Iraq’s Marsh Arabs: a reversal of a reversal of fortune
Iraq’s Marsh Arabs suffered long under Saddam Hussein. In punishment for the failed Shia uprising incited and then betrayed by the Western powers after the first Gulf War, Saddam diverted water away from the marshes. This destroyed food sources and the Marsh Arabs, the Ma’dan, were forced to flee.
After the second Gulf War in 2003, the marshes were re-irrigated. The Ma’dan could return. On February 21 2007, Tony Blair proudly told the House of Commons…
In an extraordinary development, the Marsh Arabs, driven from one of the world’s foremost ecological sites by Saddam, have been able to resettle there.
So, two years later, how are the Ma’dan faring, now that their homelands have been liberated from drought and despotism?
Experts say the rivers that flood the marshes today are too brackish and polluted to support life.
[A resident of the marshes, Ali Jassim al-] Battat sees the “undrinkable” water as a symptom of the official failure to rehabilitate the Marsh Arabs. As a father to 13 children, he says he wants better road and electricity links and improved access to education, healthcare and clean water.
“Water is the source of all our suffering,” he shouted angrily. “The water tankers do not get to us, we have no electricity. Our young men are crushed by destitution and our children grow up like savages, without schooling.”
[...]
Satellite images taken in 2006, three years after the overthrow of Saddam, showed the marshes had been restored to 70 per cent of their size in the early 1970s, before the major drainage projects began.
In 2009, environmental officials said the marshes were shrinking again, and now covered only 30 per cent of their spread in the 1970s. Dams built upstream in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey are blamed for reducing the volume of water feeding the wetlands. A prolonged drought in Iraq has only made matters worse.
According to Alaa al-Badran, head of the union of agricultural engineers in Basra, the marshlands will continue to shrink, reversing recent gains. “Salinity rates will keep rising,” he added. “Once absorbed by the soil, salts are very hard to eradicate.”
There’s currently no message of support for the Marsh Arabs on Tony Blair’s official website, a state of affairs that will no doubt be rectified as soon as he’s back from collecting his $1 million prize for leadership.
Posted on May 19th, 2009 at 3:55pm under Blair, Iraq
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• 23 Comments |
“A prolonged drought in Iraq has only made matters worse.”
Tony Blair controls the weather now…? ZOMG!
Christ.
Did it hurt? When you sneered you face off.
Listen, I bow to no man in my distate for preening narcissist Blair, but he should be blamed only for the things he’s directly responsible for.
Were the Marsh Arabs liberated? Yes. Fresh slate, chaps, time to make something of your lives.
Does that mean that they should remain forever pets of the West, looking to them for help (i.e. money) whenever the great sky goddess fails to send her tears to make the crops grow? No. You got your freedom back, pal. No more dictator.
“[A resident of the marshes, Ali Jassim al-] Battat sees the “undrinkable” water as a symptom of the official failure to rehabilitate the Marsh Arabs. As a father to 13 children, he says he wants better road and electricity links and improved access to education, healthcare and clean water.”
When he stops breeding useless mouths, gets off his backside and does something to alleviate his people’s problems, get back to me, and I’ll weep bitter tears and sing kumbaya with the rest of the ’something must be done!’ crowd.
When he stops breeding useless mouths?
So you are a racist white supremacist?
Iraq has been a lovely, free place, has it not? Well, no, it’s not.
Hmmm…
Yeah! Why doesn’t the lazy git make his own water tankers and electricity grids. Oh…it’s the lack of time, money and resources, isn’t it…Yes, yes it is.
No. I’d be equally happy if the homegrown white chavs over here stopped breeding useless mouths too.
I’d be bloody ecstatic if we adopted Iraqi welfare standards and I didn’t have to pay for them too…
If we adopted Iraqi welfare standards, we’d move closer to their degree of social cohesion and civil peace, too.
But, ho-um, one woman’s utopia is most everyone else’s idea of a hellhole.
“Iraq has been a lovely, free place, has it not? Well, no, it’s not.”
HuffingtonPost, AntiWar and some blleding heart ‘can’t we all just get along?’ website? Hmm, definitely non-biased resources….
“The water tankers do not get to us, we have no electricity. Our young men are crushed by destitution and our children grow up like savages, without schooling”
Or, in other words: ‘Wah! The world owes me a living! Why should I educate my own children? Someone else should do it for me!’
Ad hominem sneering and non sequitur? Hmm, definitely don’t know what you’re talking about.
The AntiWar link is a collection of casualty reports; the “bleeding heart” website is run by the OCHA and the HuffPo piece, well, it’s direct foreign reportage. If you want more sources, here’s the UNHCR on the refugees, UNICEF on the water crisis and a thorough compilation of casualty reports from wikipedia.
So, Julia, imagine that you’re in Battat’s place. There’s no electricity, ‘cos the nation’s so fractured and war-torn it hasn’t built any infrastructure. There’s no water, ‘cos the government can’t send out tankers. You can’t make the tankers, because you don’t have the money, the resources or, indeed, anything much to put inside them. You have to work all day to feed your kids, so you can’t educate them probably. There’s no fish to catch, ‘cos the marshes are polluted. Grass is just about the only thing to farm or sell…
How would you become self-reliant? Early to bed and early to rise?
And yeah, incidentally, I do think that the Iraqi people deserve our support. If you’d only have read the links – control that jerking knee, for heaven’s sake – you’d have noticed that Operation Iraqi Fuckup has killed hundreds of thousands, made refugees out of millions more and shattered most of the national infrastructure. However fresh that “slate” is, it’s been smashed into shards.
Who is this unspeakable shitebag called JuliaM? Can someone not beat some humanity into the batshit vending sociopath?
“Ad hominem sneering and non sequitur? Hmm, definitely don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hmm, because you’d never see those on any left wing site, would you..?
“You have to work all day to feed your kids, so you can’t educate them probably”
Hence why the phrase ‘useless mouths’. Can’t feed ‘em? Don’t breed ‘em!
“And yeah, incidentally, I do think that the Iraqi people deserve our support.”
They had it. We removed Saddam from power. Is there any stage at which, after that, you expect them to stand on their own two feet? Or do they remain one of the left’s dependent pets forever, so people like you can feel noble about calling for other people’s money to be….
Oh. Answered my own question there, didn’t I?
Commonly known as the “I know you are, but what am I” defence.
Seriously, this has to be the nadir of this ludicrous partisanship. You’ve been wrong, you’re evading the point and you’re deflecting attention onto this terrifyingly irrelevant “left wing site“.
If all you want to do – or, indeed, are capable of doing – is bicker about da Left (and, trust me, I’ve been there) there are lots of sites to fulfil your needs. If you want to have this argument then please consider the links.
You’re all heart, aren’t you.
Yep, from a practical perspective it would be easier for Battat if he’d had less children. However, it wouldn’t go any way towawrds solving the regional problems: that there’s little produce, few resources, scarce water and no external support to try and alter this.
Yes, and if you’d read the mo’fuckin links you’d learn that “we” also helped kill hundreds of thousands, drove millions more from their homes and shattered most of the national infrastructure.
Well, yes. They’re not well served by a corrupt and authoritarian government, but if we can give practical aid (heck, water tankers for example) it should be there before you can say “and guess who’s paying for it!“. With more physical structures in place – water, electricity, roads etc. – it’ll begin to get easier for the people.
Of course, it would nice if this support could be paid out of Bush, Blair and Rumsfeld’s fortunes, but even that would only be a start.
Incidentally, as you’re so big on self-reliance, I hope you’ll join me in calling for the US to pull out, post-haste.
Yup, that’s as clumsy an appeal to ridicule as any I’ve seen.
Firstly – if (somewhat) irrelevantly – your talk of “remov[ing] Saddam from power” implies that Iraqis didn’t have the self-reliance to depose him themselves. Are they your dependent pets, huh? Just there to make you feel noble, huh?
Secondly, it’s a tedious, frustrating fact of life that one can’t be self-reliant without certain conditions. I don’t think that Iraqis are lesser people, I just think they’re dreadfully unlucky; smacked with a one-two punch of tyranny and imperialism.
How do you know what I’m feeling? Christ, why can’t one have an argument without being accused of self-loathing, self-entitlement etc.
Yep, that strawman is savaged. Keep this up and you’ll be, well, the one-person parody of Wonkette that you are.
“You’re all heart, aren’t you.”
No, I just prefer to let my head rule it, rather than vice versa.
“If all you want to do – or, indeed, are capable of doing – is bicker about da Left (and, trust me, I’ve been there) there are lots of sites to fulfil your needs. If you want to have this argument then please consider the links.”
Please, please consider learning some HTML skillz. Who knows, you might be able to do links properly without them 404ing one day…
“Firstly – if (somewhat) irrelevantly – your talk of “remov[ing] Saddam from power” implies that Iraqis didn’t have the self-reliance to depose him themselves. “
They were sure taking their sweet time about it. Weren’t they?
“Keep this up and you’ll be, well, the one-person parody of Wonkette that you are.”
Oh, dahling! Wonkette is sooo last year…
Ah, right…
…er…
Got a reply regarding the horror of the Iraq invasion and the need for aid? To quote a sage…
Well, no, I was just seeing whether you were capable of following the bloody things. Chased up the references yet?
Right, so you think that they were unable to overthrow Hussein themselves and needed external support? Well, why can’t you grasp that concept when aid’s in question, not military intervention?
True…
Goodness, I hadn’t realised that my description was so accurate.
“Got a reply regarding the horror of the Iraq invasion and the need for aid?”
Several. ‘War is hell’. ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy’.
You’ll no doubt regard them as cliches, but then, there’s an underlying truth to all cliches, isn’t there? And as for aid, they’ve had plenty. When does that tap get turned off, in your little utopia? A hundred years from now? Never?
“Well, no, I was just seeing whether you were capable of following the bloody things. “
Ah, the old ‘No, I meant to do that!’ excuse. Of course you did, dear boy. Of course you did…
“Well, why can’t you grasp that concept when aid’s in question, not military intervention?”
See above.
“Goodness, I hadn’t realised that my description was so accurate.”
About as accurate as anything else you’ve said on this thread. Sorry to be the one to have to point it out to you.
Right…
Even a stopped clock…
No.
War is, indeed, hell, although how that helps your case I’ve no idea. As for “no plan survives contact with the enemy“, well, that fails to explain the gassing of a city, the deceitful, and deadly, use of cluster bombs, the idle murder of citizens, including children, the casual torture and the near boundless profiteering; all promoted with lie after lie after lie.
Seems like you should change that phrase to “no one survives contact with the plan”.
Well, if the case proceeds to the Hague it won’t be for me to decide, though I’m sure there’d be substantial reparations. As it is; I think that “we” should provide funding for the building of essential physical structures – water, roads, electricity – so that Iraqis can have the resources to rebuild their own lives. There should, of course, be some kind of compensation for those whose families “we’ve” killed, or whose homes have been destroyed, though I can’t, in all in honest, say how it could be provided.
As I’ve said, Iraqis aren’t blessed with their rather corrupt and authoritarian government, but the last thing I want is the US exerting more influence over that.
Christ, it wasn’t an “excuse” – why the hell would I need to excuse an html slip? Will I never be able to forget that fateful day where I (Mary Mother of God!) directed you to a 40-fackin’-4 page?
I was just drawing attention to your naked attempts to change the subject.
*Looks above.*
Er, could you specify, please?
See, that’d only be effective if you’d shown me to be inaccurate on, well, anything (html aside, of course).
Oh, that’s no problem. An insult from somebody else might have stung.
“Who is this unspeakable shitebag called JuliaM? Can someone not beat some humanity into the batshit vending sociopath?”
Aaaaand right on cue, the other face of the left. The desire to do violence to anyone who doesn’t fall into lockstep with their cult’s ideas.
I can see why so many of you hate organised religion. You can’t stand the competition…
Oh, and I see from your website you are a frothing AGW devotee. In fact, you have an amusingly titled ‘cartoon’ – ‘Science: It works, bitches’.
Well then, let me leave you with this.
Perhaps you can work up another cartoon, entitled ‘Science: Don’t make us look at the facts, bitches!’
That’s a damn shame… might be time to just resettle them somewhere outside the marshes, then. Most of the Marsh Arabs are still living elsewhere in Iraq, or in Iran, and don’t particularly want to come back anyway, so you’d only be dealing with a small part of the population.
Also can’t help feeling that the average Marsh Arab probably didn’t have electricity or water in his mudhif even before 1991… most of them seem to have decided they are better off elsewhere.
[...] visitor trying to follow the link to Tony Blair’s website in this blog post at the educational establishment where they work found the site blocked by the London Grid for [...]
JuliaM: “The desire to do violence to anyone who doesn’t fall into lockstep with their cult’s ideas.”
Its metaphor, not a direct call for violence. Its not uncommon for humans to broadcast appeals for assistance from higher powers in the face of such frustrating circumstances as your presence here. If you genuinely feared for your safety at my hands you would have contacted the police, my IP would have been traced and I wouldn’t be here typing this to you. So your affront is clearly false and probably just part of an unsubtle attempt to brand me a leftie-pinko-communislamunistofascist. Let me assure you that- Blair, Bush and other war criminals notwithstanding- I am avowedly pacifist. “Fucking for virginity” ring any bells?
Does anyone else here think that climate change denial instantly invalidates any further comments?
Aaaaand right on cue, the other face of the left. The desire to do violence to anyone who doesn’t fall into lockstep with their cult’s ideas.
Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I’m being oppressed!
“Its metaphor, not a direct call for violence.”
I suspect that’s only because in real life, you’d be too afraid to carry it out, in case you got you arse kicked. The desire is still there, though…
“…just part of an unsubtle attempt to brand me a leftie-pinko-communislamunistofascist.”
Why would I need to waste any effort? You stand condemned of that through your very own words.
“Does anyone else here think that climate change denial instantly invalidates any further comments?”
No one intelligent, no.
Got an answer for the Problem of The Buoys and Their Awkward Data…?
No?
Thought not…