UN to Help Iraq Restore Its Devastated Marshlands
Date: 27-Jul-04
Country: UN
The project aims to help restore the fragile environment and provide clean water and sanitation for the 85,000 people now thought to be living in the area some scholars believe is the site of the biblical Garden of Eden.
Saddam built barriers and levees to drain the once-abundant waters in the area in retaliation for what he saw as support by the Marsh Arabs for an uprising against him after the 1991 Gulf War.
As the marshes dried up, most of the area's 450,000 inhabitants were forced to flee, leaving only some 40,000 on the eve of the March 2003 U.S.-led war to oust Saddam.
After the war, residents began returning and breaking down the barriers, allowing water to again flow freely in a region where people had lived on small islands and moved around on thin wooden boats for over 2,000 years.
Satellite images show that about a fifth of the marshes were reflooded as of last April, the U.N. Environment Program said in a statement.
The new project will initially target around a dozen settlements, providing small-scale water treatment systems, some of which may be solar-powered, the agency said.