Thoughts from London

When a headline writer last Sunday referred to the spat over the Mavilaru water blockade that sparked the military clashes in the northeast as “water wars” he was stating a wider truth than he probably intended.

A generally understated idea, except in some academic and security circles, is that water has and will increasingly become a source of conflict in the world.

Disputes that could burgeon into deeper conflicts would be not only interstate but intra-state.

True, there are pundits who rubbish such thinking and believe the good sense of man, if not his innate goodness, will ensure that such conflicts are settled by bilateral negotiations and even international agreement.

Having such optimism in the good sense of man to avoid conflict and human suffering might satisfy some moral urge but unfortunately one look around the world proves how myopic such thinking is in the face of empirical evidence.

Unfortunately the lack of space prevents a recital of such disputes over the years going back to the first such clash 4,500 years ago between Lagash and Umma, two city-states in Mesopotamia, in the region now called southern Iraq. But it is there for those who wish to see.

On BBC’s Asia Today programme last week, I was asked whether this Mavilaru blockade was a pretext for what was to follow, in short a return to military action after what seemed like four years of relative calm on the battle front.

That question implied that this was all an excuse for some spectacular shenanigans that all but tore up the ceasefire agreement which, to be truthful, was being torn shred by shred anyway and exists more in name than in substance.

What the question did not make clear was who used it as a pretext, if pretext it was. It might just have been that, of course. The LTTE could well have been testing the government reaction and whether it would take the controversial step of retaliating in force and providing the Tigers with a propaganda tool.

On the other hand, this might just have been the excuse the Rajapaksa government, under pressure from Sinhala nationalist elements to retaliate militarily in support of thousands of affected rural families deprived of their source of water for cultivation, wanted to calm unease in the south.

Even if the LTTE at this particular moment had used water merely to assert its power, one wonders whether they would not think this scenario through of using water as a political weapon, if they have not already done so. Ever since the LTTE issued its map of Tamil Eelam that stretches deep into the south along the eastern coast, I have wondered whether there is a deeper significance to this than an attempt at territorial aggrandisement.

Historically, archaeologically, epigraphically and cartographically, the claim to those parts of the south along the eastern coastal belt cannot be justifiably maintained as what the Tigers call their traditional homelands.

If those parts of the country could be claimed as traditional homelands of the Tamils only because this was the habitat of some Tamil families for a short period of time, if at all, then surely that argument could be extended to make Galle and perhaps Beruwala the traditional homelands of the Moors who settled there several centuries ago.

If then these areas are being claimed on spurious grounds, is it purely for the acquisition of larger pieces of the coastal belt or is there a more insidious reason?

In the latter half of the 1960s the then prime minister, Dudley Senanayake launched his food drive. He toured most parts of the country accompanied by agriculture minister MD Banda and sometimes lands and irrigation minister CP de Silva. I covered almost every one of those tours that were highly educative because Dudley Senanayake himself was extremely knowledgeable on matters agriculture like his father Don Stephen.

One fact that struck me forcefully then, was the importance of water for sustainable agriculture, particularly in what is called the dry zone that is now partly occupied by the LTTE, and how vital it was to instil in farmers the idea of the rational use of water.

Another fact had little or nothing to do with agriculture. During visits to Ampara and Inginiyagala, areas now claimed by the Tigers, the geography became clearer. This part of the east gave access to the hill country, the tea plantations and importantly to the headwaters of rivers and our most important asset, water.

Control or threaten to control the sources of water as some upstream riparian states have done in other parts of the world and there is a potential cause of dangerous conflict.In the early days of the LTTE it had no influence in the plantation areas of the hill country. CWC leader Saumyamoorthy Thondaman had refused to be a party to the Vaddukkodai resolution calling for Eelam as he saw no gain for the Tamils of Indian origin.But the population there has been a potential target of the Tigers not only because winning influence in the plantation sector would spread LTTE power but also because it would then have penetrated vital economic assets.

Water will become increasingly important to the Tigers if it wants to sustain life in the territory they hold. Those areas, which in the past contributed to the country’s overall agricultural production, can only be sustained agriculturally if sufficient water is available for irrigation as rain-fed agriculture throughout the year is not possible.

Two factors need to be taken into account. Much of the forest cover that existed 30 years or more ago in those areas, as in some parts of the south, have disappeared due to rampant and illicit felling of trees for which some politicians and henchmen have been guilty.

I have no access to rainfall patterns for the last 10 years or so but it would not be surprising if there is less rain falling in what might be broadly called the dry zone than it used to, thus making agriculture even more difficult. Hence feeding the people will eventually become a problem.

Moreover global climate change that is perceptibly changing the face of this planet is bound to have its effect on our island too.

At a climate change conference I attended in Germany last May, the World Bank’s chief scientist Dr Robert Watson revealed some important data that should be kept in mind.

He said that 1/3 of the world’s population is living in water scarce areas. Climate change is going to exacerbate this. Initially agricultural productivity will show an increase but even by 2020 there will be a decline and by 2080 there will a definite loss in productivity in the developing countries.

The world’s population is expected to double by 2050. By then there will be increasing pressure for water. Over the years we have seen interstate disputes over the sharing of water and future conflicts over this vital and irreplaceable resource certainly cannot be ruled out. Equally future disputes between major industrialised states would not be over oil and gas but over mineral resources on the seabed. Only a couple of months ago we saw a dispute between Japan and South Korea over the Dokdo/Takeshima islets claimed by both countries, over a Japanese mineral survey. Those who are sceptical about future intrastate conflicts erupting over water might keep in mind two interesting remarks of Ariel Sharon, a former prime minister of Israel, which lies at the heart of this conflict zone. Writing in his memoirs about the Six Day War of 1967 Sharon said that while the border disputes between Syria and Israel “were of great significance, the matter of water diversion was a stark issue of life and death.”

Two years later Sharon told the BBC that people generally regard June 5, 1967 as the day the war began. “That,” he said, “is the official date. But, in reality, it started two and a half years earlier, on the day Israel decided to act against the diversion of the Jordan (River).”

Those who tend to minimise the risk of future conflicts arising from disputes over water, especially in those areas where water is critical and getting more so, might ponder Sharon’s words.