| diane9247 |
| (Humanitarian) |
| 05/03/08 10:17 PM |
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Ancient Life Lost: The Marsh Arabs of Iraq
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In order to better understand this region, an interest of mine long before the Iran-Iraq War and the Bush Wars, I have assembled a folder. The Marsh Arabs, in Arabic the Ma'dan, inhabited the marshes of southern Iraq for 5,000 years. These decendents of the ancient Sumerians lived much the same way through the ages, subsisting on the abundant wildlife and building their homes and gathering places of the tall marsh reeds.
Bas reliefs of Sumerian reed structures.
Undated, photos from Laputan Logic. The ancient building method is essentially unchanged today.
What was lost
British adventurer Wilfred Thesiger lived with the Marsh Arabs twice for extended periods, resulting in his marvelous book The Marsh Arabs. I can't recommend it strongly enough and it is still in print. One of many photos from the book, which piqued my interest in this area many years ago, shows the interior of a mudhif, this one a mens' meeting hall in 1964. The architecture is lovely and must have felt wonderfully cool and serene inside.
Thesiger's prose is lovely, too, when he descibes life in the marshes:
Quote:
That evening, back at Sadam's mudhif, I stood watching the sun go down behind reedbeds that stretched to the world's end. High overhead, banks of cirrus cloud, blown to tattered streams, ranged from ebony to flaming gold and the colour of old ivory, against a background of vermilion and orange, violet, mauve, and palest green. From all around, as if the Marshes breathed, came the massed voices of frogs, an all-pervading pulse of sound, so sustained that the mind ceased to take note of it. More than any other, even the crying of geese in winter, this was the sound of the Marshes. A dog barked; a buffalo grunted with a noise surprisingly like a camel's; a man called out a long, and to me, unintelligible message; a pause, and someone answered. More buffaloes swam across the open water towards the village, only their heads showing and each leaving a wake. Among the houses columns of dense smoke spread upwards from small fires, lit to keep the mosquitoes away from the herds. A boy, late back from the reedbeds, paddled down a waterway, a path of shining gold leading from the setting sun. He sang softly as he came towards me, the notes lingering in the air.
Thesiger, in 1964, was certain that the marshes would eventually be drained and the culture of the Marsh Arabs lost. In fact, government planning began in the '50s to do just that in order to convert the land to agricultural use.
Nick Wheeler photographed the marshes ten years after Thesiger, documenting the beginning of the end of their culture, in 1974. (Thesiger's quote and photo, and Wheeler's photos, from Laputan Logic
Floating village of the Ma'dan.
The engineering of destruction
Quote:
Human Rights Watch, January 25, 2003: Iraq's Marsh Arabs, having survived a fifteen-year campaign by the central government to eliminate them, will be at further risk in the event of war...destruction of villages, arbitrary arrests, torture, 'disappearances,' summary executions, and forced displacement have reduced the Marsh Arabs from more than 250,000 [some estimates are double that] to about 40,000.
In 1986, well before the second Bush war, the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein began the systematic destruction of the decendents of the Sumerians who had thrived in Mesopotamia for 5,000 years. Their home was the vast marshland around the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the legendary Eden of the Bible. From this point, the two rivers join to form the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf. Marsh Arabs are predominantly Shi'a Muslims, as are neighboring Persians, and both are antagonistic toward the Ba'athists. After Bush, Sr.'s withdrawal from his Desert Storm operation in early 1991, the Marsh Arabs - with encouragement from the US - joined in a rebellion agains the government of Saddam, as did non-Ma'dan Shi'a, Kurds in the north and several thousand defectors from Saddam's army. Thanks to the vast and nearly impenetrable marshes, Saddam's political enemies were able to hide, attack government forces and disappear back into the maze of waterways.
Thus, draining was begun in earnest as a retaliation and to deprive enemies of the state their hiding place. Tens of thousands of unarmed civilians were killed and the rest were imprisoned, forcibly relocated to other parts of Iraq, or chased into Iran. This post-Desert Storm period was predictably ignored by the international community, including the UN, which had no interest in carrying on a big operation in the region. While Saddam set out to destroy all those responsible for the uprising (as well as many who weren't), the Ma'dan were the only population subjected to utter destruction of their environment. From the 2003 Human Rights Watch report:
Quote:
[A]nalysis of satellite imagery has shown that the marshland ecosystem had collapsed by 2000.
Marshes - in maroon and black - intact in 1972.
In 1990, before the final elimination of the marshes.
By 1997, only a small, black patch of marsh remains.
The major engineering projects:
(Markings are not mine.) The blue central arrow partially covers "Prosperity River," the enormous channel that diverted water away from the eastern and central marshes. This channel is clearly visible on GE. The Euphrates was diverted into canals which drained directly into the Persian Gulf. Above USGS photos from UN Environment Program, whose press release of May 18, 2001, reported that up to 97% of the Central and al-Hammar marshes were turned into bare dirt and salt pan. Only 1/3 of the northeastern al-Hawaizeh marsh remained by 2000. (This shows as a dark, round area, found by spacecowboy2006.)UNEP photos from 2002. Dead reeds and cracked earth, with crop in the background. Possibly wheat, as this is now raised in much of the former marshland.
Marsh Arabs wander in Iraq with their water buffalo.
According to Sprol's "Worst Places in the World," in the first four years alone of Saddam's marsh drainage campaign, 60% of the marshland was drained. When the campaign was finally ended, only 7% remained. A marsh covering between 5,800 and 7,700 square miles was reduced to 386 square miles.
The future for the Ma'dan
The news isn't all bad. Re-flooding began in 2004, with cooperation between the government water ministry and the Ma'dan, who have broken through dams and levees where possible. Black areas of this image from 2004 show where water has re-entered to small portions of the former marshes. Dr. Suzie Alwash is Sr. Project Advisor for Eden Again, a project of Nature Iraq, "a group of Iraqi expatiriates alarmed at the loss of their beloved marshlands."
Image from Eden Again. Their website reports this tragic incident:
Quote:There is no statement about whether his death was related to his research. But, considering the scores of political parties and tribal rivalries in the south, I tend to think the worst. A hugely complicating factor in the attempt to rehabilitate the marshes is that the region contains some of Iraq's richest oil fields and only now that the water is gone can this resource be exploited. No matter what the international environmentalist pressure might be to re-flood, how will the area fare after US withdrawal from Iraq? I don't believe history shows us that ancient culture and natural habitat supercede oil.
Ra'ed D. Hameed, a Nature Iraq research assistant conducting field research in the Mesopotamian marshlands, was killed in a drive-by shooting outside his home in...Baghdad on...July 23, 2006. Ra'ed, who received his Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering from the University of Mustansiriya in 2003, was only 28 years old.
A few thousand Marsh Arabs have returned, slowly, to their former home and more are being encouraged to do so by the government. In a caption for one of their recent images, NPR states that they hope to earn a living somehow until the water returns and they can continue their traditional way of life. Or, perhaps no more water will return and their young men will become laborers in the oil fields. I think this is what history teaches us.
NPR
Aditional information from:
USGS Earthshots - Good report on this site about the findings in their imagery.
The Iraqi Campaign Against the Marsh Arabs: Ecocide as Genocide - Joseph W. Dellapenna, Villanova U. School of Law Forum.
The Marsh Arabs, 1964, Wilfred Thesiger - After all these years, still one of my favorite n on-fiction books.
Prince of the Marshes, 2007, Rory Stewart - First-hand account of the profound misunderstandings between Coalition advisors and the myriad factions of southern Iraq.