The southern marshes as they looked in 2000. By May 2001, more than 90 percent of the Al 'Amarah and the Hawr al Hammar marshes were almost completely dry according to the UN Environmental Program. (DOS Photo) |
24 April 2002 Iraqi Regime Devastates Environment of Marsh Arabs
Satellite imagery shows extensive injury to wetland ecosystemBy Jim Fuller
Washington File Science Writer
Washington — The marshlands of southern Iraq are a unique part of the world. The region, lying between the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, is where the ancient Sumerians, it is believed, became the first people to control the flow of rivers by means of dams and irrigation canals.
The region's current inhabitants, known as the Ma'dan people or Marsh Arabs, have spent the last 5,000 years subsisting through farming, fishing, hunting, reed gathering and the grazing of water buffalo. They live on islands entirely constructed of reeds, using these to build beautiful, cathedral-like homes in a wetland environment that extends over an area of about 20,000 square kilometers — about the size of Lebanon and Qatar combined. The Marshlands are the Middle East's largest wetland ecosystem.
After the Gulf War ended in 1991, the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein began an ambitious civil engineering project aimed at deliberately draining the marshes to permit military access and greater political control of the Marsh Arabs. Iraq's Sunni government is attempting to weaken the Marsh Arabs because they are Shiite Muslims. The systematic draining of the land followed a 1991 uprising by Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq that was immediately crushed by Iraqi forces.
Various international organizations monitoring the situation in southern Iraq, such as the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the International Wildfowl and Wetlands Research Bureau, and Middle East Watch, have found evidence indicating that the Iraqi government has been attempting to force the Marsh Arabs from their southern wetland settlements by literally draining the life from Iraq's marshes.
According to a report released last February by the AMAR International Charitable Foundation — a non-governmental organization set up in 1991 in response to the plight of the Marsh Arabs — the draining of the marshes has led to the destruction of the Marsh Arabs' self-sufficient economy, the near-complete atrophy of the entire ecosystem, and the flight of tens of thousands of refugees, including 95,000 to a camp in Iran.
The AMAR Appeal (which stands for "Assisting Marsh Arabs and Refugees") maintains a web site at www.amarappeal.com, which contains documentation of the environmental devastation occurring in the Iraqi marshes.
AMAR Executive Director Peter Clark said in an interview April 23 that the key findings of the report, entitled "The Iraqi Marshlands: A Human and Environmental Study," are based on satellite photos spanning over two decades. The findings demonstrate how the government's practice of draining the marshes through a series of dams and irrigation works has devastated both the environment and the way of life of the marsh dwellers — the marshes themselves being reduced to 15 percent of what they once were.
Clark concludes that because the marsh dwellers have no sustainable way of life to which they can return, they represent some of the most desperate and overlooked victims of Saddam's regime.
Clark said the AMAR report is part of an effort to promote the human rights of the Marsh Arabs and Iraqi refugees.
"We have been delivering essential medical and educational services to Iraqi refugees in Iran over the last 10 years," Clark said. He said AMAR has received funding for its humanitarian projects from the United States and Kuwait, as well as private organizations. He also said AMAR has been in contact with international experts to explore the feasibility of restoring a large portion of the Marshlands.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, European Parliamentary Rapporteur on Iraq and AMAR president, told a conference in London last May that the draining of the southern Iraqi marshes was "a humanitarian and cultural catastrophe as much as an ecological one."
"One of the oldest natural habitats in the world has been systematically destroyed for political reasons and its inhabitants either killed or sent into exile," she said.
The United Nations, which has been attempting to monitor the situation, has passed only one piece of legislation applying to the Marshlands situation. U.N. resolution 688, passed in April 1991, calls on the Iraqi government to provide free access to U.N. and non-governmental humanitarian agencies to all parts of the marshes so that essential aid can be provided.
In January 1995, the European parliament passed a resolution characterizing the Marsh Arabs as a persecuted minority "whose very survival is threatened by the Iraqi government." The resolution described the government's treatment of the marsh inhabitants as "genocide."
In March 1995, the U.N. Human Rights Commission passed a resolution calling for an end to military operations and efforts to drain the Iraqi marshes.
According to a U.N. report, from December 4, 1991 to January 18, 1992 "military attacks were launched against the Marsh Arabs ... resulting in hundreds of deaths. Animal and bird life was said to have been killed in large numbers, while the marsh waters themselves were allegedly filled with toxic chemicals."
AMAR reports that during that two-month period, the Iraqi army had encircled the region and tightened control over food supplies coming into the area. Iraqi army records showed that more than 50,000 people were removed and 70 marsh villages were destroyed.
According to AMAR, in September 1994, "military forces used incendiary bombs and launched an armored attack against the area of Al Seigel in the Al Amara marshes," home to the Ma'dan people near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The army later set fire to the entire area. The 1994 military operations caused an undetermined number of civilian casualties, and forced more than 10,000 refugees from the marshes to flee to Iran.
A report released on September 13, 1999, by the U.S. Department of State, entitled "Saddam Hussein's Iraq," (http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/iraq99.htm) states: "In the southern marshes, government forces have burned houses and fields, demolished houses with bulldozers, and undertaken a deliberate campaign to drain and poison the marshes. Villages belonging to the al Juwaibiri, al Shumaish, al Musa and al Rahma tribes were entirely destroyed and the inhabitants forcibly expelled. Government troops expelled the population in other areas at gunpoint and also forced them to relocate by cutting off their water supply."
AMAR reports that there have been schemes for draining the marshlands throughout the 20th century. However, while drainage plans drawn up by British companies in the 1940s and 1970s were linked to irrigation and cultivation projects, the massive water diversion efforts undertaken by the Iraqi regime over the last decade were aimed at destroying the environment of the marsh dwellers.
According to AMAR, another motive for the drainage is related to Iraq's negotiations since 1991 with several international oil companies for the prospective development of southern oil fields in close proximity to the marshes.
The AMAR reports provide satellite imagery that shows the draining of the marshes increased sharply in 1991-1992. Compared to the mid-1980s, when initial marsh drainage projects were conducted to reclaim agricultural land, "the amount of land drained (by 1992) had quadrupled to approximately 367,000 hectares," the report said.
It notes that within the central Marshland area, a large, formerly permanent lake, Haur Zikri, appeared on satellite imagery to be "desiccated and covered with a salt crust." The most easterly of the central marshes, Al Azair and Al Jazair, had been completely reclaimed.
According to reports from various international organizations, the Iraqi government by 1993 was able to prevent water from reaching two-thirds of the Marshlands; the flow of the Euphrates River had been almost entirely diverted to the so-called Third River Canal, bypassing most of the marshes; and the flow of the Tigris River had been channeled into tributary rivers, their artificially high banks prohibiting water from seeping into the Marshlands.
AMAR reports that this has had disastrous ecological, social and human consequences for the region. The sparse water remaining has contributed to the salinization of the land. Crops are being destroyed, as well as the land and the marshes themselves. Humans are being displaced. The future for wildlife in the region also looks bleak. The marshes are home to fish and migratory birds from western Eurasia such as pelicans, herons and flamingos. Without fresh water, the ecosystem will easily become damaged.
U.S. government analysts have estimated that more than 200,000 of the 250,000 former inhabitants of the marshes have been driven from the area since 1991. Experts report that if the marshes continue to be drained at the current rate, they will probably cease to exist in another 50 years.
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