In November 2018, Glada Lahn and Nouar Shamout wrote in an expert comment for Chatham House about the water crisis in Iraq's Basra governorate. By the end of October, health officials had counted more than 100,000 hospital admissions for poisoning. Low river flows in summer let seawater push upstream, and many treatment plants were not designed for the high salt levels. According to the authors, a legal investigation was examining why 13 donor-supplied desalination plants had not operated since their completion in 2006.
The comment showed that idle as well as missing desalination capacity contributed to the crisis in Basra, and that the water problem reached beyond Iraq's borders.