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Glimmer of hope for Iraq's marsh
Arabs
By Irina Lagunina
PRAGUE - Iraq's lush southern marshes - reputed
to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden - have
been inhabited for the last 5,000 years. In such a hot
climate, water is precious, and it was the fresh water
of the marshes that first attracted the ancient people
of Mesopotamia.
The marsh Arabs have their own
culture and speak a language slightly different from the
Arabic used by the rest of the country. They construct
floating houses from reeds and mud. They created their
own style of architecture, building large, arched bamboo
halls for public meetings and assemblies. They are known
as the first people in history to learn how to control
the flow of water by building dams.
Emma
Nicholson is a member of the European Parliament and is
its special rapporteur on Iraq. She has taken a special
interest in the plight of the marsh Arabs and met
recently with US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
to urge that they be adequately represented in the new
Iraqi administration.
"The marsh Arabs had a
special way of life," Nicholson told RFE/RL. "For 5,000
years or more they had lived a water-based life. They
were fisher folk, but more than that. They were water
farmers. They had water buffalo. They produced a third
of the dairy products from those thousands of water
buffalo for the whole of Iraq. A third of the dairy
produce for the whole of Iraq! [They were] hugely
productive people. They caught fish. Millions of fish
were sold throughout the Gulf. They were a major trading
source of fish. They grew rice. They were
aquaculturalists - self-sufficient. And they had this
enormous zone of water."
And it was just this
zone of water - about 30,000 square kilometers in size -
that created a problem for the former Iraqi regime of
Saddam Hussein. In 1991, the Shi'ite marsh Arabs joined
the failed Shi'ite uprising in southern Iraq. While the
revolt on dry land was easily crushed by Saddam's
forces, the marsh Arabs remained largely unreachable.
This was exactly how they had survived for thousands of
years. When the enemy came, they destroyed small dams
built to control the flow of the rivers and remained in
the marshes, surrounded by water, waiting for their
attackers to leave.
Nicholson continued: "What
Saddam did was carve a huge channel in the middle of the
marshland, which he called 'The Mother of All Canals',
which diverted the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates from
this great, life-giving irrigation, which supported so
many people and so much trade for so long. And the water
now pumps uselessly out directly into the [Persian]
Gulf."
A study by the United Nations Environment
Program in 2001 found that 90 percent of the marshlands
had been destroyed by Saddam. Some 10 years ago,
Nicholson created a charitable foundation called
Assisting Marsh Arabs and Refugees (AMAR) to help those
marsh Arabs who had fled to Iran when the drainage of
the marshes began. About 75,000 still live in refugee
camps in Iran and some 100,000 to 200,000 are dispersed
inside Iraq.
According to a recent report by
Human Rights Watch, some 250,000 marsh Arabs had been
living in the wetlands as recently as 1991. After what
it calls "enforced disappearances, torture and the
execution of political opponents", combined with the
"ecological catastrophe" of the marsh drainage, fewer
than 40,000 remain.
Discussions about the
possible drainage of Iraq's marshes had been taking
place for decades. In fact, British specialists drew up
the first plans for the development of the marshes in
the late 1940s. The marshes are believed to cover one of
the biggest oil deposits in Iraq. But until the early
1990s, no one had ever dared to actually drain the
wetlands.
Joseph Dellapenna is a professor of
law at the Villanova University School of Law in
Pennsylvania and a rapporteur for the Water Resources
Committee of the International Law Association. He has
also served as a consultant to the AMAR foundation.
Dellapenna noted that Saddam turned the marshes
into desert, but did nothing to develop the area in
return. This, more than anything else, Dellapenna told
RFE/RL, revealed the true intentions of the Iraqi
leader. "What makes this a crime under international law
was its purpose," he said. "And I think the purpose was
fairly clear, which was to destroy a culture and to
destroy a people. And that's genocide. And genocide is
an international crime. It's a crime against humanity."
Dellapenna said that it was also an ecological
crime, what he calls "ecocide", but notes there is no
legal instrument under international law to prosecute
anyone for the destruction of a unique ecological
system.
The marshes served as a stopping point
for birds migrating every year to and from Africa and
Siberia. The drainage of the Iraqi marshes destroyed one
of the sustaining factors of this migration. There is no
other wetland like it in the region. The drainage of the
marshes also affected the quality of water in the
Persian Gulf, since the marshes served as a filter for
the river water after it passed through the heavily
developed agricultural areas of Iraq.
It is not
known whether it will be possible to fully restore the
marshes. Even if it is possible, some say it will
require a huge investment of money and effort that the
country can ill afford right now. Nicholson disagrees.
She said the marshes can be reclaimed cheaply, while
also believing that members of the former Iraqi regime
should be prosecuted for their crimes against the marsh
Arabs in the International Criminal Court.
"Ah,
but Mother Nature can restore the marshes. Remember,
these marshes have been artificially destroyed very,
very recently," Nicholson said. "Indeed, why the
International Criminal Court could be used is because
subsequent to their formation on July 1, 2002, the
drainage has continued, the destruction of the drinking
water has continued. It's now down to the last 8 or 10
percent, but it's still going on. All you need to do is
to reverse the damage. And the damage, of course, is
very primitive. It's the massive dam in the marshes and
the building of the canal. You frankly don't need
investment. You need a few sticks of dynamite with each
dam to get rid of them."
A non-governmental
organization based in Texas has been working for the
past two years to determine if it is possible to restore
the marshes. The group was created by Azzam Alwash, a
native of southern Iraq, and his wife, Suzie. The
project is called Eden Again. For the past several
months a team of scientists brought together by the
group has been trying to determine what would be needed
immediately to try to bring back the marshlands of Iraq.
"One of those first actions that we need to do
is preserve the plants and animals," Suzie Alwash told
RFE/RL. "There is one remaining area of marshlands, and
that is the area that straddles the Iran and Iraq
border. That needs immediate water back into it. We hope
to convince the Iraqi government, the Iraqi authorities,
to return water back to that area as early as this
November when the initial flood starts. That's going to
preserve the plants and animals that could be used later
to help bring them and redistribute them to other areas
of the marshes."
Eden Again is thinking of
starting a pilot project in areas that have been dry for
10 to 12 years. First, a survey is needed of how many
people would like to return to the marshes. Suzie Alwash
said the group's talks with marsh Arab refugees have
been reassuring. "They want to go back, and they want to
go back to their natural lifestyle. But in addition to
being able to go in the marshes and fish and live their
traditional lifestyle, they want more. They want clean
water. They want security. They want sanitation. They
want a good education for their children. They want
proper health care. They want more than just the
traditional lifestyle. And I think it is going to take
some creativity to bring all of those choices together,"
she said.
The other problem is whether the
people of Iraq would want to see such a huge investment
in the reclamation of the marshes while the country's
overall water-supply system is collapsing. As Dellapenna
points out, it is a striking contradiction. Saddam
invested the country's limited resources in the drainage
of the wetlands, but little was spent by the regime on
improving the public water supply.
Copyright
(c) 2002, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of
Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington
DC 20036
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