Title: Water as a Weapon in Syria and Iraq: The self-proclaimed Islamic State and the War for Water and Power
Author: Jillian M. Ebrahimi
Place of publication: US
Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA RENO
Release date: 2016

The self-proclaimed Islamic State is targeting water supplies throughout Syria and Iraq. This manipulation of water resources combined with seasonally hot and dry years, increasing populations and urbanization, and decrease in water quality, water security is soon to become a rare resource in the Tigris and Euphrates River Basin. For countries like Syria and Iraq, which rely almost exclusively on water from these rivers, the impact of the manipulation of these rivers by the self-proclaimed Islamic State is already leading to massive water shortages, starvation, disease, and displacement. The self-proclaimed Islamic State is diverting water, flooding communities, contaminating water sources, threatening destruction of dams, and controlling water only to sell it back to the governments and populations in the region. This thesis provides a chronology of water locations the self-proclaimed Islamic State has targeted and using the history and ideology of the organization provides predications of what the organization may do next.[1]