Water rights: the war behind the war.

The question of how to manage the Euphrates and Tigris rivers is far from resolved. What is sure is that the water needs of all three countries are growing rapidly while the water flows are not and unfortunately much of the available water is already being squandered. Along some parts of the Euphrates much of the land has become too salty because of over-irrigation and thus unsuitable for agriculture. Clearly the first priority would be to make better use of this very precious resource thus hopefully making a permanent settlement of water fights issues easier. (excerpt)