ONE of the abiding images of the war in what used to be Yugoslavia came last year when people from Sarajevo were filmed running through the city, dodging sniper fire to fill buckets from makeshift wells. Less publicly, the children of Baghdad are still dying of typhoid and diarrhoeal diseases because the international trade embargo on Iraq has prevented water supplies from being fully restored after the Gulf War bombing four years ago. From Aden to Monrovia, Beirut to Kabul, modern wars are being fought in cities. And the water supplies on which millions of people depend are in the front line.
Last month, the International Committee of the Red Cross launched a campaign to improve the protection of water supplies and water engineers during war. At a symposium in Montreux, the ICRC called for the bombing of waterworks to be outlawed, and suggested that power stations might be protected in the same way. 鈥淪oldiers won鈥檛 always play by the rules, of course,鈥� says Giorgio Nembrini, a senior Red Cross water engineer and joint chairman of the symposium. 鈥淏ut we aim to get senior military people to publicly start to raise doubts about attacking certain kinds of civilian targets.鈥�
Military commanders already apply humanitarian 鈥渞ules鈥� to protect civilians, as laid down in the Geneva Convention of 1949 and its protocols. But, says the Red Cross, those rules and customs 鈥� such as not bombing hospitals or shooting nurses 鈥� cannot protect civilians in modern cities.
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Article 54 of the convention鈥檚 First Protocol, agreed in 1977, prohibits attacks on 鈥渙bjects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population鈥�, unless they are used 鈥渋n direct support of military action鈥�. The protocol lists not only crops and foodstuffs for protection, but also drinking water installations.
Rules of engagement
Neither Britain nor the US has signed the Geneva Convention but they try to adhere to its rules, according to military analysts working for the British government. Removing waterworks from their lists of targets during a war is a matter for the politicians who lay down the rules of engagement. 鈥淚f the politicians want total war, that is what the military will provide,鈥� says one analyst. The only firm rule, he says, appears to be not attacking nuclear plants.
When the allied forces bombed Baghdad in 1991, they assiduously avoided waterworks. But they still put almost every water installation in the city out of operation, because they all needed electricity to pump water and the allied forces launched more than 50 bombing attacks on the city鈥檚 21 power stations. The bombing reduced the generating capacity of the Iraqi capital from 8500 megawatts to 300. 鈥淲hen you hit a power plant, you are destroying water treatment works and hospitals as effectively as if you bomb them,鈥� says Nembrini.
Six months after the bombing ended, with the Red Cross and other aid bodies trying to repair water installations, Nembrini says that the number of cases of waterborne diseases such as typhoid, hepatitis and diarrhoea had tripled, while infant mortality had at least doubled. And since then, the trade embargo has held up for months, or permanently, imports of spare parts for waterworks and chemicals for disinfection. 鈥淎t best, the water supply stations are working at only 50 per cent of their prewar capacity,鈥� he says.
鈥淲ater shortages from lack of electricity are common in today鈥檚 conflicts,鈥� says the ICRC. 鈥淪trikes against power stations often lead to a complete breakdown of water-supply systems. Mostar, Sarajevo, Aden, Monrovia, Mogadishu and Kigali are just a few examples of the cities that had to face this problem.鈥�
The Lebanese civil war, fought in the streets of Beirut, exhibited another side of the vulnerability of urban water supplies. A map of the city鈥檚 waterworks and trunk mains reveals that water was pumped back and forth across what became known as the 鈥済reen line鈥� between the Muslim and Christian sides of the city (see Diagram). But as the city degenerated into a series of warring fiefdoms in the 1980s, its power and water supplies became increasingly unreliable.
With most of the water coming from the eastern Christian area, the Muslim south-western suburbs were particularly vulnerable. 鈥淥nly a few shells were needed for the pumps to stop or for the valves to remain closed,鈥� says an ICRC report. After every lull in shelling, engineers and aid workers dodged sniper fire to repair the system. But, during Beirut鈥檚 鈥渉arbours war鈥� of 1989, most of the suburbs lost both power and water.
Over the years, people adapted. Inhabitants in many buildings drilled boreholes to tap water held in porous rocks beneath the city. As a result, seawater poured into the emptying pores and the salinity of the water increased until it was often undrinkable.
Attacks on water installations have been recorded as far back as ancient Mesopotamian times. More recently, in 1938, during the Sino-Japanese war, Chinese forces killed hundreds of thousands of their own people after breaking dykes on the Yellow River to hold up a Japanese advance. And the bombing of dams and dykes was a key strategy for American forces in both the Korean and Vietnam wars, says Glen Plant, an environmental lawyer at the London School of Economics.
Sometimes destruction of just one waterworks can leave a whole city thirsty. In 1990, rebels destroyed the water works at White Plains, northeast of the Liberian capital Monrovia. The city鈥檚 taps remained dry until the Red Cross repaired the plant in late 1991. According to Nembrini, the people of Monrovia had to survive on rainwater and a hundred or so hand-dug wells, most of which were dug by the Red Cross.
Much the same happened in Yemen this year, where civil war damaged the main water plant at Bir Nasser, which supplied the 350 000 residents of Aden, 70 kilometres away. As taps dried up, fights for water became common in the city. When water tankers entered the streets they were 鈥渁ssaulted by the population鈥�, the Red Cross reported. Residents even broke open water mains at low points in an effort to drain the last drop of water.
Across Bosnia, the Serbs have singled out waterworks as 鈥渟trategic targets鈥�, says the Red Cross. In mid-1994, no fewer that 14 water supply lines were cut, including those in the UN 鈥渟afe areas鈥� of Bihac in the west and Srebrenica in the east. In central Bosnia alone, military conflict left more than 200 000 people without water, when soldiers cut off supplies to towns such as Vares˘, Vitez and Zenica.
In Sarajevo, power failures and shells have shut down most of the wells at the city鈥檚 main water source, the well field at nearby Bacevo. And explosions have left even functioning water mains leaking 70 per cent of their water. Many people turned last year to old public wells that tapped shallow groundwater. These were 鈥渃ontaminated with waste water from broken sewers鈥�, says the Red Cross. Meanwhile, with no chlorine gas making it through military lines, 鈥渘one of the water supplied to the city has been disinfected since late 1993鈥�. Hardly surprisingly, hepatitis, typhoid and diarrhoeal diseases have spread in drinking water.
The longer conflicts go on, the greater the risk of contamination of underground water that could destroy water resources for decades to come. Around Sarajevo, blocked river channels full of pollution threaten the aquifer that supplied 70 per cent of the city鈥檚 water.
Legitimate targets
An inspection by the UN last year found widespread pollution of the River Danube from some 50 bombed-out factories, electrical transformers and ammunition dumps in the former Yugoslavia (This Week, 19 June 1993). Dioxins, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and PCBs were seeping from the river into underground waters. And Red Cross engineers report that toxic chemicals from burnt-out battery and electroplating factories on the edge of Srebrenica are infiltrating water supplies.
For the Red Cross, this 鈥渁ccidental鈥� pollution of water, comes second to the deliberate bombing of waterworks. Many installations are attacked because they serve the military as well as civilians and so are, arguably, legitimate military targets under the Geneva Convention. The allied forces justified bombing Iraq鈥檚 Ramadi water pipeline, which extends 500 kilometres into the desert, on the grounds that it supplied some military units as well as shepherds and villages.
But the ICRC wants civilian water treatment plant and pumps to have 鈥渁bsolute protection鈥�, like hospitals. It also wants water engineers and other public health professionals given the same protection as doctors and nurses. Aid organisations such as Oxfam and M茅decins Sans Fronti猫res reported to last month鈥檚 symposium that dealing with water problems is becoming an increasing burden for them in war zones and they are raising their investment in engineering staff.
Another route to speeding up the reactivation of damaged or abandoned water installations is to create a global database of maps and technical details of water plant and distribution networks, so that when somebody blows bits of one up, or abandons it, water supplies can be restored quickly. In recent conflicts, such as Rwanda, Aden and Somalia, engineers have fled and plans have been lost, creating immense problems for aid engineers trying to figure out how things should work.
In Yemen this year, soldiers destroyed all plans at water treatment works before fleeing. It took weeks to find out which valve did what, say Red Cross engineers. In Rwanda, the mass exodus of Hutus to Zaire left dozens of intact but abandoned water installations. According to Nembrini, before aid workers could restart the water treatment plant at Gisenyi, its former engineering staff had to be traced in refugee camps and convinced to work inside Rwanda under the protection of the ICRC.
鈥淲e need site plans deposited centrally, perhaps with us in Geneva,鈥� says the ICRC鈥檚 Joachim Kreysler. Most complex plant and distribution systems are designed by Western engineers, often with Western aid money. One problem with such a bank of information could be gaining the permission of the owners of the plant, who have reason to be suspicious about what would happen to that information. According to engineers at the Red Cross meeting, some companies that had helped to design Baghdad鈥檚 power plants handed the plans over to the allied forces during the Gulf War.
Such claims, true or not, have the potential to stymie the efforts of aid workers in the field, making water engineers鈥� work more hazardous, and the prospects for protecting water supplies from military attack much harder.