Chapter 8, Part 8: Euphrates Water for Aleppo

Section Five
Euphrates Water for Aleppo

Aleppo drew its water from the Haylan canal and the Quwayq river. Turkey had diverted this river, which rises near Aintab, to its own farms, and now let it flow only in winter, when it did not need it. The Quwayq had always been a river with little water in summer. And as the surface water began to dry up, the water of the Haylan canal began to fail the people.

On top of that, the population of Aleppo kept growing until it exceeded a quarter of a million by the mid-forties. I remember taking part in a census held in 1947, as an observer from the university, and its results showed the population of Aleppo to be 265,000, while the population of the city of Damascus was 264,000. The President of the Republic at the time would not allow the census results to be published, because they would have cut the number of Muslim deputies in these two cities by more than half and made them fewer than the deputies of the religious minorities, each of whose communities enjoyed a fixed number of deputies regardless of the number of its members.[1]

This anomaly was later abolished.

When the city's thirst grew severe, a search was made for the easiest way to give its people water, and the decision settled on bringing the water of the Euphrates to it. I do not intend to set out the efforts made to this end, except to say that all the city's deputies, whatever their leanings, took part in them. And the other deputies helped them, given the worsening situation in this city that was beginning to go thirsty.

Among these efforts that bore fruit was a proposal submitted by four of Aleppo's deputies, Rushdi al-Kikhya, Nazim al-Qudsi, Latif Ghanima and Abd al-Rahman al-Kayyali, to allocate 25 million liras for bringing water from the Euphrates. On 19/5/1947 the Budget Committee agreed to allocate 20 million, to be repaid to the state once operation of the project began, that is, once the water reached the houses.

The Minister of Public Works, Dr. Adnan al-Atassi, explained the matter in the Chamber of Deputies as follows:

"Last year the government commissioned a foreign technical firm[2] to study the various economic projects in the country, among them the question of supplying the city of Aleppo with water. As for bringing the water of the Euphrates to Aleppo, the report dealt with two questions independent of each other: the first, the water needed for drinking; and the second, the irrigation of an agricultural area around the city.

The report states that bringing drinking water would cost 20 million liras, and that irrigating the land, with an area of nine thousand hectares, to create irrigated and planted farms would come to about 30 million, on the basis that irrigating one hectare costs 500 Syrian liras." This, as the minister says, is not an economically worthwhile operation.

It was decided to go ahead with the project of bringing Euphrates water for drinking only. The operation required lifting the Euphrates water by motor pumps to a height of 95 meters, then pushing it mechanically through a canal ninety kilometers long.

Al-Kikhya accepted the drinking-water project, but he held on to the project of creating a green oasis around Aleppo. This is what he said in his reply to some deputies who criticized the irrigation question on the grounds of its high costs.[3]

The sum allocated was enough to dig a canal able to draw 50 thousand cubic meters a day from the Euphrates, at a time when the city's consumption did not exceed 13,500 cubic meters a day.. So the project was designed to meet the city's needs for 20 or 30 years.. Today the city's districts have spread and its population has grown greatly, and the water reaching Aleppo in 1998 came to more than 207 thousand cubic meters a day.[4] Work is now under way on the fourth canal, and when it is finished the total water reaching Aleppo each day will be 400 thousand cubic meters.

These deputies who supported the project, those I have named and others I have not, deserve that I call down God's mercy on the souls of those of them who have died and wish a good life to those who are still living, because the service they rendered to this dear city cannot be measured in money.

I was not one of them, because I came to the Chamber of Deputies some months after the project was approved. But I did have some part in this matter.

On 26 April 1956, when I was Minister of Finance, I concluded an agreement with the foreign Aleppo Water and Bus Company, on the basis of Nationalization Law no. 85 of 21 January 1956, to end its concession and make the enterprise a national one. I also arranged a loan of 11 million liras to the enterprise to cover its losses. It had been selling a cubic meter of water to the citizens for 30 piasters, while it cost it 55 piasters.[5]

Huge interest charges of nearly three million liras had piled up on the enterprise.. and fate willed that I should cancel them during the union state in 1959, thanks to President Gamal Abdel Nasser's approval of a legislative decree, on my own personal proposal, exempting the water enterprises from the interest on their loans, despite the fierce opposition of some ministers for ignoble regionalist reasons.

Endnotes:

[1] Bashir Zuhdi says in his book "Dimashq" (Damascus) that the population of this city was 178,000 in 1924 and 230,000 in 1931; from Muti' al-Murabit's book al-Nur wa-l-Nar fi Maktab Anbar (Light and Fire at Maktab Anbar), Dar al-Fikr, Damascus 1991, p. 49.

[2] The British firm of Alexander Gibb.

[3] See the minutes of the Chamber of Deputies session of 21 May 1947, p. 401.

[4] The Statistical Abstract published by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 1998.

[5] For anyone who wishes to read further: see my speech in the Chamber of Deputies and the text of the agreement in the minutes of the session of 4 July 1956, p. 675.