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others deal with the discord over water on a smaller and more focused level. The
best example here is the small state of Israel, which has been accorded hundreds
of publications about its water (detailed bibliography in Soffer 1992, 1999, 2006).
Still, not the Middle East alone provides headlines and research on the subject.
Wide-ranging disputes about water, within states and international, with total
discharge surpassing hundreds of billions of cubic meters annually and affecting
the lives of tens or even hundreds of millions of people—particularly of third-
world countries, have enjoyed comprehensive treatment in various contexts.
These are geopolitical, but also ecological, economic, and sociological. We may
mention the vast subcontinent of India, which shares the controversial Indus river
water with its rival Pakistan, with all the political, economic, social and military
aspects this entails; or a long list of water wars, for example, inside India (Shiva
2002; Gleick 1993); Bolivia, in which ambitious infrastructure projects involving
international financial interests sparked conflicts and even a popular uprising in
the city of Cochabamba (Shultz 2003); South Africa, where the issue of free access
to water blended with the socio-economic struggles that broke out after the end
of the apartheid period (Dawson 2010); Sri Lanka, where struggles over water
occurred in the setting of ethnic tension amidst war being waged in any case
(Dissanayake 2006). The overall view of present-day conflicts worldwide provides
intelligent insights into the existence of a problem with water, conflict and violent
struggles over it, a manifestation which apparently will not be resolved in the near
future (Ofori-Amoah 2004).
Several researchers into water conflicts from different angles have assembled
databases containing thousands of items documenting instances of clashes in the
setting of water. These data have undergone varied statistical analyses by diverse
research methods, and by these means studies have been written which still today
stimulate lively academic and public discourse.
A chronological documentation of wars over water has long been conducted by
the researcher P. H. Gleick, who every several years publishes detailed charts of
water incidents, from the time of the biblical Noah (some three millennia BCE)
to 2014 (Gleick 2011; Gleick & Heberger 2014). At his initiative the Water Conflict