Abu Abbas knew extra in regards to the Iraqi Marshes than most, having lived there his whole life.
So when the Iraqi authorities of former dictator Saddam Hussein drained the wetlands of southern Iraq within the early Nineties, Abu Abbas witnessed the devastation.
Then a decade later, as younger males with picks and small water pumps started pulling down the embankments that saved water out of the previous wetlands after Hussein’s fall, he was amongst those that watched water re-enter the marshes.
It has not been plain crusing since. The marshes are struggling because of local weather change and mismanagement. And but, Abu Abbas’s optimism has remained.
Early final yr, mendacity in mattress along with his well being failing, he acquired a go to from his nephew, Jassim Al-Asadi.
“What’s the standing of the marshes?” Abu Abbas requested.
“Issues are depressing,” Jassim replied.
Earlier than Jassim may proceed, Abu Abbas lower him off.
“Don’t be afraid for the marshes,” he stated. “They’ll survive, even when the water is salty, so long as there are individuals such as you who will defend them.”
The marshes have been as soon as among the many largest wetlands on the planet, protecting 10,500sq km (4,050sq miles) in 1973, an space roughly the scale of Lebanon.
They have been residence to a various vary of wildlife and by the center of the twentieth century supported a human inhabitants estimated at 500,000.
The good cities of Ur, the place most biblical students imagine Abraham was born, and Uruk, the most important metropolis on the planet in 3200 BCE, lay adjoining to the marshes.
Whereas many of the wetlands lie inside Iraq, a smaller part often known as Hawr al-Azim is in Iran.
Throughout his lifetime, Abu Abbas noticed the pure cycles of creation and destruction of the wetlands as floods and drought affected conventional livelihoods based mostly on fishing, looking, reed manufacturing and farming.
On the identical time, he skilled the growing affect of human actions on the marshes: conflict, upstream dams, oil growth and agricultural air pollution.
