Water stole the show from oil in Iraq last week, as Kurdish peshmerga soldiers and forces loyal to the government in Baghdad routed Islamic State (IS) fighters from Mosul and a nearby strategic dam – the shoddy construction of which may in some ways be even more dangerous than IS, experts said on Wednesday. Since it was built 30 years ago, the Mosul Dam on the Tigris River has supplied water and electricity to Iraqis living in major population centers to the south. But it requires constant and intensive maintenance to continue holding back billions of gallons of water. Many fear that if it is neglected amid the current fighting it could rupture and flood villages, towns and Baghdad itself, potentially drowning or displacing hundreds of thousands of people. But experts say the dam – and the region’s water resources in general – also presents an enormous opportunity for […]