ISIS takes advantage of water scarcity to lure Iraqi farmers

Shaimaa Hefzi

It would be easier for ISIS to recruit militants in the wake of water scarcity in Iraq as droughts hits farmland.

According to a study conducted by Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, the freed Iraqi territories are facing tough challenges due to dilapidated infrastructure as ISIS is seeking to reorganize itself to recapture Iraqi cities.

Peter Schwartzstein, an environment correspondent and non-resident fellow at the Centre for Climate & Security, said “While Isis was not formed from environmental issues alone, there is a very clear link”.

According to Schwartzstein, the issue first manifested in 2010 after nearly 15 years of terrible droughts. That was also the year that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was appointed leader of what was then known as Islamic State in Iraq. Baghdadi replenished the group’s leadership by targeting former Iraqi military and intelligence officers who served under Saddam Hussein.

The Independent newspaper reported last week that drought might force the Iraqi people to join ISIS.

After years of punishing droughts, which had blasted their lands and livelihoods, they did not really care. Their real interest was in the salaries of more than $400 a month.

This was early 2014. But for years, residents of this area and others in Iraq’s northern Saladin governorate had noticed strange men in religious garb visiting the rural areas during difficult farming seasons. It seemed that whenever the droughts struck the visitors would appear, sometimes dishing out food, sometimes money, sometimes agricultural supplies.

In the early days these men, part of what would later morph into the Islamic State, tried to stoke local anger by accusing Iraq’s Shia-dominated authorities of deliberately ignoring the embattled Sunni areas. They even claimed there was a government plot to halt river flow to worsen the water, and so farming, crisis.

According to The Independent, people began to listen in the spring of 2014 the Jihadists homed in on the most vulnerable farmers of fighting age, around 18 and 19. They promised them they would become emirs. They lured them in with the salaries.

The Independent’s report said in Kirkuk a few years later, Jihadists were appearing at cattle markets, eyeing up farmers who were forced to sell their livestock because they had no means of keeping their cows alive with no water.

The newspaper quoted an Iraqi farmer as saying that they takfiris moved to “underground trenches where they had drinks and food and got training on different weapons.

The farmers who signed up had power and status. Those who refused were forced to hand over 10% of their crops by the Jihadists who terrorized the community and enforced punishing taxes. If people did not obey they had their electricity and water supplies cut or in some cases were sent to trial.

Naseer Tareq, a rights activist from Tikrit who works on water shortage issues for Save The Tigris campaign, said in total 5,000 farmers from the Saladin and Kirkuk areas signed up.

According to The Independent’s report most of the farmers are not educated, they do not learn about religion, they know little about national politics. At the time they didn’t know the difference between government forces or any other armed group, they just needed the money.

An Iraqi farmer named Nawaf told The Independent that the village where he lives lost over 100 feddans [acres] of farmland due to saline water. I personally used to own 50 feddans.

“Of course, we have to give animals fresh water. But due to scarcity; we cannot give them enough,” Nawaf said.

Abdullah, another Iraqi farmer, says that other infrastructure issues such as lack of electricity were adding to the problems. Farmers rely on electrical pumps to access underground water reserves for irrigation.

Wim Zwijnenburg, researcher at the Dutch non-profit organization PAX, said the Ministry of Water Resources estimates that ISIS had caused $600m (£457m) worth of damage to hydraulic infrastructure which, according to PAX, is still in need of urgent rehabilitation and maintenance.

However, Zwijnenburg has said the Ministry of Water Resources lacks the funds to fix this: its budget has plunged from $1.7bn to just $50m, due to plummeting oil revenues and the war efforts. Most of those funds are used to pay staff salaries.