Around 210 BC, Arsaces III, one of the Parthian kings, destroys qanats (underground channels) in order to make it difficult for the attacking army of Seleucid Antiochus to advance toward the Parthian capital, Hecatompylos.
Historian M. Athar Ali writes that in Mughal India, in the 1260s, the water canals and reservoirs feeding Delhi were intentionally dried up “because the channels feeding it were dammed up by ‘dishonest men,’” referring to local protests over social and political conditions.
In 1957, Eastern Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) begins building the Kaptai Hydroelectric Dam on the Karnaphuli River in the Chittagong Hills Tract in the southeast. Completed in 1962, the dam flooded 655 square kilometers of land and displaced 100,000 people, most of them Jumma, or ethnic minorities in a country ruled by a Bengali majority. The displaced Jumma are offered little land or compensation and many flee to neighboring India. These conditions contributed to 20+ years of conflict.
Partition leaves Indus basin divided between India and Pakistan; disputes over irrigation water ensue, during which India stems flow of water into irrigation canals in Pakistan. Indus Waters Agreement reached in 1960 after 12 years of World Bank-led negotiations.
Discussions are held at the United Nations about using the Atat?rk Dam in Turkey to cut off flows of the Euphrates to Iraq.
Violence erupts when Karnataka, India rejects an Interim Order handed down by the Kaveri Waters Tribunal, set up by the Indian Supreme Court. The Tribunal was established in 1990 to settle two decades of dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over irrigation rights to the Kaveri River.
A bomb placed under a water tank explodes, injuring 15 people in Peshawar, Pakistan.
A report suggests that proposals were made at a meeting of fundamentalist groups in Tehran, under the auspices of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, to poison water supplies of major cities in the West “as a possible response to Western offensives against Islamic organizations and states.”
Three people die and 20 are injured in December 1999 in Falla, Gujarat when the police open fire on 300 people protesting against the state government’s decision to reserve water from the nearby Kankavati Dam for Jamnagar a neighboring town. The dam had become the only source of water for about 60 villages near Falla, and shortages and overdraft of groundwater contribute to a water crisis.
Fifty people are hurt during strikes called to protest power and water shortages. Protests are led by former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia over decrease in public services and deterioration of law and order.