Pahlavi officials believed the riverine bounties of Khuzestan were slipping through their fingers and escaping into the Persian Gulf. As part of a larger development scheme for the region, foreign advisers hired by the Plan Organization in 1956 set out to replace the “maze-like and useless” irrigation canals of the villages around Dezful with a centrally-planned and scientifically-engineered network of canals. This paper will outline how subsequent changes in the relationship between the villagers of northern Khuzestan and their rivers altered modes of community-building, centers of knowledge and authority, and the meaning of water. In trying to understand the origins of current regional water crises, gaining finer understandings of how national development schemes affected pre-existing modes of harnessing water resources is crucial.
This paper will argue that the Dez Irrigation Project eroded modes of community-creation dependent on river engagement, shifted irrigation knowledge and authority away from villagers and landlords to utility companies and engineers, and transformed water into a quantifiable commodity. This was an instance of alienating Iranians from their environment in the pursuit of economic development.
Historical research concerning mid-twentieth century change in Iranian villages has often centered questions of politics and land tenure, but the period also witnessed a serious shift in how Iranians engaged with their environment. Extra-local, modern expertise partially replaced local modes of resource management in an effort to extract and produce more from the land. We can clearly observe aspects of the roots of Iran’s current water crisis here, in particular the enthusiasm for building large dams and their concomitant systems of modern canals. This paper uses Development & Resources Corporation archival documents, the journals of David Lilienthal, travelogues, contemporary anthropological research, and geoarchaeological research to outline the dynamics of people and rivers in Khuzestan, as well as the beliefs and attitudes of development officials who sought to change those dynamics.
