War, Regional Drought & Electricity Shortages Exacerbate Iraq Environmental Catastrophe

Iraq used to export food. This year it will be importing 80% of what gets eaten in a nation that was once the breadbasket of the Middle East.

The last two years of drought are exacerbating the effects of war and mismanagement; doubling the frequency of sand storms, killing trees and crops, drying up riverbeds and marshes and turning arable land into a desert wasteland.

Recently one of the worst sandstorms in living memory lasted an entire week, choking throats, clogging eyes and afflicting asthma sufferers in particular. But electricity problems might have even more far reaching effects.

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Iraqi experts contend that tank movements in the desert helped loosen sand, although the American military disputes that. But all agree on the other precipitating factors: government policies pushing farmers to try to grow crops on very marginal land. When farming failed they abandoned the tilled land, but cleared of its natural vegetation it became arid wasteland.

The drought has caused a lack of electricity that has exacerbated the situation in a vicious circle::

• Electric power stations - that need water to make steam - had to be shut down because of the lack of water.
• Electricity shortages dried crops for lack of power to pump water along irrigation channels.
• For lack of electricity, people chopped firewood which eroded the landscape yet more, causing more drought.

And of course, electricity supplies were erratic under Saddam Hussein’s rule and taken out as part of the Bush “War on Terror”.

But now, the regional drought has dramatically depleted the amount of water available. Last year’s rainfall was 80% below normal; this year only half as much rain fell as usual.

Neighbors on all sides have been dealing with their own drought-related problems. Turkey and Syria have cut the flow of the Euphrates to Iraq in half - to keep water supplies for their own countries. And even the Euphrates is drying up. Water has been diverted from the Tigris to keep it flowing.

Now Iran, too, has been damming rivers that reach into Iraq, drying out riverbeds in the east of the country.

Seawater is now leaching up into depleted rivers. Fresh drinking water is in short supply. The marshes of southern Iraq, drained by Saddam Hussein and then re-flooded by the U.S. military in 2003, are drying up, causing the flight of environmental refugees to the cities for lack of drinking water.

The Environment Minister Narmin Othman says the new nation needs international aid to plant trees and revive agriculture. It also needs help negotiating water-sharing treaties with its neighbors, which previous governments neglected to do.

Iraq is among the increasing number of countries worldwide that need to find ways to combat desertification.

Image via Stu in Iraq
Via the LA Times

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