Iraq’s Dukan reservoir drops to 20-year low, forcing rationing
Dwindling rains and damming upstream by Iran and Turkey have forced strict water rationing for 4 million Iraqis
Water levels at Iraq’s vast Dukan Dam reservoir have plummeted as a result of dwindling rains and further damming upstream, hitting millions of inhabitants already affected by drought with stricter water rationing.
Amid these conditions, visible cracks have emerged in the retreating shoreline of the artificial lake, which lies in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and was created in the 1950s.
Dukan Lake has been left three-quarters empty, with its director Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq explaining its reserves currently stand at around 1.6 billion cubic metres of water out of a possible seven billion.
That is “about 24 per cent” of its capacity, the official said, adding that the level of water in the lake had not been so low in roughly 20 years.
Satellite imagery shows the lake’s surface area shrank by 56 per cent between the end of May 2019, the last year it was completely full, and the beginning of June 2025.
Tawfeeq blamed climate change and a “shortage of rainfall”, explaining that the timing of the rains had also become irregular.