Water in Iraq

Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers, is running out of river. Iraq draws roughly two-thirds of its water from the Tigris and Euphrates, whose flows are set upstream by Turkish and Iranian dams and a drying climate. 2025 was the driest year since 1933. Reservoirs fell to a fraction of capacity, the Euphrates ran dry in stretches, and Iraq received less than 35% of its reference share. Downstream, the Shatt al-Arab has turned brackish; the sea now pushes upriver through what was once the region's great estuary garden.

Iraq is also a water market in the making, with reconstruction budgets, the Basra seawater projects, and a government forced by crisis into treatment, desalination and irrigation reform. At the depth of the 2025 drought, inflows on the two rivers ran at about 27% of the annual average and reservoir storage fell to roughly 8% of design capacity.¹⁸ The wet winter of 2025–26 then lifted live storage from about 3.5 to 20 billion m³, a real reprieve but only about a quarter of the storage lost since 2020.¹⁹ In parallel, Baghdad signed a framework with Ankara under which Iraqi oil revenues finance Turkish-built water infrastructure, a controversial trade of one strategic dependency against another.²¹

A quick-reference dashboard for Iraq: headline economy and water indicators⁵⁷⁵⁸, water stress against the scarcity thresholds, non-conventional supply, and the institutions behind the sector. The commercial picture, with buyers, deal structures and the project pipeline, is in the market brief.

One interactive map of Iraq's water, built from real geodata. Climate & drought maps the aridity gradient (WorldClim) with warming projections. The WRI Aqueduct layers, covering overall water risk, water stress and flood risk (plus groundwater decline where the trend is significant), shade every river sub-basin by its 0–5 risk score. Demand shows where the population, and the water demand, concentrate. Infrastructure brings the physical system together: rivers, dams (FAO AQUASTAT), treatment plants, desalination and the major conveyors. Hover any sub-basin or marker for detail; sources are cited under each view.

Iraq is shaped like a basin. The Mesopotamian plain of the Tigris and Euphrates is ringed by mountains of up to 3,550 m in the north and east.²³ Desert to the south and west covers more than 40% of the land.²³ About 11.5 million ha, 26% of the country, is cultivable.²³ Iraq holds 56.1% of the Tigris basin, which spans about 221,000 km².²⁵ Near Hit the Euphrates enters the alluvial lowlands, splits into channels and loses water to desert depressions.²⁴ The two rivers join in southern Iraq to form the Shatt al-Arab, which discharges into the Gulf.²⁵ The southern marshes form a triangle across Basra, Dhi Qar and Maysan. They expand with the late-winter and spring floods and shrink in the dry summer.¹

Rainfall

Rain is scarce and seasonal. The average is 216 mm a year, from 1,200 mm in the north-east to less than 100 mm over 60% of the country in the south.²³ Most rain falls from December to February, or from November to April in the north and north-east.²³ The national climate report describes three zones. The Kurdistan mountains receive 400–1,000 mm, with summers that stay at or below 35 °C. A steppe belt receives 200–400 mm.¹ The hot desert of the alluvial plain and western plateau covers 70% of the country, with 50–200 mm and temperatures of 45–50 °C.¹

River flows swing even more than the rain. On the Euphrates at Hit, the mean annual flow on record is 27.1 billion m³. It peaked at 63 billion m³ in 1969 and fell to 9 billion m³ in 1990.²⁴ In April 2019 the Tharthar barrage carried its highest flows since 1956, and Mosul held 9 billion m³.¹¹ Six years later, 2025 was the driest year on record since 1933. Water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates fell by up to 27%.¹⁰

Heat and drought

Summers are extreme. Shade temperatures pass 43 °C in July and August and fall to about 26 °C at night.²³ The national climate report says temperatures in Iraq have risen at twice the global average rate, with rainfall down by more than 30%.¹ The reanalysis data below confirm fast warming, but find little long-term change in average rainfall. Drought is now linked to that warming. Climate change made the 2020–2023 drought in the Tigris–Euphrates basin 25 times more likely.⁹ By 2025 the five-year drought across the basin had reached the “exceptional” category.¹⁰

Projections

Heat is the firmest signal. The national report projects about 2.5 °C of warming by 2100 in Anbar, Salah al-Din and Baghdad under a moderate scenario. Under high emissions, Duhok could warm by up to 6.5 °C.¹ Rainfall in Duhok could fall by 150 mm by the end of the century under high emissions.¹ Days with a heat index above 32 °C could rise by up to 80 a year.¹ In the World Bank’s CMIP6 ensemble, Iraq would add about 49 days a year above 35 °C by 2080–2099 under high emissions. It had about 139 such days in 1995–2014.⁸ Its hottest day of the year would be about 7.2 °C hotter.⁸ The report also warns that rising seas threaten to displace more than five million people.¹

Rainfall and temperature in numbers

Averaged over the whole of Iraq, ERA5 reanalysis gives about 218 mm of rain a year and a mean temperature of 23.0 °C for 1991–2020. About 50% of that rain falls in December, January and March, and 4 months average less than 5 mm. Since 1971 the country has warmed by about 0.55 °C a decade. Average rainfall in 1993–2022 was within 3% of the 1951–1980 level, though single years swing widely.

Projected change

Source: World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal, retrieved September 2026. ERA5 0.25° reanalysis for the annual series (1950–2022) and the monthly climatology (1991–2020); CMIP6 0.25° multi-model ensemble median for the projections, as change against 1995–2014. These are national averages, which hide the gap between wet highlands and dry interiors, and reanalysis rainfall over deserts carries wide uncertainty.

Iraq’s own renewable water is modest. FAO estimated internal renewable resources at 35.2 billion m³ a year.²³ Most of the rest arrives by river from Turkey, Iran and Syria. The Tigris carries a mean 26 billion m³ a year at Kut, and the Euphrates 27.1 billion m³ at Hit.²⁵²⁴ Flow records at Kut and at Jarablus, on the Euphrates upstream, both show significant downward trends.²⁵²⁴

Storage under strain

Reservoirs buffer the swings, up to a point. Between 2008 and 2018, lower inflows from climate change and upstream projects cut dam storage from 73% to 32%.¹ Water availability fell to 1,250 m³ per person a year over the same decade.¹ By mid-October 2025 Lake Tharthar had dropped to 38.5 m above sea level, its lowest since the reservoir was built.¹²

Groundwater

Groundwater is a smaller and stressed reserve. Renewable groundwater has declined sharply, especially in the last five years, according to the monitoring wells of the General Authority for Groundwater.¹ Storage in the Al-Diwaniyah basin fell by 21% over 30 years, and some springs have dried up.¹ Salt is the other constraint on every source, as the water quality section sets out.

The main rivers

The table ranks the rivers of Iraq by the largest natural flow they reach inside the country. Natural flow is the modelled long-term average before any withdrawals. For a heavily used river it measures what the river could carry, not what arrives today.

Sources: Grill, Lehner, Thieme et al. (2019), Mapping the world’s free-flowing rivers, Nature 569, dataset under CC BY 4.0, for length, natural flow (WaterGAP, 1971–2000) and free-flowing status, meaning the share of the river’s length inside Iraq still classed as free-flowing. No flow figure is given below 20 m³/s, where a global model is too coarse to rank small rivers. Dams from the FAO AQUASTAT regional inventories, matched to the nearest river reach, so a dam on a tributary close to a main stem can be counted against the main stem. The same rivers are drawn on the water map above under Rivers & lakes.

Iraq withdrew about 66 km³ of water in 2000, according to FAO. Agriculture took 79%, industry 14.5% and households 6.5%.²³ Much of the irrigation network dates from the 1970s and 1980s and runs at about 60% efficiency.²²

Half a century of irrigation

FAO put Iraq’s irrigation potential at 4.25 million ha in 1976, and later at more than 5.5 million ha. By 1990 some 3.5 million ha were equipped, almost all fed from the rivers. Much had been abandoned to waterlogging and salinity.²³ The state kept building. The first 87,500 ha of the Kirkuk Irrigation Project opened in December 1983, and the scheme eventually irrigated more than 300,000 ha.²³ The 170 km Shatt al-Gharraf canal alone irrigates about 700,000 ha from the Tigris.²⁵

Drainage came late. The Main Outfall Drain, known as the Third River, was completed in December 1992. It runs 565 km and drains more than 1.5 million ha. In 1995 about 17 million tonnes of salt reportedly reached the Gulf through it.²³²⁴

The marshes

The Mesopotamian Marshes once covered about 17,000 km², FAO records. By 2002 damming and drainage had destroyed more than 85% of them, much of it on Saddam Hussein’s orders in the 1990s.²³²⁵³⁴ Activists later re-flooded about 5,600 km². In July 2016 UNESCO inscribed the Ahwar of Southern Iraq as a World Heritage site.³⁶³⁵ Drought has undone much of the recovery: in August 2025 only about 800 km² remained under water.³⁶

Farming under drought rules

The state now rations farmland by the season. A normal-year plan allows 10 million dunams in winter and 5 million in summer, and drought years halve it.²⁸ In summer 2025 the allocation fell to 1.5 million dunams. Reserves had dropped to about 10 bcm, and Najaf banned rice.²⁸²⁹³⁰ The 2025–26 winter plan allowed 1 million dunams on river water and 3.5 million on groundwater, with modern irrigation required for wheat.³¹ Wheat held up: the 2025 harvest reached about 5.1 million tonnes, 13% above average.³⁰ After the wet spring of 2026, farmers planted 300,000–400,000 dunams of amber rice following a five-year suspension.³³

Withdrawals over time

FAO’s AQUASTAT estimates put Iraq’s freshwater withdrawals at 40.6 billion m³ in 1975 and 42.4 billion m³ in 2022. Agriculture’s share of the total moved from 97% in 1979 to 73% in 2022.

Source: FAO AQUASTAT via the World Bank World Development Indicators, retrieved September 2026. AQUASTAT revises national figures irregularly and fills the years between surveys, so a jump between two adjacent years usually marks a new national estimate rather than a change on the ground.

Iraq’s storage is vast on paper. FAO put the gross capacity of the major Tigris basin dams at 102.2 billion m³. Of that, 72.8 billion m³ sits in the off-river Samarra–Tharthar scheme, built in 1954.²³ Other inventories, including the register below, list Tharthar at 85 billion m³.²⁵ The Euphrates basin dams add 37.5 billion m³, including the off-river Ramadi–Habbaniya reservoir of 1951.²³ The Tharthar scheme diverts Tigris floodwater to the lake through a 64 km canal, and on to the Euphrates through a 37 km canal.²⁵ Completed in 1977, it is regarded as the cornerstone of Iraq’s surface water system.²⁵ The Ministry of Water Resources operates 25 major dams, hydropower stations and barrages, plus 275 irrigation pumping stations.²³

Ageing dams, unfinished dams

Mosul, Iraq’s largest reservoir, sits on gypsum bedrock that dissolves in water. The dam needs regular cement injections to stop cracks from widening.¹¹ Its hydropower capacity is 320 MW, not the 1,050 MW originally planned.²⁵ Two large dams were left partly built. As of 2013, Badush on the Tigris was designed for 10 billion m³ and Bekhme on the Greater Zab for 17 billion m³.²⁵ The ministry’s plan now includes rehabilitating Mosul Dam to raise its storage level to 330 m, with Badush as the fallback.¹ It also aims to enlarge the Tigris–Euphrates canal to 250 m³/s.¹

Reservoirs after the drought

The wet 2025–26 season refilled much of the system. In September 2026 the ministry put national storage above 31 billion m³.¹³ Mosul held 7.3 billion m³, against 1.6 billion a year earlier. Haditha held 5 billion, against 1.8 billion.¹³ The minister said the spring rains of 2026 had saved the water situation.¹⁴

Desalination and wastewater

Seawater is the new frontier. Installed desalination capacity was 384,513 m³ a day in 2002.²³ On 24 July 2025 the prime minister launched a Basra seawater plant with a daily capacity of 1 million m³.¹⁵ PowerChina is building it with an Iraqi partner under a contract worth about US$4 billion. Commercial operation is due in June 2028.¹⁵ Existing plants are exposed to low rivers. The national report lists desalination stations shut by low water levels.¹ The ministry plans longer intake pipes and new reservoirs at intake sites.¹

Wastewater treatment has grown but still misses most people. In 2019 Iraq generated about 1,112 million m³ of wastewater and treated about 670 million m³, or 60.3%.¹ Its 64 treatment plants served 34.5% of the population.¹ In FAO’s older account, treated effluent ran by gravity to rivers and drains, with no defined collection canals.²³ Baghdad’s Al-Rustumia plant was designed for 204 million m³ a year.²³

Networks and losses

Iraq’s statistics authority put average losses in the distribution networks at 24.5% in 2024. The figure covers the 16 federal governorates, not the Kurdistan Region. It counts leakage, illegal tapping and pipe breaks between treatment plant and consumer, as reported by the water directorates, and a further 431,600 m³ a day was supplied without a bill. Governorate rates ranged from 9% in Kirkuk to 37% in Salah al-Din, with Baghdad at 25%.⁷ City figures measured as non-revenue water run higher. In Baghdad, only 23% of service connections had working meters, and studies put unaccounted-for water at about 50%.² The Baghdad Water Authority’s own 2018 balance put non-revenue water at 53%. Physical leakage made up about 20% of supply; the other 33% was unauthorised use, meter error and unbilled consumption.³ UNICEF reports that 90% of household meters installed in Baghdad do not work.⁴ In Basra, leakage was estimated at half of all water supplied in 2007.⁵ In the Kurdistan Region, consultants in 2018 put the leakage ratio at more than 50% in Erbil, about 30% in central Sulaimaniya and about 80% in central Duhok.⁶

Monitoring and new works

The ministry’s plan calls for installing 103 of 182 planned hydrological stations to track water quantity and quality.¹ It also aims to send at least 75 m³/s from the Tigris to Basra to improve the Shatt al-Arab.¹ Under the framework with Turkey, six water-harvesting dams are planned in Nineveh, Karbala, Anbar and Muthanna.¹³ Turkish firms take part in building the projects, some on a design-and-build basis. Iraq pays with a daily oil allocation rather than cash.¹³ Conflict left its own bill. The World Bank put farm-sector losses from the conflict with terrorist organisations at US$2.1 billion, plus US$590.9 million in machinery.¹

The asset base in numbers

Sources: FAO AQUASTAT regional dam inventories (CC BY 4.0), which list large dams with a published capacity and can lag recent construction; the MENA Water Review major projects register, where each record cites its source on the project page. The database follows large contracted projects, not the whole asset base.

Salinity rises along the whole course of the rivers. The UN-ESCWA inventory records about 300 ppm on the Euphrates at the Syrian–Turkish border and 600–800 ppm at the Iraqi–Syrian border. Near the Tigris confluence it reaches 2,000–3,500 ppm.²⁴ At Nasiriyah mean salinity rose from 1,080 mg/L in 1979 to 5,000 mg/L in 2002.²⁴ The Tigris is fresher, at 197–256 ppm below Mosul Dam and 475–851 ppm at Baghdad between 1999 and 2011.²⁵ Iraq’s drinking-water limit, set in 2001, is 1,000 ppm.²⁷

Salt lies in the soil as well. FAO found 4% of irrigated land severely saline, 50% moderately saline and 20% slightly saline. Half the irrigated area of the centre and south is degraded by waterlogging and salinity.²³

Basra and the Shatt al-Arab

The south carries the heaviest load. On 1 August 2018 ministry data showed pre-treatment salinity of 1,763 ppm at Qurna, 14,164 ppm in central Basra and 28,000 ppm at Sihan.²⁷ By November 2018 health authorities had registered at least 118,000 cases of illness, with contaminated water the likely cause. The federal health ministry denied a cholera epidemic.²⁷ Human Rights Watch found about 87% of Basra’s farmland wholly or partly lost to seawater intrusion. In February 2019 the prime minister said about 5 million m³ of raw sewage a day was pumped straight into the rivers.²⁷

The crisis returned in 2025. In September salinity in central Basra reached 29,000 ppm, against 2,600 ppm a year earlier, and the water ministry called it the highest in 89 years.³⁷ Rain and upstream releases brought it down to 7,500 ppm in the city centre by late March 2026. Basra then began soil tests for a barrier across the Shatt al-Arab.³⁸

Cholera

Cholera recurs where treatment fails. The WHO totalled the 2007 outbreak at 4,696 cases and 24 deaths.³⁹ In 2015 UNICEF counted at least 2,200 cases and six deaths, and vaccination reached 229,000 refugees and displaced people in camps.⁴¹⁴⁰ An outbreak announced in June 2022 reached 11,097 suspected cases by February 2023, the IFRC reports.⁴²

The reported indicators

Sources: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme via the World Bank; SDG 6.3.1 and 6.3.2 from the UN Statistics Division SDG database, retrieved September 2026. Safely managed means an improved source on the premises, available when needed and free from priority contamination. SDG 6.3.2 rests on each country’s own monitoring network, so a high share can mean few water bodies were assessed, and values move when methods change between reporting rounds.

Between 92% and 98% of Iraq’s river water historically came from beyond its borders, engineers told Human Rights Watch; by 2018 the share was about 82%.²⁷ Every major change in that supply has been negotiated, imposed or fought over.

The first frameworks

A 1946 treaty with Turkey required Turkey to install flow-measurement stations, share their data and notify Iraq of planned works. The joint committee it mandated was never created.²⁴ Iraqi and Turkish experts first met on guaranteed Euphrates flows in 1964.²⁴

The dam era

Turkey’s Keban Dam in 1974 and Syria’s Tabqa Dam in 1975 changed the Euphrates regime. Filling Tabqa cut the flow downstream and set off a crisis between Syria and Iraq, resolved through Saudi and Soviet intervention.²⁴ A Joint Technical Committee formed in 1980 and Syria joined in 1983. After 16 meetings it deadlocked in 1992 over whether the two rivers form one system.²⁵

In 1987 Turkey undertook to release an annual average of at least 500 m³/s across the Syrian border.²⁴ Syria and Iraq then split that flow, 58% to Iraq and 42% to Syria. FAO and the UN-ESCWA inventory date their accord to 1990, while other sources give 1989.²⁴³² On 13 January 1990 Turkey began a month-long diversion to fill the Atatürk Dam, cutting the flow downstream by about three-quarters.⁴³ A 2002 agreement let Syria pump 1,250 MCM a year from the Tigris.²⁵ In March 2009 Iraq recorded a record-low Euphrates discharge of 250 m³/s.²⁴

On the Tigris the pressure point is Ilısu. Construction began in 2006 and resumed in 2010 after a suspension.²⁵ Turkey started filling the reservoir in June 2018 and halted within days after Iraqi complaints, as Iraq’s parliament met in emergency session.⁴⁴⁴⁵ Filling resumed in 2019, and the dam reached full generating capacity in December 2020.²⁷⁴⁶

Upstream in Iran

A 1975 agreement with Iran on frontier watercourses divides some shared streams, and Iraq has since expressed reservations about it.²⁶ In 2008 Lake Hemrin reportedly lost about 80% of its capacity after Iran dammed the Wand.²⁶ In June 2018 Iraq’s foreign ministry said Iran had cut or diverted 42 rivers and tributaries.⁴⁵ In August 2020 the director of Darbandikhan Dam said Iranian works had cut the Sirwan’s flow by 75–80%.⁴⁷ Basra’s deputy governor told Human Rights Watch that 75% of the city’s water once came from the Karun, since reduced by Iranian dams and sugar plantations.²⁷

Dams as targets

The war against ISIS turned dams into objectives. In April 2014 the group captured the Nuaimiyah Dam near Fallujah, and the flooding that followed displaced more than 12,000 families.⁴⁸ It seized Mosul Dam on 7 August 2014, and Iraqi and Kurdish forces retook it on 18 August with US air support.⁴⁹ In April 2015 ISIS seized the Tharthar Dam and opened one of its gates.⁵⁰ Maintenance lapsed while Mosul Dam was held, and in February 2016 Iraq hired Italy’s Trevi to repair it.⁵¹

A new bargain with Ankara

Iraq joined the UN Water Convention on 24 March 2023, the first Middle Eastern state to do so.⁵² On 22 April 2024 President Erdoğan visited Baghdad, and the two states signed a Water Cooperation Framework Agreement, though no binding water-sharing deal.⁵³²² On 2 November 2025 they added a financing mechanism: Turkish companies build Iraqi water projects, paid for through Iraqi oil sales.⁵³ Its full terms have not been disclosed.³² On 8 September 2026 Iraq’s cabinet capped crude deliveries under the arrangement at 33,000 barrels a day for the first phase.⁵⁴ Crisis Group judges Ankara unlikely to accept fixed release quotas.²⁸

The legal positions remain far apart. Turkey treats the Tigris and Euphrates as transboundary rivers under its sovereignty, while Iraq and Syria want them classed as international rivers with rules for fair sharing.³² On 25 June 2026 Iraq and Syria signed a protocol on shared waters, including a proposal to revive the three-country technical committee if Turkey agrees.⁵⁵ Flows recovered after the wet 2025–26 season. By late August 2026 the Euphrates entered Iraq at about 680 m³/s, against 151 m³/s a year earlier.⁵⁶

The record

Shared river basins

Cooperation and conflict on the record, 1948 to 2008

The International Water Events Database scores every reported interaction between riparian states on the Basins at Risk scale, from formal war over water to voluntary unification. Cooperative and conflictive events add up to less than 100% because neutral events are counted too.

Source: Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, International Water Events Database, Oregon State University, as compiled by the Transboundary Waters Atlas. The series ends in 2008; every later dispute and agreement is outside it and is covered in the text above.

The agreements

Source: Master Treaties Database of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (February 2023 edition), via the Transboundary Waters Atlas. Titles as recorded, with spelling normalised. Colonial-era boundary instruments appear because they fixed water rights on rivers that later became international.

Joint bodies

• Joint Technical Committee on Regional Waters (JTCW)Euphrates-Tigris · 1980 · Iraq, Syria, Turkey

Source: the river basin organisation database of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (2013). A joint body on paper is not evidence that it meets.

Shared aquifers

• Neogene Aquifer System (North-West): Upper and Lower FarsSyria · data moderate
• Neogene Aquifer System (South-East): Dibdibba-Kuwait GroupKuwait, Saudi Arabia · data moderate
• Taurus-Zagros Mountain rangeIran, Turkey · data moderate
• Umm er Radhuma-Dammam Aquifer System (North): Widyan-SalmanKuwait, Saudi Arabia · data moderate
• Upper JeziraSyria, Turkey · data limited
• Wasia-Biyadh-Aruma Aquifer System (North): Sakaka-RutbaSaudi Arabia · data moderate

Source: IGRAC and UNESCO, Transboundary Aquifers of the World. Data reliability is IGRAC’s own assessment of the information behind each outline.

The Ministry of Water Resources is the country’s bulk water supplier and national water planner.²³ In FAO’s 2008 profile it had five commissions, eleven companies and 12,000 staff. Governance was then “in a state of flux”.²³ Muthanna al-Tamimi became minister in May 2026 and pledged closer ties with Turkey and Iran to secure releases.¹⁴ Money is tight. The ministry received 0.4% of the budget in 2016, 1.08% in 2020 and 0.75% in 2024.¹⁶ Carnegie found this was the smallest share among the ministries it reviewed.¹⁶

Iraq is a federal state. The Kurdistan Region, made up of Erbil, Duhok, Sulaymaniyah and Halabja, has its own semi-independent government and legislature.¹ Environmental protection sits with the Ministry of Environment under Law No. 37 of 2008.¹ Law No. 27 of 2009, the current environmental law, followed laws of 1986 and 1997. It turned the former environment council into an advisory body.¹

Plans and deals

The government adopted the Strategic Study of Water and Land Resources in 2014.¹ A National Adaptation Plan, funded by the Green Climate Fund, is under way with UNEP support.¹ The largest recent change is financial. Since November 2025, Turkish-built water projects are paid for through Iraqi oil, as the shared waters section describes.⁵³ Implementation began in August 2026.³³ Critics in Baghdad argue that the arrangement deepens dependence on Turkey.¹⁷

Iraq has bought time, not security. The rains of 2025–26 lifted national storage above 31 billion m³.¹³ The drought before them was among the most extreme on record in the Tigris–Euphrates basin.¹⁰ Warming makes a repeat more likely. A drought like that of 2020–2023 is now 25 times as likely across the basin as in a world 1.2 °C cooler.⁹ The national report expects water availability to fall to about 1,000 m³ per person a year by 2035.¹

The response rests on three bets. The first is upstream. Oil-financed projects with Turkey brought no new commitment on how much water Turkey releases.¹⁷ The second is the coast, where the Basra desalination plant is due to start in 2028.¹⁵ The third is efficiency at home. Much of the irrigation network runs at about 60% efficiency, and the water ministry received 0.75% of the 2024 budget.²²¹⁶ If any of the three stalls, the salt line in the Shatt al-Arab and the empty summer fields will show it first.