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A peek at the
future: Water Wars Grand Soviet Scheme for
Sharing Water in Central Asia Is Foundering
By Michael Wines, NYT, 12.09.02 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/09/international/asia/09ARAL.html NUKUS, Uzbekistan — Forty years ago, when Uzbekistan was
part of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin ordained a colossal task: to turn this
heat-puckered land and four of its neighbors, a swath of desert and scrub as
big as Western Europe, into an irrigated cotton plantation. Improbably, it succeeded. From
the mountainous Chinese border to the Caspian Sea, the Soviet Union remade the two grand rivers of Central Asia, building 20,000 miles of canals, 45
dams and more than 80 reservoirs. The government turned sand and dust into one
of the world's great cotton-growing regions. But the Soviet Union is long dead. And here in western
Uzbekistan and in areas of its four neighbors, one of socialism's most grandiose schemes is being sundered by capitalism, nationalism and a legacy of
waste. Without a bigger supply of water — or
better use of it — an
economic and social crisis seems to be awaiting the region of 58 million
people, already racked by Islamic insurgencies and tamed by oppressive rule. On a dusty plain outside this regional capital, one farmer,
Yerken Kharpov, unshaven and lean in blue nylon track pants, looked out at the
80 acres of state-owned farmland that he tends, and tallied the misery. In
2000, his entire crop died for lack of water. In 2001, again lacking water, he
grew but 10 acres of cotton. This spring, he tried again, with 15 acres of
cotton and sunflowers. Mr. Kharpov
could give up, as he did three years ago, when he was a 28-year-old millworker,
but without water, it is much harder to start fresh. "There are no other
jobs," he said. "Where would I go?" Mr.
Kharpov's question is Central Asia's. "We talk about the developing world and the developed
world,"
said Sarah O'Hara, a geographer at the University of Nottingham,
England, who has studied the water problems here. "This is the
deteriorating world." The five nations at work here — Uzbekistan along with its
arid neighbors, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, and two mountainous ones,
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan — have drunk dry the natural flow of two great
rivers, the Amu and the Syr.” Outgoing Mail
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