Sea water from the northern Gulf is steadily moving up the Shatt al-Arab, where salination has been kept in check by the fresh water flowing downstream from the Euphrates and the Tigris.

Baghdad (UPI) Sep 23, 2009 – Iraq’s water crisis is getting worse by the day, adding to the political uncertainty sweeping the country ahead of potentially incendiary parliamentary elections in January. On top of the cutbacks in the water flow of the life-giving Tigris and Euphrates rivers by Turkey, Iraq’s parched south is now threatened by encroaching tidal waters from the Gulf that are poisoning vital farmland, the result of climate change. On Sept. 19, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said that Ankara had agreed to increase the Euphrates flow to between 450 and 500 cubic meters per second until Oct. 20, after which Baghdad would have to negotiate a new deal. But it will take much more than that to help the Iraqis, who are suffering one of the country’s worst droughts in living memory. Apart from the land around the two great rivers that rise in Turkey’s Anatolia region, Iraq is largely desert. These days, its arable land is steadily drying up. Poor rains have damaged farmland even further. Crop yields are so bad that a country once so fertile and known in antiquity as Mesopotamia – “the land between the rivers” – is now one of the largest importers of wheat in the world.

Water-short Iraq faces new peril: the sea