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A view of the boats along the banks of a stream in the Hawiza swamp near the town of al-Amarah.
To feed and refresh his buffaloes, Hashem Gassed will have to cross 10 kilometers (six miles) of sunburned land in southern Iraq, where drought devastates swaths of mythical Mesopotamian swamps.
The famous home of the biblical Garden of Eden, Iraq’s swamps have been battered by 3 years of drought and poor rainfall, as the flow of water along the rivers and tributaries of neighboring Turkey and Iran is reduced.
Vast expanses of the once lush Huwaizah marshes, which stretch on both sides of the border with Iran, dried up in the oven and their plants turned yellow. The sections of the Chibayish marshes, with tourists, suffer the same fate.
“Swamps are our livelihood : we used to fish here and our farm animals can just graze and drink,” said Gassed, 35, from a village near Huwaizah.
The marshes of southern Iraq were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016, for their biodiversity and ancient history.
But now dry stream beds meander around once-green wetlands, and the area’s Lake Um al-Naaj has been reduced to puddles of muddy water between largely dry land.
Like his father before him, Gassed raised buffaloes, but five of the family’s 30 animals remained.
The rest have died or been sold while the circle of relatives struggles to make ends meet.
The family members conscientiously watch over those who remain, fearing that the weak and malnourished beasts will fall into the dust and die.
“We’ve been protesting for over two years and no one listens,” Gassed said.
“We don’t know where to go. Our lives are over. “
more fish
Nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Mesopotamian swamps suffered from former dictator Saddam Hussein, who ordered them to tire in 1991 to punish protective insurgent communities and to hunt them down.
Wetlands have suffered sporadically years of severe droughts in the past, before being revived through smart rainy seasons.
But between August 2020 and this month, 46 of Iraq’s southern swamps, in addition to Huwaizah and Chibayish, suffered a general loss of surface water, according to dutch peacebuilding organization PAX.
According to the organization, which used satellite data to conduct the assessment, 41 percent of the swampy areas suffered a decrease in water and humidity levels.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Iraq said the marshes were “one of the poorest regions in Iraq and one of the hardest hit by climate change,” warning of “unprecedented low water levels. “
He noted the “disastrous impact” on more than 6,000 families who “lose their buffaloes, their only important asset. “
Biodiversity is threatened.
The swamps are home to “many populations of endangered species” and are a starting point for some two hundred species of migratory waterfowl, according to UNESCO.
Environmental activist Ahmed Saleh Neema said “no more fish”, wild boars or even a subspecies of smooth-haired otter in the swamps.
like a desert
He said the Huwaizah swamps were irrigated through two triaries of the Tigris River, which originates in Turkey, their flows had decreased.
The Iraqi government is rationing to cover other needs, he said.
“Let the government keep as much water as possible,” he added, lamenting the “unequal distribution of water” and the “mismanagement (of resources). “
After pressure from protesters, the government opened the floodgates, he said, but closed them.
On the Iranian side, the swamps of Huwaizah, Hoor al-Azim, are also suffering.
“The wetland is facing water strain and lately a component of its Iranian has dried up,” Iran’s state-owned IRNA news company recently reported.
Hatem Hamid, who heads the Iraqi government’s water control center, said that “on the Iranian side, the main river that feeds the Huwaizah swamp has been totally cut off for more than a year. “
The water wishes of Iraq’s farms and swamps are partly fulfilled, he acknowledged, as the government heavily monitors reserves and tries to cover a variety of uses, with drinking water being one of the “priorities. “
Iraqis report on canals and small streams that have been rehabilitated to feed the swamps, and where some families have left dry areas.
But it’s “impossible to compensate for maximum evaporation in swamps” at temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), he added.
In Chibayish, the effects of the drought are too transparent for Ali Jawad, who said dozens of families had left his village.
“They migrated to other spaces, through spaces where there is water,” said the 20-year-old.
“Before, when we got here to the swamps, there was vegetation, water, inner peace,” he added.
“Now it’s like a desert. “
Agence France Presse