“Water is a huge problem, as you all know, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Tajikistan has one of the greatest water potentials in the world. . . we have got a water resources task force now set up in the Department to examine how we can additionally help the countries of the area, and particularly Pakistan with the water issue.”
Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, Briefing on his Recent Trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, Georgia and Germany, March 2, 2010.
A recent article in the February 20, 2010 National Journal, “The Bottled-Water Problem,” (subscription required) explores the logistical challenges that the U.S. military and NATO troops are experiencing with water, food and fuel supplies in Afghanistan. In particular, the author, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., focuses on the military’s reliance on importing supplies of bottled-water due, in part, to concerns that contaminated water from indigenous sources is making military personnel sick.
“When we drink local water – just stuff that a normal Iraqi wouldn’t think twice about or an Afghan wouldn’t think twice about drinking, because their [immune] system is used to dealing with all that bacteria and the germs – our systems aren’t used to that,” the author quotes Lt. Gen. Mitchell Stevenson, the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, as saying.
Freedberg explores the question of purifying indigenous sources of water and indeed points out that the U.S. military and NATO are working towards buying local water with potential investments in water purification and bottling plants. But purifying water locally might not be the most cost-effective approach to solving the military’s water supply issue in Afghanistan, at least so suggests a Dutch Air Force officer who coordinates logistics for the International Stability Assistance Force.
The “bottled water we import is cheaper than when we get it here,” the Dutch officer told Freedberg. And that might be true if one were calculating the cost of water using the initial purchase value of water by volume compared to what it would cost to get water locally through investments in water purification and bottling plants. But when it comes to military supplies that are shipped to and within a combat theatre, the value of those supplies is much greater than the price the military originally purchases it for.
Last week, the U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu undertook what I would characterize as an energy diplomacy tour of the Middle East, spending the first two days of his four day trip in Saudi Arabia, followed by a visit to Abu Dhabi in the UAE, and finally Qatar. While it was certainly exciting to me the trip as a whole didn't get too much coverage, so to save you the hassle of rifling through the annals of Google, I've provided you with a short recap of each day.
Day One (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia):
Secretary Chu kept a tight schedule, meeting with multiple officials. The day began with a discussion with King Abdullah and Saudi Petroleum and Resource Minister Ali Al Naimi. Topics of their talk included climate change, energy security, and the future role of alternative resources. Chu brought these topics together for the public during a speech at the International Energy Forum Secretariat, which hit on some solid natural security points. Chu also outlined the added stress that climate change could add to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, by increasing levels of water scarcity – a problem already endemic in areas such as Yemen, whose instability has already been a thorn in the Kingdom's side.
A war machine, like any mechanism, needs fuel in order to run. When that war machine is operating in an environment where the necessary fuels are sparse, a person has two options: 1) Get it there somehow, or 2) Give up. The current engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, as their architects have elected to go with option one, are fed by often-long convoys transporting supplies (fuel and water) for both man and machine.
Convoy, released by C.W. McCall in 1975, follows the journey of truck driver Rubber Duck, within an ever growing convoy on the way to its destination. Due to the high value of its cargo, the convoy is convinced that “Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way,” despite the fact that they come under fire from, “armored cars, and tanks, and jeeps, and rigs of every size. . . And choppers filled the skies.”
Unlike at the finale of this country classic, however, sometimes the most protected convoy can end in ambushed disaster, resulting in astronomical costs for the operation (in time, dollars and blood). The Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) states that resupply casualties historically account for 10-12 percent of total Army casualties, the majority being water and fuel related, making this, quite literally, a deadly issue.
Yesterday I made the journey over to the Hill to check out an interesting hearing for the House Armed Services Committee Readiness Subcommittee over energy management and initiatives on military installations. The hearing, overseen by Chairman Solomon Ortiz (D-TX), heard the testimony of four Defense Department officials: Dr. Dorothy Robyn, Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment; Mr. L. Jerry Hansen, Army Senior Energy Executive; Mr. Roger M. Natsuhara, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Installations and Environment; and Mrs. Debra K. Tune, Performing the Duties of Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment and Logistics. 
The opening testimonies from the four defense representatives can be accessed here: DOD; Army; Navy and Air Force. The hearing can be viewed here.
Rep. Ortiz started on two colossal renewable energy projects that the military services have undertaken, at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada and Fort Irwin, California. Despite his evident pride in renewable projects such as this, the initial concern of the hearing was how these and other energy initiatives have the potential to affect DOD operations and readiness negatively. Specifically, he cited the potential for wind farms and solar arrays to disrupt military training and radar, weakening both in-theater and homeland effectiveness. Each witness named this as a potential concern in their respective testimonies, which prompted Ortiz to inquire as to any established basis of information or study to support these concerns. Dr. Robyn noted that, to her knowledge, no projects have gone forward that have created any such problems. Natsuhara followed later with a reasonable statement what concerns them most is what is not known about the effects of most projects, but none of the panelists were able to offer any data supporting, or disproving, the concern for radar disruption.
At the risk of having this new feature labeled a complete cliché, I will save you the overly used George Santayana quote, and simply state that sometimes it is pertinent to look back, in order to better assess the present. Though “natural security” as a study, like your four-year-old niece, can still count its age on one hand, in practice it has been a timeless and vital key to the success of empires, war machines, revolutions and development—for those that understood its pivotal role. In this new blog feature, I’ll be sifting through the pages of the great war “how-tos”—from Sun Tzu's The Art of War to today’s feature, U.S. Army FM 3-24, a.k.a., “The Counterinsurgency Manual”— looking back to see what role natural security held in conflicts contemporary to the manual, and what its words of natural security wisdom hold in current engagements.
The COIN Manual was drafted at a time that the U.S. military had found itself in a war it had not entirely planned for, and whose outlook seemed to grow more grim every day. The United States had not exactly come with a knife to a gun fight, but in a sense had walked into a swarm of bees after gearing up to slay a dragon. The U.S. armed forces were prepared to fight a conventional war, but found that the game had changed since they last took a stroll through Baghdad’s front gate. It was time for a reassessment, the Army dug into working on it, and thus in 2006, U.S. Army FM 3-24 was born.
The manual gave a new hope for success in Iraq, as it won hearts and minds within DOD with its heightened focus on the Iraqi people and the cancerous roots of insurgency. Though penned years before the launch of natural security here at CNAS, the manual included important natural security-relevant mentions:
Currently, the Obama administration’s 2010 3D Afghanistan strategy boasts a COIN approach which prominently features coordinated agricultural efforts between the military and USAID, water and energy projects, and additional natural security-esque initiatives supported by the COIN Manual's guidance. Having risen from the ashes of earlier failures only to help guide the current U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, the COIN Manual was as much a product of its environment, as it has now made the environment a product of itself.
Peter Gleick and associates at the Pacific Institute released a report last week, Understanding and Reducing the Risks of Climate Change for Transboundary Waters, that explores how climate change could impact shared water resources and what the implications could mean for governance structures – principally existing peace agreements over shared water resources. (Peter Gleick is one of the foremost experts on conflicts over water resources, and, in fact, spoke on the Natural Security panel last June at our annual conference.)
According to the report:
A growing number of disputes over allocations of water across local borders, ethnic boundaries, or between economic groups have also led to conflict. The good news is that water disputes are generally resolved diplomatically, and shared water resources are often a source of cooperation and negotiation. An estimated 300 agreements have been developed between riparian States – those States that border a shared river. But the long history of violence associated with transboundary water resources highlights the challenges associated with managing shared water resources.
As the authors note, future trends – ranging from population growth to economic growth to climate change – could place significant strain on these water resources and the existing institutional bodies and shared agreements that govern them. Understanding these potential risks, the authors ask a very important question: "To what degree can existing transboundary agreements or international principles for sharing water handle the strain of future pressures, particularly climate change?" (emphasis mine)
An American civil affairs soldier surveys a canal that feeds into a recently installed solar powered water filtration system outside Zadan, Iraq. The filtration systems were recently installed by Iraqi contractors and can sanitize 15 liters of contaminated water per minute, providing safe drinking water to hundreds of nearby Iraqi families. According to officials with Multi-National Force-Iraq, "The filters collect and concentrate ultraviolet rays from the sun, killing harmful bacteria and providing safe drinking water for the local populace." The filtration system installed outside Zadan can currently supply 240 Iraqi families with 30 liters of clean water per day.
Photo: Courtesy of Multi-National Division - Baghdad.
