While the battle over Mosul rages on, the World Bank has funded an operation to save the Mosul Dam 60km north of the city.
Five hundred Kurdish Peshmerga forces are guarding the Italian company,TREVI, while it tries to beat out an 18 month deadline to prevent the dam’s foundations from submerging further underground. If the dam collapses, up to 11.11 billion cubic-metres of water known as Lake Dahuk, will flood Mosul affecting the lives of millions of people living along the banks of the Tigris river.
“I don’t know if it’s a race against time, but we have the know-how and the technology to make the dam safe for the time-being,” a company source told Al Jazeera, on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Doomsday Scenario
The biggest danger of the Mosul operation is actually winning. ISIS may target the dam to plunge the entire region into a cataclysmic event. In a sense, this places the 500 members of the Peshmerga at the dam some of the most important people in the world.
Even without a terrorist attack the dam is heading for a collapse. The current attempt is merely a band-aid solution to by people time to move. The Mosul Dam sits on very unstable ground and it is impossible to fix permanently.
An in-depth study by the European Commission’s Science Centre, released last April, states that over 7 million Iraqis will be affected when the dam breaks. The Joint Research Centre’s report plays out different scenarios that could result from the dam’s breakdown.
The report continues to say that if just 26 percent of the dam collapses a flood of catastrophic proportions will ensue.
The report states: “This simulation … results in a very high wave of water, [up to 25 metres high] … arriving at Mosul after [100 minutes]. The capital Baghdad is reached after 3.5 days with a maximum water height of 8 metres and a mean of around 2 metres.”
While the world fights ISIS in Mosul, a real End-Time event is occurring. With Samanth Powers’ tweet below back in March, one has to wonder why the Obama administration is not focusing more energy on the unfolding human tragedy.
Just left chilling briefing on Mosul dam in Iraq; failure could leave Mosul City under 15m of water in only hours. pic.twitter.com/FqJuC4SiVy
— Samantha Power (@AmbassadorPower) March 9, 2016