Get Your Hands off My Water

Prepare for the ‘Water Wars’ says intelligence analysis

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | MARCH 23, 2012

A report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) warns about a new kind of wars to come in a decade’s time. The report released on Thursday cites water shortages, polluted water and floods as the potential causes for increasing conflict in countries where the US has explicit vested interests. Intelligence analysts not related to the ODNI are already questioning what this report means for the type of activities the United States carries out abroad or that may already be carrying out either in representation of the country itself, or in combination with transnational corporations which dominate the water market.

“During the next 10 years, many countries important to the United States will almost certainly experience water problems – shortages, poor water quality, or floods – that will contribute to the risk of instability and state failure and increase regional tensions,” reads the report from the office of the director of national intelligence states. According the report, there are at least seven important river basins in the Middle East Asia and Africa that the United States deems important for its security interests. Those river basins are the Indus, Jordan, Mekong, Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Amu Darya and Brahmaputra basins.

It is likely that the strong concentration of water resources in few corporate hands together with ongoing military conflict in those regions of the world will contribute greatly to bring even more instability to the people of those countries. There is a change that conflict will not be limited to fighting inside the countries themselves, but that it can expand to turn nation against nation. Even though countries’ borders are clearly drawn today, water basins and the rivers those basins supply generally go through many countries at a time and this is the key point when determining whether there will be war or not. The intelligence report says that in a decade or so water in shared basins will increasingly be used not as a resource, but as leverage over friends and foes.

“It’s very difficult to be specific about where because it depends upon what individual states do and what actions are taken on water issues between states,” said a senior U.S. intelligence analyst. If water as a resource becomes more scarce as a result of monopolization, a technique used by the United States government with other essential resources such as land and food, there is a potential for water to be used as a weapon. This weapon is considered even more powerful than many others because water is perhaps the most essential resource to guarantee the survival of people. The report warns that more powerful may decide to block the flow of water from rivers to other less powerful countries which would mean immediate scarcity for the weaker nations.

The intelligence report did not waste the opportunity to fear monger by saying that available water sources could also be poisoned by terrorists — because there is a terrorist under every single bed and rock. “Because terrorists are seeking more high visibility items to attack, in some cases we identified fragile water infrastructure that could potentially be a target for terrorism activity.” Can terrorists contaminate water to a greater degree that what it is now with fluoride, lithium, aluminum and other heavy metals that water companies already put in it? The report went even further to warn that terrorists could also blow dams as a way to threaten populations. It says that terrorists would take advantage of population displacement to target large groups of people who move away from their lands to seek fresh water in weak nations.

The report also took the opportunity to connect water scarcity to population growth, a talking point commonly used by the fake environmental movement that seeks to impose policies originated at the core of the United Nations. This organization, through numerous initiatives, already controls large masses of land that include National Parks and Conservation Areas. It is exactly those large areas the ones that possess vast amounts of fresh water sources. The U.N. also intends to amass control over water resources through policies such as Agenda 21, and the Law of the Sea Treaty. In theory, this convention defines the rights and responsibilities of nations in their use of the world’s oceans. It also provides policies for businesses, the environment, and the management of oceanic natural resources. In practice, the Law of the Sea Treaty gives power to the U.N. to govern over the oceans.

The report also took a shot at Climate Change as a the origin of future water driven conflicts. It is the belief of much of the environmental movement that the naturally changing world climate — a change they blame on humans –  will result in lack of adequate water for people to drink or to use in their daily activities. Environmentalists have changed their doomsday warnings from Global Warming to Climate Change, or even adventure themselves to talk about these two as if they were the same thing. The intelligence report does the same, referring to Climate Change as a potential source of problems for populations that do not have access to clean water. “Food markets are threatened by depletion of ground water in some agriculture areas of the world. Food production will decline, increasing the stress on global markets,” asserts the report. More of a reason for people to prepare and become independent and self-sufficient instead of waiting for the government or the corporations to offer magical solutions.

The report which concentrates heavily on how U.S. interests may or may not be threatened, concludes that by 2040 water shortages and pollution will harm the economic performance of some important trading partners. It does not say which countries these partners are, though. As it is commonly done nowadays, the report does not propose any measures to stave off the consequences of water wars. It simply mentions that current actions such as “improved water management” could compensate for the increasing demand in decades to come. The intelligence paper cites technological advances as a possible tool to aid large scale agriculture, but does not highlight anything that could help small and mid-size farmers.

In the past few months, third world countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia have moved to secure their own water resources, kicking out multinational corporations such as Nestle, which sought to monopolize the water market in those nations. But the 10 intelligence agencies that helped write the report conclude that underdeveloped nations will turn to the United States to lead the effort to resolve water problems. The study about water security and how it impacts American interests around the world was requested by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has voiced her concern about how lack of clean water may threaten U.S. interests overseas. Clinton announced Thursday what she called the U.S. Water Partnership, an initiative that according to her will bring private sector — corporations — and government agencies to confabulate about solutions to water problems.

Let’s hope the result of these talks do not end in policies such as the White House Security Memorandum 200, a document issued by the U.S. government where they explain how the United States will officially combat development in third world nations as well as curb population growth in those countries because the U.S. thought development and population growth threatened their national security. Based on the policies adopted under White House Memorandum 200, the U.S. has waged war against those countries through trade penalties, conditioning aid to the adoption of population control measures, artificially created famine and military destabilization operations, among others.

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Luis Miranda is the founder and editor of The Real Agenda. For more of his stories, subscribe to our article feed. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Email article ideas and insights through the Contact page.