A similar dynamic exists in the Jordan basin. According to 1985 statistics, Israel received a significant amount of water—40 percent of its annual need—from the West Bank aquifer. Unlike Israel, however, Jordan has no watershed to rely on besides the Jordan River. It must depend on methods like rain catchment and underground or out-of-basin transfers to meet almost 54 percent of the nation’s water needs. For a country like Jordan that frequently suffers droughts, methods like rain catchment provide a very risky, unstable solution. The 1999 drought in Jordan and Syria further illustrates that neither country has sufficient irrigation to reduce their dependencies on rainfall. States like Syria, Iraq, and Jordan have a more dire need to share the Tigris-Euphrates or Jordan River basins than do Turkey or Israel, yet they do not have sufficient access to these supplies. This imbalance of water among the riparian states renders the entire water dispute uneven, with some nations in desperate need of the river basin water to survive and other nations with more flexibility in their water resources. Furthermore, the countries for which water resources are plentiful are coincidently also the upper-riparian countries that enjoy geographic advantages. Under the current system, influence is too heavily concentrated in one group of states. A more equitable distribution would guarantee a livable supply of water to nations without geographic advantage or resource flexibility.

Inequalities in Economy

Inequalities in economic positions among the riparian states produce fundamentally different qualities of regional development. This relationship can clearly be seen in the cases of Turkey, Syria and Iraq. While all three countries have experienced economic difficulties, Turkey has emerged with the strongest economy among the three.

Since the mid-1990s, Syria’s economy has been marked by unpaid debts and falling oil exports. In 1997 Syria fell behind in its payments of external debts, accumulating deficits nearing US$1.15 billion in that year alone. The future of Syrian oil looks dim, as older oil fields have reached maturity and oil companies are pessimistic about finding new oil reserves. The US has also applied strict economic sanctions under the Syria Accountability Act. The sanctions, which started in May 2004, ban most US exports to Syria, prohibit Syrian aircraft from taking off or landing in the United States, and ban the Commercial Bank of Syria from transactions with its US counterparts.

Iraq’s economy, also dependent on oil, had been declining even before the war. Its oil production continually decreased since 1999, falling from approximately three million barrels per day in 1999 to two million barrels per day in 2002. Living conditions in Iraq during this period has been said to be similar to those in the poorest African countries. Economic conditions for Iraqis saw no improvement after the US invasion. At the end of 2004, unemployment rose to a rate of 60 to 70 percent, while some 6.5 million citizens remain dependent on food rations for survival. According to Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science, a Norwegian research group, malnutrition in children between the ages of six months and five years actually increased after 2003. These persistent economic problems are prioritized over the issue of developing long-term solutions to water distribution.

The economic problems of these two lower riparian states create an inequality between their economies and that of Turkey. Although Turkey has battled inflation for almost two decades now, it has still been able to implement projects that maximize production of its water resources. GAP has already brought about positive changes in southeastern Turkey by providing citizens with jobs, electricity, food, recreation, and infrastructure. Despite its domestic benefits, Syria and Iraq fear that the project will be a footstep toward even greater disparity between the Tigris-Euphrates riparian countries.

The vast differences between the economies of Israel and Jordan further reveal the difficulties in sustaining successful cooperation between two water-needing countries. Neighboring Arab countries refer to Jordan as their “poor cousin.” Beginning in the 1980s, Jordan faced a harsh economic reality of deflation, external debts, and other economic problems arising from its lack of natural resources. Forced to import necessities like fuel and food, the government even pondered proposals to import water in the 1980s. Worsening deflation in 1987 caused a rise in import costs, resulting in an overall fall of average domestic prices. These problems have been somewhat alleviated since the reign of the two King Abdullahs, but they continue to play a defining role in Jordan’s economy. In contrast, Israel has a relatively flourishing economy with substantial agricultural products like cereals and fruits, and industrial products like cut diamonds.

In 1994 these two countries established a peace treaty including numerous articles pertaining to water allocation—giving hope to the potential for bilateral agreements on water sharing in general. Even so, arguments still arise frequently. One such argument became the source of the 1997 conflict concerning the treaty’s water clauses. The treaty had promised Jordan a total of 200 million cubic meters (MCM) of water from Israel annually, but had failed to specify exactly from where all this water would come, besides the Yarmuk River. Jordan was, therefore, only receiving 150 MCM of its promised water a year. The conflict was finally resolved after Israel promised to immediately send over 25 more MCM of water annually. This incident illustrates the difficulty of creating a working plan for cooperation. Even when countries have the desire and initiative to cooperate, developing a successful solution remains a complicated process.

Inequalities in Military Capacity

The military superiority of Turkey and Israel over their downstream neighbors is the final major component causing imbalance of power. Among the Tigris-Euphrates basin states, Turkey, once again, boasts the strongest military power. In 1998, Turkey had the second largest army in NATO, with advanced hardware from the US and Western Europe. Turkey’s military expenditure is also noticeably greater than that of Syria and Iraq. Inequality of military power contributes to the difficulty of cooperation, since it gives the state with military superiority the most influence in a plan for cooperation. In 1974, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq hastily mobilized his army for war against Syria after he saw the flow of the Euphrates decline almost 1,110 cubic yards per second. If a similar event were to occur again, Turkey, with its geographic, economic, and military superiority, would have immense advantage over Syria and Iraq.