Restoration of marshlands can finally begin in Iraq

May 17, 2003

Saddam Hussein brutalized not only his countrymen but his country, draining more than 7,500 square miles of fertile marshland at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates that has been inhabited for millennia by a people called the Madan, the Marsh Arabs.

Along with other Shiites in the southern part of Iraq, the Madan rose against Saddam after the first Gulf War, and in retaliation he diverted the rivers that nourished the marshlands, burned the villages and drove the people out. An area roughly the size of New Jersey was devastated and depopulated. Of an estimated 300,000 people who once lived there, only 20,000 remain.

Are the marshes gone forever? The Iraq Foundation hopes and believes not. With financial support from the U.S. Department of State, it has convened an international panel of experts to develop a plan for restoring the marshes. They call it "Eden Again."

Earlier this month, the foundation released a report summarizing the panel's conclusions after a conference held in California in February.

There is enough water available for restoration, the panelists believe, if not for the entire original area, at least for enough of it so that water will flow through and between the three main regions of the original marsh.

At stake is not only the livelihood of the Madan, and their 5,000-year-old culture -- their reed houses and long canoes are documented in the history of ancient Sumer, says the Amar Foundation -- but the health of a vast and crucial ecosystem. The marshlands were a major stop for birds migrating between Eurasia and Africa and a key to maintaining freshwater and Persian Gulf fisheries.

In outline, according to the report, this is how the marshes were desiccated and how they can be brought back.

The Hammar Marsh lies south of the Euphrates, which flows from west to east. To drain it, Saddam constructed an artificial river called the Mother of Battles River, which takes water from the Euphrates and diverts it to flow directly to the Persian Gulf. The diversion dams would be breached. Another canal/pipeline, called Loyalty to the Leader, which discharges into the Mother of Battles River, would be closed. A third channel, which carries mostly agricultural drainage, would most likely be left, because the quality of the water would not be ideal for restoration.

The Central Marsh lies between the Euphrates and the Tigris, which comes in from the northwest. The main part of the river then turns almost due south to meet the Euphrates, while numerous smaller branches used to feed the marshes. Artificial channels named the Glory River and the Prosperity River divert water from these smaller branches around the marshes and directly into the main part of the river. Breaching the levees would release water back into the marshes.

The Hawizeh Marsh, which lies to the northeast of the Tigris on the Iraq-Iran border, is the last place that resembles the marshlands as they once were, and therefore the highest priority for beginning the restoration. It receives water from the Tigris, though much less than it used to. But it also is fed by the Karkheh River in Iran. That river is dammed and managed for hydroelectric power, so its patterns of flow may not be suitable for maintaining the health of the marsh.

Not to mention some small political difficulties that would arise when Iraq and Iran, as well as Syria and Turkey (which are upstream on the Tigris and Euphrates) attempted to work out a river-basin compact.

And those wouldn't be the only difficulties. Because the area was fought over during the Iran-Iraq war as well as the Shiite uprising, it is heavy with unexploded ordnance. Some of the fisheries were deliberately poisoned. Vast areas that have been dry for years are now little more than salt pans, including Lake Hammar, once 75 miles long and 15 miles across. They can't simply be flooded all at once, because the released salt would poison the environment downstream.

As long as Saddam was still in power, of course, the restoration project was entirely theoretical. Now that work can begin, the first step is collecting data -- as the report puts it, "ground-truthing existing conditions." Also, the needs and wishes of the people who have been displaced from the marshland and want to return must be determined.

"There is a critical need to establish systematic interviews with refugees to establish where people want to return to and how they want to live, to make restoration compatible with the desires of the local inhabitants," the report notes.

The release of more water into the Hawizeh Marsh, and smaller demonstration projects in the Hammar and Central marshes, could be implemented as soon as this year's autumn flood season, in November, or no later than the first spring floods in March 2004. Maybe it's not too late.