Satellites now confirm it: the land of the Marsh Arabs has all but gone. The marshes of Mesopotamia, the great historic wetlands of southern Iraq which until recent years sheltered a 5,000-year-old civilisation and unique wildlife, have nearly vanished, according to United Nations scientists. Satellites now confirm it: the land of the Marsh Arabs has all but gone. The marshes of Mesopotamia, the great historic wetlands of southern Iraq which until recent years sheltered a 5,000-year-old civilisation and unique wildlife, have nearly vanished, according to United Nations scientists. A survey based on two sets of satellite images from the US space agency Nasa, taken 10 years apart, shows that about 90 per cent of the marshes, located at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, have now disappeared.Massive deliberate drainage in the past decade by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime, and also damming of the two rivers as far upstream as Turkey, have shrunk the marshlands from their original 15,000 to 20,000 square kilometres to less than 1,500 to 2,000 square kilometres today, says a report from the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep).The result is a double disaster, ecological and humanitarian: not only has the world all but lost a unique freshwater ecosystem, the largest wetland in the Middle East, home to a host of specialised animals, birds, reptiles and fish; we have seen the virtual end of one of the world's most ancient civilisations, that of the Madan, or Marsh Arabs, whose way of life has been documented since Sumerian times.In the past 40 years a succession of British writers has made them well known to the English-speaking world.
06/11 - 08/11 Get Keith Urban Tickets playing in The Arena At Gwinnett Center, Thompson Boling Arena. Keith Urban is playing in Duluth, Knoxville and Charlotte. Keith Urban tickets
06/11 - 09/11 Attain Maroon 5 Tickets staging in Pearl Concert Theater At Palms Casino Resort, 1. Maroon 5 is staging in Las Vegas, Tampa and Baltimore. Maroon 5 tickets
08/11 - 09/11 Capture The Band Perry Tickets performing in Colorado State Fair, Evergreen State Fair. The Band Perry is performing in Pueblo, Monroe and Salem. The Band Perry tickets
Wilfred Thesiger, Gavin Maxwell and Gavin Young all celebrated the Marsh Arabs' life in harmony with the waters and great reedbeds: mat-weaving, fishing, hunting, grazing water buffalo, building beautiful, cathedral-like homes made of reeds on reed islands.But that harmony has been shattered, and yesterday's report graphically documents the stunning scale and speed at which the wetlands have disappeared."The immediate cause of marshland dewatering has been the massive drainage works implemented in southern Iraq in the early 1990s, following the second Gulf war," the report says. "Although some of these works were meant to deal with chronic salinisation in the inter-fluvial region, historically Mesopotamia's main environmental problem, they were expanded into a full-fledged scheme to drain the marshlands."Satellite images provide hard evidence that the once extensive marshlands have dried-up and regressed into desert, with vast stretches covered by crusts of salt.Furthermore, satellite imagery shows only a limited area of the marshlands having been reclaimed for agricultural purposes."A small northern fringe of the Al-Hawizeh marsh, straddling the Iran-Iraq border (known as Hawr Al-Azim in Iran), is all that remains of the marshlands, the report states. But even this last vestige is rapidly dwindling as its water supply is stopped by dams and diverted for irrigation.The situation has been worsened, says the report, by extensive damming upstream. "The Tigris and the Euphrates are among the most intensively dammed rivers in the world. In the past 40 years, the two rivers have been fragmented by the construction of more than 30 large dams, whose storage capacity is several times greater than the volume of both rivers. By turning off the tap, dams have substantially reduced the water available for downstream ecosystems and eliminated the floodwaters that nourished the marshlands."The report goes on: "The collapse of Marsh Arab society ...
confers a vivid human dimension to this environmental disaster. Around one-fifth of the estimated half-million Marsh Arabs are now living in refugee camps in Iran, while the rest are internally displaced within Iraq. A 5,000-year-old culture, heir to the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians, is in serious jeopardy of coming to an abrupt end."It adds that the impact of marshland drying-out on its wildlife has been equally devastating, with significant implications for global wildlife from Siberia to southern Africa."A key site for migratory bird species, the marshlands' disappearance has placed an estimated 40 species of waterfowl at risk and caused serious reductions in their numbers. Mammals and fish that existed only in the marshlands are now considered extinct. Coastal fisheries in the northern Gulf, dependent on the marshlands for spawning grounds, have experienced a sharp decline."Dr Klaus Toepfer, Unep's executive director, said yesterday: "These findings on Mesopotamia have only been made possible by 'eyes-in-the sky'.
