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| Supporters of the Hizb Al Tahrir Islamic movement carry flags of the group as they shout slogans against the Syrian regime during a demonstration following Friday prayers in Beirut yesterday |
Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees who have fled from carnage and violence at home to neighbouring Jordan are draining the desert kingdom’s meagre water resources, officials and experts say.
It is a new challenge for Jordan, one of the world’s 10 driest countries, where desert covers 92% of its territory and the population of 6.7mn is growing by 3.5% a year.
The country has given refuge to waves of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees because of regional conflicts over the past decades, and is now hosting up to 120,000 Syrians.
“The majority of Syrian refugees are concentrated in the northern cities of Mafraq, Irbid, Ramtha, Jerash and Ajlun. All of these areas already suffer from water shortage,” Fayez Bataineh, secretary general of the Water Authority, told AFP.
“They add pressure to our limited water resources, and we need to be extra careful and wisely manage these resources.”
Years of below-average rainfall have created a shortfall of 500mn cu m a year, and the country forecasts it will need 1.6bn cu m of water a year by 2015.
“Each Syrian refugee needs at least 80 litres of fresh water a day, so 9,600 cu m per day for 120,000 people. The cost of this subsidised water supply is 13,000 dinar ($18,000) a day, not to mention other related expenses,” said Adnan Zubi, assistant secretary general of the ministry of water and irrigation.
“It is not the first time that Jordan hosted forced migrants, but our water resources and infrastructure are already overburdened.”
Struggling to battle a chronic water shortage, Jordan is mulling controversial plans to extract water. It is tapping into a 300,000-year-old aquifer, despite concerns about high levels of radiation, while studying ways to build a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.
“When my family and I fled to Ramtha from Homs several months ago, we could not find enough drinking water,” said Abu Eid, who has two sons and four daughters.
“Sometimes, I avoided eating in order not to go to the toilet later because there was no water to wash. But we have adapted to the situation.”
Maher, another Syrian refugee living in the border town of Ramtha, said he needs to buy water every day.
“We have water shortages all the time. I shower once every 10 days,” he added.
But Basma, a 25-year-old Syrian refugee woman in Irbid, disagreed.
“I did not face any water problems in Jordan. I think the Jordanians are doing what they can to help us and things are fine thank God,” she said.
Aoife McDonnell of UNHCR Jordan said the UN refugee agency is aware that “hosting such large numbers of ‘guests’ ... severely strains already scarce resources, particularly in relation to water availability and consumption, waste management, sewage systems, energy, health and education.”
Jordan provides free medical services to UN-registered refugees, while more than 5,500 Syrian students have enrolled in public schools.
“This reliance on local services and infrastructure also brings increasing pressure on the already vulnerable host populations of Jordan, as it is coupled with major water scarcity in the region, rising temperatures and a resulting negative impact on food production,” McDonnell said, urging international support for the kingdom.
“The Syrians came from water-rich areas to almost parched parts in Jordan,” said Abdelrahman Sultan of the Jordanian-Israeli-Palestinian non-governmental group Friends of the Earth Middle East.
“They consume water here the same way they used to consume water in their country.”