The Iraq War underlined the significance of three main commodities in the Middle East, namely: labour power, oil and water. This text investigates the role of water in relation to the class struggle.
"To
the man who refuses his surplus water, Allah will say:
'Today, I refuse thee my favor, just as thou refused the surplus of
something that thou hadst not made thyself."
(Caponera
1954; quoted from Muhammad Ibn Isma'il, al-Bukhari,
Les Traditions Islamique, Vol. II, p. 108)
The
Iraq War underlined the significance of three main commodities in the
Middle East, namely: labour power, oil and water. This text investigates
the role of water in relation to the class struggle.
The Early
Domestication of Water
The earliest examples of water
worship date from the period 6000-4000 BC. The druids offered the water
goddess libations in the vain hope of arresting the Roman advance. In
Wales, water was drunk from human skulls in order to acquire the desirable
qualities of the skull's original owner. Persians personified the
water as Apas and prayed to them in order to rejuvenate the life-force
the goddesses had invested in nature. The invention of qanats
(sloped water canals), sometime between the tenth and eighth centuries
BC in Persia, witnessed the birth of a hereditary class of professionals
responsible for excavating and maintaining them. The Achaemenid Shahs
"actively encouraged the construction of qanats by granting the
profits for five generations to the people who dug them" (Dale
R. Lightfoot). At least five of the Mithraic (Persian 'mystico-pagan'
religion imported into the 'West' during Roman times) temples discovered
in Britain were all built close to streams or over springs. Around 500
BC, the Chinese became the first to understand the 'water cycle'
(sea evaporation to cloud formation to surface water). It was also the
Chinese who set up the first flood-warning system in 1574 on the Yellow
River, using "horseback riders who traveled faster than the water"
(Gioda).
Some societies were so dependent
on water, that the determinist historian Wittfogel coined the term 'water
civilizations' to describe them. Egypt, Assyria and the kingdom of
Saba' are clear examples. The latter's fall was symbolized by the
destruction of the only dam around Ma'rib (approx. 300 AD). Some Old
Testament scholars are of the firm opinion that "King David was
able to take Jerusalem by using the city's underground conduits, which
supplied water from the spring of Gihon"(Gioda).
"After the fall of Rome
(410 AD) and then Constantinople (1453 AD), the Arabs and the Persians
pursued and refined the tradition of fountains, water sports and hot
baths" (Gioda). Persian qanats were brought to Spain by Muslim
conquerors during the 8th century. In turn, the Spanish conquerors took
their qanat engineering skills to the Canary Islands, Peru, Chile and
Mexico. This enabled them to incorporate most of the land under their
influence into wheat farms and cattle ranches. At the beginning of the
7th century AD Pope Gregory acknowledged the obduracy of
paganism by recommending their temples be converted to Christian use,
instead of the previous policy of ruination. The well water was adopted
for the Christian rites of baptism and hand-washing. The transition
became allegorized in the stories of saints battling with giants, monsters
and demons.
Da Vinci and Machiavelli were
very clear about the importance of water. In a failed plot they tried
to divert the course of the Arno River away from Florence's enemy, Pisa,
and to the sea through a series of navigable canals that would immensely
benefit Florentine commerce and security (Adam Garfinkle).
By the time of the Reformation
(16th century), the Church was strong enough to try strong-arm
tactics once more. Some well chapels were demolished, pilgrimages prohibited
and offenders chastised. The 'lower' classes attracted to holy
wells turned the ritual into Bacchus orgies, not unlike original football
festivals. The spa culture was a bourgeois response to plebian carnivalesque.
"But it was not until the eighteenth and, even more so, the nineteenth
century, with the rediscovery of the body and the health cult, that
the popularity of spas reached its height" (Gioda).
Gradually the magical holy
wells transmuted into devotionless 'wishing wells', and by the late
19th century, 'cursing wells' played an important role
in identifying criminals.
Commodification
of water
Water enjoys an unrivalled
position in nature's domain, precisely because "it symbolizes
the whole of potentiality; it is fons et origo, the source of
all possible existence" (Mircea Eliade). So much so that even "under
Roman law flowing water was considered to be public property, which
meant that rivers and their branches could not be commercialized. The
political and military power of the feudal system was limited by rural
communities for which water, by virtue of being continually renewed,
was a public property and could not be appropriated by feudal rights"
(Gioda).
Under capital, life becomes
survival, and water, a vital regulator of political economy. "Enclosures",
as some autonomist Marxists have correctly observed, "are not a
one time process exhausted at the dawn of capitalism. They are a regular
return on the path of accumulation and a structural component of the
class struggle" (Midnight Notes). Water deposits determine the
boundaries of enclosures, separating thirsty proletarians from podgy
masters. The resultant phony
water shortage becomes harnessed to a siege mentality- an essential
strategy for smothering dissent.
Water economists have employed
Sraffa's distinction between 'basic' versus 'non-basic' commodities
lately. Basic commodities enter into the production of all commodities,
while non-basics do not. Energy commodities (water included) are basic
commodities. In certain transitional periods, it is claimed, only with
price changes of the energy commodities can the average real wage be
reduced. The new fangled concept of 'virtual water' (J. A. Allan)
is one such attempt to increase the exchange value of water. It refers
to the water embedded in water-intensive commodities such as cereals.
It is argued that the economies that import cereals are getting a subsidized
bargain and should be grateful for this 'western' generosity.
Higher industries suck
up the surplus value produced at the bottom of the system through
this price structure, and in the process dictate the rhythm and extent
of lower forms of surplus value extraction. The Israeli hi-tech industry
not only guarantees Israel's military pre-eminence over her neighbors,
but just as crucially it catalyses agriculture's passage from absolute
to relative surplus value extraction for Jewish farmers, through
constant technological upgrading. Arab farmers, by contrast, are forced
to rely on the less productive methods of extending the working day,
and working harder in order to compensate for their lack of technology.
The military and economic superiority of the state of Israel can also
be harnessed to 'retard' rival states at the level of the formal
domination of capital. As we try to demonstrate later, the control of
water supplies becomes a vital method of ensuring this superiority.
Marx correctly observed that,
"it is not the absolute fertility of the soil, but its degree of
differentiation, the variety of its natural products, which forms the
natural basis for the social division of labour." He also noted
that in ancient societies such as Egypt, Lombardy, Holland, India, and
Persia, "artificial canals do not only supply the soil with the
water indispensable to it, but also carry down mineral fertilizers from
the hills, in the shape of sediments. The secret of the flourishing
state of industry in Spain and Sicily under the rule of the Arabs lay
in their irrigation works." Significantly, in the Middle East,
the problem is not only the total volume of water but the high evaporation
rate, which 'devalues' water as commodity.
Commodification
as policing
Capital commodifies water
by making use-value into exchange-value. Obviously, "something
cannot be a commodity unless someone lacks it." Commodification
is practiced whether shortage is caused 'naturally' or artificially.
The U.N. sponsored Rio earth summit of 1992, where hydro-economists
agreed to treat water as a commodity, capable of being traded, was a
formal recognition of this phenomenon.
The commodification of water,
the alienation of peasants from land (through territorial acquisition
of, say, fellaheen Arabs by Israel or the general capitalist
invasion of the countryside by the metropole), and the sedentarization
of nomadic population (as seen in Jordan and Iran) must, therefore,
be viewed as strategic elements of the same violation. The current attempt
by Israel to ethnically cleanse the Negev desert from Bedouin Arabs
in preparation for the next wave of Jewish settlers is part of this
'civilizing' strategy. In 1963 Moshe Dayan was quite explicit on
this: "We should transform the bedouin into an urban proletariat.
This will be a radical move, which means that the bedouin would not
live on this land with his herds, but would become an urban person who
comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on. The children would
go to school with their hair properly combed" (Chris Mc Greal).
To pressure the bedouin off the land, water (as well as electricity,
roads and welfare programmes) are withheld from them.
The data collected about aquifers
and water distribution is treated as state secrets, giving more 'advanced'
countries such as Israel and Turkey a scientific advantage over their
neighbors. The inapplicability of international water laws to arid countries
also works to the advantage of the militarily superior powers as it
allows them to use water as a bargaining chip. In fact, some believe
the 'international community' does not want international water
law at the present time (Tony Allan).
Commodified water becomes
an agent of policing hierarchies: national as well as social. "One
of the material foundations of the power of the state over the small
and unconnected producing organisms of India", writes Marx, "was
the regulation of the water supply. Its Mohammedan rulers understood
this better than their English successors. It is sufficient to recall
the famine of 1866, which cost the lives of more than a million Hindus
in the district of Orissa, in the Bengal Presidency".
Water conflicts
within Middle East/N Africa region
There are five major
disputes over water in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region:
control of the Karun or Shatt-al-Arab River (Iran and Iraq); Euphrates
and Tigris Rivers (Turkey, Syria, and Iraq); the Jordan River (Syria,
Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine); the coastal and mountain aquifers
(Israel and Palestine); and the Nile River (Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan).
Let us look more closely at some of these points of tension.
Lebanon
Technologically superior
countries and those perched upstream hold a decided advantage
over technologically backward and water-hungry downstream
neighbors. For instance, Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights
extended her water reserves to the Banias tributary, and since the 1982
invasion of Lebanon, Israel has maintained effective control over the
Hasbani tributary. In so doing Israel has fulfilled Chaim Weizmann's
dream of extending her northern border to the Litani river. Some analysts
believe "water itself has been a relatively minor factor in most
Israeli land acquisition, but the result of the acquisition of land
has been to exacerbate the gap between Palestinian and Israeli water
use" (James Hudson). However, no one can deny the existence of
'water piracy.' Israel restricts the expansion of Palestinian water
use in order to recharge upland aquifers, which feed wells on Israel's
coastal plain (James Hudson). It has been estimated that "Palestinians
have access only to about 18 percent of the ground water which is generated
on their territories" (James Hudson).
During the siege of Beirut
(1982) a small Israeli engineering unit "turned the wheel that
closed the valve controlling the supply to west Beirut; then they removed
the wheel and took it with them." The PLO resistance faltered soon
after.
Lebanon is also subjected to
Syrian 'Water Imperialism.' The 1991 treaty of friendship between
the two countries includes a "secret clause ensuring that Syrian
forces would guard and if necessary defend the source of river Yarmouk,
which rises in Lebanon before flowing into Syria." To underscore
the point, it should be remembered how the Israel-Syria talks became
stalled, at least in part, over the question of Syrian access to the
eastern shore of Lake Tiberius. And how Israel's decision to back
out of its water obligations under various agreements to Jordan and
Palestine has led to one crisis after another (Jad Isaac).
Egypt
At Camp David in 1978, Sadat
offered to divert 1 per cent of the Nile's flow to irrigate the Negev
Dessert of Israel, in return for Arab land. Mukhaberat (the Egyptian
Intelligence Services) leaked the details, in an attempt to bring down
Sadat. Although the coup failed, the ensuing anti-Sadat media campaign
created a hostile climate, culminating in his assassination in 1981
by the Jihad group. Israel's construction of new dams in Ethiopia,
which would inevitably diminish Nile's volume, is economic blackmail
in all but name. What Israel and Syria do to Lebanon and Jordan through
their military superiority, Turkey (an upstream riparian) does to Syria
and Iraq, by virtue of geographic ascendancy. Sudan and Ethiopia will
begin demanding more water from the Nile to meet growing developmental
needs. Egypt's position will become increasingly tenuous.
The nationalist /supra-nationalist
tensions intrinsic to capitalism, find an echo in the two strategies
proposed for water management: the integrationist faction (as
represented for instance by the World Bank), who following Churchill's
original concept, seek to create hydro-political units in the Middle
East; and the separatist wing who are happy exploiting the dynamics
of present boundaries. Both wings of the ruling class are, however,
united on the use of water as a weapon in the class struggle.
Iraq
The Saddam River (a 565 Km
waterway between Baghdad and Basra) is ostensibly designed to reclaim
polluted land, but more significantly the project aims to dislodge the
Marsh Arabs, dissidents and deserters who fled there after the abortive
uprising of 1991. This is a dual political and 'civilizing' project
which aims to annihilate a way of life and turn self-sufficient marginals
into wage-slaves. The Israeli state has been employing a similar strategy
for uprooting Arabs from their lands, since at least 1951. A related
ploy is to increase the salinity of downstream water to such an extent
that irrigation becomes impossible. Surplus peasants are forced to leave
the land and migrate. Whilst Israel has deployed such tactics with subtlety
against Palestinians, the Iraqi orgy of destruction during their retreat
from Kuwait included a 'scourge water' policy, when desalination
plants were damaged beyond repair. Bordiga once pointed out with regard
to the floods at Po valley: "Capital has become incapable of the
social function of transmitting the labour of past generations to the
future ones ... It does not want maintenance contracts, but huge building
deals; to enable this, huge natural cataclysms are insufficient -
capital creates human ones with ineluctable necessity, and makes post-war
reconstruction 'the business deal of the century.'" Although
Bordiga's comment should not over-generalized, it does seem to be
an accurate description of 'western' capital's current jockeying
for a post-Saddam 'reconstruction' scenario.
Turkey
The Turkish bourgeoisie is
using its dam and irrigation schemes to terraform its vast eastern
territory from low-yield small land-holdings to an army of wage slaves
for agri-business. This is not unique to Turkey as dam building is also
used in India to clear valleys where peasant struggle is high. However,
Turkey's $32 billion programme includes the building of 19 hydroelectric
power plants and 22 dams along the Euphrates, the Tigris and other rivers
in the impoverished southeast Anatolia region. The project is expected
to reduce the flow of the Euphrates by 30-50 percent within the next
fifty years as well as increasing the amount of salt, pesticides, fertilizers
and other pollutants entering the river. The Ataturk Dam alone meant
155 villages were submerged, the power base of Kurdish rebels wiped
out overnight. The 'Kurds' will then be cordoned off in reservations,
in a policy reminiscent of the US treatment of native Indian tribes
in previous centuries. Those 'Kurds' who decide to collaborate with
the central government will be 'integrated', the rest will remain
'differentiated'. Significantly, the Turkish ruling class has decided
to take on and subdue the Syrian and Iraqi states one at a time. First,
the Euphrates will be blocked bringing the Syrians to their knees, and,
once they have agreed to the price increases, the Tigris will be targeted
in order to win further concessions from the Iraqis. The water crisis
has helped accelerate a rapprochement between Iraq and Syria, which
have been bitter rivals for decades (Ed Blanche). Interestingly, Turkey
already ships water to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and now
it is negotiating to sell water to Israel.
Palestine
Israel's economic and technological
superiority shapes water shortage in Palestine. Israel has achieved
a position where 97 per cent of its GDP is generated from activities,
which only use five per cent of its water (Tony Allan).
At the same time as becoming
water sufficient, Israel suppresses Palestinian development of water
collection as a matter of strategic policy. Since 1967 Israel has allowed
Palestinians to drill only 13 wells in the West Bank. Even then Israel
insists that Palestinians use only the Israeli drilling company, Mekorot,
which can charge whatever it wants and schedule the work at its whim
(Jane Adas). Control of water is an indirect method of limiting Palestinian
population growth and development. Whereas Israel has the technological
capacity to treat and reuse waste water, Palestinian farmers cannot
afford the procedure. The same is true of desalination plants that are
beyond the means of Palestinians. Moreover, when Ariel Sharon was minister
of infrastructure, he insisted that all waste water, treated or not,
had to go to Israel (Jane Adas). Another favourite tactic of the Israeli
state is to negotiate separately with its Arab neighbours over water
distribution when the issues are clearly interdependent.
Attempts by racist revisionist
historians (Patrick Clawson) in recent years notwithstanding, we could
concur with orthodox historians that water was one of the underlying
causes of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war as well as a rallying cry for the
Intifada. After all, some 40 percent of Israel's water is obtained
from aquifers beneath the West Bank and Gaza (Christian Drake). Jewish
settlements consume 90-120 cubic meters per capita, whereas for Arab
settlements the consumption is only 25-35 cubic meters per capita.
Since Israel is now economically
capable of cutting water allocations to agriculture, it will probably
initiate 'water for peace' negotiations in the future. In fact,
some experts claim Israel can easily use 400 million cubic meters per
year less than the two billion per year it now demands (Tony Allan).
The reasons seem to be political and tied into giving Israel a stronger
hand in the 'Peace Process'.
Conclusions
As post-boom governments of
the region (with the exception of Israel and Turkey) fail to turn their
population increase into capitalist advantage (as earlier capitalist
powers such as USA and Britain managed so admirably in the 19th century),
the commodification of water will exacerbate regional socio-economic
variations. Tourism, instead of aiding in 'development', may be
used as an excuse to cement existing superiority. After all, with tourism
comes a concern with the quality of water, toxic chemicals and air pollutants.
Already industries related to environmental technology (especially US-based
ones) are invading the region. In Saudi Arabia, for example, US companies
hold a 60 per cent market share and in Egypt (the largest single Middle
East market for environmental technologies) they hold a 45 percent share
(Josh Martin). Whilst individual companies may only be after profit,
'western' (and Japanese) governments will use this lever to exert
socio-political pressure. Will we in the future witness the construction
and maintenance of water-wasteful tourist attractions such as golf courses
in the Middle East as proletarians are increasingly denied basic needs?
'Western' capitalists
are using water to reverse decades of 'dependency' they claim to
have endured at the hands of oil-producing Middle Eastern countries.
For instance 'western' experts are encouraging "the reallocation
of water from comparatively low-value use, such, as agriculture, to
essential domestic use and higher-value, industrial uses" (Christian
Drake). However, such a policy creates increased reliance upon food
importation. Another ploy is to engineer a technical division of labour
by discouraging the irrigation of 'water-consumptive' crops such
as cotton, rice and sugarcane. Reactionaries such as Patrick Clawson
are pursuing the concept of 'virtual water' (i.e. water that is
embedded in water-intensive commodities such as wheat). Once the policy
has been accepted by MENA (Middle Eastern & North African) countries,
the 'subsidized' virtual water will be commodified. Furthermore,
the US policy seems to be aimed at maintaining the regional hegemony
of friendly states at each river basin. Thus Turkey is given the green
light to control the Tigris-Euphrates valley, Egypt takes care of the
Nile basin and Israel rules supreme over the Jordan-Yarmuk waters.
Capitalist 'modernisation'
is also responsible for draining much of the area's water. For instance,
"the qanats in the oases of central Arabia appear to have died,
probably after the 1930s when pumps installed by US agricultural missions
and Aramco began withdrawing large quantities of water in these areas"
(Dale R. Lightfoot). Capitalist corporations are expanding their water
operations into new fields. "In India", for example, "whole
river systems, such as the River Bhavani in Tamil Nadu state, have been
sold to Coca-Cola even as the state is suffering the worst drought in
living memory" (Maude Barlow). The bottled water industry is growing
at an annual rate of 20% and super-tankers and giant sealed water bags
are being constructed to transport vast amounts of water to paying customers
(Maude Barlow).
And yet capital's apparent
supremacy conceals fissures of vulnerability. As surplus value from
sectors with a low organic composition of capital become congealed in
sectors with a high organic composition, the smallest monkey wrench
can wreak havoc. Machines and information industry are deployed to counter
the falling rate of profit, but bourgeois success proves partial and
short-term. This lack of control represents itself in ideological attempts
to bring order to chaos. Yet both structuralism and post-structuralism
have failed to impose bourgeois hegemony on the proletariat.
Water disputes are becoming
evermore entangled. Riots over water shortage have been reported in
Iran. This whilst 300 were drowned from flooding in another part of
the country. In South African townships, "entire communities react
to the arrival of new water meters by revolting, smashing the meters
and chasing away the installers" (Naomi Klein). Desertification
is becoming increasingly severe in parts of Western Europe and the USA.
Portugal and Spain fight over water, as do Argentina and Brazil. We
live in a capitalist world where "every eight seconds a child dies
of water-born disease. By 2025 ... two-third of the world's people
will not have enough water for the basics of life" (Maude Barlow).
Structuralism and post-structuralism are manifestations of bourgeois
fear, doomed attempts to control the uncontrollable.
******************************
'Impending' Gulf War II
Series, Leaflet Three, 8.03.2003
Address for correspondence:
Melancholic Troglodytes, c/o 56a Infoshop, 56 Crampton Street, Walworth,
London SE17 3AE, United Kingdom.
Email: meltrogs1 (at) hotmail.com
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