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Drought, dams, and survival: linking
water to conflict and cooperation in
Syria’s civil war
a
Andrea Beck
a
Department of Bioresource Engineering, McGill University, 21111
Lakeshore Road, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC H9X 3V9, Canada
Published online: 03 Jan 2014.
To cite this article: Andrea Beck , International Affairs Forum (2014): Drought, dams, and survival:
linking water to conflict and cooperation in Syria’s civil war, International Affairs Forum, DOI:
10.1080/23258020.2013.864877
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International Affairs Forum, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23258020.2013.864877
Drought, dams, and survival: linking water to conflict and cooperation
in Syria’s civil war
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Andrea Beck*
Department of Bioresource Engineering, McGill University, 21111 Lakeshore Road, Sainte-Anne-deBellevue, QC H9X 3V9, Canada
In an attempt to contribute to the literature on natural resources and civil war, this
paper addresses the role of water in the ongoing armed struggle in Syria. It examines
the question “To what extent is water linked to conflict and cooperation in Syria’s civil
war?” Based on an analysis of scholarly work and media reports, it is argued that water
is closely linked to the violent conflict in Syria through its roles as a contributing cause
to the 2011 uprising; a strategic tool and military target; and a means of survival for
IDPs and refugees. Going beyond assessing the water-conflict nexus, the paper also
shows how water could help foster transboundary cooperation and peacebuilding in the
Syrian context. Although the civil war’s outcome is still uncertain, the importance of
water to all facets of society might eventually help restore Syria’s political, social, and
economic fabric while promoting regional stability.
Keywords: water; civil war; Syria; transboundary cooperation; peacebuilding
Introduction
Since the late 1990s, scholars have become increasingly concerned about the relationship
between natural resources and civil war. As Ross (2004, p. 337) notes, much of this
research has been motivated by a series of prominent conflicts in countries such as
Angola, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Sierra Leone,
and Sudan. In this connection, the linkages of civil wars to fossil fuels and “lootable”
commodities – including gemstones, minerals, timber, and narcotics – have received
substantial attention from academics (see, for example, Auty, 2004; Le Billon, 2001,
2005; Lujala, 2010; Ross, 2004, 2006). However, few of these studies address themselves
specifically to the links between civil war and water, arguably “the critical resource of the
twenty-first century” (Priscoli & Wolf, 2009, p. xxii).
From an inter-state point of view, Yoffe, Wolf, and Giordano (2003) in a major
research project have demonstrated that shared water resources predominantly act as a
source of cooperation rather than conflict. With respect to the intra-state level, however,
the current state of scholarly debate is less clear. In an earlier article, Gleick (1993)
suggests that growing water scarcity in many places around the world might increase the
likelihood of water-induced conflicts, possibly also at the community and subnational
levels. In a quantitative replication of a previous study (Hauge & Ellingsen, 1998),
however, Theisen (2008) finds little support for the so-called “eco-scarcity theories,”
that is, the supposed causal link between resource scarcity – including water scarcity –
and civil conflict. In contrast, case study work by Hagan and Kaiser (2011) on the conflict
*Email: [email protected]
© 2014 Center for International Relations
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A. Beck
in Darfur suggests that desertification and famine intensified disputes over land and water
resources, which eventually exacerbated socially constructed divisions between Arabs and
Black Africans. In addition, they argue that state-led attacks on water supplies – including
scorched earth tactics and systematic poisoning of wells – caused massive displacement of
Black African populations and thereby contributed to the genocide in the region.
As is apparent from this brief survey of the literature, the relationship between water
and internal armed conflict still merits revisiting. In an attempt to contribute to the current
debate over the water–civil war nexus, this paper uses the ongoing violent struggle in
Syria as a case study, and addresses the question “To what extent is water linked to
conflict and cooperation in Syria’s civil war?” In order to answer this question, the paper
is organized as follows. It begins by setting out some brief background information about
the origins and evolution of the civil war in Syria. Thereafter, the linkages between water
and conflict in the Syrian context will be examined. Based on scholarly work and media
reports, the analysis proceeds along three dimensions, looking at water as a contributing
cause to the 2011 uprising; water as a strategic tool and military target; and water as a
means of survival for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees. The next part
analyzes possible linkages between water and cooperation during and beyond the Syrian
civil war. In particular, the potential contributions of water to Turkish–Syrian regional
cooperation and post-conflict peacebuilding will be addressed.
Taken together, the paper reaches two main conclusions. First, it argues that close
linkages exist between water and conflict in the ongoing Syrian civil war. Most notably,
water scarcity and recurrent drought can be identified as significant contributing causes to
the 2011 uprising, and hydropower dams have served as strategic tools and military
targets for both government and opposition forces. In addition, lack of safe and sufficient
drinking water and sanitation constitutes a threat to the survival and human well-being of
millions of IDPs and refugees in neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan.
Second, however, water might also perform important roles in maintaining regional
dialogue between Turkey and Syria, and in facilitating post-conflict peacebuilding in
the aftermath of the civil war. Although the final outcome of the conflict is still uncertain,
it is hoped that the importance of water to all facets of society will be recognized, thereby
allowing it to help restore Syria’s political, social, and economic fabric while promoting
regional cooperation and stability.
Syria’s civil war
The popular uprising in Syria started in the southwestern city of Dara’a in March 2011,
when security officers arrested and tortured children because they had scrawled on a wall
the slogan of the Arab Spring: “The people want the fall of the regime” (Noueihed &
Warren, 2012, p. 227). Reportedly, the insurrection came as a surprise to the regime of
president Bashar al-Assad, who in early 2011 – amid the turmoil in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya,
Bahrain, and Yemen – portrayed Syria as largely resistant and invulnerable to similar
domestic strife. Among observers, it was widely assumed that measures could easily be
taken by the regime to address limited difficulties within the country (Kilo, 2011, p. 432;
Lesch, 2011, p. 422). Thus, “[a]t first it seemed as if there might be no Arab Spring in
Syria, let alone a battle for its aftermath” (Noueihed & Warren, 2012, p. 226).
However, the upheaval against the Syrian regime rapidly spread across the country.
From the outset, the Assad government depicted the revolts as a foreign or Islamist
conspiracy, and launched official propaganda intended to inflame sectarian divisions
among the opposition (Kilo, 2011, p. 438; Wieland, 2013, p. 35). Initially, the regime’s
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response consisted of a mix of repression, appeasement, and co-optation; yet many
peaceful measures were perceived by the people as “last-minute concessions,” and
promises of limited political reform remained largely unfulfilled (Hinnebusch, 2012,
pp. 108–109; Wieland, 2013, p. 21). With anti-regime protests becoming more intense,
the Assad regime eventually resorted to violent means in order to suppress the prodemocracy movements. By mid-2012, fighting between government and opposition forces
had escalated to such an extent that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
officially classified the conflict in Syria as a civil war (MacFarquhar, 2012).
Over long stretches of time, the UN Security Council remained divided over the war
in Syria, and international attempts at diplomatic resolution – launched most
prominently by the UN and the Arab League – proved to be extremely difficult (Beck,
2013; Wieland, 2013, pp. 39–42). However, the Syrian conflict acquired a new sense of
urgency when credible allegations of chemical weapons use were first made in
March 2013 (International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2013, p. iv). In August 2013,
the Syrian armed forces were once more suspected of having employed chemical weapons
against civilians in a suburban area of Damascus. As a consequence, some parts of the
international community called for military intervention (Global Cop, Like It Or Not,
2013).
Yet, in Resolution 2118 of 27 September 2013, the UN Security Council reaffirmed
“. . .its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the
Syrian Arab Republic. . .” Rather than authorizing the use of armed force, the Council
responded to the alleged use of chemical weapons by establishing a joint mission by the
UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The main
mandate of the mission consists in overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons
capabilities (Security Council Approves Joint OPCW-UN Mission, 2013).
Linking water to conflict in Syria’s civil war
After having provided a brief overview of the Syrian civil war, the paper now turns to
examine the extent to which water is linked to the current violent conflict. To this end, this
section analyzes three dimensions, namely water as a contributing cause to the 2011
popular insurrection; water as a strategic tool and military target for both government and
opposition forces; and water as a means of survival for millions of people who were
internally displaced by the conflict or fled to neighboring countries in order to escape the
intensifying violence.
Water as a contributing cause
No single factor can account for the Syrian uprising that started in March 2011. Rather, as
suggested by Kilo (2011, pp. 432–438), a crisis of multiple dimensions – political, social,
and national – had developed in Syria over the past decades, and finally escalated into a
popular rebellion. Important elements of the crisis include long-standing assimilation and
containment of the middle class as an independent political force; repression by the
security apparatus; indefinite delay of structural political reforms; high levels of administrative corruption; high youth unemployment rates; and increasing income disparities
after the introduction of economic liberalization reforms. In Wieland’s (2013) interpretation, al-Assad and his Ba’athist regime repeatedly failed to respond to the crisis by not
taking advantage of opportunities for change. Cumulatively, al-Assad’s “decade of lost
chances” led to a point of no return. Empowered by the internet and social media, and
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observing the successes of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt, large sections of Syrian
society – including a new generation of mostly educated and unemployed young people –
were eventually mobilized into action (Kilo, 2011, p. 437; for a discussion of the role of
new media in the uprising, see Almqvist, 2013).
A variety of variables were thus working together to produce the popular insurrection
in Syria that gradually turned into a civil war. Given the principal concern of this paper,
the question arises of how water is linked to this complex web of causal connections. As
suggested by Femia and Werrell (2012), water shortages – intensified by rapid population
growth and mismanagement of natural resources, and leading to internal mass displacement and rural disaffection – provide a significant part of the explanation for the current
crisis in Syria. A similar argument is made by Gleick (2013), who suggests that the Syrian
conflict has intricate but direct connections to water issues. The following paragraphs will
discuss the suggested underlying causal mechanism in more detail.
To begin with, most parts of Syria are either arid or semi-arid, thus experiencing high
physical water scarcity. Precipitation varies considerably across spatial and temporal
scales, and has tended to diminish since the early 1980s. Likewise, surface water flows
in the Euphrates–Tigris River Basin – which is shared among the three riparians Turkey,
Syria, and Iraq – show high levels of seasonal variation. Regarding groundwater, nonrenewable resources in Syrian aquifers have steadily been reduced by over-exploitation.
As a result, Syria has long been facing serious problems related to water scarcity, and
climate change is projected to aggravate these difficulties in the future (Juusola, 2010, pp.
21–23; Kibaroglu & Scheumann, 2013, p. 282).
Over the past decades, several factors have contributed to further exacerbate Syria’s
acute water scarcity problems. First, the fact that the country’s water resources are
diminishing at a rapid pace is often attributed to demographic developments. With the
population growing at an average rate of 3.1% between 1975 and 2002, pressures on
Syrian water resources were increasing accordingly (Barnes, 2009, p. 513). Second, the
Syrian government long promoted agricultural policies that encouraged unsustainable and
inefficient irrigated cultivation of water-intensive crops such as wheat and cotton, and
thereby encouraged severe mismanagement of the country’s scarce natural resources
(Hole, 2009, p. 9; Juusola, 2010, pp. 27–29; for the underlying rationale of these policies,
see Barnes, 2009, pp. 520–525). Third, as will be further discussed below, Turkey in the
1970s began to develop extensive dams and irrigation schemes on the upper reaches of the
Euphrates and Tigris Rivers – including the Southeast Anatolia Development Project
(GAP, in its Turkish acronym) – which caused a reduction in downstream flows and a
decrease in sediment loads for Syria (Hole, 2009, p. 10; for a more detailed discussion of
Turkish foreign water policy in general and GAP in particular, see Çarkoglu & Eder,
2001; Gruen, 2000; Turan, 2004).
In the period 2006–2011, Syria experienced an extraordinarily severe and prolonged
drought, and its northeastern part – the “traditional breadbasket of Syria” – was particularly affected (Juusola, 2010, pp. 23–24). According to the 2009 UN Syria Drought
Response Plan, the drought reached approximately 1.3 million inhabitants of eastern
Syria, and more than 800,000 of them lost almost all their livelihoods and were facing
extreme hardship as a result (United Nations, 2009, p. 1). Overall, recurrent waves of
drought caused internal mass displacements from rural to urban areas, especially to the
outskirts of cities like Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Damascus, and Dara’a. As Friedman (2013)
suggests, “[s]ome of those small towns swelled from 2,000 people to 400,000 in a decade
or so.” Juusola (2010, p. 27) estimates that “[t]he internal displacement is the largest in the
history of modern Syria.” Yet, the Syrian government failed to adequately respond to the
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influx of drought refugees into urban centers. Although some measures were taken to
mitigate their suffering, critics argue that the response was too slow and inefficient in
implementation (2010, pp. 30–31).
As early as 2008, the US embassy in Damascus issued a warning that the population
displacements caused by the droughts “could act as a multiplier on social and economic
pressures already at play and undermine stability in Syria.” (quoted in Gleick, 2013)
Similarly, in 2010, Juusola (2010, p. 32) warned that the drought in the northeastern areas
was “. . .a risk to political stability in Syria, where water security problems are heavily
linked to food security as well as to the state’s ability to provide jobs for the population.”
In 2011, these warnings eventually seemed to turn into reality. As Arnold (2013) puts it,
“Dara’a is a mostly agricultural community in a region that has suffered an unrelenting
drought since 2001. . .it’s no accident that Syria’s civil war began there. . .The pattern of
the protests followed the rural path of the drought.” Taken together, an argument can thus
be made that severe water scarcity – combined with the government’s failure to find
adequate responses to drought-induced mass displacements – constitutes an important
contributing cause to the uprising and ensuing civil war in Syria.
Water as a strategic tool and military target
Beyond its role as a contributing cause, water has continued to play an important part in
the escalating violence between the regime and armed opposition groups in Syria. In
particular, over the course of the conflict, rebel forces have captured strategic hydroelectric dams on the Euphrates River, which in response were targeted by government
military units.
In November 2012, opposition forces seized control over the Tishrin dam near the city
of Aleppo. The dam was regarded as a strategic asset due to its role as electricity provider
and communications junction between Aleppo and the eastern part of Syria (Syria Rebels
Build Momentum, 2012). In February 2013, anti-Assad forces also captured the Tabqa
dam upstream from the city of Raqqah and southeast of Aleppo. Given that the dam is the
largest hydropower structure in Syria and used to generate a majority of electricity for
urban consumption, the opposition’s seizure of the dam was seen as another strategic
setback for the government (Gleick, 2013; Oweis & Evans, 2013). As Saad and Gladstone
(2013) argue, control of the Tabqa dam “. . .would give [the rebel forces] significant
control over a vital reservoir and what remains of the sporadic power supplies in their
war-ravaged country,” and could serve as a potential weapon of retaliation for the
systematic denial of electricity by the regime. In response, the Syrian air force allegedly
launched a series of deliberate attacks on the Tabqa dam in September 2013, igniting fears
of massive flood in the mostly rebel-held area (Syria: Assad Strikes Euphrates Dam,
2013). According to representatives of the Syrian National Council (SNC), a coalition of
opposition groups, the attack on the dam set “a dangerous precedent” that “poses a
significant threat to millions of Syrians across the country, and in particular those residing
in the eastern provinces” (quoted in Atassi, 2013).
Water as a means of survival
With violent attacks between government and opposition forces intensifying, water has
come to play yet another crucial role in the Syrian conflict, namely as a means of survival
for countless IDPs and refugees. Within Syria itself, an estimated 2–5 million people have
been displaced by the civil war. In March 2013, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
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(UNHCR) announced that 1 million people had fled Syria since the onset of the violence,
with the true number likely to be significantly higher. Most of these refugees have sought
shelter in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, as well as in Iraq and Egypt (Burki, 2013, p. 296).
However, the humanitarian situation in many camps and communities where IDPs and
refugees have gathered is alarming. Inside Syrian borders, basic humanitarian aid is often
not reaching rebel-controlled areas. In neighboring countries, the provision of safe and
sufficient drinking water and sanitation has become a challenge due to the steadily
growing influx of refugees from Syria. For example, in some locations in Lebanon,
drinking water assessments have shown high levels of contamination, and adequate
sanitation is often not available, which has led to an increase in diarrhoeal diseases
(2013, p. 297).
Water-related humanitarian challenges are particularly severe in Jordan. Although
international aid agencies and the Jordanian Ministry of Health (MOH) have made efforts
to provide basic health care and other humanitarian support to Syrian refugees, not all
needs are being adequately addressed (Murshidi, Hijjawi, Jeriesat, & Eltom, 2013, p.
206). The provision of water has become a particular challenge in this respect, given that
Jordan is itself a severely water-stressed country. As Sullivan (2013) notes, water
shortages have intensified considerably since the arrival of Syrian refugees, especially
in the area surrounding the large Za’atari refugee camp. Although aid agencies are
adopting short-term measures such as the digging of additional wells, water scarcity in
the area is likely to worsen due to the growing number of refugees. In this connection,
Baker (2013) even suggests that “[c]ompetition between Syrian refugees and local
residents over limited resources, from water to electricity, food, schooling, housing and
health care could boil over, potentially causing unrest in one of the few stable countries
left in the Middle East.”
Linking water to cooperation in Syria’s civil war
As the preceding discussion has shown, water is closely related to several aspects of the
conflict in Syria, including its origins; strategic tools and military targets; as well as
humanitarian concerns in the ensuing refugee crisis. With this critical recognition, this
section now moves beyond the water-conflict nexus, and examines the extent to which
water may be linked to Turkish–Syrian regional cooperation, as well as post-conflict
peacebuilding in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war.
Water and regional cooperation
Since the beginning of the Arab Spring in Syria, bilateral relations with Turkey have
deteriorated considerably. This deterioration constitutes a rapid and radical deviation from
the Turkish–Syrian friendship that characterized much of the 2000s. In fact, it seems fair
to say that since the signing of the 1998 Adana Agreement, in which Syria pledged to end
support for Kurdish separatists (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK), “. . .a golden era
began in Turkish-Syrian relations.” When Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (JDP)
came to power in 2002, bilateral ties improved even further, to the extent that lifting of
visa requirements, increasing trade and commercial ties, and common cabinet meetings
were achieved (Demirtaş, 2013, p. 116).
However, this era of friendship came to an end in light of the Syrian government’s
violent repression of popular protest movements. While Turkey had initially adopted a
cautious attitude toward the events in Syria and tried to promote peaceful reforms through
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“back-door diplomacy,” the JDP changed its course in mid-2011 and strengthened its
support for the Syrian opposition. When a Turkish jet was shot down by Syrian forces in
June 2012, and violent confrontations along the border led to the killing of several Turkish
civilians, the government in Ankara began to build up its military defense capabilities in
the border region (Demirtaş, 2013, pp. 116–117; Ilgit & Davis, 2013).
Given the Assad regime’s unrelenting stance in the Syrian civil war and the conflict’s
potential regional spill-over effects, bilateral relations between Turkey and Syria are
unlikely to improve in the short term. In this context, however, water could turn out to
be an important mechanism for maintaining bilateral communication, albeit possibly at
lower levels. In fact, transboundary water management initiatives have often provided a
venue for achieving inter-state confidence-building and cooperation, even during times of
war. The continuation of water cooperation over the Indus River between India and
Pakistan during the 1965 Kashmir war (Zawahri, 2009, pp. 297–299) and the secret
“Picnic Table Talks” between Israel and Jordan to manage the Jordan River (Wolf &
Newton, 2009, pp. 201, 203) are examples of this point.
Inter-riparian competition over the shared water resources of the Euphrates–Tigris
River Basin was intense during the period 1960–1990s due to large-scale unilateral water
projects such as GAP, as well as complex linkages between water and other security
concerns. However, transboundary water politics among Turkey, Syria, and Iraq improved
markedly in the first decade of the 2000s (Kibaroglu & Scheumann, 2013, pp. 280–289).
For example, in 2005, a track-two initiative – the Euphrates-Tigris Initiative for
Cooperation (ETIC) – was established, and in 2008, the three riparians agreed to create
a joint water institute (2013, pp. 295–296). In 2009, Syria and Turkey also agreed to build
a joint dam on the Orontes River, another transboundary watercourse in the region. The
signing of the official protocol on this so-called “Friendship Dam” has been described as
“. . .a breakthrough in Turkish-Syrian hydropolitics and also in wider political relations”
(2013, p. 292).
The recent deterioration in Turkish–Syrian relations notwithstanding, work on the
Orontes dam was delayed but was still ongoing as of July 2012 (Cengiz, 2012). Indeed, as
Kibaroglu and Scheumann (2013, p. 281) conclude,
. . .even in the midst of the recent political crisis between Turkey and Syria, partial institutionalization of water cooperation and growing networks of water dialogue at both the
governmental and nongovernmental levels have continued to serve as open channels for
easing the tensions.
Despite the recent bilateral crisis between Syria and Turkey, transboundary waters have
thus continued to serve as a mechanism for maintaining communication and cooperation,
however modest and low-level. Given the fact that most of the Euphrates is now in the
hands of Syrian opposition groups (see map in The Tomahawks Fly, 2013), the strategic
importance of the Orontes waters to the Syrian regime is likely to increase. Eventually,
this could provide Turkey with some additional leverage over Damascus in order to
achieve a peaceful resolution of the Syrian civil war.
Water and peacebuilding
At the time of this writing, the final outcome of the Syrian civil war is still uncertain. Yet,
it is clear that once the conflict ends, the challenges lying ahead of post-conflict Syria are
likely to be enormous. As suggested by Wieland (2013, p. 42), “[n]o matter how events in
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Syria unfold, it has been shaken beyond return, domestic power structures are shifting,
and the regime has destroyed its legacy.” In economic terms, the civil war has already
destroyed a large part of Syria’s infrastructure, including the health sector. Moreover, food
is becoming scarcer and increasingly expensive, while the currency is collapsing and
entire industries have stopped operating (Putz, 2013).
As the civil war continues to devastate Syria’s political, social, and economic fabric, a
universally agreed-upon transition plan is still lacking. However, a number of high-profile
documents have been produced, including the UN-backed Geneva Communiqué (Action
Group for Syria, 2012) and a report by the so-called The Day After Project (German
Institute for International and Security Affairs [SWP], 2012). Both documents emphasize
a myriad of aspects and challenges involved in a possible Syrian-led transition, including
humanitarian relief; strengthening the rule of the law; transitional justice; constitutionmaking; and security sector reform. Implementation of these elements in a post-conflict
environment will take time, resources and – above all – strong support and trust on the
part of the Syrian people.
Given the magnitude of the challenge, water resources will by no means be sufficient
to achieve a peaceful transition and successful post-conflict peacebuilding in Syria. Yet,
water might eventually assume important functions in assisting these tasks, in at least two
important senses. First, water is likely to be critical in providing immediate humanitarian
relief in the conflict’s aftermath, and in restoring the functioning of the Syrian economy –
including the agricultural sector – thereby helping to achieve food security. Second, as
shown by Burt and Keiru (2011) in their case studies of the DRC, Afghanistan, and
Liberia, post-conflict water management initiatives at the community level can help
restore basic trust among alienated groups, encourage social inclusion, and reinforce
democratic values and practices (see also Weinthal, Troell, & Nakayama, 2011, p. 143).
Given the increasing sectarian divisions and intensifying violence in the Syrian conflict,
such initiatives aimed at reunifying divided communities may be indispensable when
rebuilding the country in the aftermath of war.
Conclusion
This paper has addressed the question “To what extent is water linked to conflict and
cooperation in Syria’s civil war?” In conclusion, two principal results stand out. First,
water is closely linked to three dimensions of conflict in the ongoing Syrian civil war. In
particular, intense water scarcity and recurrent drought have been identified as important
contributing causes to the 2011 uprising, and hydropower dams have served as strategic
tools and military targets for both the regime and opposition forces. Furthermore, the lack
of safe and sufficient drinking water and sanitation threatens the survival and human wellbeing of millions of IDPs and refugees who have fled the violence in Syria.
Second, however, this paper has sought to move beyond the water-conflict nexus by
examining how water might also act as a source of cooperation during and after Syria’s
civil war. As the foregoing analysis has shown, transboundary waters have continued to
provide a venue for Turkish–Syrian regional cooperation, and might possibly also provide
Turkey with a degree of leverage in order to encourage a peaceful resolution to the
conflict in Syria. Moreover, although the final outcome of the civil war is yet uncertain,
water is likely to assume important functions in post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery.
Overall, it can only be hoped that the importance of water to all facets of society will be
recognized, thereby allowing it to help restore Syria’s political, social, and economic
fabric while at the same time promoting cooperative relations at the regional level.
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On a more general level, this paper has attempted to make a contribution to the
growing literature on natural resources and civil war. Taken together, the present case
study on water, conflict, and cooperation within the Syrian context demonstrates that the
linkages between water and civil war are multifaceted and can go well beyond cause-andeffect relationships. As has been shown in the paper, water is closely connected to various
aspects of the Syrian civil war, including its origins, conduct, humanitarian consequences
– and possibly also its termination and aftermath. Due to the single-case study approach,
the extent to which these results can be generalized is limited. However, it is hoped that
this paper will provide an impetus for further empirical research on the relationship
between water resources and intra-state armed conflict, with particular attention to the
potential role of water as a catalyst for cooperation and peacebuilding.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Dr. Murray Clamen, Dr. Jan Adamowski, and Lara Sievers for their
valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks are also expressed to the German
Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for the provision of a full graduate scholarship at McGill
University.
Notes on contributor
Andrea Beck is currently pursuing her M.Sc. in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)
at McGill University. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from the Free University of Berlin, and
an M.A. in International Peace and Security from the Department of War Studies, King’s College
London. During her undergraduate program, she spent 1 year as a Fulbright scholar at Hampshire
College in the United States. Her main research interests include transboundary water management,
international water law, and diplomacy studies. Andrea previously worked for the German
Development Service (DED) in Malawi, and was a guest contributor to The Diplomatic Courier
and The Diplomat global affairs magazines, where she wrote about the challenges of mediation in
Syria and Chinese cultural diplomacy.
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