflicts.”
That Yemen is a mess is indisputable. It’s in many respects still a 15th century collection of warring tribes. The central government’s inefficiency, ineptitude, and inability to assert its power throughout the country is problem enough. Combine that with decades of mismanagement of their natural resources (never abundant to begin with), and it’s not difficult to understand the challenges Yemen faces. People have already died over water, and the problems will be exacerbated by the passage of time and a continued lack of coordinated corrective efforts.
If you want to see what the future holds for the Middle East, one need only to look at Yemen. Only Israel has made a concerted effort to secure its water supply into the future. The Arab world has largely ignored the problem, making a solution even more difficult to achieve. Each day that passes without recognition of the need to secure and preserve a reliable supply of water increases the likelihood of armed conflict in the region.
When Americans think of Yemen- most never do- they tend to see chaos, disorder, and terrorism…and there’s certainly more than enough of all that. What we don’t see is the country’s dire and increasing lack of water, and that’s what will probably lead to the next war(s) in the region.
It’s not going to be about religion. It won’t be about ideology. It’ll be about water. It’ll be about survival. In typical fashion, the Arab world will ignore the problem until a peaceful solution is no longer attainable. Water will very likely be the flash point for the next world war.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
