The Marsh Arabs' Story

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Symposium: "Environmental Refugees: Anticipation, Intervention, Restoration"

Tuesday, February 13, 1996, Baltimore, Maryland
During the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

 [Program began with excerpts from the 1993 documentary "Saddam's Latest War: A Michael Wood Commentary" by Maya Vision, London]

Stuart M. Leiderman, University of New Hampshire:

Good afternoon and thank you for attending our AAAS symposium, "Environmental Refugees: Anticipation, Intervention, Restoration". Today, there are likely millions of people who worry about refugees. There are probably hundreds of millions who are refugees of one sort or another. The latest we've been able to estimate, among ourselves, is that perhaps half of all people who are uprooted and fleeing dangers in the world are those who are doing it because of the environment, or because a large part of their reason is environmental.

As I've put down in my introductory paper and distributed to you, I am trying to review, just briefly, the appearance of this term "environmental refugees" which first, in a fairly noticeable way, appeared in a United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) booklet. It was called "Environmental Refugees" and was written in 1985. I have a copy here, and after the meeting you are all welcome to look through it and through the rest of the traveling library I've brought. In it, there was a simple statement that defined who we are talking about today: "This is a booklet about people, a special category of people. It is about environmental refugees, those who have had to leave their habitat temporarily or permanently because of the potential environmental hazard or disruption in their life supporting systems."

As I explain in my paper, up until recently there have only been a few dozen articles and reports written specifically about the subject of environmental refugees. I've come to this subject after being an independent environmental and public health investigator, advocate, and sympathizer of humanitarian and environmental causes. I've been an environmental refugee myself at least a couple of times; not life-threatening situations, but with the same kinds of feelings of being threatened, uprooted, persecuted, and driven by forces beyond my control. Now, I'm at the University of New Hampshire to try to do something in a methodological way about my concerns, and certainly to try to accelerate the awareness, writing and interaction between people who care about refugees and those who are suffering from the environment.

There have only been a few dozen articles written until recently and, oddly enough, they are primarily by people who are not refugees. This is a problem. As any of you know, it takes more than just the performer to make a performance, it takes more than the actor or the musician to do it; it takes more than the President of the United States to make a country. In the case of a movement to prevent environmental refugees and restore the environment, we also must hear from the refugees themselves. So I'm hoping that this program will give us some practice with that kind of chemistry...the difference between the people who are writing about it and the people who are actually experiencing it.

Now, in the last two years, something very interesting has happened. Computer library systems have been invented to search for terms and, last month, I punched up the term "environmental-refugees" on a new World Wide Web program. I found a hundred and four entries. You are all welcomed to look at these government documents, testimony, planning papers from municipalities and whole regions, studies about global warming, studies about desertification. Hardly any studies were specifically about "environmental refugees", but each one of them contains this term. And, I guess, there's about twenty pounds of environmental refugee literature here. So, you all are welcome to pass around these binders as we are talking today.

This is the point we are at now...from the point of view of those who are not refugees themselves. I don't want to hear any more argument about the existence of environmental refugees; I don't want to have to continue to defend the definition of environmental refugees, or whether they should be officially recognized by the United Nations. They are there and we may be part of them. At any moment, I may be one, again, if my friendly nuclear power plant blows up down the road from the University of New Hampshire.

There are plenty of people in the United States and in Canada and in the rest of the western world who are also experiencing varieties of environmental pressure. I wanted to set this sort of tone today, and I've tried to invite people whom I've come to know, and about whom I've heard good reports from all over the world.

"Environmental refugees" is not a Third World problem exclusively. Thus, I'm not only interested in environmental stress and the cause, as related to violence in developing countries. I'm also interested in it as related to countries that are developed, and in countries that are disintegrating. And, as I said as succinctly as I can in this paper, I believe that environmental refugees are not only something human, in and of themselves, but can be looked at as an indicator: a bio-indicator of our overall quality of life, and a social indicator of our competence in managing natural resources.

For some of you who eat and breathe statistics, perhaps you can relate to this concept. The United Nations, for example, have been trying to develop new indices, and other agencies have been trying to find ways to better evaluate their programs; and so in this case, I am suggesting environmental refugees as indicators.

You'll find the abstracts of our speakers included in my paper. I'll introduce our entire panel and then go on to our presentations.

Rend Rahim Francke is from the Iraq Foundation in Washington, D.C. I learned of her last year; we've worked closely to develop today's paper and audio-visual materials and to gather as gripping a presentation as we can about the situation which we call "The Tragedy of the Southern Iraqi Marshes" and the people who were there.

Ms. Francke is joined by two gentlemen from the United Kingdom, Yousif Al Khoei and Dr. Laith Kubba. They are here today representing the film producers, Maya Vision, whose film, "Saddam's Latest War", we were showing before the start of our session, and the foundation that bears the name of Mr. Al Khoei's grandfather [Shi'a Islam's most senior cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qassem al Khoei, who died in 1992 while under Iraqi house arrest]. They have brought with them a statement from Michael Wood, the film's commentator and the person who was able to bring this story so pointedly to both the BBC and the PBS over the last couple of years.

The second speaker will be Dr. Michelle Leighton Schwartz, representing the Natural Heritage Institute. Her talk will be about environmental refugees from Mexico...; it is as shocking as any environmental refugee episode in the world. The estimates are that close to a million people a year are moving because of environmental problems in that country. She is part of the team at the Institute that has now published four or five investigations concerning environmental refugees in different parts of the world, including India and Brazil. Those investigations are cited in your reading list in the back of my paper; you can write for them and you can tell other people that documentation about environmental refugees is already underway.

Then, Dr. Stephen Leatherman, from the Coastal Research Laboratory, University of Maryland, whom I first met last Spring at Oxford, when he was part of the working group that produced a compendium giving a quantitative dimension to people affected by environmental causes around the world. That effort was led by the Climate Institute in Washington, D.C. and Dr. Norman Myers at Oxford in the United Kingdom. Dr. Leatherman will hit home the message of environmental refugees from sea-level rises. His research at the University of Maryland concerns people living in the Chesapeake Bay, and then, jumping to the other side of the world, to the threatened islands of the Pacific.

And then, Charlotte Brody is here today from the Citizens Clearinghouse on Hazardous Wastes (CCHW). She is standing in for CCHW's founder, Lois Gibbs, and standing in for hundreds of thousands of people around the United States who are victims of toxic wastes and toxic chemicals...many of whom have had to leave very quickly, others only after they learned that they couldn't stay there any longer. It's really important for her to be representing those people here today. The citizens toxics movement has been one of the social movements in the world where the refugees and victims have learned how to speak out themselves and then decide what strategy they want to take...not leave it up to the analysts to put a name to their plight.

So, I want to thank everybody for being here. Some have come a very long way. All have come at sacrifice to other tasks they would normally be doing. I hope everyone appreciates their effort. I want to acknowledge Mr. Fred Martinez from Video International Productions, Woodstock, New York, who is a long-time friend and who has been our technical advisor in the planning and holding of this symposium. I also want to thank the people at the AAAS for accepting the findings of reviewers on my proposed subject. This is totally new to the scientific community. So, I want to thank them for forebearing with us, for trusting us and for giving us the room where we meet today. Let me introduce Ms. Rend Rahim Francke...and I hope that you'll both enjoy and learn from being at this meeting, and that you won't be shy about speaking up at the proper time.

Rend Rahim Francke: "Refugees from Environmental Warfare in Iraq"

Thank you very much, Stuart. I feel, perhaps, somewhat redundant, if you've sat through Michael Wood's film, because it captures the essence of the problem that I want to speak about. And, as I talk a little bit more about it, I will be using some of the footage from the film, although there will be some other footage I'll use from other sources. If I could have the slide please, on the geography of Iraq.

The Iraqi marshlands are an extensive area of water that lies in the southern basin of the Tigris and Euphrates. Roughly, I'm going to pull this pointer across...roughly across there, and a little bit into Iran. The marshes are divided into the central section, or what's called the Al-Amarah marsh, and an eastern section which goes into Iran for some way, and then a western section which is along and south of the Euphrates.

The marshes are not uniform. You get some of the very deep water, there are some shallower areas of water, some are seasonal...they depend on flooding or rainwater, but essentially, in normal times, the overall area of the marshes is about ten thousand square miles, which is roughly the area of the State of Vermont. At its peak, at the highest seasons of flooding, the area could go up to about thirteen thousand square miles, so it is a considerably large area at its peak, and in fact, very large even in the dry seasons.

The water from the marshes comes from a variety of sources. If you look at the River Tigris..., there are a lot of distributaries of the Tigris that you can't see on this map, but you'll see on another later on. A lot of Tigris' distributaries run south...north-south into the marsh area. And then from the Euphrates, you have distributaries into the central marshes, and also ones that go down into south and west of the Euphrates.

So, the major source of the marsh water is the distributaries; other sources are the flooding of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Rainwater has some impact, although to a lesser extent; and seepage from the distributaries and the flooding.

The Iraqi marshes are the largest wetlands system in southwest Asia, and they are the largest area for migrating fowl in the whole of Eurasia...the western Eurasian subcontinent. Every year, millions of birds migrate through the marshes or are supported by marsh waters. There are hundreds of thousands of species of fish in the marshlands and several of these species, both of waterfowl and of fish, and also mammals, are threatened. There are about fourteen threatened species of birds and at least three of mammals that we know of. Some of these are endemic species and some of them are migratory or can live elsewhere.

[film narrative] "...fished, harvested the reed beds, and tended their water buffalos since the dawn of history. These pictures were taken in the 1970s when their world was still intact.... As we're all taught at school, the Bible's story of the Garden of Eden originated here, and the Marsh Arabs culture can be traced back five thousand years."

The destruction of the environment of the Iraqi marshes and the destruction of life...of human life...in the Iraqi marshes, really is the story of an environmental and human catastrophe that the world has watched without any protest. My contention is that the tragedy of the Iraqi marshes does not belong to the Marsh Arabs alone...it does not belong to Iraq alone. This is a loss for humanity's cultural, ecological and historical heritage.

The area of the Iraqi marshes is the ancient land of Sumer, and this is the civilization with which mankind's recorded history begins. The culture of the Marsh Arabs as we now know it is, in a sense, the heir and descendant of the Sumerian culture. And many of the essential features of the marshlands culture preserve the features that we understand to have existed under Sumerian culture. So, what we have in the marshlands is really part of humanity's cultural and historical heritage, and this is what is being destroyed in the destruction of the Iraqi marshlands.

The population of the marshes, which is also the Ma'dan, is somewhat imprecise; it varies seasonally, and has been estimated at three hundred fifty thousand to five hundred thousand. The unique life that the Ma'dan sustained was a balance between their human needs and the environmental needs around them. There was a use of the environment, of the ecology, which benefitted their lives but which also benefitted and enriched their environment.

The recent story of the marshes goes back at least to the Iran-Iraq War when, in the late 1980s, the Iraqi government began to build dikes as part of strategic defenses against Iran. If you look at the area, essentially, these dikes were built along the eastern side of the border, in Iraq, in order to prevent the waves of Iranian forces coming into Iraq. The way they used the water as a strategic defense, was occasionally by flooding this area. But more often, and most notably, a very large moat was constructed down there, which drew up water from the Tigris and from the marshes, and created a natural barrier from Iraq against Iranian attacks.

The consequence of this big moat and this fooling around with the environment was really, by 1990-91, a considerable drying of the eastern section of the marshes. But the worst part of the environmental degradation began to occur after the Gulf War in 1991. Essentially, what the Iraqis started to do was build canals and diversion moats on the Tigris and on the Euphrates that would take away the water and prevent seepage and prevent water from the distributaries from going into the marshes.

If you look at the pointer, a fifty kilometer long canal was built east-west across the basin of the Tigris. That prevented the distributaries, that were going north-south, from pouring their water into the marshes...the central marsh area. So, there was a canal that went east-west, and then this fed into a canal which went north-south and prevented the water from flowing from the Tigris, in this direction, from going into the marshes. So, the water from all of these distributaries was channeled into these canals, and straight into the Basra canal, and taken right into the Shatt al Arab. That was on the eastern side.

On the western side, on the Euphrates side, a dam was built across the Euphrates in An Nasiriyah. And, from the dam, another canal was built that essentially diverted the water from the Euphrates altogether and circled the Euphrates, going down to Basra and then to Shatt al Arab [?]. So that instead of the water running into the Euphrates, and seeping into the marshes, the Euphrates became a dry riverbed.

A third thing that was done was, where the Tigris and Euphrates traditionally meet...remember, the Euphrates has become a dry riverbed...a dam was built across the Euphrates down here to prevent clean water from going back into the Euphrates and taking the back door into the marshes.

These are some aerial views [film] of the engineering projects that were taken by British Royal Air Force of the marshes, and this film is from 1993; there are two, one from 1993 and one from '94. You can see the extent of the canals and moats that have been built.

Now, supporting the system of canals that were built to divert the rivers...the waters of the Euphrates and the waters of the Tigris...the whole area was dotted with causeways and dikes that compartmentalized the remaining waters of the marshes, and that greatly promoted the drying of the areas. Also, these causeways were built as roads for the Iraqi army, so that they could penetrate deep into the marshes in areas where it wouldn't have been otherwise possible to enter. This is near the Euphrates and I think you will see a picture of one of the dams they built in the northern section where they built the drain that circles the Euphrates River.

These were vast engineering projects and it took the Iraqi government from 1992 until late 1993 and possibly 1994 to complete them. The enormous amount of manpower and money that went into the building of these canals and dams at a time when Iraq was under severe pressure, is a testament of the importance attached to the draining of the marsh area and the sanitizing of the region.

Here we have a series of satellite photos. These were taken over a period of time and they show you the progressive drainage of the marshes. This photo was taken in 1972 and shows the marshes as they were before the drainage began. You see the extent of the water. This area is the central marshes, and if you look there, perhaps you can see...this is the Euphrates, and this is the Tigris, and this area is the central marshes.

The next picture was taken in late 1991 before the major works began but it was after the big moat was built along the Iranian border had taken its effect on the marshes; you can already see the drying of the region.

This one was taken in March 1993. You can see the east-west canal that blocks the Euphrates and the north-south canal running from that into Shatt al Arab near Basra, and you can see the extent of the drying, which is in red.

This is late 1993, of the same area, and the final picture that I'll show you is...if you remember the 1972 picture...this is all of the same region, of the central marshes. In the 1972 satellite photo, the whole region is covered with water. This photo was take towards the end of 1993: the blue areas are the areas that have water, in fact it is a superimposed image, not a simple satellite photo. The blue areas are the areas that still had water in late 1992. The red areas...there are two red areas, although one is not clear...these were the areas of water that were still there in late 1993. So, in just one year, we had a drying of this...all that, all that, all that...leaving only two little spots of water left in the marshes in comparison to the 1972 satellite picture where the entire area is deep blue and obviously with deep marsh water.

Now, clearly, the problem of the marshes is not simply an environmental problem, and this is where we talk about environmental refugees. The Marsh Arabs had a much more integrated life with their environment...with their ecology...than other societies would normally have. They were totally dependent on their environment. Their water buffalo lived in the marshes, and they got their milk and milk products from water buffalo. They got wild fowl and domesticated fowl from the area, such as ducks. They got their fish from the marshes, they got reeds for the construction of houses and boats, which were totally indispensable...the only way to get around was by boat. And finally, their drinking water was also from the marsh area. Also, their rice and millet; the islands that they lived on were floating islands and you could actually cultivate rice and millet. A great deal of rice and other grains were cultivated in those areas.

So, the Marsh Arabs were totally integrated into their environment, and their environment was their livelihood, their life. Without the precise equilibria that existed and the biodiversity that existed in their environment, they could not sustain their lives.

And so, the human impact of this drying was devastating. Drying the marshes simply meant death for the Marsh Arabs. It was much more severe than any other community, because they had this organic dependence on their environment and the cutting off the water meant cutting off all sources of life in the area. To make matters worse, throughout this period, the Iraqi government...that is, from 1991 onwards, and indeed partly somewhat before, but we certainly know that from 1991 onwards...an economic blockade was imposed on the Marsh Arabs. The Marsh Arabs who normally used the water buffalos, the rice and millet, fish and so on, for trading in the urban areas and for bringing into the marshes manufactured goods...they were prevented from taking any of their goods outside the marshes, and the government also prevented any trade with the Marsh Arabs. So that you can neither take anything out nor can anything get in. Well, with the depletion of the water and the depletion of the life resources for the Marsh Arabs, the only way you could bring in food and water to drink and the necessities of life, was really through smuggling.

Essentially, it was mostly the women who conducted the smuggling at great risk to their lives, and often these women were captured and they were severely punished. There is a very good account the economic blockade in the reports that the U.N. human rights rapporteur for Iraq, Max van der Stoel, has written for the United Nations. And the situation in the marshes, including the economic blockade, the effects of it, are included in several of the reports that he submitted in 1993-94, and I refer you for greater detail to those reports.

As areas around their islands began to dry up, the marsh villages had to flee from one region to the other, from one island to the other, to find water, to find life sustenance. But as the desiccation of the land spread, it became much more difficult to find anywhere to go, and eventually all of them, one way or another, had to leave the area.

[film segment] The greatest plea of the Marsh Arabs was for water, and time and time again, in film after film that were smuggled out of the marshes or brought into Iran, is a plea to restore the waters, because water was the air for the Ma'dan, for the Marsh Arabs.

[film segment] These refugees are [at the time of filming] inside the marshes still, and this is what is called Hi-8 video footage that was smuggled out of the marshes in 1993.

[film continuing] "...now fleeing across the border into Iran. Two thousand families have come in the last month. These images were shot in early Fall. Sixty thousand Shi'a refugees now live in camps in the borderlands; they live in shock from the treatment they have..."

Now, the question arises, why did the Iraqi government carry out all this drainage? One of the clues we have is in a rather shocking and chilling document that was discovered in 1991 after the Gulf War and after a massive uprising by the population against the Iraqi regime. The document is called "Plan of Action for the Marshes". We actually have a slide of that document...I don't know if it is possible to put it up.

Essentially, this document is marked "Confidential" and is a security document produced by one of the many security apparati, and it is endorsed by Saddam Hussein himself. The "Plan of Action" talks about imposing an economic blockade on the marshes. First of all, it brands the Marsh Arabs as "hostile and subversive," and because they are blamed for harboring dissidents. And indeed, the marshes have been an historic refugee for Iraqi dissidents...that the Or Horesh itself is rather docile and benevolent. But because this has been an historic area for refuge, the whole area became branded as "subversive and hostile".

The 1988 document talks about plans to destroy the marshes through environmental and military action, and it talks specifically about burning houses, about poisoning the water, about detaining people, and about an economic blockade. The most ominous part of the document talks about "relocating the marsh inhabitants on dry land."

This document of 1988 clearly was something that the government planned to do, however, it probably lacked the resources in 1988 to start doing it, and then, of course, there was the diversion of the War. However, immediately after the War, it became a top priority for the Iraqi government to implement this plan of action.

In a sense, this doesn't quite explain why the Iraqi government would undertake such a massive project for environmental and human terrorism. The issue becomes an issue of control, and the marshes were, in a sense, out of control of the government, because they were simply inaccessible. You couldn't take in your tanks, you couldn't take in your armored vehicles, and you couldn't send in your troops into the marshes. It became imperative for the Iraqi government to spread its control into that area in order to deter any dissidents from taking refuge in the region.

The other possible reason that has come up is that the area of the marshes contains Iraq's largest oil reserves. And, these are for the most part...some of them are exploited oil reserves...but for the most part, they are not tapped yet. There are known about, they have been measured. Iraq, in fact, has the second largest oil reserves in the world. And, if the marsh area proves to have as much as is suspected they have, Iraq may come up having the largest oil reserves in the world.

There are several oil fields in that region that the Iraq government knows about and has already reached agreement with French and Russian oil companies for exploitation and exploration in that area. This may be an additional reason for the huge campaign against the Marsh Arabs in the marsh environment. In essence it is a question of control, and the Iraqi government wanted that control one way or another.

Now, in addition to the environmental warfare, the Iraqi government has conducted a military campaign against the marshes. I want to show you some footage that was, again, taken by the [British] Royal Air Force of burning villages in the marsh area...in the Euphrates section of the marsh area. What you see from the air, and I hope that you can see it. Do you see those plumes of smoke? When the areas were dried, the Iraqi military would sweep in and they would...the villages would undergo...there was a lot of artillery shelling of the villages. Before 1992, in fact, there were helicopter gunships that strafed the villages, but after the no-fly zone was declared in the south, they relied on heavy artillery for shelling, and also on military troops going into the villages and burning or possibly detonating...we're not quite sure what weapons were used.

In one of the reports of the United Nations human rights rapporteur, he estimated almost two hundred villages had been destroyed by 1993, through burning and explosions, so the Iraqi government really conducted a massive campaign to evacuate the marshes to prompt the campaign against the environment...the environmental campaign and the military campaign.

This is a film of a village called Al-Agar about which we have quite a lot of information. Al-Agar was attacked in May 1992 by the Iraqi military...in fact, was shelled...and it happened during a wedding, and we know that in once instance of shelling, twenty to thirty people were killed in Al-Agar. Al-Agar was attacked many times over, but by the time this film was taken in the summer of 1993, there was nothing left of the village; all eight hundred families had to leave it. The families...there has been an attempt to follow the history of those families...they first left Al-Agar and went to other islands in the marshes. And then, from there they had to move around the marsh area until eventually most of them ended up in Iran. And when we talk about a village of eight hundred...we're talking about large families...we could be talking about a family of husband and wife and children, perhaps brothers and sisters, or a third generation, grandparents; possibly as many as eight to ten people. Eight hundred families is tantamount to about eight thousand people. [film segment] "...they left behind a single black flag saying, "Redeemer, save us."

The other aspect of the military campaign is that there are many, many reports of, first of all, poisoning of water. This is something that was cited in the 1988 Iraq document. The other aspect is chemical warfare. There is related to...this film talks about napalm being used in the marsh. There is further evidence of other types of organic poisons and other chemicals used in the shelling against the marsh villages. It is hasn't been possible to ascertain this, but some doctors...a British team of doctors, actually...went out to the Iran-Iraq border, and they detected some effects of chemical warfare on the victims.

This is Iran, and this is the first place where Iraqi refugees were fleeing to. [BBC film segment] "...stories of constant shelling. Just over five thousand made it to the border and their numbers are increasing every day. There may be as many as fifty thousand people trying to get out; it's a perilous journey with only the reed beds for cover. Abu Nagid [?] told me that he had taken his family of ten out. Some had to be carried. [translation]: 'We were near the border, and we had to cross a military area of Saddam's soldiers. We had heard that other escorts were being killed by Saddam's soldiers.' It's not the first time these people have faced Iraqi guns. They are Shi'a Muslims, and many were involved in the uprising against Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War. They have not been forgiven. Everyone we talked to said Iraqi engineers had drained the marshes of the water they depend on. Has Naftali [?] was one of the first to come here. 'Saddam has dried up the water,' she said, 'blocked it and built streets across it. Our children are dying. What can we do?' The disease has taken hold; with daytime temperatures above 50 degrees [C], heatstroke is common. There are even cases of cholera; many are suffering from dysentery. This doctor didn't want to be identified; such is the fear of Saddam Hussein. '...Three hundred patients a day. But a few days ago, we saw about seven hundred.'"

The condition of the refugees in Iran is very problematic; Iran, of course, has a four-million strong refugee problem, most of them from Afghanistan, some from Tajikistan. The component of southern Iraqi refugees is considerable. We know that in '93 and '94, something like thirty thousand refugees had escaped, but clearly there were some before and some after that. In 1995, a statistic on the number of southern refugees in camps in Iran...in refugee camps...was a hundred ninety-three thousand. Now, it's not clear exactly where they come from, but the bulk of them are from the marshes. The situation in the camps is not very good because the Iranian government is stretched to its limit. The UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] can't operate there very effectively. In fact, because this region is a military zone, both on the Iranian side and the Iraqi side, access for NGO's [non-governmental organizations] is really bad, and very limited, and most of the work that is being done is being done by Iranian government agencies.

The other problem that the refugees have...or that we have to deal with...is that countries are reluctant to give to the Iranian government directly because many of them don't want to be seen supporting the Iranian effort.

There is another aspect of the refugee problem which I hope that my colleague will talk about, but which I want to mention: we talked about the refugees fleeing to Iran, and a very large proportion, indeed, did manage to get to Iran...however, out of a population of three hundred fifty thousand, a hundred thousand or hundred fifty thousand managed to get to Iran, that still leaves us with about two hundred thousand people.

We know that marsh area is depopulated now because it cannot sustain life. What has happened to those two hundred thousand people? In all probability, these are people who have been internally displaced inside Iraq. In other words, they have left the marshes, their natural habitat; they have left their homes, and they have drifted into the surrounding countryside, surrounding towns, villages. And they are homeless, they are destitute, they don't have jobs, and they really live upon the mercy of the community...certainly at the mercy of the Iraqi government...for whom they are, ipso facto, suspect people. So they are condemned people to begin with, and their presence inside Iraq as a "tainted population" is both dangerous and alarming.

I want to talk a little about the possibility of restoring the marshes. There have been some statistics done on the hydrology and, what I understand is that it is not impossible, although it is not as easy as simply bombing their barrages or the dams. It has to be a very gradual process. Now, there are some endemic species that are going to be lost, that have been lost, and we can't replace them. But nevertheless, both in terms of the environment as a whole and in terms of the animal life in that environment, a lot can be improved if it can be done gradually over a large period of time. The problem of the refugees will remain a problem so long as their area is not rehabilitated and, I don't see any prospect of rehabilitation under the present circumstances. There is a political problem that has to be overcome; primarily a political problem that has to be overcome, if the whole area is to be rehabilitated and reconstituted. Thank you.

I'd like to introduce Mr. Al Khoei, who is a member of the Al-Khoei Foundation and who has also worked with Maya Vision and Michael Wood in producing the film which is called "Saddam's Latest War" or "Saddam's Killing Fields"...it has two names. Here in the U.S., it was shown as "Saddam's Latest War".

Yousif Al Khoei, Al-Khoei Foundation (and also representing Maya Vision)

Thank you. I'll read out a very short statement from Michael Wood; and I believe it will answer any questions you may have about our visits to the marshes:

"Saddam's Killing Fields": Statement by Rebecca Dobbs and Michael Wood (Maya Vision, London)

"It is two years since the showing of our film, "Saddam's Killing Fields" in Britain, "Saddam's Latest War" in the U.S. We made the film, about events in South Iraq after the Gulf War, because there had been no coverage in the western media of this tragedy. In human terms the disaster which has overtaken Iraq is probably bigger than Bosnia. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights calls it one of the clearest cases of massive violation of human rights since World War 2, but nothing has been done by the international community. They have simply exacerbated the situation by isolating Iraq and the imposition of sanctions.

"The tragedy in South Iraq is also an environmental disaster. The largest fresh water system in the Near East has been deliberately destroyed by the Iraqi regime. With it has gone one of the most remarkable cultures in the world. The Marsh Arabs, whose roots go back over 5 millennia, have been largely wiped out already, killed, poisoned, imprisoned, confined to Iraqi shanty towns, or driven into exile in Iran. Along with their environment and society, many species of animal, fish and birds have been destroyed. All that has happened since 1991 and again the international community has done nothing to prevent it.

"As the film shows, the environmental disaster in South Iraq has been deliberately engineered by the Iraqi regime. The British aerial surveillance footage which is available for viewing at this conference proves the gigantic scale of the project and shows the river Tigris has been canalised to flow straight into the sea and the Euphrates directed uselessly into the desert. The Iraqi regime's claim that the work was for an agricultural reclamation project could not be more clearly exposed: their new claim that the draining of the marshes is caused by the Turkish Euphrates dam is equally mendacious.

"This environmental and human disaster is not an act of God. It has been deliberately created by a tyrannical government as a control measure, because the marsh people have always been independent of the State, and the marshes have become a haven of opposition. But perhaps this is not so different from the way other authoritarian states have destroyed societies and landscapes in the name of progress and development. In this case, our sources agree that Saddam Hussein undertook the drainage of the marshes simply to remove the inhabitants and make their habitat dry land. There has been no reaction from the U.N. despite the terms of the 1991 cease fire (Resolution 688) and despite the repeated warnings of their Special Rapporteur.

"The first transmission of our film in the U.S. in February 1994 was followed by a shallow and ill-briefed interview at the White House by Bill Clinton's national security advisor on the near East, Martyn Indyk: this simply confirmed that the U.S., like the British, had no policy towards Iraq more than two years after the devastation of the country in the Gulf War, except economic sanctions. They still have not. Iraq was one of the richest countries in the region in human and natural resources. With peace and democracy it was potentially one of the most progressive. The effect of the last 15 years of Western policy has been to ruin the country and with it to shatter democratic Iraqis' hopes for change.

"As for the marshes, though they could still be regenerated at least in part, we do not believe this will happen, even were Saddam to go. The governments of France and Russia have already signed lucrative deals to exploit the oil fields under the marshes, thereby colluding with the perpetrators of mass murder and environmental terrorism. Unless a miracle happens, Saddam has got away with it. Most democratic-minded Iraqis are now deeply disillusioned with the conduct and morality of Western policy--especially our long support of Saddam. For them, the time of miracles is long past."

Thank you.

Leiderman: Dr. Laith Kubba, would you like to say a few words?

Laith Kubba, Al-Khoei Foundation

Thank you very much. I'll try to be brief; if I could attempt to put some sense into this complicated problem just in a few minutes. To say that Iraq and what you saw provides a case study for obvious environmental issues. Particularly, I think it shows a case study of an ineffective protest in the case of Iraq. There have been many disasters that are caused worldwide by governments, and I think that in the last few years, Iraq in particular caused a few environmental disasters such as the burning of oil fields, of letting oil into the Gulf, or drying the marshes. But this one in particular, because it was so predictable. It took place under the observation of various governments, it was documented by airplanes, everybody knew it was taking place, and everybody knew that the long-term effects of it would be irreversible. Yet it took place. And, although I am a civil engineer by profession, and I specialize in soil mechanics, I have been trying to lobby on this issue the last four to five years, and I realize that a simple, straightforward problem like this cannot be stopped for a variety of reasons. I think it's important to bring it to the attention of people, especially in the science circles.

The biggest obstacle on the scene was actually the legal issue, to do with sovereignty. That keyword gave the pretext for the Iraqi government to do whatever it can within international law. Regrettably, there aren't enough conventions at the moment, or if there are conventions they cannot have any enforcement mechanisms to stop such atrocity from taking place.

The second, think, fact that one must always bear in mind, is that Iraq has always conflicting agendas when it comes [to] environmental issues, and regrettably, the Iraq government had very soft spots by which its agenda of security, of exerting maximum control over that area, was shared by others such as by some oil companies who have spotted that area as being rich in oil, by the need for Iraq to have strict border control...for future governments, as far as Iraq is concerned...and so on.

The only element, the only side that brought some result was the one to do with the human agenda. The humanitarian suffering was actually highlighted by U.N. agencies, the Human Rights Watch, by Amnesty International, and with some lobbying, and again coinciding with some political interest. The pressure brought the no-fly zone by which the Iraqi helicopters were stopped from flying over that area. But no recommendations or resolutions went as far as stopping the dams being built and the drying of the marshes taking place. And although our campaign over the last few years brought some publicity which has been effective, and some magazines and specialized magazines on the environment, and attracted some notable persons such as Prince Charles of Britain, who added his voice to the campaign, there was actually very little done in terms of scientific study on what's happening in that area.

The only good piece of research that was done is by Exeter University; this was sponsored partly by the AMAR [Assisting Marsh Arabs and Refugees] Appeal and to bring to attention what's happening. And the essence of that study says that unless something is done within the next five to ten years, then the damage in that area is irreversible.

Very briefly, we have managed to scratch the surface and win a few battles on this issue. But regrettable, I have to say we've lost the war on trying to save that area, and certainly what the Iraqi government has always called areas like these, they call them the "Triangle of Death", i.e. they need to create a triangle of security by which no living soul can move. They have to assure that no sources of life exist in areas they consider vital to their security. As I said, in that respect, I think I regret to say that we have lost the war and the Iraqi government has managed to exert its authority and life in that area. Thank you very much.

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 Stuart M. Leiderman
Environmental Response
leidermn@christa.unh.edu