By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--August 18, 2014
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“We told the Iraqi government a month ago that we needed to protect this strategic structure,” said Shirouk al-Abayachi, a member of the Iraq parliament for the Civil Democratic Alliance, and previously an adviser to the Ministry of Water Resources. “Any group manipulating this dam away from its original purpose is dangerous.”
ISIS is now in a position to do exactly that, and the consequences could be devastating. The group has several ways to leverage its control of the dam, say experts. “One of the things Saddam Hussein was really good at in his reign was choking off water supplies to Shiites in the south,” said Christopher Harmer, who is a senior analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, and who served several stints with the U.S. army in Iraq. “ISIS now controls the water flowing into Baghdad and to the agrarian areas south of Baghdad. They are in a position to impose a famine on the rest of Iraq.” Alternatively, the militants could destroy the dam, sending a 60-ft wave ripping down the Tigris River, washing away Mosul, a city of 1.5 million people, and days later flooding Baghdad with meters of water. ISIS is unlikely to do that while Mosul remains under its control. But it means that Iraqi forces must take control of the dam, said Harmer, before making a move on Mosul.It's that last proposition that sends shivers down the spine. From the perspective of ISIS, if the U.S. and its Iraqi/Kurdish allies actually make headway and appear to be poised to re-take the dam, why not just destroy it? A 60-foot wave ripping down the Tigris River that obliterates the entire city of Mosul? Knowing what we know about ISIS, what conceivable reason would they have to object to that? It sounds like a pretty efficient way to commit mass murder, and ISIS is all about that. If this sounds to you a little like a 24 episode, I'm right there with you. But I doubt there's a real-life Jack Bauer available to swoop in, personally gun down 400 or 500 ISIS murderers (can the media please stop calling them "militants"?) and retake the facility with no damage to it, to the river or to the cities in its path. The Mosul Dam was originally constructed on Saddam Hussein's orders largely as a monument to himself. Let's pray it doesn't end up crashing down like his statue did.
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