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March 7, 2003 The
Iraqi Marshlands: A Pre-War Perspective The area of the Iraqi Marshlands, in the country’s south, was until recently a unique environmental wetlands. Its people have for generations lived a life that has few parallels in the world, but over the last two decades their habitat and they themselves have been subjected to sustained attack by the Iraqi regime. There is little doubt that Saddam Hussein’s campaign against Iraq’s Marsh Arabs rises to the level of a crime against humanity. Now the approach of war has raised new dangers for this area and its inhabitants. The people of the Iraqi Marshlands have special needs, and in any post-Saddam settlement there is a risk of their interests being overlooked. The Iraqi Marshlands Under Attack Plans for draining the Iraqi Marshlands go back decades, if not centuries. The first detailed and extensive plans go back to before the First World War. The first major engineering work in the Marshes region was the construction of the Kut Barrage, followed by the Sammara Dam in 1956. In each case the declared aims of the engineering works were to extend irrigation and improve agricultural opportunities. But Baghdad governments have always been anxious about the Marshlands. For a thousand years and more, at least from the time of the Abbasids, the Iraqi Marshlands has been a refuge for dissidents, for bandits and for smugglers. The labyrinth of waterways gave individuals who knew the routes every advantage to hide and disappear in the flexible narrow craft of the Marshlands. It was not so easy for the steamers of the police from urban Basra or Baghdad. After the war for the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, the uprising against Saddam Hussein was almost successful in southern Iraq. When the government succeeded in restoring its authority, the response was repressive. Among other actions, the Baghdad government embarked on programmes for draining of the Marshes with a punitive determination. Again the pretext was agricultural improvement, but the consequences have been wholly negative for the people of the Marshes, leading to emigration, both voluntary and forced, pauperisation for those that remained, and massive degradation of the environment. Life in the Marshlands It is important not to romanticise life in the Marshlands a generation ago. Life may have been remarkable, even heroic, but it was also insecure, disease-ridden and poverty-stricken. Conditions of life in the 1950s have been superbly described with an artist’s touch by Wilfred Thesiger, and with a scholarly pen by S M Salim. Thesiger and two younger travellers who were with him – Gavin Maxwell and Gavin Young – also described the remarkable ecology of the region. Social changes affecting the way of life of the Marshdwellers were under way well before the 1990s. From the thirties there was – as in all countries – a drift to the cities. The oil-producing areas of the north also attracted labour. Remittances supplemented the meagre subsistence incomes extracted from Marshlands. Those Marshlands themselves were changing. Gavin Young, in Return to the Marshes documents the changes between the 1950s and the 1970s. Schools, clinics, police, even factories were bringing the physical presence of the government into the Marshlands. Literacy was rising. The Marshlands were not totally excluded from the prosperity of Iraq as a whole. The people of the Marshlands are heirs to a way of life that can be traced back millennia and can be seen portrayed on tablets unearthed at Ur, on the edges of the Marshes. However over the years the area has seen extensive in-migration. People are unmistakeably Arab, the result of considerable migration from Najd in the Arabian Peninsula. The newer immigrants were the targets of much proselytisation from Shi’ite Muslim preachers from the nearby holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf. A Tally of Destruction There have traditionally been three areas of Marshlands – the Hammar marshes to the south, the Central or Qurna marshes around the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, and the Huwaiza Marshes that are to the north east and partly in Iran. They used to cover a combined total of 20,000 square kilometres. During the 1990s, extensive engineering works throughout the region affected the regular flowing of the rivers and led to extensive desiccation of the area of the Marshlands. Five major drainage projects were carried out during this period. The first, the Dujaila canal, was ostensibly designed to increase agricultural production. There is little evidence that it has actually done so. The Third River Canal was built from Mahmudiyya to Qurna and is over 500 kilometres in length. This was said to be needed to drain off polluted water but has led to extensive salination. This canal was completed in 1992, and diverts most of the Euphrates. Two other lengthy canals, the Fourth River Canal, 120 kilometres long, and the Qadisiyya Canal are also on the Euphrates. A moat, north to south, and parallel to the Tigris at Qurna, is two kilometres wide and nearly 50 kilometres long, withholds water to the Marshlands, and discharges waters into the Euphrates west of Qurna. This had a destructive effect on the Qurna Marsh. There have been smaller works, roads, separating people from waterways, and controls on the Tigris river, all have which have contributed to the degradation of the Marshlands. All in all, there has been an 85% degradation in the Hammar and Qurna Marshlands. It is possible that these two Marshlands could totally disappear by the year 2020. Because the Huwaiza marshes are partly watered from rivers inside Iran and so cannot be controlled by the Baghdad government, they have suffered only a 65% degradation. The impact on the people of the Marshlands has been devastating. They have had to endure the oppression, human rights abuses, the effects of sanctions and war that all other Iraqis have suffered from, and the destruction of their economic and social base as well. The Impact on the People of the Marshes Let us quantify the impact. All indices of agricultural production have shown an overall downturn. Whereas in the past the Marshdwellers were almost self-sufficient, they are now reliant on aid from outside, capricious state support and remittances from family members who have migrated. Dates were the basic fruit of the region. There has been a drop of 50% in production, and about the same drop in livestock products – meat, eggs and milk – and fish. There has been rapid salination, especially of wells. Reeds were traditionally used to produce houses, boats, tools, mats, baskets. Collapse in reed production has varied from locality to locality, but is up to 80% in places. The area depended on river transport, but transport of goods and people have switched to the roads that do not pass near the Marshes, depriving the people of the Marshlands of that source of revenue. There has been an out-migration of at least 200,000 people, both forced and voluntary. Those that have been left have been pauperised, with low incomes, poorer diet, inadequate medical aid; they have been forced to cope with a cash economy at a time of hyperinflation. Disease and epidemics have increased, as has mortality. There has been a decay of the traditional spheres of production and subsistence (fishing, hunting, handicrafts). Sources of sustenance and marketing have been destroyed. Water is unreliable, irrigation systems are damaged. In short, a water-based rural economy is in the process of being exterminated. Some of the changes have reached the point where they are now irreversible. The human damage can be matched with the broader ecological damage. A unique area of wetlands has been destroyed. What has happened has wider international implications. Such extensive hydraulic engineering changes affect weather patterns in neighbouring countries. Salination and degradation of the waters affects the fisheries in the Gulf. Wetlands animals, flowers, reptiles, insects and birds have all been threatened with extinction. Some species, such as the smooth-coated otter, have ceased to exist. Others, such as the African darter and the sacred ibis, no longer exist in the wild in the Middle East. A Population Displaced There has been a huge displacement of people from the region. About 100,000 have fled to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Of those half are in refugee camps. Life is basic, people subsist on Iranian and international support and dream of returning to the Marshlands, a Marshlands that no longer exists. In one of the refugee settlements in Khuzestan, just inside Iran and not far from their homeland, one Marshdweller has constructed a mudif, the traditional guest house. It is wholly inappropriate, a heartrending transfer of a familiar physical structure into exile. The refugees are in a limbo, like all refugees. They want to return but only with a change of government. Some have been refugees for ten years and there is a danger of a permanent “dependency” culture. The wish to return is strongest among those who have been longest in exile. This is understandable, for the refugee population is young. Children will have no memory of Iraq. Displacement has led to other alternatives and there is a clear, but probably unrealisable, wish among many to go to Australia. A detailed recent report by Human Rights Watch published in January 2003 concluded that “many of the acts of the Iraqi government’s systematic repression of the Marsh Arabs constitute a crime against humanity.” The report points out that the crimes were committed as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population” and lists a number of specific criminal actions: the murder of thousands of unarmed civilians in the aftermath of the abortive 1991 uprising; forcible transfer of large parts of the Marsh Arab population to settlements on dry land; torture of Marsh Arab detainees held in government custody; arbitrary and prolonged imprisonment; and persecution through “the intentional and severe deprivation of their fundamental rights on the basis of their religious and political identity as a group.” A Possible War – and its Aftermath In the event of a war, every expectation is that there will be a humanitarian crisis of gigantic proportions. Up to a million extra refugees are anticipated in Iran, a similar number in Syria. Millions could be internally displaced inside Iraq. There are countless possible scenarios, depending on the nature and duration of the war, whether chemical weapons are released and on the character of the post-war settlement. Although the present situation of the people of the Marshlands is desperate, the long-term prospects offer seeds of hope. There are huge deposits of unexploited oil in Southern Iraq. All estimates are confident that oil could be extracted at a rate of 3 million barrels a day for the next fifty years. Much of the oil is on the edges of the Marshlands, some even beneath the Marshes. Iraq has had a good social and economic infrastructure, a high level of education. Once this is re-established it is conceivable that Iraq could be a considerable industrial power. It is important that any restoration of the country must consider the interests and wishes of the people of the Marshlands themselves. The restoration of agriculture and the desalinisation of the water must be a priority. With the prospect of oil wealth and economic development, there is limited purpose in restoring the Marshlands to what they were a generation ago. One cannot recreate the past. It would be like restoring pearl fishing in the Gulf. However a group of scientists – water resources experts and environmentalists – met in early February in southern California and concluded that a measure of reflooding was possible. In determining what arrangements are put in place, the people of the Marshlands should be consulted and assisted, with due consideration for the cherishing of surviving resources – fisheries, dates and reeds. The objective of reconciling human needs and scientific possibilities should be the subject of comprehensive study. The people of the Marshlands have other interests that should not be pushed aside by the juggernaut of powerful economic forces. Is their ownership of land legally secure? What machinery for consultation is there? Apart from the development of the oil industry, what other economic development is possible? The Marshlands was a unique wetlands. Is it possible to restore some of that uniqueness with the possibility of ecotourism? There are certainly possibilities for tourism. Apart from the nearby archaeological site of Ur, the Euphrates/Tigris delta is the traditional site of the Garden of Eden. The tomb of the prophet Ezra is a potential tourist attraction. War brings all sorts of uncertainties. It must be hoped that any military conflict will be short and effective and with minimal casualties and infrastructure damage. Post-war reconstruction will have to take into consideration war damage as well as the degradation of every aspect of Iraqi public life over the last generation. Those who have been responsible for crimes against humanity will have to be held accountable. There will be huge issues of integrating exiles into Iraqi society, reassuring those who have endured cruel repression, and restoring hope and confidence to emerging generations. Not the least of these challenges will be programmes to bring dignity back to the people of Iraq. Agendas will be full but they should not marginalize the special interests of the people of the southern Iraqi Marshlands. Peter Clark is Chief Executive Officer of the AMAR International Charitable Foundation, which delivers medical and educational services to Iraqi refugees in camps in the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is co-editor with Emma Nicholson of “The Iraqi Marshlands: A Human and Environmental Study” (Politico’s Publishing, London, 2002)
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Against Humanity Related Links: AMAR
International Charitable Foundation Iraq's
'devastated' Marsh Arabs The
Mesopotamian Marshlands: Demise of an Ecosystem
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