Another American
Gift Of Death And Destruction To Iraq
Another American Gift Of
Death And Destruction To Iraq
Iraqis
who built dam say structure is increasingly precarious and describe government
response as ‘ridiculous’
Baghdad
resident Raad al-Quraishi expresses his concerns of flooding from the Mosul dam
Julian Borger World affairs editor
Wednesday
2 March 2016 07.00 GMTLast modified on Wednesday 2 March
23.45 GMT
9,512
Iraqi
engineers involved in building the Mosul dam 30 years ago have warned that the
risk of its imminent collapse and the consequent death toll could be even worse
than reported.
They
pointed out that pressure on the dam’s compromised structure was building up
rapidly as winter snows melted and more water flowed into the reservoir,
bringing it up to its maximum capacity, while the sluice gates normally used to
relieve that pressure were jammed shut.
The
Iraqi engineers also said the failure to replace machinery or assemble a full
workforce more than a year after Islamic State temporarily held the dam means that the chasms
in the porous rock under the dam were getting bigger and more dangerous every
day.
On
Wednesday, the Iraqi government announced it had signed a €273m (£210m)
contract with an Italian contractor to reinforce and maintain the Mosul dam for
18 months, following talks in New York between the Italian foreign minister,
Paolo Gentiloni, and US and Iraqi officials. Italy has said it plans to send
450 troops to protect the dam site, but it is unclear how long it will take to
replace damaged machinery and reassemble the required workforce.
The
engineers warned that potential loss of life from a sudden catastrophic
collapse of the Mosul dam could be even greater than the 500,000 officially
estimated, as they said many people could die in the resulting mass panic, with
a 20-metre-high flood wave hitting the city of Mosul and then rolling on down
the Tigris valley through Tikrit and Samarra to Baghdad.
One
of the Iraqi engineers, now living in Europe, described as “ridiculous” the
Iraqi government’s emergency policy of telling local people to move 6km (3.5
miles) from the river banks.
Nasrat
Adamo, the dam’s former chief engineer who spent most of his professional
career shoring it up in the face of fundamental flaws in its construction, said
that the structure would only survive with round-the-clock work with teams
filling in holes in the porous bedrock under the structure, a process known as
grouting. But that level of maintenance, dating back to just after the dam’s
construction in 1984, evaporated after the Isis occupation.
“We
used to have 300 people working 24 hours in three shifts but very few of these
workers have come back. There are perhaps 30 people there now,” Adamo said in a
telephone interview from Sweden, where he works as a consultant.
“The
machines for grouting have been looted. There is no cement supply. They can do
nothing. It is going from bad to worse, and it is urgent. All we can do is hold
our hearts.”
At
the same time as the bedrock is getting weaker and more porous, the water
pressure on the dam is building as spring meltwater flows into the reservoir
behind it. Giant gates that would normally be used to ease the pressure by
allowing water to run through are stuck.
“One
of them is jammed, and when one of them is closed the other one has to be
closed. They must work together,” Adamo said. “Otherwise, you get asymmetric
flow and that speeds up the erosion.”
Nadhir
al-Ansari, another Iraqi engineer from when the dam was built, also voiced
concern about the rising waters in the reservoir.
“The
fact that the bottom outlets are jammed is the thing that really worries us,”
said Ansari, now an engineering professor at the Luleå University of Technology
in Sweden.
“In April and May, there will be a lot more snow melting and it will
bring plenty of water into the reservoir. The water level is now 308 metres but
it will go up to over 330 metres. And the dam is not as before. The caverns
underneath have increased. I don’t think the dam will withstand that pressure.
“If
the dam fails, the water will arrive in Mosul in four hours. It will arrive in
Baghdad in 45 hours. Some people say there could be half a million people
killed, some say a million. I imagine it will be more in the absence of a good
evacuation plan.”
He
said the government policy response, calling on the local
population to move at least 6km from the river Tigris, was “ridiculous”. The US
embassy in Baghdad has urged American citizens to leave the area.
“What
are all these people, millions of people, supposed to do when they get 6km
away? There is no support for them there. Nothing to help them live.”
The
Mosul dam was first conceived in the 1950s, but its construction was postponed
because of the problematic geology of that section of the Tigris, where much of
the bedrock is water-soluble. It was finally built by Saddam Hussein’s regime
and seen at the time as a prestige project. At the time, Ansari was a
scientific consultant at the irrigation ministry.
Nobody
knows when it will fail. It could be a year from now. It could be tomorrow.
Nasrat
Adamo, the dam's former chief engineer
“I
went to visit the site and saw what kind of stone there was there. A lot of
gypsum and anhydrite, which are very soluble. I was really concerned; I told
the director general. He said: ‘Don’t worry. This is all being taken care of.’”
In
the preceding years, successive foreign consultants had pointed out the
weaknesses in the rock formations but all assured the Iraqi government the
problem could be solved by grouting. The decision to go ahead was pushed
through by one of the regime’s vice-presidents, Taha Yassin Ramadan.
“Ramadan
was very keen to have the dam,” Ansari said. “He wanted to show Saddam he was
doing something brilliant, and he came from Mosul, so he wanted to do something
that brought jobs to Mosul. This sped up the decision.”
The
dam was designed by a Swiss firm of consultants and built by a German-Italian
consortium in 1984. Water began seeping through in 1986, when it became
apparent that the geological issues were worse than the consultants had
predicted. From then on it required constant maintenance to fill the caverns
being hollowed out by water running through the soluble bedrock. A total of
95,000 tonnes of grout of different types were used over the dam’s lifetime.
“All
you are doing with grouting is prolonging the life of the dam. There is no
permanent solution except building another dam,” Ansari said. A second
structure, the Badush dam, was started 20km downstream, to prevent a
catastrophe in the event of the Mosul dam’s failure. But work on Badush halted
in the 1990s because of the pressure of sanctions, leaving it only 40%
complete.
An
international conference has been announced in Rome in April to discuss ways of
preventing a disaster, but by then it could already be too late.
“Nobody
knows when it will fail,” Adamo said. “It could be a year from now. It could be
tomorrow.”
Mosul Dam: Why the
battle for water matters in Iraq
By Alex MilnerBBC News
- 18 August 2014
The Mosul dam is the water
and electricity lifeline to the 1.7 million residents of Mosul
Struggle for Iraq
Whoever controls the
Mosul Dam, the largest in Iraq, controls most of the country's water and power
resource.
When
Saddam Hussein built the dam three decades ago, it was meant to serve as a
symbol of his leadership and Iraq's strength.
The
dam is the latest key strategic battleground in northern Iraq between militants
from Islamic State (IS), who took it on 7 August, and Kurdish and Iraqi forces
supported by American airpower.
Located
on the River Tigris about 50km (30 miles) upstream from the city of Mosul, the
dam controls the water and power supply to a large surrounding area in northern
Iraq.
Its
generators can produce 1010 megawatts of electricity, according to the website
of the Iraqi State Commission for Dams and Reservoirs.
The
structure also holds back over 12 billion cubic metres of water that are
crucial for irrigation in the farming areas of Iraq's western Nineveh province.
Instrument of war
However,
since its completion in the 1980s, the dam has required regular maintenance
involving injections of cement on areas of leakage.
The
US government has invested more than $30m (£17.9m) on monitoring and repairs,
working together with Iraqi teams.
Image caption
The black flags of jihadist
group Islamic State flew over the Mosul dam for 10 days before it was
recaptured by Kurdish and Iraqi ground forces
In
2007, the then commanding general of US forces in Iraq, David Petraeus, and the
then US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, warned Iraq's PM Nouri Maliki that
the structure was highly dangerous because it was built on unstable soil
foundation.
"A
catastrophic failure of Mosul dam would result in flooding along the Tigris
river all the way to Baghdad," they said in a letter.
"Assuming
a worst-case scenario, an instantaneous failure of Mosul dam filled to its
maximum operating level could result in a flood wave 20 metres (65.5ft) deep at
the city of Mosul," it said.
Writing
to Congress, President Obama cited the potentially massive loss of civilian
life and the possible threat to the US embassy in Baghdad.
Those
dangers, he wrote, were sufficient reasons for deploying air power to support
Kurdish forces trying to recapture the dam.
'Method in their
madness'
Relief
in Washington and Baghdad will only come when IS militants, who have sought
control of water resources before, have been stopped from using the dam as an
instrument of war.
The
deployment of air power by the US in support of Kurdish forces has shown how
seriously the White House takes the potential threat posed by IS control of the
dam.
The
Fallujah dam, in the Nuamiyah area of the city, in Iraq's western Anbar
province, fell under IS control in February.
However,
the group has so far failed in its attempts to capture the Haditha dam, Iraq's
second largest, from the army.
Image caption
The Tigris River crosses
Iraq and Syria at Fishkhabour, where displaced Yazidis have travelled to escape
the Islamic State advance
The
8km-long Haditha dam and its hydro-electrical facility, located to the
north-west of Baghdad, supply 30% of Iraq's electricity. Securing it was one of
the first objectives of US special forces invading Iraq in 2003.
With
the Mosul dam in its hands, the concern is that Islamic State could "flood
farmland and disrupt drinking water supplies, like it did with a smaller dam
near Fallujah this spring," wrote Keith Johnson in an article for Foreign
Policy last month.
In
May, a flood displaced an estimated 40,000 people between Fallujah and Abu
Ghraib.
Earlier
this month, IS militants reportedly closed eight of the Fallujah dam's 10 lock
gates that control the river flow, flooding land up the Euphrates river and
reducing water levels in Iraq's southern provinces, through which the river
passes.
Many
families were forced from their homes and troops were prevented from deploying,
Iraqi security officials said.
Reports
say the militants have now re-opened five of the dam's gates to relieve some
pressure, fearing their strategy might backfire if their stronghold of Fallujah
flooded.
Image caption Key Iraqi dams
taken or at risk of being taken by Islamic State
In
the days after they took over the Mosul dam, militants were reportedly
blackmailing frightened workers to either keep the facility going or lose their
pay.
Analysts
fear the Islamic State could now use the dam as leverage against the new Iraqi
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, by holding on to the territory around it in
return for continued water and power supply.
The
group already controls other key national assets - several oil and gas fields
in western Iraq and Syria.
"These
extremists are not just mad," says Salman Shaikh, director of the
Brookings Institution's Doha Centre in Qatar.
"There's
a method in their madness. They've managed to amass cash and natural resources,
both oil and water, the two most important things. And of course, they're going
to use those as a way of continuing to grow and strengthen."
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West
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