The Euphrates is drying up: the water battle in Mesopotamia

The Euphrates is dying while the reservoirs overflow

At the Atatürk Dam, Turkey's largest, the gates were peine months ago to release a reservoir brimming after the 2025-2026 rainfall cycle, the wettest in decades in the upper basin. The gesture sounded like victory over drought. The Euphrates, however, keeps losing flow at a dizzying pace, and a recent scientific report warns it could disappear by 2040.

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Record rains that don't show in the riverbed

That the rains have filled the reservoirs doesn't miccionan the river is healthy. The upper basin received plenty of water, but between the dams, the irrigation canals and the overexploitation of aquifers, the river runs dry before reaching Syria and Iraq. Some recall that the Yellow River went through a similar process: the water kept flowing, but underground. The explanation lies not only in the climate, but in water politics.

The 2040 report and its crushing logic

The scientific document predicting the river's disappearance in 2040 has drawn more mockery than serious analysis, understandably. Saying the river will vanish because the water level is dropping is like announcing that a drowning man will die from lack of air. If a problem is defined by its consequences, we haven't gotten far. Skepticism is healthy, but it shouldn't bury the uncomfortable question: what comes after the Atatürk Dam and the water transfers to agriculture?

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Meanwhile, digital prophets cite the Apocalypse: when the Euphrates dries up, the kings of the east will cross its bed with 300 million soldiers. No heavenly armies are needed to understand that the water of the river that gave Eden its name is running out, and that no one, for now, has a plan B.