Martyrs of the Iraqi marshes

One of the few successes of the Iraqi governments since the fall of Saddam Hussein has been reversing one of his great crimes: the draining of the marshes of southern Iraq and the destruction of the unique water-born civilisation which had survived there for thousands of years.

Now this achievement is in doubt. A prolonged and devastating drought, combined with the building of dams on the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Syria, Turkey and Iran, is reducing the water flow once again and the marshes risk disappearing, possibly forever.

Once double the size of the Everglades in Florida and home to 300,000 people, the marshes nearly vanished in the 1990s when they were drained by Saddam Hussein to stop them being used as hideouts by anti-government guerrillas. But as soon as the Iraqi dictator was toppled in 2003, the marsh people tore down the earth ramparts his engineers had built and water once again flowed into the lakes and reed beds.

The marshes revived surprisingly quickly as their people returned from the slums of Basra to rebuild their old villages, fish in the shallow lakes and tend their water buffalo.

The rebirth of the marshes, fed by the Tigris and Euphrates and close to the legendary site of the Garden of Eden, seemed to be one of the few undoubted successes of post-Saddam Hussein governments. By the end of 2006, more than half the marshlands had been restored. The success did not last.

Over the last two years the marsh people have once again seen the water which they need to survive become shallower and more brackish.

"A few years ago, the marshlands were green and full of reeds and papyrus but now they are almost dry," Abdul-Khadum Malik, the mayor of Chibaiesh town in the marshes near the city of Nassariyah, told the UN.

"If the situation continues like this, all life in the marshlands will quickly die out." He said that dozens of families were already leaving because they could not find fresh water to drink or fresh reeds for their cattle and buffalos to eat. The same pattern is being repeated across the marshes as thousands of people once again take flight.

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