The Guir wadi has its source in the heights of the High Atlas at Gourrama (jebel Mesrouh, 2736 m) a mountain which follows the crest of the jebel Ayachi (3721 m) to the east. It is considered one of the longest and most powerful wadis in North Africa. In Morocco, its main tributaries are the Assefti, Aït Aïssa and Zelmou wadis.
Further downstream, after its confluence with the Zousfana wadi, in Algerian territory, the Guir wadi forms what is called the “Saoura” (Wadi Saoura), which is lost in the desert. So much for geography. On the Oued Guir, about 50 km west of the wilaya of Colomb Béchar on the borders of Morocco, Algeria had built there between 1965 and 1968 a gravity type dam, Djorf Torba in this case which was commissioned in 1973. Djorf Torba which is supplied with water by the Guir (or perhaps the Ger as mentioned by Pliny the Elder) is 37 meters high and 762 meters long, it is purpose (drinking water and irrigation) and is the fourth most important dam in Algeria.
For its part, Morocco has recently built and commissioned there (end of 2021) the Kaddoussa dam with a planned total capacity of 220 million m3, and which aims to protect the oasis perimeters downstream against floods, but also to securing the irrigation of 5,000 ha and supplying drinking water to a population of 15,000 inhabitants.
The volume that will be regularized in an average year will be 33 million m3, of which 30 million m3 will be reserved for the irrigation of the perimeters located downstream of the dam. The water needs of the region (development of irrigation and adaptation of irrigated agriculture to climate change) have a certain impact on the flow of this wadi which suddenly reduces the flow of water in Algeria on the side of Colomb Béchar and its Djorf Torba dam. But this low flow and the decrease in the level of water retained in the dam in question in Algeria that it generates, we also owe it to Mother Nature.
Indeed, the latter, of an endemic drought and the strong scorching heat recorded in this geographical area which also includes Morocco, rages more and more strongly. Recently the Algerian media announced that no less than twenty tons of freshwater fish died there of asphyxiation due to the drop in water level at the Djorf Torba dam.
The latter, whose lake previously extended over an area of 94 km2, has become an area completely devastated by a relentless drought phenomenon. It’s practically dried up. It is both a human and an ecological disaster. It is that Djorf Torba, supplied until last June, all the moderately populated area of the city of Bechar which is now faced with a shortage of drinking water.
The senile regime of Algiers dispatched officials there to inspect the damage. Shocked by the seriousness of the situation, they were quick to designate the ideal culprit, and to shout haro on Morocco. And go ahead and blame the neighbor for this disaster.
According to the caressing media in the direction of the hair, this is the result of a plot carefully thought out and fomented by the “Makhzen” with the recent construction of “Kaddoussa”, which diverted and stopped the flow of 100% of the tributaries which fed the dam Algerian. Also, there is therefore a threat, given the scale of the disaster, to bring this matter before the UN and the international courts, and that if a return to the situation before, as soon as possible not take place, all options would then be allowed, including that of an armed conflict with Morocco!… Always talk!
Note, however, the official silence of the two senile Muppet Show made in Algeria, Statler and Waldorf who generally do not miss one to open it and accuse Morocco of a plot like that of the Kabylie fires or the theft of mountains from the Atlas, even the Atlantic Ocean and I don’t know what else. But this “close mouth does not fly” finds its reason in the absence of international legislation on the waterways bordering two neighboring countries and even more.
Moreover, putting this discord of water, as an official protest in this region particularly, calls into question the drawing of the borders between Morocco and Algeria. Certainly there were treaties that had been negotiated at the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies, but the expulsions of the Moroccan owners of El Arja (ancestral tribal lands) recently rendered them de facto obsolete.
.