Um Mohamed (centre) and her family stand beside their makeshift water tanker in al-Zaatari. She is one of thousands of Jordanians who complain they have been left without potable water in the north for over three months.
By Taylor Luck
Mohamed Hassan grunted as he slowly lowered a clay jug from his right shoulder down to the floor of his one-room mud-brick house in northern Jordan. The 25-year-old had just completed what he said has become a daily 6km trek to the edge of his desert village of al-Kom al-Ahmar to retrieve what his family had long taken for granted: their daily water.
“This will be enough to drink, boil some tea and maybe some rice,” Hassan said as he cupped a handful of the murky, mineral-laden water he had retrieved from an artesian well at the edge of his village. He and his family of seven have relied on the well as their main water source since May.
“We haven’t even dreamed of bathing for months.”
Hassan is one of thousands of Jordanians who have been left without water services. Ongoing water cuts across the country are set to escalate a conflict over municipal services and a wider political crisis.
Jordan has long faced chronic water shortages. Classified as the world’s fourth water-poorest nation, it relies on rainwater reserves for some 20% of its annual, 1.5bn cu m needs.
The country’s water woes have reached crisis levels this summer with the influx of over half a million Syrians, pushing water demand up 16% and raising Jordan’s water deficit by 50%, from 400mn cu m (mcm) to 600 mcm.
No region has been hit harder by the water shortage than the city of Mafraq, 90km north of Amman. A rapid influx of Syrians has more than doubled the city’s population from 80,000 to 200,000. That halved available water per capita, which once stood at 100 mcm, to under 50 mcm per year.
Residents across the area, such as the city’s al-Hussain neighbourhood, claim they have witnessed a sharp decline in water services, with authorities reducing water deliveries from twice a week to twice a month. They allegedly suspended water supply altogether in May.
“We have been a dry city ever since the Syrians arrived,” resident Mohamed Mushagbeh said as he queued to purchase two 6-litre jugs of drinking water at a corner grocery store.
“If anyone has enough water to shower and wash their clothes, they are either rich or extremely lucky.”
The widespread shortages have forced thousands of Jordanians to rely on private water tankers and entrepreneurial private well-owners, who they claim have taken advantage of the crisis by raising their rates from $3 to over $7 per cu m this year.
With private water deliveries costing the average household over $100 per month — half of the country’s $210 minimum monthly wage — many Jordanians say they have opted to instead let their taps run dry.
“At the end of the day, we can barely afford our rent and food bills,” said Um Samer, whose family of six has been relying on bottled water since deliveries to their village of al-Hamra, north of Mafraq, were suspended in early June. “We can’t take out a loan just to stop our thirst.”
Jordanian authorities say they are racing to ease the growing water crisis by renting hundreds of private wells across the country and contracting private water vendors at a cost of some $280mn this year.
Yet with the number of Syrians flooding into the country growing and water demand nearly doubling during the holy month of Ramadan, water officials admit they are facing an “uphill battle.”
“Nearly overnight we had twice as many consumers and almost half the available resources,” says Ali Abu Sumaqqa, head of the water directorate of Mafraq — which has seen water demand nearly triple from some 600cu m per hour to over 1,500cu m per hour this year alone. “We are trying our best to limit cuts, but without greater international support, we just can’t continue to provide full service.”
With the country in the dead heat of summer, citizens’ patience with the ongoing cuts is wearing thin. Jordan has witnessed several angry protests over the ongoing water shortage, with hundreds of citizens from Mafraq to the southern city of Karak blocking off roads and marching on government buildings, warning Amman of a “popular uprising” should it fail to fill the pipes.
“The government is raising electricity prices and taxes while letting us die of thirst,” Ahmed Bani Hassan said as he set ablaze a pile of tyres near the entrance to the Mafraq water directorate during a protest over water cuts in late June. “If the government refuses us our basic rights as human beings, then we will take them by force.”
Amman continues to beg for patience from citizens, pinning its hopes on long-term mega-schemes such as the Disi Project, a pipeline from an ancient aquifer near the southern port of Aqaba.
It is designed to provide an additional 200 mcm annually to Amman and several southern cities by the end of the decade. It delivered its first cubic metres to Amman this month.
Jordanian officials also continue to explore the so-called Jordan Red Sea Conveyance Project, a multi-billion-dollar initiative to desalinate billions of cubic metres of Red Sea water by mid-2020.
With thousands of Jordanians across the country in their third month without water, citizens warn that the government has days, not years, to turn the taps back on. “In Tunisia, unemployment sparked a revolution; in Egypt, dignity and lack of freedoms,” Bani Hassan said. “If we remain dry, the Jordanian street will be alight — and there is no amount of water in the world that can put out that fire.” — DPA
