Specifically, Al-Ankur area, near Ramadi district, with a population of over 9,000 people, is suffering from signs of a thirst crisis due to lack of drinking water for citizens, due the shutdown of water pumps due to low levels of the Euphrates and the drying up of a large part of Lake Habbaniyah which overlooks it.
The distress of the population
As the crisis of unavailability of drinking water worsened, the inhabitants of the region migrated to other areas of the governorate, while those who remained there found it difficult to obtain it by buying water by tankers, which is often impure and unfit for consumption, or by relying on the water that charities try to provide them, and humanely, according to the testimonies of the population and their requests through social networks and platforms.
ghost thirst
Environmentalists believe that what they have repeatedly warned has happened, and that this region is certainly the first to face the danger of the thirst of its population, but it will not be the last, according to them. , given the worsening of the climate change crisis that affects Iraq as the fifth most affected country in the world according to the United Nations, and the reluctance of solutions to deal with it and not guarantee the shares and the rights of Iraq in the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Ayman Haitham Qaddouri, environmental expert and member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said in an interview with Sky News Arabia:
The areas of Al-Ankur and Al-Majar, which are inhabited by more than 10,000 people, face the danger of thirst and are located south of Lake Habbaniyah, and mainly depend on lake water for meet daily needs. Lake Habbaniyah, due to the constant water shortage experienced by the Euphrates and the receding of its waters due to Turkey’s encroachment on Iraq’s water share. The draining of Nazim Al-Warar also disabled around 85,000 agricultural dunums. As a result, the water in Lake Habbaniyah receded by 40%, causing the lake to move away from the pumping and desalination stations for more than 2 kilometers, which negatively affected nearby residential areas, including the area of Al-Akour. The drought crisis has reached the point of completely cutting off drinking water in the region, in addition to the loss of Lake Habbaniyah to the wealth of fish, which is the source of livelihood for families in the village of Al-Ankur . Compounding the dire scene is that the Ministry of Water Resources, the District Commissioner of Habbaniyah District, says the lake will soon be out of service due to the Ministry’s failure to open the Ramadi Dam and to transport water through the Al-Warr. river to the lake due to the low level of the Euphrates, which means a threat to the stability of another 7,000 families living in the areas of Al-Tash and Al-Bujaber and Al-Humaira in the north and northwest of Lake Habbaniyah. The drought has caused the water to transform into the micro-fissures (man-made cracks) that bring the lake water closer to the pumps than 100% polluted stagnant water, due to the decomposition of organic matter and its transformation source of diseases and epidemics. The thirst crisis has already begun and families in Al-Ankur have started migrating from drought-prone areas to Ramadi in the north.
immediate solutions
The local government of Anbar and the federal government of Baghdad must intensify their efforts to save the drought-stricken areas, through urgent measures, the most important of which are: digging channels and fissures to bring the waters of Lake Habbaniyah closer to the village. Equip the area with pumps to deliver water to the water bodies in the area, for desalination purposes and to solve the problem of microbial contamination by biological pollutants (coliform bacteria and faecal bacteria) resulting from the reduction of discharges of water in the lake, then deliver the water to the citizens after treatment. Dispatching well-drilling teams affiliated with the General Groundwater Authority to dig artesian wells for the region, on the condition that the validity of the use of the water from the well and its suitability for human consumption are assessed , given that the area of Al-Ankour is surrounded by salt water on 3 sides.
What else?
These solutions will not remain effective for long, and they will only remedy the crisis, perhaps for a short time, as villages far from fresh water and surrounded by salt water must develop sustainable management strategies, and implement water recycling projects while rationalizing its consumption. Here, the foreign water policy must be activated, because the government is required to accelerate the remedy to the disaster of the management of the water dossier, so as to guarantee that Iraq obtains its fair share. of water, otherwise Mesopotamia will not resist the worsening of the situation. drought crisis in the future.
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