Authorities in
Iraq
's
autonomous
Kurdistan
area are building 11 dams and
plan dozens more, the region's agriculture minister said Thursday, in a move
that could raise tensions over water.
"There are 11 dams now under construction," Jameel Sulaiman told AFP.
"We have studies and designs to build 28 more," he added.
He said the dams currently under construction in three provinces of
Kurdistan
were
"small and medium size," with storage capacities ranging between one
million cubic meters (35 million cubic feet) to 10 million cubic meters.
He added that four were being built in Arbil, five in Sulaimaniyah and two in
Dohuk, but did not say when they would be completed.
"We are building these dams in order to develop the agriculture sector in
the region, and for water storage, because
Iraq
has
suffered droughts for the past several years," Sulaiman said.
Water is a major source of tension in
Iraq
,
especially between the
Kurdistan
region and other provinces.
In the multi-ethnic
Kirkuk
province, Arab farmers accuse the
Kurdistan
region of ruining them by closing the valves to a dam in winter.
A growing water deficit and dams built by
Iraq
's
neighbors have significantly reduced the water flow in a country that was until
the late 1950s a breadbasket of the Arab world.
A United Nations factsheet in October 2010 showed that while more rain fell in
2009 compared with 2008, the water situation in
Iraq
is
still critical. Rainfall is now 50% below average.