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ultimate price of Iraq’s poisonous wartime legacy</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/children/" title="View all posts in Children" rel="category tag">Children</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/features/" title="View all posts in Features" rel="category tag">Features</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/iraq/" title="View all posts in News" rel="category tag">News</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/war-crimes/" title="View all posts in War Crimes" rel="category tag">War Crimes</a>, Tags: <a 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href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water/" rel="tag">Water</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/who/" rel="tag">WHO</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%aa%d8%af%d8%b1%d9%86/" rel="tag">التدرن</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <div style="text-align: left; unicode-bidi: bidi-override; direction: ltr"> <p><strong>BASRA LETTER:</strong> The effects of depleted uranium can be seen among the young in the city’s hospitals, where staff are convinced of its link to cancer and deformities</p> <p>THE AIRY, bright and modern corridors of the new, $166 million (€116 million) 101-bed Laura Bush hospital for children with cancer are a short car journey from the colourfully painted, but ageing Ibn Ghazwan maternity and children’s hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.</p> <div style="border-bottom: black 1px solid; border-left: black 1px solid; padding-bottom: 5px; margin: 5px 0px 5px 15px; padding-left: 5px; width: 325px; padding-right: 5px; float: right; border-top: black 1px solid; border-right: black 1px solid; padding-top: 5px"> <p><strong>Editor’s Note:</strong> John Reynolds’s visit to Basra with Irish film-maker Dearbhla Glynn was supported by <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.savethechildren.net/alliance/index.html" target="_blank" class="external">Save The Children</a>. </p> <ul> <li>Save The Children’s USA site is here: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.savethechildren.org/" target="_blank" class="external">savethechildren.org</a> </li> <li>Save The Children’s USA <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.savethechildren.org/site/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.6146369/k.95B8/Ways_To_Give.htm" class="external" target="_blank">"Ways To Give"</a> lists how donations are used and various ways of supporting Save The Children. </li> <li>Save The Children’s USA donations page is here: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/https://secure.savethechildren.org/site/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.6239401/k.C01C/Global_Action_Fund/apps/ka/sd/donor.asp" target="_blank" class="external">Donate using "Save The Children" USA site</a> </li> <li>Save The Children’s UK site is here: <a title="http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/" target="_blank" class="external">savethechildren.org.uk</a> </li> <li>Save The Children’s UK donations page is here: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/donate.htm" target="_blank" class="external">Donate using "Save The Children" UK site</a> </li> </ul> <p>Save The Children have a well deserved reputation for running very effective campaigns that really help the children they’re aimed at. They also are known for being very efficient in how they use any donations they receive. You can visit their <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.savethechildren.org/site/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.6146417/k.6241/Financial_Responsibility.htm#cn" target="_blank" class="external">Awards and Rankings</a> page to see how they are rated by various charity monitoring organisations. If you can please make a donation to Save The Children.</p> </p></div> <p> They provide a rare contrast to the greyish-brown city streetscape, whose dusty, fume-filled air will reach 60 degrees this summer and is some of the most polluted in the world. <p>Brightness and colour might inspire initial hope in the minds of concerned parents here, but both hospitals still lack vital machines and laboratory equipment needed to provide radiotherapy or to diagnose the numerous conditions that mean up to 10 babies die every day in the Ibn Ghazwan maternity ward.</p> <p>“We are blind,” says Dr Ahmed Jafer, a paediatric specialist. “Ours is the only neo-natal unit in this region but we cannot quickly diagnose what exactly we are dealing with. Our children are dying from malnutrition, diarrhoea, TB, meningitis, leishmaniasis, chronic liver disease, pneumonia, anaemia and congenital heart disease, all of which are easily preventable outside of Iraq.”</p> </p></div> <p> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/06/13/children-pay-ultimate-price-of-iraqs-poisonous-wartime-legacy/#more-13508" class="more-link">» أقرأ التفاصيل .. | Read the rest of this entry »</a></p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-11314"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2010/07/09/paradise-found-water-and-life-return-to-iraqs-garden-of-eden/#respond" title="Comment on Paradise found: Water and life return to Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’">No Comments</a></span> Posted on July 9th, 2010 by Sagib</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2010/07/09/paradise-found-water-and-life-return-to-iraqs-garden-of-eden/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Paradise found: Water and life return to Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’">Paradise found: Water and life return to Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/amil/" rel="tag">Amil</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/arabian-sea/" rel="tag">Arabian sea</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/baghdad/" rel="tag">Baghdad</a>, <a 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align="right"> <p><span style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 42px; float: left; margin: 3px 1px 0px 0px; line-height: 36px; font-style: normal! important">O</span>ne of Saddam Hussein’s greatest acts of ecological destruction – the draining of the Mesopotamian marshes – has been reversed as birds and rivers return to the region</p> <p>Saddam Hussein’s draining of the Mesopotamian marshes of Iraq – recorded as the Garden of Eden in the Bible – was one of the most infamous outrages of his regime, leaving a vast area of once-teeming river delta a dry, salt-encrusted desert, emptied of insects, birds and the people who lived on them.</p> <div class="container"> <div class="shadow"> <div class="frame"> <p><a title="20100708_marshes_guardian_nature_iraq_captioned" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.flickr.com/photos/27086036@N02/4777445917/" class="external" target="_blank"><img alt="20100708_marshes_guardian_nature_iraq_captioned" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524im_/http://static.flickr.com/4074/4777445917_ea65faecc3.jpg" border="0"/></a></p> </p></div> </p></div> </p></div> <p>  <div style="clear: both"> </div> <p>But nearly two decades later the area is buzzing and twittering with life again after local people and a new breed of Iraqi conservationists have restored much of what was once the world’s third largest wetland to some of its former glory.</p> <p>The story of this once almost impossible restoration is told in an exhibition of photographs that has opened in the UK. They show the huge expanses of reeds and open water – now at least half the size of the Florida Everglades – where plants, insects and fish have returned, creating a vast feeding area for migrating and breeding birds, including the majestic Sacred Ibis, the endemic Basrah Reed Warbler and the Iraq Babbler, along with most of the world’s population of Marbled Teal ducks, bee-eaters and many more.</p> <p>"We call them stop-over sites, refuelling sites," said Richard Porter, Middle East advisor for the conservation group Birdlife International, who has helped train biologists and other experts for the local Birdlife partner <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://natureiraq.org/English/" class="external" target="_blank">Nature Iraq</a>. "They are as important as the breeding and over-wintering grounds for species; if you have got to make a journey from central Africa to norther Europe and Asia, and you’ve got nothing to feed on, you’re stuffed."</p> <p>The Mesopotamian marshes originally made up an area more than three times the size of Norfolk, where the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.birdscapesgallery.co.uk/" class="external" target="_blank">exhibition is showing, in Holt</a>. It sprawled across thousands of square kilometres of floodplain where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers divided into a network of tributaries meandering and pulsating south to the Arabian sea. They were home to more than 80 bird species, otters and long-fingered bats, and hundreds of thousands of Marsh Arabs who grew rice and dates, raised water buffalo, fished and built boats and homes from reeds.</p> <p>In the early 1990s, this way of life came to an abrupt end when Hussein ordered the marshes to be drained to punish the local population for an uprising after his failed invasion of Kuwait, a problem exacerbated by the continued construction of dams upstream.</p> <p>He ordered the area to be hemmed in by constructing around 4,000km of earthen walls that towered up to 7m above the unbroken flat landscape. The wetlands retreated to as little as 5-10% of their original size, according to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/1000/1716/meso2.pdf" class="external" target="_blank">a 2001 United Nations Environment Agency report</a>.</p> <p>After Hussein was toppled by American forces in 2003, Azzam Alwash returned from his adopted home in the US to the area, where he had lived for part of his childhood, and learned to hunt ducks with his father while they inspected the irrigation ditches. Alwash found the local people who had stayed had already begun to break up the walls with shovels or earth diggers, and they have continued to do so. They have destroyed up to 98% of the embankments, he told the Guardian, "not because they are tree-huggers or bird-lovers, but because it’s a source of economic income to them, because they can harvest reeds and sell them. They can fish and feed a family or sell them to earn extra income."</p> <p>Alwash, a civil engineer, set up Nature Iraq and has organised training for graduates who help with monitoring work. "We take guards with us with Kalashnikovs, but the most difficult part is the road between [the capital] Baghdad to the marsh," said Alwash. "Once I’m inside the marshes it’s relatively safe."</p> <p>About half the original marshland has been restored – even more had been reinstated, but there was a setback last year because of a drought. Nature Iraq has now drawn up a plan to cope with the diminishing water flows from dams upstream in Turkey by channelling irrigation water back into the rivers and building a barrage to retain meltwater from the mountains and create a "mechanical flood" of water to replicate the important pulses of freshwater that wash through the marshlands every spring.</p> <p>Alwash and his team are also trying to tackle the problem of local poaching, although he has great sympathy with those who have few alternative sources of income, and hopes the opening of a new oil industry will help create jobs.</p> <p>"We have done some work in trying to educate the locals," he added. "We say: ‘Go out and hunt but take less; make $10 today – you don’t have to make $20, and make $10 tomorrow’. We just keep at it. You can’t give up."</p> <p>• The exhibition runs until July 25 at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.birdscapesgallery.co.uk/" class="external" target="_blank">Birdscapes Gallery in Glandford, Norfolk</a></p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/09/iraq-marshes-reborn" class="external" target="_blank">Paradise found: Water and life return to Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’ | Environment | The Guardian</a></p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-7922"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/12/14/the-dust-bowl-of-babylon/#respond" title="Comment on The Dust Bowl of Babylon">No Comments</a></span> Posted on December 14th, 2009 by Editors</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/12/14/the-dust-bowl-of-babylon/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link 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href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/zagros-mountains/" rel="tag">zagros mountains</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <p> </p> <blockquote><p><b>The Dust Bowl of Babylon</b></p> <p>Are crippling droughts the next great threat to Iraq? Asks <b>Martin Chulov</b>.</p> <p>BAGHDAD — From his mud brick home on the edge of the Garden of Eden, Awda Khasaf has twice seen his country’s lifeblood seep away. The waters that once spread from his doorstep across a 20% slab of Iraq known as the Marshlands first disappeared in 1991, when Saddam Hussein diverted them east to punish the rebellious Marsh Arabs. The wetlands have been crucial to Iraq since the earliest days of civilization — sustaining the lives of up to half a million people who live in and around the area, while providing water for almost two million more. </p> <p>The waters vanished after the First Gulf War due to a dictator’s wrath; over the next 16 years, they ebbed and flowed, but slowly started to return to their pre-Saddam levels. By 2007, with no more sabotage and average rains, almost 70% of the lost water had been recovered. Now it’s gone again. This time because of a crisis far more endemic: a devastating drought and the water policies of neighboring Turkey, Iran, and Syria. These three nations have effectively stopped most of the headwaters of the three rivers — the Tigris, Euphrates, and Karoon — that feed these marshes. </p> <p>“Once in a generation was bad enough,” says Awda, a tribal head and local sheikh in the al-Akeryah Marshlands, who also advises the Nasiriyah governorate on water issues. “Twice could well be God’s vengeance.” </p> <p>In a land where fundamental interpretations of monotheistic scripts often determine the tone of public discourse, particular attention is now being paid to the biblical Book of Revelation, in which the Euphrates River drying up was prophesized as a harbinger for the end of the world. It is not doomsday yet in Iraq, but the water shortage here has not been worse for at least the last two centuries — and possibly for several millennia more. Government estimates suggest close to two million Iraqis face severe drinking water shortages and extremely limited hydropower-generated electricity in a part of the country where most households get by on no more than eight hours of supplied power per day, in the best of times. </p> <p>The flow of the Euphrates that reaches Iraq is down, according to scientific estimates, by 50% to 70% and falling further by the week. From his frugal office in Baghdad’s National Center for Water Management, engineer Zuhair Hassan Ahmed has for the past decade plotted the water levels of the Euphrates and the Tigris, the latter of which bisects the Iraqi capital. The hand-etched ink graphs show a black line that marks an average “water year,” from October to May, superimposed over a green line, which shows the actual flow through the two rivers over the same time. The green line had been markedly lower than the benchmark for much of the past decade. But in 2007 — the start of a serious drought — it dipped sharply and has continued to fall. </p> <p>In Baghdad, the lack of water has been an inconvenience, an eyesore, and a health hazard. Raw sewage and refuse pumped into the Tigris is not flushed downstream as rapidly as it once was. The Tigris is Baghdad’s main artery, but it is also still a working river, long traversed by small commuter ferries, industrial barges, and, in the city’s halcyon days, even pleasure boats. Giant mud islands now protrude from the once wide, blue expanse of the river, making it unnavigable for larger vessels. Further downstream, and especially along the Euphrates — which runs roughly on a parallel track west though Iraq’s bread basket — the effects of the shortage are far worse. </p> <p>Between Two Rivers </p> </p> <p>Here, in the land between the two rivers that was once the heartland of ancient Mesopotamia, the water crisis has ravaged agriculture, an industry still struggling to regain its footing after three decades of deprivation and war. This was the second mooted site (the other was the Marshlands themselves) of the fabled Garden of Eden — a land so rich in soil and water that it would quench the needs of its dwellers throughout eternity. It doesn’t look quite like that now. Crops of grain, barley, mint, and dates have failed almost en masse. Further west, in Anbar province, a prized rice variety that was once sold at a premium throughout Iraq and in the markets of neighboring countries has just been harvested. Like almost all other crops, this year’s yield is a disaster. </p> <p>“We blame the Turks for this,” says Hatem al-Ansari, a local Anbar rice grower who claims to have lost half his family’s life savings since January 2009 due to a lack of water to irrigate his rice. “We have been digging wells nearby, and so has the government, but it is not enough. Not even close.” Shielding his face with a black scarf from a sandstorm blowing in on an acetylene desert wind, Hatem points in the direction of the Euphrates’ upper reaches. “If you go down to the bank, you will see where the water was last year and last week,” he says. “Our water pumps can no longer reach it. It’s true it hasn’t been raining, but it’s just as true that even 30% of normal rainfall does not cripple a mighty river like this.” He had to be taken on his word. The swirling sand and dust were starting to turn the sky an ochre-orange haze and was steadily closing like a shroud on us all, making an inspection of the river bank impossible. </p> <p>Sandstorms have long been a fixture of Iraqi summers — on average, there are about eight to ten each hot season. But this year they became a pandemic. Close to 40 sandstorms blew in during the five months from May to early October. Some lasted three days at a time, sheeting farms with suffocating silt, closing airports, and adding another layer of misery to a society that has been through hell. </p> <p>Lack of water for irrigation, especially in Anbar, is a key problem. Iraq’s water minister, Dr. Abdul Rashid Latif, says that the government dug an extra 1,000 wells over the past two years, taking advantage of a relatively high groundwater table. But drawing on a diminishing resource during a time of drought has proved costly. “We now have only around 20% of our original reserves left,” he says. “And the thing about this water is that not much of it is being replenished.” </p> <p><b></b> </p> <p>“The Scent of a Dying Ecosystem” </p> </p> <p>Iraq’s water numbers make for disturbing reading across the board. Government estimates put total reservoir storage at around 9% of nationwide capacity on the leading edge of a wet season that is not forecast to bring much relief. For the past two years, rainfall was some 70% lower than usual in most of Iraq’s 18 provinces. </p> <p>The snow melt that usually feeds the Tigris system from the Zagros Mountains in the Kurdish north was equally deficient. There are now seven dams on the adjoining Euphrates system, most in Turkey and Syria, with plans for at least one more. And then there are the rampant inefficiencies built into Iraq’s antiquated 8,000 miles of canals and drains, which send countless millions of gallons gushing into parts of the country that have little use for the water, and no means to harness it even if they did. </p> <p>Some have looked to the heavens to explain the lack of rain. Society here is deeply superstitious. Many Iraqis, from the Sunni Arabs of Anbar to the tribes of the Marshlands, believe the natural deficiencies are God-ordained — and possibly a punishment for the sectarian ravages that have torn the country apart over the last three years. </p> <p>“Droughts have happened before and will plague us again,” says Awda as he surveys the vast expanse of hard-baked and cracked brown mud in front of him that used to be the Marshlands. “But not even in ’91 was the water like this. Now there is nothing.” The only water left in the maze of feeder streams that empty into this giant basin are pools of lime-colored stagnant ooze. Nothing flows. Ducks and geese sit listlessly on creek banks that have not been exposed in decades — if ever — to direct sunlight. Infestations of flies circle like Saturn’s rings around giant, steel barrels of drinking water, imported from the nearby city of Nasiriyah, that line village roads. Reeds that were once the staple of the agrarian peoples who worked this waterway through the ages jut starkly from the banks, nearly all of them yellow and hardened, looking more like medieval weapons of war than crops. </p> <p>Earlier this fall, the major tributaries of the Euphrates were flowing at around 30% of their normal levels. “Look at that mark on the bank,” says Awda, pointing to a stain on a corrugated iron beam at the base of the bridge. Not long ago, he notes, this had been a high-water mark. The waterline is now at least nine feet lower. The pungent murk of the riverbed lingers in the air. “Take a deep breath,” says Awda. “That smell is the scent of a dying ecosystem.” </p> <p>Two fishermen, who had launched themselves into what remained of the waterway in a bid to net carp, return to the banks with their haul — 12 fish, none bigger than 10 inches. The catch is not enough to feed their families, let alone take to market. Two years ago, the fish were fat and bountiful. </p> <p>“Fishing is our staple here,” explains one local man, Sheikh Hameed from Abart village, further north of the Marshlands. “That, and hunting water birds. But they’ve all flown away. I had a stall here for many years,” he recalls, pointing to an abandoned roadside hut, where he used to sell his catch. </p> <p>The white polystyrene crates that used to hold the fish on ice are now home to street cats and sand drifts. A giant water buffalo, which once spent the best part of the summer immersed in the water, is now making do with what remains. He stands motionless, buried to the midriff in a festering, black mud. The caked soil cast offers at least some respite from the heat, but with the temperature expected to hover between 118 and 124 degrees Fahrenheit for the following week, he doesn’t have long left to wallow. </p> <p>“We are digging wells for our own survival,” says Sheikh Hameed. “And this in the most water-rich area of the country. This is not God’s wrath. This is the work of people.” </p> <p><b></b> </p> <p>Tweaking the Tap </p> </p> <p>Over the past six chaotic years, new reservoirs have been built into the Euphrates system on both the Syrian and Turkish sides of the border. Iraq, as a downstream country, would have likely suffered from serious water depletion even if it had a government strong enough to assert its authority against two powerful neighbors. But with a political class struggling to win legitimacy amid a sectarian war that has torn the country apart along ancient societal fault lines, there has been little time to tend even to the bare basics of survival. Delivery of services has been close to non-existent, from the national government down to village mayors. Now, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki claiming to run a credible sovereign state, work has begun in earnest on talking to the neighbors about many issues of Iraqi sovereignty, including border integrity, that have remained sidelined throughout the post-war turmoil. </p> <p>“They should realize that we are an important neighbor and share many things in life,” says Dr. Rashid, who has three times led Iraqi delegations to Istanbul and Damascus to beg for more water. He has returned with promises, but little fruit for his labors. With no treaties or agreements signed with either state, however, he has little leverage. “Our neighboring countries need to get the message that it is our right to get our share of water from these two international rivers and that we should have a say in their operational procedures because we are downstream. In our discussions they have never connected the water issues with any other issues.” </p> <p>There is trouble, too, from Iran, whose government earlier this year ordered the diversion back into Iranian territory of a key tributary of the Tigris — the Karoon River, which enters Iraq just north of the southern city of Basra. Until early this year, the Karoon had sent regularly a vital flush of freshwater down the Tigris and into the Shatt al-Arab waterway at the northwestern end of the Persian Gulf. The freshwater pushed back the tidal effect and allowed tens of thousands of Iraqis from the southern Marshlands to make their livelihood through fishing and farming. “There were 13 billion cubic meters of freshwater [annually] feeding into the Shatt al-Arab,” says Dr. Rashid. “Now that has gone. We have asked them to sit down and talk but they won’t even answer our requests.” </p> <p>In late October 2009, Iraqi technicians finally met with their Iranian counterparts. “They were told about the effect on the people in the south who are exclusively Shias — their people,” says Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari. “They were very embarrassed by this and promised to look into it.” Today, the saltwater of the relentless tides around Basra is still winning the push-me, pull-you game and, like a rampaging army, has pushed farther north up the waterway than ever before. As a result, some 30,000 locals have left their land, some of which has now been heavily salinated, leaving it of marginal agricultural value at best. </p> <p>Across Iraq, entire ecosystems are under threat. So far, redress from the Turks and the Syrians has consisted only of sympathetic words, followed by the occasional tweak of the tap. “We need 500 cubic meters per second,” Dr. Rashid said in August. “We have been getting 350 meters on some days, but 150 meters on average. They have promised us more, but we have yet to see it.” In the months that followed, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey three times announced a boost in the headwater flow from the Euphrates. But by late autumn, the downstream effect had been negligible. </p> <p>The giant power station in the city of Nasiriyah was still using only two of its four turbines that are normally powered by the flow of the Euphrates. One had broken down, but could not have been used anyway because, along with a second turbine, there was not enough moving water to power it. Nasiriyah was getting by on about six to eight hours of power a day — roughly the same as the rest of the country. </p> <p>Throughout the summer and fall, engineers at the power station were desperately hoping the river would not fall another eight inches, to a level that would have left Iraq’s fourth-largest city without any electricity whatsoever. “We saw it rise a centimeter or two, roughly two days after every announcement from the Turks, but it would soon drop away,” says an engineer at the power station. “The figures we were being promised were not translating into tangibles.” </p> <p><b></b> </p> <p>The Rains Cometh Not </p> </p> <p>Both Turkey and Syria have been suffering from the same rainfall deficiency as Iraq. The winter storm fronts that once formed regularly near Cyprus and swept east through Syria, Jordan, and Iraq have been rare over the past three years, as have the low-pressure systems that could usually be counted on to dip south into Turkey from the Balkans and the Russian steppe. Cloud seeding and the contentious science of rain-making have been considered in all four countries. </p> <p>Jordanians, in particular, remember the 1991 winter season, when seeding was attempted near Cyprus. That year, six separate snow-bearing storm fronts swept through the country, leaving yard-deep snow drifts on the streets of the capital, Amman, for many weeks. Heavy snow also fell across the Iraqi desert plains and the Zagros Mountains. The snow melt that autumn saw the Tigris burst its banks in Baghdad. Upstream in Turkey, there is still enough reliable winter rainfall to keep the dams brimming and make cloud seeding unnecessary. Downstream in Iraq, where the water is needed most, there is neither money nor interest for such an experiment. </p> <p>Even the ancient ways are starting to fail. From June to August of this year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conducted research into the status of ancient, natural subterranean aqueducts used both for human settlement and irrigation in the Kurdish north. The UNESCO results painted a bleak picture of water resources in northern Iraq, which had for centuries boasted relatively bountiful supplies, even during harsh times. The UNESCO study found that 70% of the aqueducts, known as karez, that were producing water in 2005 had since dried up and been abandoned. Of the 683 karez surveyed, most were not functioning, due largely to excessive use and ongoing drought — only 116 still delivered water. The study claimed that 36,000 people were at risk of being displaced, while tens of thousands more had already left their lands. </p> <p>Figures in Iraq are always open to a degree of conjecture, but one reality is now clear: the water crisis is leading to mass migrations of people and a renewed displacement at both ends of the country, just as some order was starting to replace the bedlam of the invasion and civil war. Iraqis have been returning to their homes in mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad, but now rural people, fleeing in droves from the increasingly arid provinces, are also showing up in urban centers. </p> <p>The Marsh Arabs have left their lands in large numbers, according to Nasiriyah’s governor, Qusey al-Ebadi, who has yet to find ways to accommodate them. “They are nomadic people and move around during difficult times,” says al-Ebadi, “but I have never seen them coming into the cities with their animals like this.” The men of the Marshlands — now far from their ancestral lands — mill around in small groups on street corners in Nasiriyah, many searching for laboring work, looking incongruous and desperate. </p> <p>The people from the Shatt al-Arab area of the southern Marshlands also need accommodating. Government estimates suggest as many as 30,000 have left their lands, all but abandoning their agrarian livelihoods. Thousands more have been pushed to the brink of survival. If the Tigris and the Karoon do not flow again toward the Shatt al-Arab, the ecosystem they have relied on is all but finished. </p> <p>The water crisis could not have come at a worse time for Prime Minister al-Maliki, who has spent much of his time and energy as leader attempting to win enough authority to assert his will. His formula had been security first and stability second, followed by delivery of services. So far, he has achieved qualified approval on the first two, but abject failure on the third. </p> <p>Iraq’s energy sector is in a desperate state of disrepair. In late October, a rare thunder and lightning storm that brought the first rains to Baghdad in seven months caused power to crash citywide for eight hours. Even without rain, or other disturbances such as dust or wind, most residents of the capital are getting by on no more than a half-day of regular electricity, the vast bulk supplied by coal-burning energy plants that generate power channeled by substations resembling museum pieces. What little electricity supply exists is frequently targeted by militias who boast of their intent to return the society (literally) to the dark ages. Sewer lines have only been dug in the most affluent areas and city roads are, at best, rudimentary. </p> <p>With a national election looming in early March, al-Maliki knows that his current base of support across Iraq’s religious and ethnic divides is fragile. Failure to give Iraqis the essential services they have long craved — especially electricity, water, and sewerage –will likely spell his doom. Twice this fall, he has traveled to the Shia bastion of Basra to assess the plight of the Shatt al-Arab and to persuade locals that all is not lost. It is a hard sell for the people of the south, who collectively still see themselves as being as deeply deprived today as they were under Saddam. </p> <p>For the prime minister to blame his nation’s neighbors for water woes is unlikely to fly. Beyond the troubles over the water supply, al-Maliki has pointedly accused Syria of destabilizing Iraq by sheltering former Baathists, who, he claims, funded two bombing campaigns that targeted three government ministries and the Baghdad municipal government headquarters in August and October. All four buildings were annihilated, with almost 300 people killed and more than 1,000 maimed. While wagging his finger at Damascus, al-Maliki has also been constantly promising patronage to the southern tribes and an entrée to state coffers if they fall in behind him. Months before a definitive election and amid an unparalleled ecological crisis, the tribes are, at best, restless. And water is near the top of their worry list. </p> <p><b></b> </p> <p>Enough Blame to Go Around </p> </p> <p>“The government didn’t do this directly, it’s true,” says tribesman Maher al-Zubaidi, as he surveys the shrinking Euphrates in Nasiriyah. “But they tell us they are strong now and yet they can’t stand up to the Turks. Wars have started in this region for a lot less. Also, Iraq constantly cries poor, yet we read about the trade minister taking a cut from every kilo of imported grain and see enormous revenues from oil. The time has long past for them to deliver.” </p> <p>The Turks, though sympathetic to the plight of their downstream neighbors, lay much of the blame at the feet of Iraqi bureaucrats who have done next to nothing to protect an already precious natural resource from atrocious water management practices. It is not uncommon to see burst water-mains spouting geysers through Baghdad’s parched suburbs or across village roads, quickly mixing with refuse and oil, turning into giant molasses-like pools. Almost all public taps invariably leak, and environmental awareness is close to nonexistent. </p> <p>Publicly, Turkey will say nothing on the subject of its water dispute with Iraq, other than that it is working with both Syria and Iran to remedy the situation and has agreed to share daily technical data with both sides on flows. After recent floods near Istanbul, a limited extra release was allowed into the Euphrates system. It was soon stopped. The saga was symptomatic of Iraq’s dilemma and its lack of means to do much about it. Again, Baghdad had to make do with what its neighbors could spare on a good day. Iraq is yet to press its case for water rights under international law and, with its hand weakened by so many ongoing woes, the government does not currently hold much sway in the region. </p> <p>The torpor is of no comfort to Iraq’s downstream dwellers. Back in al-Akeryah Marshlands, Awda Khasaf kicks a splintering skiff that used to ply the lowland waterways. The last six months, he says, have changed everything. “If the Turks release all the water that used to come down the Euphrates, then the Marshes will fill up again within two months and we will recover. But that is not going to happen. They caught the government off guard while it was obsessed with the war and now they have a chokehold on us. This has had a revolutionary effect. The Turks have the upper-hand and until we are strong enough to stand up for ourselves, all we can do is pray for a flood. Look at them. They are not serious about helping us. They are trying to build another dam [the Ilus hydroelectric plant planned for southeastern Turkey, on the northern reaches of the Tigris]. Only when we can stand up can we address this. For now…” He leaves the last thought hanging, possibly conjuring up the same apocalyptic vision that started our conversation: only the good Lord can save us. </p> <p>In the short term, it would appear that divine intervention is Iraq’s best hope. The means to address water management effectively seem decades away. Much of the country’s infrastructure belongs in scrap yards or exhibits of nineteenth-century industrial artifacts. Re-laying water pipes nationwide for urban water delivery would likely take the better part of a generation. Desalination has been considered during cabinet meetings and projects have been offered by investors from the cash-rich Gulf states, which rely heavily, if not exclusively, on desalinated water. But Iraqi officials have so far described the costs as prohibitive. “It might work out for a small state like Abu Dhabi that doesn’t need tens of thousands of kilometers of pipeline,” says one minister. “But for us, it is a non-starter for now.” </p> <p><b></b> </p> <p>Globalization Woes </p> </p> <p>The crisis of 2009 has revealed some domestic inefficiencies that Iraq’s farmers will struggle to reverse. Wholesalers have been able to import and distribute fresh produce at market rates that compete successfully with what domestic consumers would have paid for locally grown produce. Hundreds of tons of bananas have been flown in from Somalia, watermelons from Iran, rice from the Far East, and bottled water from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. </p> <p>Water woes are playing a big part in turning Iraq into a net food importer. But so are the cost-efficient alternatives introduced to the Iraqi market by companies in both developing states and Western nations, all of which are clamoring to service some 20 million people who, for the most part, have always relied on homegrown produce. </p> <p>Apart from small pockets that can still harness water from the Euphrates, much of Iraq’s politically and strategically critical Anbar province is now a dust bowl. So, too, is Diyala province, north of Baghdad, which boasts some of the most fertile alluvial soil in the land. Both areas were ground zero for the Sunni militancy — Anbar the so-called triangle of death, Diyala the declared heartland of a new Islamic caliphate in 2006. The al-Maliki government had hoped to appease insurgents with the promise of prosperity. But as 2009 draws to a close, the notion seems fanciful. Family incomes are down substantially in many areas. The violence, successfully quelled throughout the past two years, is again on the rise, especially in Anbar. </p> <p>Iraq’s provinces and some of its most dangerous towns have been the focus of work throughout the past five years by American reconstruction teams, especially the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which in October wound up its mission. The engineers left, claiming that 21.2 million Iraqis now had access to potable drinking water, up from just over 5 million people immediately after the invasion. Last year, in the giant Sadr City slum in Baghdad’s northeast, the Army Corps built a treatment plant which draws and purifies water from the Tigris. The net effect, the Army claims, has been an increase from 46 to 200 in the per capita liters of water per day for Sadr City residents. The bill for the project was $65 million. </p> <p>In all, the engineers completed 25 large water distribution projects across the country as well as 800 smaller water sector projects that delivered potable water to many Iraqis who had no such luxury before Saddam fell. But now the engineers are gone. Gone with them is the bulk of America’s capacity to do more good works before the White House orders the last troops out late next year. </p> <p>Water distribution at the micro level is undoubtedly better than it was. But in a macro sense, the efforts amount to a small splash in a large pond. Iraq has giant subterranean lakes of another precious resource — oil — under the soil at both ends of the country and appears to be betting its future on turning anticipated revenues into purchasing power and regional clout today. </p> <p>Oil is Iraq’s meal ticket — a buffer against both drought and geopolitical impotence. The cabinet has been absorbed over the past six months with finding a formula that offers foreign investors enough financial incentives to bring their expertise to the badlands, while at the same time retaining control of the oil sector and the billions of petro-dollars it is likely to produce. But while the promise of future riches and power may see the waters flow again one day, on the barren plains of Iraq’s south a simpler business plan is taking shape. </p> <p>Alongside the highway between Baghdad and Basra — a giant, Saddam-era, four-lane road built to move tanks and troops — a rare agricultural success story is emerging. To travel this road in 2005-06 was to almost guarantee a run-in with a militia group, or an angry burst of bullets fired from a nearby sand berm. It remained a no-go zone to most non-Iraqis until the middle of 2008. By then, scorched wrecks of tankers lined the highway along with the charred chassis of the occasional American Hummer or private security company four-wheel-drive vehicle, conspicuous by its blackened, rusting bulk. </p> <p>Even today, giant scabs of charred bitumen are missing along the entire stretch to Basra, legacies of improvised bombs and aerial strikes that turned Iraq’s main arterial highway into a Mad Max-like wasteland. But now, dozens of salt farms line both sides of the road. There had always been a small salt industry, especially in the center of Iraq, near the cities of Babylon and Najaf, but with rapid water depletion turning lakes into shallow, salinated pools, dozens of small enterprises have now sprung up. Salt, piled in pyramid-style heaps, pockmarks the horizon of a barren landscape once covered in year-round sheets of water. One farmer sold his flock of goats to concentrate on salt. “I have around 190 kilos here,” he says, pointing at his pile. “It’s much more [profit] than I will get this year from dates.” </p> <p>The salt is then taken to market in Baghdad, where a small export industry is tipped to develop this year. Until the oil money kicks in or its neighbors turn on the taps again, success in the salt pans is likely to be a rare high-water mark for Iraq. In the short term, it would appear that divine intervention is Iraq’s best hope. The means to address water management effectively seems decades away. </p> <p><b></b> </p> <p>Martin Chulov is the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/martin-chulov" class="external" target="_blank">Baghdad correspondent </a>for the Guardian of London.</p> </p> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=36192" class="external" target="_blank">Middle East Online</a></p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-7367"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/09/22/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%b2%d9%85%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%a7%d8%a6%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d9%88%d8%aa%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%b9%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%aa%d9%87%d8%a7-%d8%b9%d9%84%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%b6/#respond" title="Comment on الازمة المائية وتداعياتها على الاراضي الزراعية وازدياد ظاهرة التصحر في العراق">No Comments</a></span> Posted on September 22nd, 2009 by Editors</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/09/22/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%b2%d9%85%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%a7%d8%a6%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d9%88%d8%aa%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%b9%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%aa%d9%87%d8%a7-%d8%b9%d9%84%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%b6/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to الازمة المائية وتداعياتها على الاراضي الزراعية وازدياد ظاهرة التصحر في العراق">الازمة المائية وتداعياتها على الاراضي الزراعية وازدياد ظاهرة التصحر في العراق</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/features/" title="View all posts in Features" rel="category tag">Features</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/agriculture-decline-of/" rel="tag">Agriculture decline of</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/construction-of-dams/" rel="tag">construction of dams</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/dams/" rel="tag">Dams</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/degradation-of-ecosystems/" rel="tag">degradation of ecosystems</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/desertification/" rel="tag">Desertification</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/euphrates-river/" rel="tag">Euphrates river,</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/features/" rel="tag">Features</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/iran/" rel="tag">Iran</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshlands/" rel="tag">marshlands</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/rate-of-flow/" rel="tag">rate of flow</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/syria/" rel="tag">Syria</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/tigris-and-euphrates-rivers/" rel="tag">tigris and euphrates rivers</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/tigris-river/" rel="tag">Tigris River</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/treaty-of-1947/" rel="tag">Treaty of 1947</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/turkey/" rel="tag">Turkey</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/turkish-promises-to-increase-flow/" rel="tag">Turkish promises to increase flow</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-crisis-iraq/" rel="tag">Water Crisis (Iraq)</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-security/" rel="tag">water security</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-treaty/" rel="tag">Water Treaty</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-treaty-negotiations/" rel="tag">Water Treaty negotiations</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <div dir="rtl" align="right"> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>تقسم الانهر الى نوعين<span>  </span>انهر وطنية داخلية او محلية تنبع وتنتهي في الدولة ذاتها وانهر دولية تنبع في دولة معينة ويكون مجراها في دولة او دول اخرى وعلى مدى عدة قرون ومنذ سقوط الدولة العباسية في العام 456 هـ وحتى تقسيم الوطن العربي بين دول الحلفاء كان نهرا دجلة والفرات عبارة عن نهرين وطنيين فهما ينبعان وينتهيان في الدولة العثمانية، وبعد الحرب العالمية الاولى عقدت اول اتفاقية مائية بين بريطانيا وفرنسا لتنظيم استخدام مياه نهر الفرات ومثله دجلة وقد اقرت الحكومتان العراقية والسورية بعد الاستقلال الاتفاقية المذكورة ومنذ تلك الفترة وحتى بداية السبعينيات من القرن الماضي كان العراق ينعم بوفرة مائية وزراعية يحسد عليها سكان وادي الرافدين<span>  </span>، وحول ازمة المياه في العراق كان لـ<a title="(وكالة انباء الاعلم العراقي/واع " href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://al-iraqnews.net/new/shafiaa/34361.html" class="external" target="_blank">(وكالة انباء الاعلم العراقي/واع </a>) جولة <span> </span>تحقيقية لمعرفة تداعياتها على الواقع االزراعي والبيئي في العراق …</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3">التصور الطبيعي الدائم بين الاهالي هو حدوث فيضانات</font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>يقول <span style="color: red">عقيل ايدام</span> …احتوى العراق منذ القدم على نهرين عظيمين هما دجلة والفرات. وعرف بـ"بلاد ما بين النهرين" وهو ما كان يرمز للثروة المائية البيضاء، وذلك قبل عهود من اكتشاف ثروته ــ مصيبته النفطية السوداء. فيما تغيّر كل شيء اليوم، وأصبح العراق عنواناً لعطَش أهله وتصحّر الأرض المعطاء وجفاف التربة وتلوّث ما نجا من مائه في مواجهة عجز الطبيعة وظلم الجيران وسلوك الإنسان زسوء الادارة وضعف التخطيط لمشاريع معالجة المياه الثقيلة التي ترمى في دجلة بعدم مبالاة لهذه الثروه والنعمة التي لا يعرفها الا من حرم منها، فالماء عصب الحياة وبغض النظر عن حاجة الفرد للمياه فهناك حاجة قومية مستمرة لكل امة لهذا العصب لتدب فيها الحياة. </span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>وفي العراق الذي يضم بين حدوده نهرين عملاقين هما دجلة والفرات اضافة الى عدة انهر فرعية ذات مخزون عالي من المياه لم يكن احد ليتصور يوما ان تحدث ازمة مروعة وتنذر باضمحلال هذه الامة عن بكرة ابيها بل كان التصور الطبيعي الدائم والسائد بين الاهالي هو حدوث فيضانات بين فترة واخرى كما حدث تأريخيا. </span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>لكننا اليوم نشهد كارثة غير متوقعة وتسببت بازمات اقتصادية وبيئية بل واجتماعية كبيرة تمثلت بانخفاض مناسيب نهري دجلة والفرات الى درجة كبيرة واختفاء انهر اخرى من على الخريطة ! </span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ويقول استاذ الاقتصاد <span style="color: red">داود سلومي</span> النزاع على مصادر المياه أصبح يمثّل فتيلاً يهدد بظهور صراعات محلية وإقليمية، ما يستدعي أن تأخذ المنطقة هذه المسألة بجدية، من خلال وجود تصور وبعد استراتيجيَّين، ووضع سياسات مائية موحَّدة لمواجهة تحدّيات الأمن المائي، فيما بدأت تركيا بإنشاء السدود، ولحقها في المضمار ذاته سوريا وإيران، وبقي العراق بين متفرّج ومترقّب للكارثة.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span style="color: red">عقد العراق معاهدة صداقة مع تركيا أُلحقت بها ستة بروتوكولات نظمت الانتفاع من مياه دجلة والفرات</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>وسبق أن وافق العراق في عام 1947 على عقد معاهدة صداقة وحسن جوار مع تركيا، أُلحقت بها ستة بروتوكولات تضمّنت تنظيم الانتفاع من مياه دجلة والفرات، وتفادي أضرار الفيضانات،وإقامة مشاريع للمحافظة على المياه، مع موافقة أنقرة على مبدأ ضرورة تزويد العراق بالمعلومات الخاصة بالمشاريع والأعمال التي تنوي القيام بتنفيذها،على نحو يوفّق بقدر الإمكان، بين مصالح البلدين.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>لذلك لم تظهر أية مشكلة قانونية حتى بدأت تركيا، ومن بعدها سوريا، في وضع الخطط لاستغلال مياه نهر الفرات على نحو منفرد. ففي عام 1966، بنت تركيا سد كيبان الذي بلغت سعة التخزين فيه 30.5 مليار متر مكعب، ومحطة كهربائية قوّتها خمسة مليارات كيلوواط. وبدورها، قامت سوريا ببناء سدً كبير على نهر الفرات بسعة تخزينية تبلغ 11.9 مليار متر مكعب، ومحطة كهربائية بقوة 800 ألف كيلوواط، وهكذا بدأت كل من الدولتين الجارتين بتنفيذ مشاريعهما واستغلال مياه الفرات من دون مراعاة لحقوق العراق المكتسبة في مياه نهر الفرات التي قدّرها الخبراء في حينه بـ 18 مليار متر مكعب من المياه. وقد سعت الحكومة العراقية إلى عقد مفاوضات واتفاقيات لتحديد الانتفاع من مياه نهر الفرات بين الدول الثلاث إلا أن جميع اللقاءات والمحاولات باءت بالفشل.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>وفي عام 1990، توصلت سوريا والعراق إلى توقيع اتفاقية لاقتسام مياه نهر الفرات بنسبة 58 في المئة للعراق، و42 في المئة لسوريا. وبالرجوع إلى البيانات المتعلقة بتصريف نهر الفرات ومقارنتها مع حجم المطالب الاستهلاكية للدول الثلاث، ترى تركيا أنّه يستحيل تلبيتها، حيث إنّ 88 في المئة من إجمالي إيرادات نهر الفرات المائية تأتي من أراضيها، فيما تُسهم سوريا بنحو 12في المئة، بينما العراق لا يُسهم بأية كمية. وكانت هذه المبررات عاملاً مساعداً وأساسياً لاستمرار السلطات التركية في حرمان العراق من المياه، إذ وصلت حصته من نهر الفرات إلى ثلث الكمية التي كانت تصله قبل بناء السدود. كذلك انخفض مستوى مياه نهر دجلة الداخلة إلى العراق، من 20.93 مليار متر مكعب في السنة، إلى 9.7 مليارات مكعبة، فيما توقف نهر ديالى الذي ينبع من إيران عن الجريان نهائياً، بسبب إنشاء إيران سداً على هذا النهر، ما أدى إلى نضوب مياهه.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span style="color: red">ويضيف سلومي</span><span> <span> </span>تهدد شحة المياه المتدفقة إلى العراق عبر نهري دجلة والفرات بحصول كارثة بيئية خطيرة في العراق خاصة مع تزامنها بقلة مياه الأمطار الساقطة خلال فصل الشتاء الأمر الذي قد يحول ألاف الدونمات من الأراضي الزراعية إلى أراضي جرداء.</span></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span style="color: red">سدود روافد الاهوار او تحويل مسارها إلى إيران لا تقل أهمية من مشكلة المياه الواردة من تركيا</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ويقول الاستاذ <span style="color: red">طه محيي</span> لعل مشكلة الجفاف الذي يهدد اهوار العراق نتيجة قيام إيران ببناء سدود على الروافد التي تمد الاهوار بالمياه او تحويل مسار تلك الروافد إلى داخل الأراضي الإيرانية لا تقل أهمية من مشكلة المياه الواردة من تركيا وهو ما دعا الحكومة العراقية إلى مطالبة إيران بمراعاة الوضع العراقي في سياستها المائية واحترام الاتفاقيات المبرمة بين البلدين.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ويضيف مشكلات المياه من المشكلات التي تجذب نظر الباحثين والمفكرين في مختلف تخصصاتهم ، فهي تدخل في ديمومة حياة الإنسان والحيوانات البرية والبحرية ،فضلا عن أهميتها الاقتصادية وما تحتويه من ثروة سمكية .</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>واضاف <span style="color: red">محيي</span> ان نسبة العجز في مياه الأنهار المشتركة الواصلة إلى العراق أكثر من 33 بليون متر مكعب<span>  </span>فلا يوجد <span> </span>اقتسام عادل للمياه المشتركة ،إذ تبلغ حاجة العراق أكثر من 50 بليون متر في ظل مساحة زراعية لا تتجاوز 12 مليون دونم في حين تبلغ واردات المياه الحالية 43.92<span>  </span>بليون متر مكعب مصحوبة بارتفاع كبير في نسبة الملوحة خاصة في حوض الفرات وان نسبة الخزن الحالية<span>  </span>تبلغ 77 مليون متر مكعب أي نصف نسبة الخزن الكلية التي تبلغ 148.91بليون متر مكعب إذ تأثرت طاقة خزن الاهوار بنسبة 20 بليون متر مكعب خلال السنوات الماضية بعد سحب كميات كبيرة منها.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>وما يثير الخوف هو مواصلة تركيا في تشييد مشروع (ألكاب) التركي الذي يهدف إلى إنشاء 22 سدا و19 محطة كهرومائية على نهري دجلة والفرات بطاقة خزن مئة بليون متر مكعب الذي سيؤثر على ثلثي مساحة الأراضي الزراعية في العراق خلال الـ 15 سنة المقبلة.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>واردف <span style="color: red">محيي</span> هذا ما يعرض العراق الى مشكلة التصحر<span>  </span>المشكلة التي تعاني منها الانسانية وقد اصبحت من اخطر التحديات التي تواجهها في هذا القرن والصحاري هي احدى الانظمة البيئية التي تكونت بفعل العوامل الجيولوجية والمناخية وتميزت بالظروف القاسية المتطرفة ،والتصحر احد مظاهر التدهور البيئي ويعني تردي الاراضي في المناطق القاحلة وشبه القاحلة والجافة وشبه الرطبة نتيجة عوامل مختلفة من اهمها الاختلافات المناخية والانشطة البشرية وهو يدل على الانخفاض الكمي والنوعي في القدرات الانتاجية للاراضي وتدمير الطاقة البايولوجية الكامنة. </span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ويردف تدهور النظم البيئية يشخص بمجموعتين من العوامل الطبيعية مثل التربة والمناخ والثانية المتعلقة بالانسان والادارة وهناك درجات للتصحر.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>تصحر اولي خفيف وفيه تغير نوعي وكمي للغطاء النباتي والتربة اما الثاني فتصحر متوسط ويحدث فيه انجراف وتعرية خفيفة للتربة وانخفاض ملحوظ في الانتاج النباتي وتصحر شديد يزداد فيه معدل الانجراف وانخفاض كبير في الانتاجية وتصحر شديد جداً حيث تصبح الاراضي جرداء وتنعدم قدرتها الانتاجية وتتحول الى كثبان رميلة او حواف صخرية او اراض ملحية.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span style="color: red">العراق يستورد 90% من احتياجاته الغذائية والسبب الرئيس تدهور القدرة الانتاجية للاراضي</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ويقول <span style="color: red">احمد حميد</span> "بايلوجي" يصيب التصحر بشكل مؤثر ثلث بلدان العالم اي ان نحو 150 بلداً معظمها من البلدان النامية والفقيرة. الظروف الطبيعية التي ساعدت على حدوث التصحر في العراق ان 90% من مساحة العراق تقع ضمن منطقة المناخ الجاف وشبه الجاف حيث يقل معامل الجفاف عن المعامل الثابت بنحو20 درجة . وارتفاع درجات الحرارة في الصيف الى حدود 55 درجة مع ارتفاع نسبة التبخر وخاصة في السهل الرسوبي لتصل الى 2000 – 3000 مليمتر وكذلك ارتفاع عدد الايام المشمسة وتصل في معدلها السنوي الى تسعة اشهر في السنة . وهبوط نسبة تساقط الامطار حيث تقل في اغلب مناطق العراق عن 150 ملم ولا يتجاوز معدل الامطار في الجنوب عن 40 يوماً وفي الشمال عن 70 يوماً <span> </span>اضافة الى قلة الرطوبة التي تعد مهمة جداً في الدورة البايولوجية للتربة ونمو الاعشاب وان الرياح السائدة في العراق رياح شمالية غربية جافة وحارة وتنشر الغبار المحلي يرافقها صيف حار جاف وطويل لها دور في حدوث التصحر في العراق. وستابع <span style="color: red">حميد</span><span>  </span>ازمة المياه والتصحر يهددان الامن الغذائي فتدهور زراعة الاراضي واستخدام التقنيات غير المناسبة في الري ادى الى انخفاض نصيب الفرد في الدول النامية من الرقعة الزراعية الى دون المستوى العالمي للفرد.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span> </span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>والعراق يستورد نحو (90%) من احتياجاته الغذائية والسبب الرئيس هو تدهور القدرة الانتاجية للاراضي وان اهم ما يتطلب لمعالجة الازمة استخدام تكنلوجيا مناسبة في الري سيما التنقيط<span>  </span>الحد من تدهور اراضي النظم الطبيعية والزراعية توفير الحماية اللازمة للمناطق الحساسة بيئياً . و يمكن معالجة التصحر من خلال الانشطة المكثفة لحفظ التربة ووضع خرائط للمناطق المهددة بالتصحر ومسار حركة الرمال ووضع الخطط الانية والمستقبلية لمعالجتها والتأكيد دائماً على دور التوعية والتربية البيئية والتركيز على خطر التصحر واهمية التنوع الحياتي والاعتناء بالحيوانات البرية واطلاقها في مناطق محددة من الصحراء والمحافظة عليها وتوفير مصادر طبيعية لتغذيتها وكذلك الاستفادة من بعض الدول التي لها تجارب متقدمة في مكافحة التصحر ووضع خطط اقليمية مشتركة في مكافحة التصحر وتدخل سريع في اقامة حملة وطنية لمكافحة التصحر تستهدف توعية الجماهير ودفعها للمساهمة من خلال حملات التشجير والمحافظة على الحيوانات البرية واستحداث برامج لتعليم الزراعة او اساليب الزراعة الملائمة وبرامج الري المستديم من اجل المحاصيل والمواشي معاً . </span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ويقول <span style="color: red">كريم خلف</span> "تاجر" برغم ان العراق قدم ومد يد الصداقة وحسن الجوار والتعاون للجارة تركيا من خلال الملف الامني الذي يعاني منه الاتراك، او من خلال الملف الاقتصادي الذي استفادت منه عندما فضلت الحكومة العراقية الشركات التركية للاستثمار في العراق وفي مشاريع اعادة البناء والتنمية، وعندما فتحت الاسواق العراقية ابوابها امام البضائع التركية، الا ان تركيا لم تتعامل معنا بالمثل، وانما ردت الاحسان بالاساءة، عندما سعت الى توظيف ملف انساني بحت هو ملف المياه لممارسة الضغط على بغداد لابتزازها، ما ساهم في ازدياد حدة التصحر من جانب وقلة مناسيب المياه في نهري دجلة والفرات الذي تسبب بشحة المياه حتى الصالحة للشرب، ما سبب موت الاحياء من حيوان ونبات، كما سبب تدميرا كبيرا لاراضي زراعية واسعة.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span> </span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span style="color: red">"تاجر" يدعو الحكومة العراقية الى ان تتعامل مع الملفات المتعلقة بالجارة تركيا بكل حزم</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>واردف <span style="color: red">خلف</span> على الحكومة العراقية ان تتحمل مسؤوليتها لحماية العراقيين من الاجندات التركية بتوظيف عناصر الضغط على انقرة، سيما الملف الاقتصادي،فيمكنها ان تحرم الشركات التركية من الاستثمار في العراق وهي التي تحتاج الى <span> </span>دخول السوق العراقية ولو حرمت منها فسيتضرر الاقتصاد التركي بدرجة كبيرة.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>وان ما يثير الاستغراب لماذا تتعامل الحكومة العراقية بهذا الشكل الضعيف مع من يسعى لايذاء العراق والعراقيين؟ وكلنا نعرف ان العراق اقدر على رد الصاع صاعين لمثل هذه المساعي العدوانية.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ولماذا ترضى الحكومة العراقية ان تتحول الى شرطي لحماية حدود تركيا من هجمات عناصر حزب العمال الكردستاني التركي، من دون ان تتخذ الحكومة من هذا الامر ورقة للمساومة على حقوق العراقيين المشروعة.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ولماذا تقبل الحكومة العراقية ان تنشط الشركات التركية وان تنساب البضاعة التركية الى العراق، فيما تصر انقرة على توظيف ملف الماء للضغط على بغداد؟.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>وتساءل <span style="color: red">خلف</span> اين نتائج الزيارات التي قام بها مسؤولون عراقيون (كبار) الى تركيا يصفونها في كل مرة بالتاريخية، فيبشرون العراقيين بنتائجها الايجابية؟ ام انها زيارات دعائية وانتخابية هدفها توظيف ملف المياه الحساس لمصالح حزبية؟.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ودعا <span style="color: red">خلف</span> الحكومة العراقية الى ان تتعامل مع الملفات المتعلقة بالجارة تركيا بكل حزم، فالعراق في خطر والحياة في العراق على كف عفريت، لا يمكن التمادي بمثل هذه الملفات الحياتية.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span style="color: red">رأي وزارة الرزاعة العراقية</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ويقول مدير عام الهيئة العامة للتصحر<span>  </span>في وزارة الزراعة <span style="color: red">الدكتور عدنان عبد الكريم</span><span>  </span>ان التصحر ودرجة خطورته متعددة ومتباينة تكشف عن وجوده ودرجة خطورته من خلال<span>  </span>مظاهره التي تختلف باختلاف طبيعة البيئة الصحراوية وسلوكيات وتقنيات الانسان في استقلال الموارد البيئية.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>مضيفاً ان برامج الامم المتحدة للبيئة منذ عام 1996 يجد صعوبة في رصد عمليات التصحر بصورة شاملة في مرحلة مبكرة لانها تشمل عمليات<span>  </span>تدهور تدريجي للتوازن البيئي. </span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>وبين <span style="color: red">عبدالكريم </span><span> </span>ان" تطور وتوازن الحياة النباتية والبشرية والحيوانية مع البيئة في الاقاليم القاحلة وشبه القاحلة والجافة والرطبة.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>ودعا الى<span>  </span>ضرورة ايجاد حلول منها عدم اتباع اساليب الحراثة التقليدية لانها تولد تربة هشة مفككة وغير متماسكة وتكون سهلة<span>  </span>لقابلية التنقل<span>  </span>بعوامل تعرية التربة الريحية.</span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span> </span></font></p> <div align="justify"></div> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify" align="justify"><font size="3"><span>لا نضع اللوم كله على الاتراك والسوريين فكل منهما يسعى الى مصالح شعبه وبلده الا نحن فلم تحسب حكوماتنا المتعاقبة على مر السنين حسابا لهذا اليوم واستمر تدفق مياه دجلة والفرات الى الخليج العربي فلم تقم الحكومات ببناء السدود والخزانات برغم امكانية استغلالها من خلال توفر الوديان والصحارى التي تصلح ان تكون من اكبر الخزانات الطبيعية اضف الى ذلك ان مجرى دجلة والفرات هو خزان كبير لو انه وجد العقول التي يمكن ان تستغل الوادي بشكل صحيح. ويبقى التساؤل قائما هل تتعض الحكومة العراقية من تجارب سابقاتها وتقوم بانشاء مشاريع عملاقة للاستفادة مما متوفر لها من مياه حتى الان<span style="color: red">؟؟؟</span></span></font></p> <p><strong>المصدر :</strong>   <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://al-iraqnews.net/new/shafiaa/34361.html" target="_blank" class="external">الازمة المائية وتداعياتها على الاراضي الزراعية وازدياد ظاهرة التصحر في العراق</a></p> </p></div> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-7366"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/09/22/iraq-iraqs-marshlands-in-peril-again/#respond" title="Comment on IRAQ: Iraq’s marshlands in peril again (Updated)">No Comments</a></span> Posted on September 22nd, 2009 by Editors</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/09/22/iraq-iraqs-marshlands-in-peril-again/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to IRAQ: Iraq’s marshlands in peril again (Updated)">IRAQ: Iraq’s marshlands in peril again (Updated)</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/basra/" rel="tag">Basra</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/basrah-marshes/" rel="tag">Basrah marshes</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/dams/" rel="tag">Dams</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/features/" rel="tag">Features</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/irin/" rel="tag">IRIN</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshlands/" rel="tag">marshlands</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/maysan-governorate/" rel="tag">Maysan (Governorate)</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/mesopotamian-marshes/" rel="tag">Mesopotamian marshes</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/nassiriyah/" rel="tag">Nassiriyah</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/tigris-and-euphrates-rivers/" rel="tag">tigris and euphrates rivers</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-buffalo/" rel="tag">Water Buffalo</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-crisis-iraq/" rel="tag">Water Crisis (Iraq)</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <p>BAGHDAD, 21 September 2009 (<a title="IRIN" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=86222" class="external" target="_blank">IRIN</a>) – Farmers and fisherman in Iraq’s southern marshlands have had mixed fortunes in the past couple of decades, but livelihood prospects are now looking increasingly bleak. </p> <p>Back in 1993, fisherman Nasser Shamkhi Dawood, now aged 63, abandoned the area after former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein diverted water away from it to drive out Shia insurgents who had risen up against his regime after the 1991 Gulf War. </p> <div style="border-right: lightgrey 1px solid; padding-right: 5px; border-top: lightgrey 1px solid; padding-left: 5px; float: right; padding-bottom: 5px; margin: 5px 0px 5px 15px; border-left: lightgrey 1px solid; width: 360px; padding-top: 5px; border-bottom: lightgrey 1px solid"> <p><strong>Update Editor’s note:</strong>  see also <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.mmorning.com/ArticleC.asp?Article=7209&CategoryID=6" class="external" target="_blank">iraq: The ‘Garden of Eden’ waterway facing calamity</a></p> <blockquote><p>A vibrant fresh water lifeline teeming with fish has become a salty, polluted channel which is driving people away from its banks and where fishermen struggle to make a living, local residents and officials say. <br/>At the center of the dispute is the Karoun river, which this year has been completely staunched by Iran to stop its water feeding into the Shatt al-Arab just above the Iranian oil city of Abadan, local people say. <br/>“Iran completely cut the water from the Karoun and diverted it to the Bahman Shir”, an Iranian river, explained Oun Dhiab, director of the Iraqi National Center for Hydro-Resources.</p> </blockquote> <p><strong>Read in full: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.mmorning.com/ArticleC.asp?Article=7209&CategoryID=6" class="external" target="_blank">iraq: The ‘Garden of Eden’ waterway facing calamity</a></strong></p> </p></div> <p>After 2003 and Saddam’s demise, the network of dams, dikes and canals used to divert the water began to disappear, and the marshes came to life again: Dawood returned. However, he is now preparing to leave again due to the debilitating drought that has turned the marshes into vast expanses of cracked earth. </p> <p>“The water is gone again; there is no fishing and our livestock have died,” said the father of six. “With this situation we can’t provide for our families and we have to find another place and another source for living.” </p> <p>Iraq’s once-lush marshlands, fed by the Tigris and Euphrates, were spread over three southern provinces – Nassiriyah, Missan and Basra – and existed for more than 5,000 years. </p> <p>Characterized by its scattered shanties made of reeds and papyrus, it boasted buffaloes and hundreds of species of fish and migratory birds. </p> <p>In 1973 the marshlands covered an area of 8,350sqkm. By 2003 the area had shrunk by 90 percent – due to upstream dam construction in Iraq, Turkey and Iran during the 1970s and 1980s, and exacerbated by Saddam’s drainage operations in the early 1990s, Abbas al-Saidi, an adviser to Iraq’s minister of state for marshlands, told IRIN. </p> <p>Many people were forced to leave to nearby towns and cities, al-Saidi said, but came back after 2003 when the area started to show signs of revival. The estimated total marshland population currently stands at about 1.2 million people, with about half a million living in rural areas, al-Saidi said. </p> <h3>“Scary” </h3> <p>By 2006-2007 only about 75 percent of the marshlands as they were in the 1970s had been restored, with the rest left for agricultural use and oil exploration, he said. However, only 10-12 percent of the current marshland area is covered by water due to low water levels of the Tigris and Euphrates and below average rainfall, al-Saidi said. </p> <p>"This is scary," al-Saidi said. "Simply put, the situation is deteriorating and tragic. The areas that were previously covered with water are now dried up, the boats are idle, and the inhabitants are suffering and leaving for the cities again," he said. </p> <p>He was not able to give specific numbers but said there were “hundreds” of recently displaced families. </p> <h3>Four challenges </h3> <p>Kadhum Lahmoud, director-general of the Marshlands Revival Centre at the Water Resources Ministry, listed four challenges facing the marshlands: drought, the absence of water-sharing agreements with neighbouring countries, the poor quality of water from the two rivers due to industrial pollutants, and salt water intrusion from the Gulf. </p> <p>“The marshlands have plummeted to the same [low] stage they were at during the previous [Saddam] regime era. We hope this message does not fall on deaf ears and resonates in neighbouring countries and international organizations dealing with wetlands,” Lahmoud said. “We are now going through a very critical situation.” </p> <p>To tackle the situation Lahmoud said his Ministry was working on a US$120 million project to boost the flow of water into the area by building dykes on marshland inlets. Each dyke would use satellite technology to track water quality and levels every 15 minutes, with the aim of retaining inflowing water in the marshlands for longer periods. </p> <p>However, the system would not be completed before 2011. </p> <p>He also criticized the post-2003 “unplanned and hasty” return of residents to the marshes, saying there should have been programmes to help people diversify their incomes. </p> <p>sm/at/cb</p> <p><strong>Source:</strong> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=86222" class="external" target="_blank">IRIN Middle East | Middle East | Iraq | IRAQ: Iraq’s marshlands in peril again | Environment Food Security Water & Sanitation | Feature</a></p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-7279"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/09/03/%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%b3%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%b9%d9%85%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%a3%d9%85%d9%86%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%ac%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%af%d8%a9-%d8%b9%d9%84%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d9%86%d8%a7%d8%b7%d9%82-%d8%a7%d9%84/#respond" title="Comment on ميسان…عملية أمنية جديدة على المناطق المتاخمة لإيران">No Comments</a></span> Posted on September 3rd, 2009 by Editors</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/09/03/%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%b3%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%b9%d9%85%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%a3%d9%85%d9%86%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%ac%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%af%d8%a9-%d8%b9%d9%84%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d9%86%d8%a7%d8%b7%d9%82-%d8%a7%d9%84/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to ميسان…عملية أمنية جديدة على المناطق المتاخمة لإيران">ميسان…عملية أمنية جديدة على المناطق المتاخمة لإيران</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/iraq/" title="View all posts in News" rel="category tag">News</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/border-security/" rel="tag">Border Security</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/iran/" rel="tag">Iran</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshlands/" rel="tag">marshlands</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/maysan/" rel="tag">maysan</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/maysan-governorate/" rel="tag">Maysan (Governorate)</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/politics-and-security/" rel="tag">Politics and Security</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/security-plans/" rel="tag">Security plans</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <p dir="rtl" align="right">كشفت القيادات الأمنية في محافظة ميسان عن تنفيذ خطة أمنية على الحدود مع محافظة البصرة والمناطق المتاخمة لإيران. <br/>واعلن قائد الفرقة العاشرة في ميسان اللواء حبيب الحسيني في تصريح صحفي عن تطبيق خطة أمنية جديدة بعنوان (سور العراق) ، موضحا أن العملية تأتي استكمالا لخطة فرض القانون التي أطلقها القائد العام للقوات المسلحة نوري المالكي. <br/>واوضح الحسيني أن الخطة الأمنية تعمل في مسارين أولهما ضبط الأهوار والمناطق التي تقع ضمن مسؤولية الفرقة العاشرة و الفرقة الرابع عشر في البصرة في حين يكون المسار الآخر في اتجاه تأمين الحدود الدولية مع ايران.</p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-6324"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/05/26/iraq-disappearing-paddy-fields/#respond" title="Comment on IRAQ: Disappearing paddy fields">No Comments</a></span> Posted on May 26th, 2009 by Editors</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/05/26/iraq-disappearing-paddy-fields/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to IRAQ: Disappearing paddy fields">IRAQ: Disappearing paddy fields</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/early-warning/" title="View all posts in Early Warning" rel="category tag">Early Warning</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/features/" title="View all posts in Features" rel="category tag">Features</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/agriculture/" rel="tag">Agriculture</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/al-mishkhab/" rel="tag">al mishkhab</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/babil/" rel="tag">babil</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/baghdad/" rel="tag">Baghdad</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/dams/" rel="tag">Dams</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/diwaniya/" rel="tag">Diwaniya</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/diwaniyah/" rel="tag">Diwaniyah</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/drought/" rel="tag">drought</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/early-warning/" rel="tag">Early Warning</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/euphrates-river/" rel="tag">Euphrates river,</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/irin/" rel="tag">IRIN</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshlands/" rel="tag">marshlands</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/najaf/" rel="tag">Najaf</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/resources/" rel="tag">Resources</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/rice/" rel="tag">rice</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/rice-cultivation/" rel="tag">rice cultivation</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/rice-fields/" rel="tag">rice fields</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/rice-research-station/" rel="tag">rice research station</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/salinity/" rel="tag">salinity</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/samawa/" rel="tag">samawa</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/soil-salinity/" rel="tag">soil salinity</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/southern-iraq/" rel="tag">southern iraq</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/southern-provinces/" rel="tag">southern provinces</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/syria/" rel="tag">Syria</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/turkey/" rel="tag">Turkey</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water/" rel="tag">Water</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-level/" rel="tag">water level</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-resources/" rel="tag">water resources</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-shortage/" rel="tag">water shortage</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-shortages/" rel="tag">Water Shortages</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/%d8%a8%d8%ba%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%af/" rel="tag">بغداد</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <p>BAGHDAD, 26 May 2009 (<a title="IRIN" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=84553" class="external" target="_blank">IRIN</a>) – Rice is only grown in certain central and southern regions of Iraq, but the area under cultivation appears to be diminishing rapidly due to low water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris and resulting <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84142" class="external" target="_blank">higher levels of soil salinity</a>. </p> <p>“We are facing a very tough situation this summer regarding land where rice is planted in central and southern Iraq. We will be forced to reduce the planted area by half,” said Aoun Thiab Abdullah, a senior official in the Water Resources Ministry, adding “We are expecting a drought in the marshlands this summer.” </p> <p>Abdullah said 68,750 hectares were planted with rice in 2008 in the central and southern provinces of Najaf, Diwaniyah, Samawa and parts of Babil but this would be reduced by 50 percent this summer “due to water shortages”. </p> <p>According to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/countries/iraq/iraqhameedrpt1207.pdf" class="external" target="_blank">a 2007 report</a> by Khidhir Abbas Hamid and Flayeh Abed Jaber from the Al-Mishkhab Rice Research Station (MRRS) in Najaf, the total area under rice cultivation that year was 125,000 hectares; some 400,000 tonnes of paddy was produced for favoured local varieties. </p> <h3>Turkey releases more water </h3> <p>On 24 May Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Turkey, the source of the two rivers, had agreed to increase water flows into the Euphrates by 130 cubic metres a second from 22 May. </p> <p>Whilst Al-Dabbagh welcomed the move, the Water Resources Ministry’s Abdullah was more critical. He said: “This isn’t enough; it is modest and has come too late… We asked them to release 350 cubic metres a second in March and increase this to 700 cubic metres a second by November.” </p> <p>Abdullah said the situation was critical as Turkey had five major dams on the Euphrates, and Syria two. All rice fields depended especially on the Euphrates, he said. However, in some places tributaries of the Tigris feed into the Euphrates, so water levels in both rivers affect rice growing in Iraq, he added. </p> <p>“Unfortunately it has become impossible for us to plant rice this year, as we did in previous years, due to acute water shortages, and despite the new increase in water flows into the Euphrates,” Mahdi al-Qaisi, undersecretary in the Agriculture Ministry, told IRIN. </p> <p>Rahim Mohammed Khazaal, an analyst at the University of Diwaniyah, said the new release "doesn’t meet our real needs for water this summer". He added that some farmers could leave traditional cultivation areas in search of other work. </p> <p>The upshot is that Iraq will have to import more rice – something that will not be easy given its restricted budget due to low oil prices, said Khazaal. </p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=84553" class="external" target="_blank">IRIN Middle East | Middle East | Iraq | IRAQ: Disappearing paddy fields | Early Warning Environment Food Security | News Item</a></p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-6160"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/05/13/grim-prospects-for-basra-marsh-dwellers/#respond" title="Comment on Grim Prospects for Basra Marsh Dwellers">No Comments</a></span> Posted on May 13th, 2009 by Editors</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/05/13/grim-prospects-for-basra-marsh-dwellers/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Grim Prospects for Basra Marsh Dwellers">Grim Prospects for Basra Marsh Dwellers</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/features/" title="View all posts in Features" rel="category tag">Features</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/ali-hassan-al-majid/" rel="tag">Ali Hassan al-Majid</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/children/" rel="tag">Children</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/dams/" rel="tag">Dams</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/destitution/" rel="tag">destitution</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/drought/" rel="tag">drought</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/euphrates-river/" rel="tag">Euphrates river,</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/garden-of-eden/" rel="tag">garden of eden</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/iwpr/" rel="tag">IWPR</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marsh-arab/" rel="tag">Marsh Arab</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marsh-arabs/" rel="tag">marsh arabs</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshes/" rel="tag">marshes</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshland/" rel="tag">marshland</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshlands/" rel="tag">marshlands</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/saddam-hussein/" rel="tag">Saddam Hussein</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/salinity/" rel="tag">salinity</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/southern-iraq/" rel="tag">southern iraq</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/tigris-and-euphrates/" rel="tag">tigris and euphrates</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/tigris-and-euphrates-rivers/" rel="tag">tigris and euphrates rivers</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/tigris-river/" rel="tag">Tigris River</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water/" rel="tag">Water</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-contamination/" rel="tag">Water Contamination</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-crisis-iraq/" rel="tag">Water Crisis (Iraq)</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <div style="border-right: rgb(203,202,202) 1px solid; padding-right: 10px; border-top: rgb(203,202,202) 1px solid; margin-top: 5px; padding-left: 10px; font-weight: normal; float: right; padding-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 20px; border-left: rgb(203,202,202) 1px solid; width: 305px; padding-top: 10px; border-bottom: rgb(203,202,202) 1px solid"> <p><strong>Reporter finds local people struggling to revive their ancient lifestyle. </strong></p> </p></div> <p>Our motorboat glided over an area that was dry land a mere month ago, attracting the attention of the marsh dwellers at the water’s edge. </p> <p>Seeing our urban clothes, one of them mistook us for government officials and called out, “May Allah have mercy on your parents’ souls for releasing the water!” </p> <p>The Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq are trying to revive an ancient way of life disrupted by the draining of the wetlands on which they depend. Until recently, they have had few reasons to be grateful to their government. </p> <p>Their habitat was once the largest marshland in the Middle East, an area twice the size of the Florida Everglades that they believed to be the location of the legendary Garden of Eden. </p> <p>The last 40 years have seen it shrink in size – at one point by as much as 95 per cent. The region has been exploited for water and oil and denuded by conflict, most dramatically under Saddam Hussein, who drained the marshes in retaliation for a Shia rebellion in the early 1990s. </p> <p>Their habitat ravaged, some three-quarters of the wetland’s 400,000 inhabitants migrated to the suburban slums of southern Iraq. </p> <p>After Saddam was deposed in 2003, the dykes and dams he had built upstream were destroyed. Under the supervision of Iraq’s new leaders, the marshlands were flooded again. </p> <p>Thousands of Marsh Arabs returned to their old homes, where they tried to revive their ancient way of life as if the preceding decades of upheaval had merely been momentary interruptions. </p> <p>The Marsh Arabs are thought by some historians to be descendants of the ancient Sumerian civilisation. They have lived for millenia by fishing and grazing buffalo in the lush delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. </p> <p>On a recent visit to the marshes, IWPR found its inhabitants struggling to survive in an environment whose partial recovery could easily be reversed. </p> <p>The marshlands begin some 50 kilometres north of the port of Basra. The road runs past herds of cattle grazing on rich grasslands to the east and a vast tract of desert, dotted with ruined homes, to the west. There is no sign of the Iraqi state – no schools, police stations or mosques. </p> <p>Ali Jassim al-Battat, a resident of the marshes, says the road was built after 2003 on what was originally an embankment, constructed by Saddam’s government. “The embankment blocked the flow of water, dried up the marsh and forced us to migrate,” he said. </p> <p>Battat is in his early forties but his slow movements and sallow complexion make him seem older. Pointing to sand dunes and dilapidated huts, he said, “These were prosperous villages before the uprising… Only a few hundred people have returned since the water was allowed back.” </p> <p>He grew emotional listing the names of the clans that once lived in the area – the Sada, the Hamadna, the Shaghanba, the Albu-Bukhit and his own tribe, the Al-Battat. </p> <p>Leaving the road, we boarded a motorboat to venture deeper into marshland that had until recently been desert. In shallow waters, we saw surreal remnants of the conflict with Saddam. </p> <p>Blackened reeds passed beneath us. According to Battat, the vegetation had been set alight on the orders of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the Saddam lieutenant better known by his nickname, Chemical Ali. </p> <p>Chemical Ali led the crackdown on the Shia uprising that followed Saddam’s defeat in the First Gulf War. Shia rebels and deserters took cover in the marshland’s dense reed forests. Military helicopters reportedly used napalm to clear the area. </p> <p>Further along, our boat approached a large, partially submerged iron mass – a Russian-made T-72 tank. Its barrel gulped in water and small waves broke lazily on its sides, scrubbing off the soot of war. “English warplanes hit the tank in 1991,” said Battat. “Back then, the marsh was so dry it was a battlefield for such vehicles.” </p> <p>Many southern Iraqi villagers still regard all fair-skinned westerners as “Ingreezy”, or English – a throwback to the era of British colonial rule. </p> <p>We passed a canoe, energetically paddled by two young women with tanned faces. The boat was loaded with bundles of green grass, gathered to be sold as fodder in a nearby town. </p> <p>“This grass is now our only source of livelihood,” said Ghanim Ghazi, our boatman. “We can no longer farm here or catch fish because the water does not allow it. It is sterile.” </p> <p>Experts say the rivers that flood the marshes today are too brackish and polluted to support life. </p> <p>Battat sees the “undrinkable” water as a symptom of the official failure to rehabilitate the Marsh Arabs. As a father to 13 children, he says he wants better road and electricity links and improved access to education, healthcare and clean water. </p> <p>“Water is the source of all our suffering,” he shouted angrily. <br/>“The water tankers do not get to us, we have no electricity. Our young men are crushed by destitution and our children grow up like savages, without schooling.” </p> <p>The Marsh Arabs say they were never compensated for cattle they left behind when they fled and nor have they received any state assistance, having now returned. </p> <p>Ashur al-Shaghanbi, a tall man with the dark, weather-beaten looks typical of the marsh dwellers, recalls how Chemical Ali ordered the destruction of his neighbourhood. </p> <p>“We fled to save our skins. We barely had time to take our children and fetch their clothes,” he said. Since his return to the marshes, Shaghanbi says he has seen visits by humanitarian teams but no sign of the housing they promised. </p> <p>Satellite images taken in 2006, three years after the overthrow of Saddam, showed the marshes had been restored to 70 per cent of their size in the early 1970s, before the major drainage projects began. </p> <p>In 2009, environmental officials said the marshes were shrinking again, and now covered only 30 per cent of their spread in the 1970s. Dams built upstream in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey are blamed for reducing the volume of water feeding the wetlands. A prolonged drought in Iraq has only made matters worse. </p> <p>According to Alaa al-Badran, head of the union of agricultural engineers in Basra, the marshlands will continue to shrink, reversing recent gains. “Salinity rates will keep rising,” he added. “Once absorbed by the soil, salts are very hard to eradicate.” </p> <p>Our boat pushed on, along reed and papyrus plantations where men and women from the same clan harvested fodder. A young girl, no older than three and with scruffy, blonde hair, sat alone in a boat tethered some distance from the adults. </p> <p>Passing her, Battat remarked casually, “If she drowns, it won’t be a problem – we can quickly make up for her. We multiply like cats. You see, we have to rehabilitate ourselves – we cannot wait for help that may never materialise.”</p> </p> <p>Source: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.iwpr.net/?p=icr&s=f&o=352425&apc_state=henpicr" class="external" target="_blank">Grim Prospects for Basra Marsh Dwellers</a> By Ali Abu Iraq in Basra (<a title="ICR No. 289, 11-May-09" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.iwpr.net/?p=icr&s=f&o=352425&apc_state=henpicr" class="external" target="_blank">ICR No. 289, 11-May-09</a>). Ali Abu Iraq is an <a title="Institute of War and Peace Reporting" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.iwpr.net/" target="_blank" class="external">IWPR</a>-trained journalist in Basra.</p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-6094"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/05/09/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%82-%d9%85%d8%b3%d8%a7%d8%b9%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%ad%d9%83%d9%88%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%b7%d9%81%d8%a7%d9%84-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d9%87%d9%88%d8%a7%d8%b1/#respond" title="Comment on العراق: مساعدات حكومية لأطفال الأهوار">No Comments</a></span> Posted on May 9th, 2009 by Editors</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/05/09/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%82-%d9%85%d8%b3%d8%a7%d8%b9%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%ad%d9%83%d9%88%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%b7%d9%81%d8%a7%d9%84-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d9%87%d9%88%d8%a7%d8%b1/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to العراق: مساعدات حكومية لأطفال الأهوار">العراق: مساعدات حكومية لأطفال الأهوار</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/children/" title="View all posts in Children" rel="category tag">Children</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/features/" title="View all posts in Features" rel="category tag">Features</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/child-poverty/" rel="tag">Child Poverty</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/children/" rel="tag">Children</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/education/" rel="tag">Education</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/education-crisis-iraq/" rel="tag">Education Crisis (Iraq)</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/irin/" rel="tag">IRIN</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/jaya-murthy/" rel="tag">Jaya Murthy</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marsh-arab/" rel="tag">Marsh Arab</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marsh-arabs/" rel="tag">marsh arabs</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshland-area/" rel="tag">marshland area</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshlands/" rel="tag">marshlands</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/maysan/" rel="tag">maysan</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/migratory-birds/" rel="tag">migratory birds</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/nassiriyah/" rel="tag">Nassiriyah</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/southern-iraq/" rel="tag">southern iraq</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/unicef/" rel="tag">UNICEF</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water/" rel="tag">Water</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-plants/" rel="tag">water plants</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-purification-plants/" rel="tag">water purification plants</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <div dir="rtl" align="right"> <p>خصصت الحكومة العراقية مبلغ 30 مليون دولار لمشاريع المياه والتعليم التي تهدف لمساعدة الأطفال الفقراء في منطقة الأهوار بجنوب العراق، وفقاً لأحد كبار مساعدي وزير الدولة لشؤون الأهوار. </p> <p>وأوضح عباس السعيدي، مستشار وزير الدولة لشؤون الأهوار بالعراق أن هذه الميزانية ستمول بناء 70 محطة لتنقية المياه و48 مدرسة. وأضاف أن هذه المشاريع تغطي ثلاث محافظات في الجنوب على النحو التالي: 16 محطة مياه و15 مدرسة في البصرة و21 محطة مياه و16 مدرسة في ميسان و33 محطة مياه و17 مدرسة في الناصرية. </p> <p>وتعتزم الوزارة إنفاق 13.3 مليون دولار على محطات المياه و16.6 مليون دولار على المدارس. وستبدأ عملية تقديم العطاءات خلال هذا الشهر وستنتهي جميع الأعمال في المشاريع بحلول نهاية عام 2010.</p> <p>وأشار السعيدي إلى أنه بالرغم من ضآلة حجم هذه المساعدات إلا أنها تشكل خطوة في الاتجاه الصحيح للاهتمام بمجتمعات الأهوار التي عانت من الإهمال على مدى "عقود من الزمن".</p> <p><strong>"إنجاز هام"</strong></p> <p>وقد أشادت منظمة الأمم المتحدة لرعاية الطفولة (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.unicef.org/arabic/media/24327_49550.html" class="external" target="_blank">اليونيسف</a>) في 4 مايو/أيار بهذه المبادرة واصفة إياها بكونها الاستثمار الحكومي الأول الذي يركز بشكل حصري على تحسين أوضاع الأطفال في المنطقة. وأفاد اسكندر خان، ممثل اليونيسف في العراق، في بيان صادر عن المنظمة أن "هذا إنجاز كبير من جانب الحكومة إذ انه الأول من نوعه، ليس في ‏العراق فحسب بل على الصعيد العالمي أيضاً". وأضاف أن "هذه المبادرة ‏تعد نقطة الانطلاق نحو سلسلة من مبادرات الاستثمار في مشاريع الطفولة التي من شأنها منح جميع الأطفال ‏حقوقهم التي طالما حرموا منها وخاصة تلك التي تكفل لهم البقاء وتعينهم على تنمية قدراتهم بشكل كامل".</p> <p>ووفقاً لليونيسف، فإن "حوالي 34 بالمائة من نساء الأهوار أميات مقارنة بـ 24 بالمائة فقط على المستوى الوطني. كما أن نسبة الالتحاق بالمدارس في أرياف المنطقة أقل بحوالي 30 بالمائة عما هي عليه في المناطق الحضرية. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، لا ترتبط حوالي 81 بالمائة من الأسر بشبكة المياه العامة مقابل 26 بالمائة فقط على المستوى الوطني حيث يعتمد حوالي 99 بالمائة من سكان بعض القرى على مياه الشرب التي تصلهم على الشاحنات".</p> <p>وقدر السعيدي إجمالي عدد سكان الأهوار بحوالي 1.2 مليون نسمة، منهم حوالي نصف مليون شخص يعيشون في المناطق الريفية. وأفادت اليونيسف أن مشاريع المياه وضعت لتخدم حوالي 250,000 نسمة، من بينهم نحو 125,000 طفل. كما ستمكن مشاريع التعليم حوالي 12,000 طفل من الاستفادة من المدارس الجديدة.</p> <p>وقد أخبر كل من السعيدي والمتحدث باسم اليونيسف، جايا مورثي، شبكة الأنباء الإنسانية (إيرين) أنه من المرجح أن تضيف اليونيسف 6 ملايين دولار لهذه المبادرة، من أجل إعادة إعمار المراكز الصحية والمدارس وتوفير اللوازم المدرسية.</p> <p><strong>"مسكنات ألم"</strong></p> <p>وقد <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://arabic.irinnews.org/ReportArabic.aspx?SID=1244" class="external" target="_blank">أعلنت الحكومة العراقية في شهر مارس/آذار </a>عن عزمها بناء 5000 منزل لعدد من الأسر في الأهوار كما أعلنت منظمة الأغذية والزراعة عن <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://arabic.irinnews.org/ReportArabic.aspx?SID=1236" class="external" target="_blank">خطة لتخصيص 47 مليون دولار لتطوير المنطقة</a>.</p> <p>غير أن الشيخ محمد عبادي، الذي يرأس لجنة محافظة ميسان لإحياء الاهوار، يرى أن كل هذه التحركات هي "مجرد مسكنات ألم". فما يتم عرضه لا يشكل أمراً ضرورياً لأن المطلوب هو المزيد من الاستثمار في الطرق والكهرباء وشبكات الصرف الصحي. وأشار إلى "عدم وجود استراتيجية واضحة".</p> <p>وقد عانت الأهوار من أضرار بالغة خلال التسعينيات عندما قام الرئيس العراقي السابق صدام حسين بتحويل مجرى نهري دجلة والفرات بعيداً عنها انتقاماً لمحاولة ثورة فاشلة من طرف المسلمين الشيعة في المنطقة.</p> <p>وفي عام 2001، أفاد برنامج الأمم المتحدة للبيئة أن 90 بالمائة من <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://marshlands.unep.or.jp/" class="external" target="_blank">الأهوار </a>اندثرت وأن الأراضي الرطبة تحولت إلى صحراء مما أجبر حوالي 300,000 من سكانها على مغادرتها. وقد تكللت محاولات إعادة إحياء المنطقة التي بدأت منذ 2003 ببعض النجاح بالرغم من المشاكل الناجمة عن انخفاض تدفقات النهرين الرئيسين.</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://arabic.irinnews.org/ReportArabic.aspx?SID=1314" class="external" target="_blank">العراق: مساعدات حكومية لأطفال الأهوار-العراق-طفولة-صحة وتغذية-المياه والصرف الصحي</a></p> </p></div> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-6079"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/05/07/iraq-government-aid-for-marshland-children/#respond" title="Comment on IRAQ: Government aid for marshland children">No Comments</a></span> Posted on May 7th, 2009 by Editors</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/2009/05/07/iraq-government-aid-for-marshland-children/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to IRAQ: Government aid for marshland children">IRAQ: Government aid for marshland children</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/children/" title="View all posts in Children" rel="category tag">Children</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/category/women/" title="View all posts in Women and Children" rel="category tag">Women and Children</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/child-poverty/" rel="tag">Child Poverty</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/children/" rel="tag">Children</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/education/" rel="tag">Education</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/education-crisis-iraq/" rel="tag">Education Crisis (Iraq)</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/irin/" rel="tag">IRIN</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/jaya-murthy/" rel="tag">Jaya Murthy</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marsh-arab/" rel="tag">Marsh Arab</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marsh-arabs/" rel="tag">marsh arabs</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshland-area/" rel="tag">marshland area</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshlands/" rel="tag">marshlands</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/maysan/" rel="tag">maysan</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/migratory-birds/" rel="tag">migratory birds</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/nassiriyah/" rel="tag">Nassiriyah</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/photo/" rel="tag">Photo</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/sheep/" rel="tag">sheep</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/southern-iraq/" rel="tag">southern iraq</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/unicef/" rel="tag">UNICEF</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water/" rel="tag">Water</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-plants/" rel="tag">water plants</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/water-purification-plants/" rel="tag">water purification plants</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <p>BAGHDAD, 6 May 2009 (<a title="IRIN" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportId=84257" class="external" target="_blank">IRIN</a>) – The Iraqi government has earmarked US$30 million for water and education projects designed to help children in impoverished parts of Iraq’s southern marshland area, according to a senior aide to the minister of state for the marshlands. </p> <div style="border-right: rgb(203,202,202) 1px solid; padding-right: 10px; border-top: rgb(203,202,202) 1px solid; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 10px; font-weight: normal; float: right; padding-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 20px; border-left: rgb(203,202,202) 1px solid; width: 305px; color: rgb(0,0,0); padding-top: 10px; border-bottom: rgb(203,202,202) 1px solid; background-color: #fff"> <p><strong>Photo:</strong> An Iraqi Marsh Arab child smiles as he hugs his sheep at Hor Hamidi 30 kms south of the Souk ak-Shuykh, 420 kms south of the capital Baghdad on December 05, 2008. The Marsh Arabs live along the marshes of southern Iraq where their ancestors lived some 6000 years ago. Their homes are built from the locally found reeds, they fish the waters and herd cattle and sheep. Migratory birds also use the wetlands to rest during their long journeys south and north.</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.flickr.com/photos/27086036@N02/3509156685/" class="external" target="_blank"><img title="20081205_marsh_arab_boy_hug_his_sheep_small" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 5px 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="448" alt="20081205_marsh_arab_boy_hug_his_sheep_small" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524im_/http://gorillasguides.com/images/IRAQGovernmentaidformarshlandchildren_8F14/20081205_marsh_arab_boy_hug_his_sheep_small.jpg" width="300" align="right" border="0"/></a></p> </p></div> <p>The funding will allow the construction of 70 water purification plants and 48 schools, said Abbas al-Saidi, an adviser to Iraq’s minister of state for marshlands. </p> <p>Al-Saidi said the projects would cover three southern provinces as follows: 16 water plants and 15 schools in Basra; 21 water plants and 16 schools in Maysan; and 33 water plants and 17 schools in Nassiriyah. </p> <p>The ministry plans to spend $13.3 million on water plants and $16.6 million on schools. The tendering process should be done this month and all work completed by the end of 2010. </p> <p>Though small in scale, the aid would be a step in the right direction for the marshland peoples who had been neglected “for decades”, he said. </p> <h3>“A major achievement” </h3> <p>The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on 4 May hailed the initiative as the first government investment to focus exclusively on improving children’s welfare in the area. “This is a major achievement by the government as it’s the first investment of its kind to target children – not only in Iraq but also globally,” Sikander Khan, a UNICEF representative in Iraq, said in a statement. </p> <p>“This sets the standard and will be the beginning of a series of child-friendly investments… specifically improving their prospects of survival,” Khan added. </p> <p>According to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.unicef.org/media/media_49552.html" class="external" target="_blank">UNICEF</a>, “some 34 percent of women in the Marshlands are illiterate, compared with 24 percent at the national level, and school enrolment in rural areas of the region is at least 30 percent lower than in urban areas. Around 81 percent of households are not connected to the general water network, compared with 26 percent at the national level with, in some villages, up to 99 percent of people relying on drinking water to be delivered by truck.” </p> <p>Al-Saidi estimated the total marshland population at about 1.2 million, with about half a million living in rural areas. </p> <p>UNICEF said the water projects were designed to serve around 250,000 people, including about 125,000 children, and around 12,000 children would benefit from the new schools. </p> <p>Both al-Saidi and UNICEF spokesman Jaya Murthy told IRIN UNICEF was likely to add $6 million to the initiative – for the reconstruction of health centres, schools, and for school supplies. </p> <h3>“Painkillers”</h3> <p>The Iraqi government <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=83575" class="external" target="_blank">announced in March</a> that it would build 5,000 houses for as many families in the marshlands, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has announced a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.faoiraq.org/news.htm" class="external" target="_blank">$47 million scheme</a> to develop the area. </p> <p>However, Sheikh Mohammed al-Ebadi, who heads the Maysan provincial committee to revive the marshlands, sees all these moves as “mere painkillers”. What is being offered is not essential, and what is needed is much greater investment in roads, electricity and sewage networks, he said, adding that there was “no clear strategy”. </p> <p>The marshlands suffered severe damage in the 1990s when former President Saddam Hussein diverted the Tigris and Euphrates rivers away from the marshes in retaliation for a failed uprising by Shia Muslims in the area. </p> <p>In 2001 the UN Environment Programme reported that 90 percent of the marshlands <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://marshlands.unep.or.jp/" class="external" target="_blank">had been lost</a>, forcing some 300,000 inhabitants out of the area. Since 2003, efforts to restore the marshes have gradually revived the area, though <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=83391" class="external" target="_blank">reduced flows from the main rivers</a> are causing problems. </p> <p>sm/at/cb</p> <p>Source: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportId=84257" class="external" target="_blank">IRIN</a></p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="navigation"> <div class="alignleft"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130130000524/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/marshlands/page/2/">« Previous Entries</a></div> <div class="alignright"></div> </div> </div> <div id="sidebar" class="span-10 last"> <div class="span-10" id="tabs"> <ul> <li class="ui-tabs-nav-item"><a href="#featured-articles">Featured Articles</a></li> <li class="ui-tabs-nav-item"><a href="#latest-articles">Latest Articles</a></li> </ul> <div id="featured-articles" 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