Unexploded Mines, Sabotaged Wells, and Dead Livestock: The Ecological Trauma of War in the Middle East Environmental degradation is typically associated with war through the lens of resource scarcity creating conflict; people go to war over resources that are difficult to share. Examining how conflict in the Middle East has affected agriculture and livestock suggests that war— even just war—is futile in resolving conflict over natural resources. The intentional and unintentional weaponization of agriculture in the Middle East reveals the irony of justifying war for a greater good because it perpetuates one of the reasons people go to war, which is ecological resource scarcity itself. Agricultural productivity is linked with economic and ecological sustainability worldwide. As the heart of the economy, culture, and livelihood in the Middle East, agriculture is crucial to sustainable recovery in regions impacted by war. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Near East is one of the most arid regions in the world and per capita availability of arable land in the Near East is of the lowest in the world.1 This places people groups in the Middle East in a vulnerable position. The Yezidi, an Iraqi minority often targeted by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, are agricultural labourers whose geographically isolated land is vulnerable to IS terrorism; along with other residents in the Sinjar area of Iraq, Yezidis rely on an economy based on wheat, barley, and vegetables.2 In Yemen, where war has placed 257,000 hectares of cropland in distress, the intersectional crisis of food insecurity and human displacement has highlighted that 16.2 million Yemenis are food insecure.3 One of the ways war in the Middle East targets agriculture and livestock is through deliberate attacks on farmland and infrastructure. In Yemen, the Houthis are an insurgent group who have sought to weaken the state by attacking agricultural sites and infrastructure to damage the livelihoods of Yemenis. The Conflict and Environment Observatory, an agency that monitors and raises awareness of the environmental dimensions of war, counted 489 incidents of attacks on agricultural sites or infrastructure in southwestern Yemen in 2019, along with 220 incidents in the northern highland plains of Yemen.4 The methods to achieve such destruction included destroying water sources like wells and dropping cluster bombs in agricultural areas; the 220 incidents also include indirect attacks on infrastructure such as roads or buildings which impede the transportation of crops and livestock across the country.5 Alice Martins, “An empty water tank and a sabotaged irrigation well on an abandoned farm near Sinune town north of Sinjar mountain.” Amnesty International, 2018. Fair use.
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IS also targeted environmental infrastructure in Iraq. Though Iraq declared a military victory over IS in 2017, rebuilding the country and returning farmers to their homes and land has been a process slowed by the conflict’s extensive collateral damage. According to a ground report conducted by Amnesty International, IS took advantage of irrigation links by sabotaging wells with rubble, oil, and other objects and destroying pumps, cables, and generators which were essential to crop irrigation.6
