Iraq's vast marshes threatened by new upstream projects скачать в хорошем качестве

Iraq's vast marshes threatened by new upstream projects

(26 Oct 2017) LEADIN: Iraq's southern marshes, reborn from the damage done by Saddam Hussein, are once again in peril. New upstream projects and government mismanagement are threatening the largest wetlands in the Middle East. STORYLINE Down where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet sprawls a massive ecological rarity. Reeds, as far as the eye can see, are crisscrossed with open channels teeming with fish, birds, and water buffalo. It's a world away from the desert that covers most of Iraq. It was here that human civilisation started. Ancient Sumerians invented the wheel and writing here as well as founding the world's first empire. The vast marshes were reborn after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein. Residents dismantled dams he had built a decade earlier when he drained the marshes to root out Shiite rebels. But now the largest wetlands in the Middle East are imperiled once again, by government mismanagement and new upstream projects. Um Haidar is one of the Marsh Arabs, an indigenous group living in the marshes who claim descent from the ancient Sumerians. She and her son set out before sunrise to lay traps for fish. "We lay the lines for about an hour. When they are full we take the fish to town and sell the fish," she says. However farming and sewage runoff have depleted fishing stocks. The flares of nearby oil wells light up the night sky, but the sweltering, humid region remains mired in poverty. The draining of the marshes began long before Saddam, when upstream dams in Turkey, Syria and Iraq reduced the flow of water to the region by two-thirds in the 1970s. The dams also blocked silt, depriving the rare ecosystem of life-giving nutrients. In the early 1990s, rebels took cover in the marshes as they battled Saddam's forces in the uprising that followed the Gulf War. In 1991, the government deliberately drained 20,000 square kilometres (7,700 square miles) of wetlands, turning the area to desert and displacing half a million people. People here were once comfortable and economically independent from Baghdad. The marsh provided plenty and Iraqis who lived through that era speak of a paradise lost. "The marshes were a state outside of Saddam's control. The resources were a great boon – we can say it was as valuable as oil," says Fadel Duwaish, an 84-year-old Marsh Arab from the Bani al-Asad tribe. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam, the people of the marshes dismantled the local dams, allowing the waters to return and with them the plants and animals on which the community relied. Still, today's marshlands are only around 14 percent of what they were in the 1970s. The region was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016, and there has been talk of exploiting its tourism potential. Southern Iraq has largely been spared the violence that has gripped other parts of the country and the marshes were always hundreds of miles away from the front lines in the war against the Islamic State group. But Iraq still suffers from instability and there has been hardly any investment in the marshes, where daily life appears to have changed little since ancient times. The 6,000 people who live in the marshes dwell in thatch huts and barns, relying on fishing and the raising of water buffaloes. Wooden boats ply channels braided through a forest of reeds. Migratory birds like eagles, cormorants and pelicans still visit the marshes on their seasonal journeys. Richard Porter, a long time researcher of the marshes and adviser to Birdlife International, says the loss of the wetlands would be a "big blow" to several species. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...