Conflict following lack of water? Eyal Weizman's tracking of the 'aridity line'

In this blog post I want to comment on something I heard about in a talk at the Southbank Centre last year. The talk was held by Naomi Klein, called ‘Let them Drown: The Violence of Othering in a Warming World’. Celebrating Edward Said’s legacy, she transferred his profound theory of Othering and related it to the current climate crises in a variety of captivating ways. You can see a transcript or listen to a podcast of the talk here if you are interested yourselves.

One of the main things that particularly struck me from the talk, and that I will now make the subject of this blog post, is mention of the famous architect-come-academic Eyal Weizman’s following of the ‘aridity line’.

This is published in his book collaborated with photographer Fazal Sheikh called The Conflict Shoreline (2015). The ‘aridity line’ is what is usually considered to be around 200mm of annual rainfall. This level of precipitation has been considered the minimum needed for growing crops on a large scale, anything less is considered ‘desert’. This line is in no way static, and can move as a result of human influences such as cyclical drought or human attempts to ‘green’ deserts.

Following this aridity line on a map, Weizman simultaneously mapped Western drone strikes and found what he calls an ‘astounding coincidence’. As Klein explains:

‘When you map the targets of Western drone strikes onto the region, you see that many of these attacks – from South Waziristan through northern Yemen, Somalia, Mali, Iraq, Gaza and Libya – are directly on or close to the 200mm aridity line.’

But what explains this shocking coincidence? Klein continues:

 ‘The connection between water and heat stress and conflict is a recurring, intensifying pattern all along the aridity line: all along it you see places marked by drought, water scarcity, scorching temperatures and military conflict – from Libya to Palestine, to some of the bloodiest battlefields in Afghanistan and Pakistan… first, Western fighter jets followed that abundance of oil; now, Western drones are closely shadowing the lack of water, as drought exacerbates conflict.’

Although the main focus of his book is on the Middle East, in particular the conflicts surrounding the Palestinian Bedouins and the fluctuations of the desert threshold in this area, in an earlier interview Weizman spoke about this conflict pattern in relation to Africa:

‘In past decades, conflicts have broken out in most countries from East to West Africa, along this shoreline: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal’.

I wonder if this is merely coincidence or if there really is a correlation between low water levels in Africa and conflict, so have tried to do some exploration. I’ve looked at timelines of recent events leading up to both the Somalia and Mali drone strikes highlighted in Weizman’s maps, trying to determine whether there is any distant connection between the strikes and water availability.

In both cases, I found mentioning of water scarcity (such as 2005 food shortages in Mali after severe drought; severe drought in the 70’s in Somalia (BBC, 2016)), but there are also a plethora of other historical and modern political tensions that have led to this, so it is really very hard to make a definitive conclusion. A huge study comparing a variety of areas and their history’s I think is needed to do that, and with my current time frame I’m not sure that is quite possible…

Nevertheless! I also looked up more maps showing western drone strikes in Africa, and sure enough, they very clearly follow the same pattern that Weizman’s aridity line map shows! So maybe there is something to it.

Source: https://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com

It really is a very striking similarity, which I am fascinated by. I would love to find out more about this in future. I wonder if any of you readers have any more insight into this?

Weizman, E and Sheikh, F (2015) The Conflict Shoreline: Colonisation as Climate Change in the Negev Desert, Göttingen: Steidl.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14094632 (Somalia timeline)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13881978 (Mali timeline)