Iraq's onetime Garden of Eden, a vast stretch of wetlands in southern Iraq
known as the Mesopotamian marshlands, destroyed by the 1991 Gulf War and by
Saddam Hussein himself in the 1990s, was the grim setting last week for the
discovery of more than 3,000 graves. The people who lived there were among
Hussein's Shiite targets, and they have been excavating two sites in and near
the marshes looking for relatives. The marshes themselves, which were their
refuge, also became, in Hussein's hands, a major environmental disaster. Even in
the last moment of his regime, Hussein tried to make deadly use of the wetlands
by lifting dam gates to unleash trapped waters into the now parched acres.
Presumably he hoped to slow down the invading American and British troops.
Scientists remain unsure how the flow of water will affect the ecology of the
decimated area, but most agree that nature is the best medicine and the first
fresh water into the marshlands in years may be a lucky break for renewal in
what has become a graveyard in more than one way. Hussein's weapon may also be
fortuitous for a Mesopotamian wetlands reclamation plan on a scale comparable to
the restoration of Florida's Everglades. The project in Iraq, however, could
cost about 10 times as much as the Everglades work, because the vision for
restoration includes a revolutionary plan to restore to their original homes the
indigenous marsh dwellers—now embattled environmental refugees.
Scholars believe the Mesopotamian Marshlands were the site of the biblical Eden,
located within the "Land of the Two Rivers" between the Tigris and Euphrates.
The largest wetland ecosystem in the Middle East—20,000 square kilometers of
once lush plant life—is a maze of interconnected lakes, mudflats, and wetlands.
For over 5,000 years, the marshes sustained the Madan or marsh dwellers—an
indigenous community, now also Shiite Muslims. They lived deep in the marshes,
and moved around by boat, peacefully tending water buffalo, harvesting massive
reed beds, and spearfishing in long, winding waterways. Using reeds, the Madan
made elaborate dwellings that sat on woven mats suspended above the water.
In the 1950s, when Syria and Turkey built dams diverting the river waters
upstream, the marshlands began to decline. Then, soon after the failed Shiite
uprising of the last Gulf War, the Iraqi regime willfully destroyed this vital
paradise. In the early 1990s, Hussein drained and dammed the marshlands under
the official pretext of agricultural enhancement. Analysts worldwide, however,
believe Hussein planned wholesale environmental destruction to exact revenge on
rebel Shiite groups taking refuge in the marshes. The Iraqi government burned
and shelled marsh villages and forcibly deported or killed hundreds of thousands
of Madan.
Almost 13 years later, the marshes still lie in ruins after what the United
Nations Environment Program (UNEP) calls one of the "worst environmental
disasters of this century." About 93 percent of the swampy oasis is parched and
contaminated, according to a 2001 UNEP report. Experts believe at least 300,000
marsh dwellers out of a population of about half a million were killed. At least
40,000 Madan currently remain in refugee camps in Iran, with others scattered
throughout Britain and the U.S. The latest war in Iraq, however, has finally
roused international interest in the plight of the wetlands and one man in
particular is leading efforts to restore the region and bring its people home.
Iraqi exile Azzam Alwash spent his childhood canoeing through the marshlands
with his father, a district engineer who settled water disputes and monitored
hydrological works in southeastern Iraq. Alwash moved to the U.S. as a young
engineer, and over the last 25 years often dreamed of taking his family kayaking
in the marshes. In 1997, however, that dream was shattered when he saw desolate
footage of the area and realized the extent of its destruction. Alwash resolved
to do something, and along with his wife, geologist Suzie Alwash, founded Eden
Again (EA) last year.
The project ambitiously aims not only to oversee total ecological restoration of
the marshlands—an area comparable in size to the Everglades—but also to make
possible the return of its people. Alwash says Eden Again is unique because it
is committed to involving the marsh dwellers and local Iraqi engineers in the
entire process. "We want to involve [the Madan] in all the work; this will
provide them with a livelihood and will also give them a stake in things," says
Alwash.
With a modest starting budget of $190,000 from the Iraq Foundation and the U.S.
State Department Office for Northern Gulf Affairs, the Alwashes began by
assembling an international panel of 18 prominent wetland specialists and
restoration ecologists. After poring over remote sensing maps of the marshlands,
the team confirmed at a press conference in April that an ecological makeover is
indeed scientifically feasible.
The Iraqi regime dammed the Euphrates at Nasiriyah and built a network of levees
and dikes in northern Iraq to divert water from the central marshes into a
30-mile-long canal, often called the "mother of all wars" canal. Water levels
quickly fell in all three areas of the wetlands: the Hammar marshes to the
south; the central or Qurna marshes, where the Euphrates and Tigris meet; and
the Huwaiza marshes, which are to the northeast, bordering Iran. Because the
Huwaiza marshes get some Iranian water they are the least degraded of the three,
but experts believe the other two could disappear by 2020.
EA scientists will have to go to Iraq before knowing exactly how much water has
been released in the last two to three months. Before the dam openings only
about 30 percent of the entire marshland area could have been revived, says
Curtis Richardson, a wetlands ecology professor at Duke University who is on
EA's team and on the Everglades restoration project.
In order to come back entirely Alwash says the marshlands will require about 7
billion cubic meters of water annually. Most of Iraq's water comes from Syria
and Turkey and they will partly determine how much water Iraq gets. The three
countries still have to agree on how to divide the water, which, given Iraq's
current situation, may take a while.
All these years, portions of the cracked marshlands resembled "a desert with two
feet of salt where there used to be lakes," says Michelle Stevens, a restoration
ecologist and EA's project manager. Too much salt is dangerous because
freshwater stagnating over salty earth creates saltwater, which is deadly to
many marshland plant and fish species.
Swift seasonal water flows are essential to flush the salt out and revive seed
banks, fish species, and wildlife, says Dr. Rich Beilfuss of the International
Crane Foundation, another panel member. The scientists can only wait and see
whether the newly released waters will mimic such flows, but Derek Scott, an EA
avian consultant and the last scientist to survey the marshes—in 1979—remarks,
"My inclination would have been to . . . open up the floodgates and let nature
take its course. There are wetlands in Iran that flood only once every 20 years,
but when they do have water, they become a paradise for wildlife within months."
Eden Again proposes to launch the project with a detailed survey of the region,
which could begin as early as November. It will involve testing for soil
contaminants, establishing exactly how much water is there, and gauging how
easily plants will return, according to the April 30 EA report, "Building a
Scientific Basis for the Restoration of the Mesopotamian Marshlands."
Once the technical constraints of ecological restoration are resolved, of
course, there is the monumental challenge of relocating perhaps thousands of
Madan. It is unlikely that life in the marshlands will ever be as it was. The
Madan now want amenities of the developed world like adequate sanitation, proper
medical care, and schools, says Baroness Emma Nicholson, executive director of
the AMAR International Charitable Foundation, a British humanitarian agency that
has delivered relief services to Iraqi refugees in Iran and elsewhere for the
last 12 years.
Unfortunately, many Madan also have blurry memories, if any, of marsh life
because most of the remaining population is between 15 and 18 years old, says
Peter Clark, AMAR Foundation's chief executive officer and co-editor with
Nicholson of The Iraqi Marshlands: A Human and Environmental Study.
Of course for Ramadhan al Badri, there's no place like home. After fighting in
the 1991 uprisings, the marsh dweller spent a year and a half in a refugee camp
in Saudi Arabia, before immigrating to the United States, where he runs an auto
transportation business. "[Marsh dwellers] will be happy to see the positive
movement happening in the marshes," says Badri, who plans to be closely involved
in the restoration effort and thinks "lots of willing" Madan families will
quickly follow suit.
Eden Again is also stimulating public interest because the unique effort could
set a precedent for the treatment of refugees worldwide. Nicholson says the
concept of employing refugees to rebuild their own environment and homes could
be replicated in other places like Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan, where
thousands of refugees cannot return home due to a lack of water from damming
projects and drought.
Such optimism about returning refugees is contingent on a working infrastructure
in Iraq. Stuart Leiderman, an environmentalist and a University of New Hampshire
scholar, also believes Eden Again comes at a time when thousands of new refugees
are emerging, reflecting a dire need for better repatriation efforts. One of the
foremost proponents of the legal recognition of environmental refugees,
Leiderman believes that globalization has dramatically spiked refugee numbers
worldwide, not just through ethnic, cultural, and religious violence, but
increasingly because of the environmental effects of war, environmentally
harmful economic-development schemes, or severe natural disasters. In 1998, the
International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said for
the first time that more people were forced out of their homes by environmental
disaster than by war. Currently, however, environmental refugees have no formal
status under any international treaty.
Eden Again can demonstrate the necessity of restoring a place in order to
restore its people—all the while allowing indigenous people oversight. "[The
marshland project] will be the first time in modern history where a whole
bioregional restoration effort incorporates the memories, desires, sweat, and
toil of the refugees themselves in exchange for title to the communities and
ecosystems they restore," says Leiderman.
Leiderman thinks the same kind of thing could start elsewhere if there were a
new international convention that couples environmental refugees to ecological
restoration projects worldwide. Such a convention would place emphasis on
renewal efforts that would automatically generate income for returning refugees.
Of course, in the current bureaucratic knot of international-convention
policies, many see Leiderman's vision as hopelessly wishful, even though most
experts agree that the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is
badly outdated, too narrow to include thousands of the newly displaced.
Stephen Castles, director of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University,
also believes that a new kind of protection system is urgently required for the
millions displaced by development projects and environmental degradation but
feels that it's a better idea to identify such people as "forced migrants." "It
would be wrong to change the 1951 convention definition," he says, "because in
the current political climate, any change is likely to be a watering down.
Rather, we need specific protection and assistance conventions and institutions
to meet the needs of the other types of forced migrants."
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But even as Eden Again hopes to break new ground both in scale and concept,
funding for the project is still uncertain. Project members are hesitant to put
a price tag on achieving total restoration and repatriation, but Leiderman
estimates that it will cost about 10 times the $7.8 billion tab on the
Everglades project. This kind of money will probably have to come from the UN,
the United States, and other countries, and at least for the moment, they are
beginning to pay attention. In fact, "countries are fighting to be involved,"
says Suzie Alwash.
"We may find the needs exceed the funds but we'll only know that when we do a
thorough environmental-impact assessment, which we couldn't do before,"says Greg
Sullivan, deputy press director for the State Department Office of Northern Gulf
Affairs.
This week the UNEP is hosting the Mesopotamian Marshland Forum, an international
meeting in Geneva focusing on restoration of the Iraqi wetlands. Conservation
and relief organizations will attend as well as the UN High Commission for
Refugees (UNHCR), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and others.
The concern now, says Suzie Alwash, is that USAID, which is putting forth
billions of dollars for education, health care, and wastewater treatment in
post-war Iraq, will try to bully other governments and organizations out of
restoration plans.
Eden Again project members plan to go to Iraq in June. "There is a great deal of
public interest, and all of the federal agencies want a piece of the restoration
pie," says project manager Michelle Stevens. "Inshallah, God willing, it will
work out for the benefit of the marsh dwellers and the marshes themselves."