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How IS uses water as weapon of war

The Islamic State's expanding control over the water resources of the Middle East will only compound the region's water crisis.
Peshmerga fighters stand guard at Mosul Dam in northern Iraq August 21, 2014. Despite its structural faults, the country's biggest dam at 3.6 km long, built by a German-Italian consortium in the 1980s, is a vital water and power source for Mosul, Iraq's largest northern city of 1.7 million residents. Control the dam and you control the 'keys' to the city. With that in mind, Islamic State insurgents who captured swathes of Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate, wrested control of the dam from Kurdish force

CAIRO — The Middle East is facing a water crisis. As the region experiences conflicts over water and faces the continuous risk of war breaking out, experts on water predict that the Islamic State (IS) aims to exacerbate this water crisis, as evidenced by its efforts to seize rivers and dams in Syria and Iraq, starting in 2013.

The Arab League has worked since 2008 to establish a new Arab convention on water usage, which would establish parameters on how to deal with the water crisis. However, the final draft is still under review because of the reservations of some member states.

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