Western Asia

Iran claims to have bombed a hydroelectric facility in Kurdistan, thereby blacking out large portions of Iraq, during the Iran-Iraq War.

During the Gulf War, Iraq destroys much of Kuwait’s desalination capacity during retreat.

During the Persian Gulf War, Allied Coalition forces damage Baghdad’s modern water supply and sanitation system”intentionally and unintentionally. “Four of seven major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal water and sewerage facilities in Baghdad”resulting in sewage pouring into the Tigris. Water purification plants were incapacitated throughout Iraq” (Arbuthnot 2000). Following the damage, the New England Journal of Medicine reports that, during the first eight months of 1991, childhood death in Iraq increases by 47,000 and the country’s infant…

As upstream dams are filled during a low-flow year on the Euphrates, Iraqis claim that flow reaching its territory is “intolerable” and asks the Arab League to intervene. Syrians claim they are receiving less than half the river’s normal flow and pull out of an Arab League technical committee formed to mediate the conflict. In May Syria closes its airspace to Iraqi flights and both Syrian and Iraq reportedly transfer troops to their mutual border. Saudi Arabia successfully mediates the…

The flow of the Euphrates is interrupted for a month as Turkey finishes construction of the Atatürk Dam, part of the Grand Anatolia Project. Syria and Iraq protest that Turkey now has a weapon of war. In mid-1990 Turkish president Turgut Özal threatens to restrict water flow to Syria to force it to withdraw support for Kurdish rebels operating in southern Turkey.

To quell opposition to his government, Saddam Hussein reportedly poisons and drains the water supplies of southern Shiite Muslims, the Marsh Arabs, or Maʻdān. The marshes of southern Iraq are intentionally targeted. The European Parliament and UN Human Rights Commission deplore use of water as weapon in region.

Israel destroys the Arab diversion works on the Jordan River headwaters. During Arab-Israeli War Israel occupies Golan Heights, with Banias tributary to the Jordan; Israel occupies West Bank.

Iraq threatens to bomb the Euphrates dam (also known as al-Thawra or Tabqa dam) in Syria and massed troops along the border, alleging that the dam had reduced the flow of Euphrates River water to Iraq.

Attacks on water and power infrastructure throughout Yemen deprive nearly 20 million people of reliable access to clean water.

In response to the advance of the Syrian Arab Army, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) floods villages they control in the Deir Hafer Plain of east Aleppo by pumping water from Lake Assad into the Al-Jar channel.