Earlier this month, a huge dam on the Dnipro river, in the Kherson region occupied by Russian forces in South-Eastern Ukraine, was blown up, flooding vast areas. Each side in the war predictably blamed the other, but the weight of motive and opportunity pointed to Russia, as it was in the process of hampering the imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive.
While not unprecedented, such acts in war are rare, in modern times. Are they effective? Moral? Legal - could their perpetrators be tried as war criminals? And considering all of the above, is the threat of going to such extremes credible as a deterrent against a comparable act, such as the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction?
This is an issue of universal implications, but it has a specific relevance to the Middle East, with its dams over the Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris, along with other rivers and waterways. Should policymakers and planners in the region be concerned, lest someone, perhaps a terror group rather than a nation-state, try to emulate the Dnipro sabotage?
