Great…
Via Washington Post:
BAGHDAD — The Islamic State militants who have rampaged across northern Iraq are increasingly using water as a weapon, cutting off supplies to villages that resist their rule and pressing to expand their control over the country’s water infrastructure.
The threat is so critical that U.S. forces are bombing the jihadists close to the Mosul and Haditha dams — Iraq’s largest — on a near-daily basis. But the radical Islamists continue to menace both facilities, clashing Tuesday with Iraqi troops near the Haditha Dam.
The Sunni militants want to seize the dams to bolster their claim that they are building an actual state. They have already taken over large swaths of Iraq and Syria and, as part of their latest offensive, have been besieging the Syrian town of Kobane in an effort to secure another piece of the border with Turkey. The U.S.-led coalition escalated its airstrikes Tuesday around Kobane, blunting the assailants’ offensive.
Controlling the dams is important because of their role in irrigating the country’s vast wheat fields and providing Iraqis with electricity. More ominously, the Islamic State has used its control of other water facilities — including as many as four dams along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers — to displace communities or deprive them of crucial water supplies.
The Islamic State “understands how powerful water is as a tool, and they are not afraid to use it,” said Michael Stephens, a Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based security studies think tank.