Development Cooperation as Conflict Management
The German Development Service (Deutsche Entwicklungsdienst—DED) knows that it is operating on thin diplomatic ice, but it has decided nevertheless to expand its activities in Syria. Its director, Jürgen Wilhelm, says close cooperation with the regime of Bashar al-Assad offers major advantages. But he does not deny that Syria has problems in the field of "good governance."
"Well, good governance in Syria is a subject which politically we just don't talk about," he says. "The DED knows there's potential for conflict over this issue on the international level—the international situation is clear. But, by entering into this cooperation, we want to offer some modest signal of hope to those elements in Syria which support a civil and peaceful development in the Middle East.
"I believe that the signal which the German government is sending with its decision to expand development cooperation by taking up another major project is a signal which has not gone unnoticed in the senior levels of the Syrian government."
Networking of development work
The German Development Service, which is sponsored and funded by the German government, plans to employ 25 staff by 2006 in the project to produce clean water and treat waste. The project should start this year and will cost up to two million euros. Ten of the staff will be sent out from Germany, the rest will be locally recruited.
The German government has said it wants the project to be carried out by a network of German development organisations, including the German Association for Technical Cooperation GTZ and the KfW Development Bank.
Only experience will show whether this enforced work-sharing will lead to "coordinated development aid," as the development minister, Heide Wieczorek-Zeul has declared.
DED director Wilhelm's Syrian water plans are ambitious. At the top of his agenda is the peaceful use of the water of the River Euphrates by both Syria and Turkey.
"We want to lead Turkey and Syria politically towards agreements which you can compare with the agreements between Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland," says Wilhelm.
"These countries have had agreements about the use of the waters of the Rhine for the last hundred years. But one hundred and twenty years ago, when these countries were fighting wars, such agreements were unthinkable. So there are positive examples, and we're trying hard to make our knowledge and experience available in everything from the major political decisions to the level of local private usage."
Disputes with Turkey over water
Turkey has a key role in solving Syria's water problems. Back in 1992, Turkey built the Atatürk dam in the upper reaches of the Euphrates. The dam can hold back around half the river's water.
The Euphrates is by far the most important source of water for Syria and there have been repeated conflicts with Turkey over the reduced volume of water flowing through Syria and into Iraq. And Turkey's planned new Ilisu dam close to the Syrian border promises to be the cause of new conflicts over water.
According to Gernot Rotter, professor of oriental studies at the University of Hamburg, Turkey will have to make substantial concessions over the use of the waters of the Euphrates if water projects in Syria are to have any chance.
"That means," Rotter says, "that there will have to be a treaty with Turkey over the use of water. And such treaties have to be internationally guaranteed, so that Syria knows how much water it will have at its disposal in future. Otherwise any project is useless—something which the German development workers will find out for themselves."
Rotter believes that a committed policy of step-by-step development could help the parties to work towards such agreements. On the other hand, a strategy of isolating Syria, as currently followed by the United States, gives exactly the wrong signals.
"It's a global problem of development aid that we can scarcely change anything significant on the political level," he says. "One can only work gently, by making it clear to Syria that it is increasingly dependent on the West, and especially on Europe. The Syrians are much more interested in the Europeans than they are in the Americans."
Richard Fuchs
© DEUTSCHE WELLE/DW-WORLD.DE 2005
Translation from German: Michael Lawton
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