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| A map showing Moush Dam & Tel Afer |
The Mosul dam has been a subject of international concern
since Saddam insisted that it was built and numerous experts have raised
concerns as to the threat that the dam poses to the hundreds of thousands of
people who live downstream from it and to the stability of Iraq itself.
ISISداعش are
known to target dams as by taking a dam they can control the water supply to
those that they are targeting or destroying a dam can have catastrophic
consequences to those ISIS wants to subjugate. A simple internet search for
Mosul dam will reveal the opportunity he represents to those wishing to gain
power or to destroy opposition.
In October 2007, the Independent newspaper UK carried the
following article by their Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn. The
headline of the article is a stark warning of the threat posed by the dam:
Iraqi dam burst 'would drown 500,000'
A
catastrophic failure of the largest dam in Iraq would send a wave 65ft high
hurtling down the valley of the river Tigris, killing up to 500,000 people, US
engineers warned yesterday.
The dam, which is near Mosul in the north
of the country, was built in 1984 on a bed of water-soluble rock and is in
imminent danger of collapse. "In terms of the internal erosion potential
of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world," said
a report by the US Army Corps of Engineers. "If a small problem [at] Mosul
dam occurs, failure is likely." The collapse of the two-mile long,
earth-filled dam would release eight billion cubic metres of water in the lake
behind it in a giant wave which would flood Mosul – a city of 1.7 million
people 20 miles downstream – to a depth of 60ft.
"A catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam would
result in flooding along the Tigris river all the way to Baghdad," the US
military commander General David Petraeus and the US ambassador Ryan Crocker
warned the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, in a letter on 3 May this
year. "Assuming a worst-case scenario, an instantaneous failure of Mosul
Dam filled to its maximum operating level could result in a flood wave 20m deep
at the city of Mosul, which would result in a significant loss of life and
property."
The frantic debate within the US and Iraqi governments
over the failing dam was kept secret for months to avoid public panic and
attracting the attention of insurgents. The US Army Corps of Engineers has
tried to monitor the deterioration and undertake remedial action.
The state of the dam and the experts' belief that it is
on the verge of collapse was first revealed by The Independent on 8 August.
"It could go at any minute," a senior aid worker, who knew of the
struggle by American and Iraqi engineers to save the dam, told this newspaper.
"The potential for disaster is very great."
The Independent's story was confirmed yesterday with the
release of a report by the US Special Inspector for Iraq Reconstruction, which
said that the dam's foundations could give away at any moment. It spells out
publicly the degree of alarm felt by the Corps of Engineers, which has directed
that American military equipment on the Tigris flood plain should be moved to
higher ground. The main problem is that the dam was "built in the wrong
place", according to Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Nineveh province,
of which Mosul is the capital. Construction of the dam, initially known as the
Saddam Dam, began in 1980 and was completed four years later when the lake
behind it began to fill.
"The dam was constructed on a foundation of marls,
soluble gypsum, anhydrite and karstic limestone that is continuously
dissolving," said a specialist at the US embassy in Baghdad. "The
dissolution creates an increased risk of dam failure."
The flat, Mesopotamian plain was the site of the biblical
flood where Noah launched his ark to escape the rising waters. Much of the
story was drawn from the legend of Gilgamesh, the ancient Mesopotamian hero,
which recounts the tale of a great inundation with details strikingly similar
to those in Genesis.
For millennia,Iraq was prone to floods as melting winter
snows in the mountains of Turkey filled the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In the
20th century, flooding was brought under control by an elaborate system of dams
and dykes. But these would be unable to cope with the vast quantities of water
which would be released if the Mosul Dam bursts.
The Independent was first told of the impending disaster
by a senior aid worker who feared that no one was doing much to prevent a
disaster. "It is a time bomb waiting to go off," he said.
"Everybody knows about the threat but they have other preoccupations and,
in the case of foreigners, it is now conveniently in Iraqi hands." He
added that some military radios issued to US personnel had panic buttons to
press when the dam began to give way.
The failings of the dam became clear soon after it was
built and, since the late 1980s, the main method used to strengthen the
foundations has been to pump liquid cement into them, or grouting. Since May
this year, the water level in the reservoir behind the dam has been lowered on
the advice of an international committee of experts appointed by the Iraqi
Ministry of Water Resources, which is now responsible for the project.
Cockburn makes reference to the concerns of both US and Iraqi
authorities that the dam’s weakness would attract insurgents. Un fortunately
the internet and other media sources have highlighted the problems associated
with the dam and the threat its collapse poses. It is essential that the dam is
protected and, in the absence of Iraqi ground forces, the peshmerga are the
only forces that could do so.
Saddam built the dam to try to curtail us by ensuring it does
not fall to ISIS we will not only be safeguarding our border with Mosul and
ISIS but taking a decisive act to safeguard countless Iraqi lives.
Latif Rashid, theex
minister in charge, continues to believe that disaster can be averted. But, if
the dam does break, there is nothing to stop a 65ft wall of water drowning
hundreds of thousands of people between Mosul and Baghdad.
