Chapter
8:
Case
studies
in
Wadi
Siham
TDA’s
management
of
the
situation
seems
to
have
contributed
to
the
conflict.
On
the
one
hand,
in
early
2012,
person
83
managed
to
put
pressures
on
the
head
of
the
TDA
to
remove
the
wooden
plank
at
the
inlet
of
WMC3
and
to
refrain
person
82
from
putting
back
the
sand
bags
in
the
canal,
although
the
situation
remains
unresolved
today.
On
the
other
hand,
the
TDA
project
manager
thinks
that
this
is
an
unbalanced
action
against
person
82.
According
to
Ameen
Saleh,
the
head
of
operation
and
maintenance
at
the
TDA,
there
have
been
discussions
within
the
authority
to
replace
the
bags
in
person
82’s
canal
with
concrete
to
resolve
the
ongoing
conflict
but
the
request
is
awaiting
approval
and
has
been
caught
in
bureaucracy.
With
no
resolution
in
sight,
the
patience
of
both
sides
of
the
conflict
is
growing
thin.
Both
indicate
they’ll
resolve
the
matter
with
violence
if
necessary.
“Maybe
we
should
just
claim
all
our
land
including
that
in
which
the
canal
runs
and
let
the
government
deal
with
it.”
A
farmer
from
person
82
whose
father
donated
the
land
to
TDA
said.
Equally,
person
83
indicates
he’ll
“blow
up”
the
canal
and
put
the
old
Manadeb
system
back
to
work.
Person
82
did
not
try
to
reach
out
to
the
shaikh
simply
because
he
had
an
ongoing
conflict
over
land
with
person
83
in
which
one
person
was
killed
already.
“We
didn’t
want
to
add
this
to
that
conflict”,
he
said.
During
a
stakeholder
consultation
meeting
held
in
Amman
(see
Annex
6),
a
representative
of
the
TDA
and
person
83
revealed
conflicting
positions
of
the
matter.
The
government
representative
wanted
to
describe
the
crisis
as
a
result
of
several
natural
phenomena
(e.g.
the
Sesbania
propagation,
decline
in
rainfall
over
the
past
years
etc),
local
tribal
conflicts,
and
lack
of
enough
financial
resources.
On
the
other
hand
the
farmer
insisted
on
corruption
being
the
main
reason
behind
the
conflict.
Towards
the
end
of
the
discussions,
the
farmer
admitted
that
he
once
threatened
the
governmental
official
to
death
if
he
did
not
came
up
with
a
solution.
A
review
of
letters
issued
by
the
Ministry
of
Agriculture
indicated
that
the
ministry
instructed
the
police
to
interfere
and
arrest
one
of
the
influential
corrupt
farmers
who
was
stealing
others’
water.
However,
the
letter
was
suspicious
as
it
was
not
sent
to
the
police
by
a
court.
A
closer
analysis
by
the
research
team
of
several
other
letters
and
discussions
revealed
that
such
actions
were
taken
only
as
false
hints
by
the
government
to
show
that
it
was
trying
to
do
something,
which
in
fact
it
was