DUKAN: Water levels at Iraq’s vast Dukan Dam have plummeted as a result of dwindling rains and further damming upstream, hitting millions of inhabitants already impacted by drought with stricter water rationing.

Amid these conditions, visible cracks have emerged in the retreating shoreline of the artificial lake, which lies in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and was created in the 1950s.

Dukan Lake has been left three quarters empty, with its director Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq explaining its reserves currently stand at around 1.6 billion cubic metres of water out of a possible seven billion.

That is “about 24 per cent” of its capacity, the official said, adding that the level of water in the lake had not been so low in roughly 20 years.

Satellite imagery shows the lake’s surface area shrank by 56 per cent between the end of May 2019, the last year it was completely full, and the beginning of this month.

Tawfeeq blamed climate change and a “shortage of rainfall” explaining that the timing of the rains had also become irregular.

Over the winter season, Tawfeeq said, the Dukan region received 220 millimetres (8.7 inches) of rain, compared to a typical 600 millimetres.

Harvest failure

Upstream damming of the Little Zab River, which flows through Iran and feeds Dukan, was a secondary cause of the falling water levels, Tawfeeq explained.

Also buffeted by drought, Iran has built dozens of structures on the river to increase its own water reserves.

Baghdad has criticised these kinds of dams, built both by Iran and Turkiye, accusing them of significantly restricting water flow into Iraq via the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Iraq, and its 46 million inhabitants, have been intensely impacted by the effects of climate change, experiencing rising temperatures, year-on-year droughts and rampant desertification.

At the end of last month, the country’s total water reserves were at their lowest level in 80 years.

On the slopes above Dukan lies the village of Sarsian, where Hussein Khader Sheik­hah, 57, was planting a summer crop on a hectare of land.

The farmer said he hoped a short-term summer crop of the kind typically planted in the area for an autumn harvest — cucumbers, melons, chickpeas, sunflower seeds and

beans — would help him offset some of the losses over the winter caused by drought.

In winter, in another area near the village, he planted 13 hectares mainly of wheat.

“The harvest failed because of the lack of rain,” he explained, adding that he lost an equivalent of almost $5,700 to the poor yield. “I can’t make up for the loss of 13 hectares with just one hectare near the river,” he added.

‘Stricter rationing’

The water shortage at Dukan has affected around four million people downstream in the neighbouring Sulaimaniyah and Kirkuk governorates, including their access to drinking water.

For more than a month, water treatment plants in Kirkuk have been trying to mitigate a sudden, 40 percent drop in the supplies reaching them, according to local water resource official Zaki Karim.

In a country ravaged by decades of conflict, with crumbling infrastructure and floundering public policies, residents already receive water intermittently.

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2025