Those oil companies with interests in oil from the Caspian Sea Basin have a critical interest in the Black Sea. So far pipelines from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have proposed routes ending in existing Black Sea ports, such as Novorossisk, Supsa, and Batumi or even a new facility built especially for loading oil discovered during the 1990s. Already, the Black Sea has more ship traffic than it can safely handle from these ports. These ships, most, if not all of them are tankers of differing dead weight tonnage. These tankers must then navigate the treacherous Straits of Bosporus. A navigation map prepared and published by the Defense Mapping Agency of the United States in 1996 illustrates just how treacherous navigation through the Straits of Bosporus is and has been for years. Passage through these straits to the Sea of Marmara and then to the Mediterranean Sea through the Dardenelles is awkward but essential to deliver oil to Europe. Passage through the Bosporus may even be impossible for tankers over 100,000 deadweight tons Navigation safety is a paramount obligation, but the Black Sea is the world's largest single reservoir of hydrogen sulphide, one of the deadliest substances in the natural world. A full breath of it is enough to kill a human being. This deadly brew has accumulated over tens of thousands of years.

Five rivers empty into the Black Sea: the Kuban, the Don, the Dnieper, the Dniester, and the Danube. The Danube's drainage basin extends across the whole of eastern and central Europe. The inrush of organic matter from five rivers was too much for the bacteria in sea water which would decompose this matter. They feed by oxidizing their nutrients, using the dissolved oxygen normally present in sea

Turkey with satellite photo of Pan Bosporus Str. See http://gurukul.ucc.american.edu/TED/BOSPORUS.HTM

water. But when the organic inflow is so great that the supply of dissolved oxygen is used up, then the bacteria turn to another biochemical process: they strip the oxygen from the sulfate ions which are a component of sea water, creating hydrogen sulphide in the process, or H 2 S. In the last fifty or more years, the five rivers have carried runoff from agriculture along their banks. Even more recently, toxic pesticides and fertilizers have been added to the poisonous brew that had already settled to the bottom of the Black Sea. Some authorities mention a possibility so terrible that most scientists prefer not to discus it. This nightmare is known by the harmless word 'turnover,' a phenomenon which has been observed in lakes whose depths are anoxic and charged with hydrogen sulphide. 'Turnover' means a sudden rolling over of water layers, as if the whole balance of pressures and densities which had kept the heavier mass below the lighter, fresh water were reversed and overthrown. Were this to take place in the Black Sea,, it would be the worst natural cataclysm to strike the earth since the last Ice Age. Neal Ascherson, author of Black Sea, is somewhat reassuring. There are traces of hope in measuring the oxycline, the upward limit of the poisoned undermass. Russian measurements suggest their measurements have shown variations up and down of as much as thirty metres. Ascherson has also noticed that scientists with the most experience were amongst those least ready to issue melodramatic forecasts of doom.

Ascherson also points out that humans of the Black Sea Basin -- about 160 million people -- are slowly killing the fish population of the Black Sea, although the process began 2000 years ago. The natural action of natural forces brought about a huge act of pollution: the decay of billions of tons of upcountry mud and leaves and living ooze and dead microorganisms poured into the sea floor since the last Ice Age by the five great rivers of the Black Sea. In the last century or so, fisherman could earn a decent living with small wooden boats and primitive nets to catch the creatures of the sea and sell them ashore. What is being polluted by human agency is not the main body of water (apart from the tipping of drums of toxic waste by Italian ships) but the surface layer whose abundance has shaped the entire prehistory and history of the Black Sea. Monstrous plankton blooms have begun to appear on the shallow northwestern shelf of the Black Sea, where the bottom is above the anoxic level and where many of the important fish spawn. 'Red tides' have formed regularly since the 1970s from the phosphates found in fertilizers. They combine to produce a neuro-toxin deadly to humans. The worst of these was in the Bay of Odessa in 1989. The red tide reached the horrifying concentration of one kilogram for every cubic metre of sea water. As if this litany of environmental disasters were not enough, Ascherson offers another, this time a small, jelly-like creature with no known predators. It was discovery in the Black Sea. Scientists identified it as the Mneniopsis, a native of the shallow estuaries of the United States. Clearly, it got to the Black Sea in the water ballast of freighters. Between 1987 and 1988 one of the most devastating biological explosions ever recorded by science involved this small, transparent creature. It multiplied by the millions and fed on zooplanckton, the food of young fish, and on fish larvae. Its total biomass in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov reached 700 million tons of translucent jelly , and its impact was wildly catastrophic. The Mnemiopsis, however, seem to have eaten the sea to the point of losing all Black Sea fish and moved on the Sea of Marmara This disaster, more than anything else, finally convinced the governments of the Black Sea states that they must take action.

Here's what Ascherson notes about the fish population of the Black Sea.

A second obstacle to the rescue of the Black Sea's ecology is the attitude of Turkey. Among all the causes of the Black Sea crisis, the most direct and obvious is over-fishing. Species after species is being wiped out, or reduced to a few insignificant survivors, by genocidal and shortsighted greed which pays no attention to warnings about fish stocks until catch numbers and average weight have fallen below the point of no return. Most of the over-fishing is done by Turks. This is a demonstrable fact, but a fact which Turkish fisherman, politicians and even scientists find almost impossible to admit. Ignorance and the cruel spoils system of Turkish regional politics, contribute to this reluctance. But the most the most powerful motive is patriotic resentment. Once again, the outside world is perceived to be picking on Turkey and meddling in Turkish internal affairs.

There can be no thought that the major oil companies may use the ports of the Black Sea to load oil and/or liquefied natural gas for shipment through this dying sea and on to the Mediterranean Sea via the Straits of the Bosporus. No rescue effort could take place while supertankers were moving through this old route to the sea. The amount of oil involved will more the quadruple the existing traffic. As Ascherson states: "Appalling difficulties confront any program for saving the marine life of the Black Sea. One of them -- the most pathetic -- is the bankruptcy of science in the countries of the former Soviet Union. All around the coasts of Ukraine and southern Russia, from Odessa and Sevastopol to Kerch on the Crimean Peninsula, there once stood a chain of magnificent institutes of marine biology and oceanography. Their standards of research, not only in the Black Sea region but in the oceans, were as high as any in the world, and their equipment -- above all their fleet of specially fitted ships -- was the envy of their Western colleagues.....At exactly the moment when awareness of the desperate situation in the Black Sea began to dawn on the world, this magnificent and indispensable resource was paralyzed by financial collapse. In Russia, money for almost all public scientific bodies dried up to a mere trickle at the end of 1991."

At the western extremity of the Black Sea, one finds the Danube River Delta. In the mid1980s this huge area of over 1700 square miles was the subject of an environmentally destructive attempt to transform the delta into farmland. This idea was one of Nicolae Ceausecsu's projects, and it would have seriously degraded what is the world's largest river wetlands. Ceausescu was shot by one of the officers in his own army on December 25, 1989.

His violent death was part of the fallout of the revolution in Central Europe. Ceausescu ordered 6000 men to pump the Danube Delta dry and plant wheat and rice. The project was a failure. Water plants died, and animals were driven from some 240,000 acres; even worse, uncounted pelicans and cormorants were shot. These birds were part of a Rumanian project to encourage more fish. The birds were eating the fish, so Ceausescu ordered them shot. In the 1990s, environmental scientists and economists from several countries decided Ceausescu's projects had to go. Since this decision to reverse politics, some 9,000 acres of the Danube Delta have been re-flooded. The agency overseeing this project is the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve. Financing it is the World Bank's Global Environmental Facility. The area reclaimed by flooding had become too dry, and irrigation with river water was difficult because water evaporated quickly, leaving too many minerals behind.

The Danube Delta was one of Europe's largest wetlands west of the Volga. Straddling the border of Rumania and Ukraine, is a vast patchwork of islands and swamps river created by the Danube's final split into three main branches. Each branch had its own channels and backwaters where water and nutrients bred a multitude of living things. On the flyways of many migrating birds, the delta served as a breeding, resting, or feeding ground for some 365 species, with large flocks wintering in the delta. In the spring, shad and sturgeon made spawn runs up the river, and there were fat carp, bream, and pike to be found amongst the rushes and water lilies. Marius Condac is now the bird and game warden of the delta and could use more wardens to deal with poachers. A fishing ban for sturgeon has not yet passed, but Condac is hopeful. Unexpected support for the delta restoration project came from the Eastern Orthodox Church. Its spiritual leader, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, made defense of the region's damaged environment Church policy; it exhorts the faithful to respect God's creation. Up the river, countries through which the Danube flows have agreed to clean up the river, but progress has been slow. Two years before, 1995, land re-flooded then showed signs of life. In 1997, this land had rushes and coot nests together with plenty of carp. All this occurred after officials in Turkey had allowed its fishermen a license to kill fish. Ankara had never heard of a relatively new movement supporting the protection of wildlife and wetlands preservation as being more important and valuable than agriculture that barely survived the poisonous waste from the headwaters of the Danube in Germany . The river flowed through Austria, Hungary, and Rumania before emptying into the Black Sea.

In the 1970s, the Turkish government decided to make fishing more profitable. The government announced a generous program of loans and grants financed in part by the World Bank. With this money the fisherman living in villages along the Turkish coast of the Black Sea were able to buy or build large boats equipped with new fishing and fish-locating technology. However, the cost of an effective boat began to soar out of reach of most Black Sea fisherman, while the interest charges on loans ruined family after family. Disaster struck in the 1980s. Society in the little ports and villages divided in a desperate struggle between the precariously rich and the chronically poor. Even the big fishing boats began to lose money often returning from a trip with no or very few fish. Owners of the smaller boats gave them up and cast nets during the winter for meager catches. After some thirty years of hand-to-mouth existence's, the fishermen got more or less to where they were, but there were no fish.

Just to the south of the Black Sea coast in Turkey, there are nine provinces dominated by some 12 million Kurds. For some thirteen years, Turkey has been racked by a most brutal civil war with these Kurds. Hardly anyone mentions this ugly war even though Turkey acceded to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on July 31, 1950. In October, 1997, the Turkish government lifted emergency rule in three provinces, Batman, Bitlis, and Bingol. In fact, however, the civil governors still have the same power as before to authorize military operations and expel citizens they suspect of Kurdish national sympathies. Four other provinces remain in limbo. Mus, Mardin, Adiyaman, and Elazig had emergency rule lifted in 1996, and the government in Ankara remains unwilling to settle the brutal fighting by letting the Kurds at least preserve their own culture by encouraging schools to teach the Kurdish language. As of October, 1997 even suggesting anything that might "harm the indivisible unity of the Turkish state" is a crime in Turkey. The two provinces having a common border with Iraq, Sirnak and Hakkari, are still under emergency rule. Notwithstanding, Turkish army units have been pursuing Kurds into Iraq heedless of boundaries. The area in Iraq included land in the No Fly Zone, a policy adopted after the Persian Gulf War.

In treating the Kurds as non-persons while, at the same time, wiping out their language and culture, Turkey has violated the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. On the other hand, Turkey has expressed an interest on joining the European Union (EU). With inflation at well over 50 percent, Mesut Yilmaz, Turkey's Prime Minister since June, 1997 has no intention of complying with the plan endorsed by the International Monetary Fund. Turkey would not even qualify for admission to the EU; as a minimum, it needs a balanced budget. Evidently, Turkey considers itself free to violate treaties by which they are bound. Turkey has never accepted the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. Recently, however, the International War Crimes Tribunal has been formed to deal the trial of persons charged with the crime of genocide. It arose out of the war in Serbia and Herzegovina and the ethnic cleansing in which hundreds of thousands were either killed or became refugees. This court is located at the Hague in the Netherlands, and it has already tried and convicted several people from Serbia. They were found guilty of violation of the convention on genocide. Turkey is a member of NATO, but it periodically enrages Greeks by overflying their part of Cyprus. Cyprus, of course, is the issue. For violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, see http://www.kypros.org/Cyprus_Problem/hr/hr_8.htm

In Anatolia, a gigantic Turkish project, the Ataturk Dam, has been receiving water beginning in 1990 to flow in behind the dam, creating a huge lake. The dam, or rather a series of dams, has slowed the flow of water downstream in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Iraq and Syria have both objected to this reduction in their flow of water. Iran has threatened war if its water for agricultural purposes is unreasonably reduced. So has Iraq. Because of the controversy over water rights, the World Bank refused to fund the project, known as the Southeastern-Anatolia Project (GAP). GAP was designed to bring electricity and water for the irrigation of some 30,000 square miles of arid and semiarid land. GAP was also designed to allow Turkey to grow much of the food for the Middle East by irrigating some 4.2 million acres of land. This irrigation would enable Turkish farmers to raise cotton, sugarbeets, tobacco, soy beans and other cash crops instead of the grain they now raise. Turkey has expressed concern over cross-border raids by Iraqi Kurds. Water to irrigate much of Turkeys' Anatolian area is expected to flow from the Ataturk Dam through basalt-lined tunnels designed to avoid erosion. These tunnels incidentally serve as protection from sabotage by the Kurdish militants.

What has happened in the Black Sea, one story from Turkey and another, more positive story from Rumania make a critical point first made by Robert D. Kaplan in his 1996 book, The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century.

It is time, he wrote, to understand the environment for what it is: the national security issue of the early 21st century. The political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation, rising sea levels in the critical, overcrowded regions like the Nile Delta and Bangladesh -- developments that will prompt mass migrations and, in turn, incite group conflicts -- will be the core foreign challenge policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate, arousing the public and uniting assorted interests left over from the Cold War.

And this is not all. Saddam Hussein, a hangover from the War in the Persians Gulf (1990-91), has searched the world for nuclear weapons and/or biological weapons and may well have them in 1997. India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons, and the inventory of missing weapons-grade uranium and plutonium is a sober warning.

The cultural mix of Central Asia has never been fully understood at all in the United States. Islam Karimov, for example, was born an orphan and spent his entire life within the Communist hierarchy of Uzbekistan. Karimov would like to emulate Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, but he doesn't know how. He fears what has happened in the Caucasus, where two so-called democrats were lauded for the for their human right, Levon TerPetrossian in Armenia and Ebulfez Elcibey in Azerbaijan They promptly entered into a war that killed 20,000 people and created a million refugees. In the Caucasus, it required a Soviet era dictator, Geidar Aliyev who overthrew the democrat in Azerbaijan to move toward peace with Armenia. The discovery of oil and great wealth helped Aliyev settle the dispute, or at least put it on hold, pending a decision on the routes for oil and gas pipelines.

All contents © 1998 William M. Brinton