Life has returned to parts of Iraq's spectacular Mesopotamian Marshes after their intentional destruction by Saddam Hussein. The 5,000-year-old marshes are unlikely however to return to their former glory, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Washington was told.
Researchers from the US and Canada described the international effort to reverse, at least in part, the ecological disaster inflicted on the Mesopotamian Marshes. Saddam decreed after the first Gulf war in 1991 that the lush reed marshes be drained in retribution for Marsh Arab participation in a southern uprising against his rule.
Known at least since Sumerian times, the ancient marshes were fed by water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Saddam built canals and dikes to channel the waters away from the marshes and so crush a way of life that supported between 350,000 to 500,000 Marsh Arabs living there before the war, explained Prof Curtis Richardson of Duke University.
"The Mesopotamian Marshes are one of the great wonders of the world or they were," he said. They once covered between 15,000 and 20,000 square kilometres but were reduced to just 7 per cent of their former size.
At low ebb the Marsh Arab population was probably as low as 75,000, he said, with current estimates at between 100,000 and 125,000. Perhaps 100,000 died and many left the region or moved to towns and villages away from the marshlands. "They are basically without a home," he said.
What happens next depends on the availability of water, Prof Richardson suggested. "Essentially the marsh's water has been moved north," he said.
Dams have been built north of the marshes and Iraq, Iran and Turkey contest for water supplies from the two rivers.
The Marsh Arabs themselves moved to bring back the marshes after Saddam's defeat in April 2003, breaking down dikes and flooding parched lands. In many cases returning water to these lands unfortunately represented a "waste of this precious resource", Prof Richardson said.
Water evaporation had left high salt concentrations in the soil, and some of the wetlands became brackish because there was too little water to cleanse the marsh system. International groups have joined with Iraqi scientists and officials to better co-ordinate the renewal effort, working together within the Centre for the Restoration of the Iraqi Marshlands (CRIM).
Prof Richardson estimates that it may be possible to restore 30 per cent of the marshlands, but this would not exist as a single marsh. Rather, large blocks of between 5,000 to 7,000 acres each would be reflooded in a controlled way.
Surveys of plant, animal and fish life show that the reeds are taking hold again in these areas. At least 32 of the 35 or more bird species known to have inhabited the marshes have also returned.