Saddam Hussein's campaigns to drain marshes and force population transfer
The
Mesopotamian Marshes
were drained in
Iraq
and to a smaller degree in
Iran
between the 1950s and 1990s to clear large areas of the
marshes
in the
Tigris-Euphrates river system
. The marshes formerly covered an area of around 20,000 km
2
(7,700 sq mi). The main sub-marshes, the
Hawizeh
,
Central
, and
Hammar
marshes, were drained at different times for different reasons.
In the 1990s, the marshes were drained for political motives, namely to force the
Marsh Arabs
out of the area and to punish them for their role in the
1991 uprising
against Saddam Hussein's government.
[1]
However, the government's stated reasoning was to reclaim land for agriculture and exterminate breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
[2]
The displacement of more than 200,000 of the Ahwaris, and the associated state-sponsored campaign of violence against them, has led the United States and others to describe the draining of the marshes as
ecocide
or
ethnic cleansing
.
[3]
[4]
[5]
The draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes has been described by the
United Nations
as a "tragic human and environmental catastrophe" on par with the
deforestation of the Amazon rainforest
[6]
and by other observers as one of the worst environmental disasters of the 20th century.
[7]
History
[
edit
]
Since the time of
Sumer
, agriculture in Mesopotamia involved major
melioration
, including drainage and building of irrigation canals. After the collapse of the Mesopotamian civilization and the Arab conquest the territory was derelict, which resulted in the restoration of the original wetland conditions. The wetlands were gradually populated by the
Marsh Arabs
, or Ahwaris, who grew rice and grazed
buffalo
on the natural vegetation. At times, the marshes have also served as a refuge for escaped rebels, such as during the
Zanj Rebellion
.
The former
British Mandate
administrators (Iraq became independent in 1932) were the first to attempt to drain the marshes, motivated by their role as a breeding ground for mosquitoes and lack of apparent economic value, as well as the potential use of the water for irrigation. Prepared in 1951, The Haigh Report outlined a series of sluices, embankments and canals on the lower ends of the Tigris and Euphrates that would drain water for agriculture. These notably included the Main Outfall Drain (MOD), a large canal also referred to as the Third River, and the
Nasiriyah Drainage Pump Station
. Neither were completed under British rule: they were later revived by the
Ba'athist
government.
[8]
[9]
During the 1970s, the expansion of
irrigation
projects had begun to disrupt the flow of water to the marshes; by the early 1980s, it was evident that these had significantly affected water levels.
[10]
Part of the Hammar Marsh was also drained in 1985 during efforts to prepare the area for
oil exploration
.
[11]
By the mid-1980s, the marshes had become a refuge for people persecuted by the
Ba'athist
government of Saddam Hussein (
Shi'ites
in particular), and a low-level
insurgency
had developed against the drainage and resettlement projects, led by Sheik Abdul Kerim Mahud al-Muhammadawi of the Al bu Muhammad under the
nom de guerre
Abu Hatim.
[12]
Gulf War draining
[
edit
]
After the
First Gulf War
(1991), the Iraqi government revived a program to divert the flow of the
Tigris River
and the
Euphrates River
away from the marshes. The marshes had served as a base for a
Shi’a insurrection
against
Saddam Hussein
's Sunni-led Ba'athist regime, so Hussein drained the marshes largely to deny their use by insurgents and to punish the Ahwaris for their participation in the uprising.
[13]
The flow southwards from the distributary streams of the Tigris was blocked by large embankments and discharged into the Al-Amarah or
Glory Canal
, resulting in the loss of two-thirds of the Central Marshes by as early as 1993.
[14]
A further canal, the Prosperity Canal, was constructed to prevent any overflow into the marsh from the main channel of the Tigris as it ran southwards from
Qalat Saleh
.
[15]
By the late 1990s, the Central Marsh had become completely desiccated, suffering the most severe damage of the three main areas of wetland. By 2000, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that 90% of the marshlands had disappeared.
Environmental effects
[
edit
]
The Central Marshes stretched between
Nasiriyah
,
Al-'Uzair
(Ezra's Tomb) and
Al-Qurnah
and were mainly fed by the
Tigris
and its distributaries. They were characterised by tall
qasab
reeds
but included a number of freshwater
lakes
, of which the largest were the Haur az-Zikri and
Umm al-Binni
(literally "mother of
binni
", the latter being a species of
barbel
).
[15]
The marshes support breeding populations of the
Basra reed-warbler
and
marbled teal
, along with several other species of non-breeding birds.
[14]
It was feared that the Levant darter (
Anhinga rufa chantrei
), a subspecies of the
African darter
, and the
maxwelli
subspecies of the
smooth-coated otter
had disappeared entirely, but small and threatened populations remain of both.
[16]
[17]
It is also feared that the
Bunn's short-tailed bandicoot rat
(
Nesokia bunnii
,
syn.
Erythronesokia bunnii
), which had only been described from specimens obtained in the Central Marshes, is extinct.
[18]
A study by the Wetland Ecosystem Research Group at
Royal Holloway, University of London
concluded that thousands of fish and
waterfowl
died as the waters receded, and that the central Qurnah marshes 'essentially no longer exist as an ecosystem'.
[19]
According to a 2001
United Nations Environmental Programme
report, the projects resulted in:
[20]
- The loss of a migration area for birds migrating from Eurasia to Africa, and consequent decrease in bird populations in areas such as Ukraine and the Caucasus
- Probable extinction of several plant and animal species endemic to the Marshes
- Higher
soil salinity
in the Marshes and adjacent areas, resulting in loss of dairy production, fishing, and rice cultivation.
- Desertification
of over 7,500 square miles (19,000 km
2
).
- Saltwater intrusion
and increased flow of pollutants into the
Shatt-al-Arab
waterway, causing disruption of fisheries in the Persian Gulf
Demographic effects
[
edit
]
The water diversion plan, which was accompanied by a series of
propaganda
articles by the Iraqi regime directed against the Ahwaris,
[21]
systematically converted the
wetlands
into a
desert
, forcing the residents out of their settlements in the region. The western
Hammar Marshes
and the Qurnah or
Central Marshes
became completely desiccated, while the eastern
Hawizeh Marshes
dramatically shrank. Furthermore, villages in the marshes were torched, water was deliberately poisoned, and villagers' vehicles were attacked by government helicopters.
[22]
Several thousand Marsh Arabs were killed.
[23]
The majority of the Ahwaris were displaced either to areas adjacent to the drained marshes, abandoning their traditional lifestyle in favour of conventional agriculture, or to towns and camps in other areas of Iraq. An estimated 80,000 to 120,000 fled to refugee camps in Iran.
[24]
The Marsh Arabs, who numbered about half a million in the 1950s, have dwindled to as few as 20,000 in Iraq. Only 1,600 of them were estimated to still be living on traditional
dibins
in their homeland by 2003.
[25]
Political response
[
edit
]
The AMAR International Charitable Foundation described the event as "an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe of monumental proportions with regional and global implications."
[20]
Besides the general UN-imposed
Gulf war sanctions
, there was no specific legal recourse for those displaced by the drainage projects, or prosecution of those involved. Article 2.c of the
Genocide Convention
(to which Iraq had acceded in 1951
[26]
) forbids "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." Additionally, the
Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868
says that "the only legitimate object which States should endeavour to accomplish during war is to weaken the military forces of the enemy", a provision potentially violated by the Ba'athist government as part of their campaign against the insurgents which had taken refuge in the marshlands. However, Iraq is not a signatory on the treaty
[27]
Since water flowed unfiltered into the Gulf through the newly dug canal system, The
Kuwait Regional Convention for Co-operation on the Protection of the Marine Environment from Pollution
could be used to compensate Iraq's neighbours for the increase in
marine pollution
, but it does not protect the Ahwaris for the loss of their marshlands.
[28]
Reflooding
[
edit
]
Following the
2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq
, many embankments and drainage works were dismantled under the newly formed administration, and the marshes began to refill. Some of this dismantling was done by local Marsh Arabs acting on their own. The Central Marshes showed little recovery through 2003, but by early 2004 a patchwork of lakes had appeared in northern areas. There was flooding in southern areas which had previously been dry since the early 1990s.
[29]
There has been some corresponding recolonization by the natural marsh vegetation since that time, and return of some species of fish and birds. However, recovery of the Central Marshes has been much slower compared to the Huwaizah and Hammar Marshes; the most severely damaged sections of the wetlands did not show any signs of regeneration by 2006.
[30]
By 2008, 75% of the marshes had been restored, including most of the Central Marshes. However, the wetlands have since shrunk to 58% of their pre-drainage area and are projected to drop below 50% as a result of Turkish and Iranian damming of the Tigris and Euphrates, which the UN reports has reduced the combined volume of the rivers by 60%. Further, the water quality and salinity is much worse than in the pre-drained marshes: water salinity has soared to 15,000 parts per million (ppm) in some areas, up from 300 to 500 ppm in the 1980s. This increased salinity has hindered the reintroduction of native plant and fish species and has had major detrimental effects on buffalo herding and fishing in the marshes, the chief economic activities of the Marsh Arabs.
[31]
2010 research in the Central Marshes attributed the increased salinity and decreased water quality to the limitation of the water source to only the Euphrates, a smaller seasonal fluctuation in water inflow and outflow, and inputs of
contaminated water
from farms and villages.
[32]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
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(PDF)
(Report).
Human Rights Watch
. January 2003
. Retrieved
June 20,
2018
.
- ^
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.
ICE Case Studies
. January 2001
. Retrieved
2018-06-20
.
- ^
"The Marsh Arabs of Iraq: Hussein's Lesser Known Victims"
.
United States Institute of Peace
. November 25, 2002.
- ^
Nadeem A Kazmi, Sayyid (2000).
"The Marshlands of Southern Iraq: A Very Humanitarian Dilemma"
(PDF)
.
III Jornadas de Medio Oriente
. Retrieved
20 June
2018
.
- ^
Priestley, Cara (2021). "
"We Won't Survive in a City. The Marshes are Our Life": An Analysis of Ecologically Induced Genocide in the Iraqi Marshes".
Journal of Genocide Research
.
23
(2): 279?301.
doi
:
10.1080/14623528.2020.1792615
.
S2CID
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.
- ^
Partow, Hassan (August 13, 2001).
"UN ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME RELEASES REPORT ON DEMISE OF MESOPOTAMIAN MARSHLANDS"
(Press release). Nairobi/Stockholm: United Nations. UN Environment Programme
. Retrieved
2018-06-20
.
- ^
Hopkin, Michael (2005-02-21).
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.
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.
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:
10.1038/news050221-1
.
ISSN
1744-7933
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- ^
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, February 2003
- ^
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(PDF)
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. Retrieved
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.
- ^
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Archived
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. Retrieved
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.
- ^
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,
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- ^
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.
- ^
a
b
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, birdlife.org
- ^
a
b
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- ^
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- ^
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IUCN
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30(1).
- ^
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.
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/
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. p. 560.
ISBN
978-2-8317-0270-4
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- ^
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.
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. Retrieved
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.
- ^
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,
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- ^
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.
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31°02′24″N
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/
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/
31.04000; 47.02500