An Iraqi woman rides in a boat as she goes out fishing early morning in marshland near Karbala, 110km south of Baghdad, in 2006. (Credit: AFP)
The Hoor al-Azim Wetland is the last of its kind in the once-lush and seemingly endless Mesopotamian Marshes — and it is steadily shrinking. The Marshes were once the largest in West Asia until the 1990s, when Saddam Hussein drained them to force out the rebellious Marsh Arabs. The dikes were broken down in the early 2000s, but the wetlands, which straddle Iran and Iraq, were never the same.Since then, the Karkheh dam in Iran, oil drilling, industrialization, agricultural run-off have weakened the vast network of waterways even further. Now, instead of wind blowing through the reeds and rippling the surface of lakes fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the wind whips up dust storms that fill the lungs and infect the eyes and cost Iraq more than one million dollars in losses every day the storm rages, according to the Iraqi Green...
The Hoor al-Azim Wetland is the last of its kind in the once-lush and seemingly endless Mesopotamian Marshes — and it is steadily shrinking. The Marshes were once the largest in West Asia until the 1990s, when Saddam Hussein drained them to force out the rebellious Marsh Arabs. The dikes were broken down in the early 2000s, but the wetlands, which straddle Iran and Iraq, were never the same.Since then, the Karkheh dam in Iran, oil drilling, industrialization, agricultural run-off have weakened the vast network of waterways even further. Now, instead of wind blowing through the reeds and rippling the surface of lakes fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the wind whips up dust storms that fill the lungs and infect the eyes and cost Iraq more than one million dollars in losses every day the storm rages, according to the Iraqi Green...
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