AMMAN —
Minister of Water and Irrigation
Mohammad Al-Najjar said Tuesday during a discussion at the Lower House
Agriculture, Water, and Badia Committee on water management in the Jordan
Valley that Jordan had asked Syria to provide it with 30 million cubic meters
of water, but the request was rejected, various local media outlets reported.
اضافة اعلان
Najjar later told Al-Mamlaka TV that the request was
rejected “due to the weather conditions and the political situation in areas in
southern Syria”.
Regarding the water situation, the minister
indicated that “during the past week, a tender was floated through the private
sector to expedite the rehabilitation of Al-Mukhaybeh wells to increase the
quantities of water, specifically for farmers.”
Last month, Najjar revealed that Jordan was in the
process of purchasing water from Israel, in an attempt to make up for the
current water shortage.
EDAMA Chairman and water expert
Dureid Mahasneh told
Jordan News that “there is an old agreement signed by the Jordanian and Syrian
parties that the Syrians have not respected for more than 10 years, and even
before that.”
He added that “the
situation in Syria has begun to stabilize, and Syria has gained control over
the Yarmouk River Basin, and therefore their lack of commitment to Jordan’s
water rights is unacceptable.”
He said Jordan should enter a dialogue with
Syria and complain about what happens “as what happened was a blatant violation of
Jordan’s water rights”.
While “the quantities that we used to receive from
Yarmouk River were huge, exceeding 350 million cubic meters annually, today
Al-Wahdah Dam does not contain more than 10–15 million cubic meters,” he said.
Citing various credible sources,
Climate Diplomacy
reports that Jordan and Syria reached an agreement in 1953 over the management
of the Yarmouk River. Without specifying clear water allocations for each
country, Jordan and Syria agreed to construct several dams along the Yarmouk in
order to store irrigation water and generate hydropower.
In 1987, the 1953 agreement was revised and a new
treaty was signed, elaborating on aspects of the main dam of the irrigation
project — the Maqarin Dam, also known as Unity Dam, and Wahdah Dam, according
to Climate Diplomacy.
In that treaty, Jordan was required to bear all the
costs related to the dam, from planning to maintenance. The agreement also
bound Syria to release 208 million cubic meters water per year to Jordan and
allowed the former to build 25 dams on the Yarmouk River.
In 2001, a third bilateral agreement on the Yarmouk
River was signed, in which the size and storage capacity of the dam were
reduced. It was only in 2003 that Jordan and Syria reached a final agreement on
a plan for the Wahdah dam at the border between Syria and Jordan, and its
construction started in 2004; it was completed in 2005.
The dam was built to provide a storage capacity of
110 million cubic meters of water. Originally the project aimed to provide 30
million cubic meters of water for agricultural purposes in addition to
supplying Amman with 50 million cubic meters of drinking water. It was supposed
to generate 18,800 megawatt/hour in the second stage.
Climate Diplomacy reports that an analysis of the
texts of the agreements shows a significant imbalance in favor of Syria.
Scholars explain that Jordan agreed to an “unfavorable water agreement” in 1987
due to the power asymmetry between Jordan and its “more powerful neighbor”.
According to former minister and water expert
Munther Haddadin, since 1954 Syria has only cooperated “intermittently” with
Jordan, when it was in its interests. In addition to the unfair treaty,
scholars and newspapers have reported “persistent violations” of the agreement
by Syria. Although the terms of the 1987 treaty entitled Syria to build 25
dams, it built 42 dams on the Yarmouk.
According to Climate Diplomacy, even though Jordan has been
asking Syria to remove its dams and wells for years, violations continued.
Syria refused to provide Jordan with the water share agreed to in the 1987
treaty, blaming the reduction of the flow on a decrease in precipitation. In
April 2012, Jordan called once again and end to “violations of the
water-sharing agreements”. Paradoxically, since 1994, Jordan has committed to
release 25mcm water/year from the Yarmouk to Israel.
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