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Fresh water life itself, has never come easy in the Middle East. Ever since the Old Testament God punished man with 40 days and 40 nights of rain, water supplies here have been dwindling. The rainfall only comes in winter, Inshallah ----- Good willing and drains quickly through the semiarid land, leaving the soil to bake and to thirst for next November. The regions accelerating population, expanding agriculture, industrialization, and higher living standards demand more fresh water. Drought and pollution limit its availability. War and mismanagement squander it. Says Joyce Starr of the Global Water Summit Initiative, based in Washington, D.C. Nations like Israel and Jordan are swiftly sliding into that zone where they are suing all the water resources available to them. They have only 15 to 20 years left before their agriculture, and ultimately their food security, is threatened. I came here to examine this crisis in the making, to investigate fears that water wars are imminent, that water has replaced oil as the regions most contentious commodity. For more than two months I traveled through three river valleys and seven nations -----from southern Turkey down the Euphrates River Syria, Iraq, and on to Kuwait; to Israel and Jordan, neighbors across the valley of the Jordan; to the timeless Egyptian Nile. Even amid the scarcity there are haves and havenotes. Compared with the United States, which in 1990 had a freshwater potential of 10000 cubic meters a year for each citizen, Iraq had 5 500, Turkey had 4 000, and Syria had more than 2 800. Egypts potential was only 1 100. Israel had 460, Jordan a meager 260. But these are not firm figures, because upstream use of river water can dramatically alter the potential downstream. | 
