There are a lot of “firsts” to this story. The first of civilization. The first environmental agency in a newly democratic Iraq. Possibly a first national park. They all stem from an area in Southern Iraq, where the Tigris and the Euphrates River meet and where Biblical scholars cite as the place that formerly held the Garden of Eden.
According to Genesis, these wetlands were closed off from humanity when Adam and Eve sinned against God. In the early 1990s, the marshes took another beating, but this time, by dictator Saddam Hussein, who drained them as punishment for a Shiite uprising.
“Saddam’s soldiers came to our village and accused us of hiding terrorists,” Naim Aatai told Spiegal Online. “They shot at us and killed my brother. Then they burned down our huts.”
Today, the wetlands are making a comeback thanks to one man, Azzam Alwash. He’s a dual citizen of the US and Iraq, having immigrated to the states as a student in 1978. Alwash works as a a hydraulic engineer, now serving as the director of Nature Iraq, the nation’s first and only environmental group. Married to an American geologist and living in California, he often told his wife and two daughters that hiking in the state was nothing compared to his childhood hiking in these wetlands. It wasn’t until he returned to his homeland in 2003 that he witnessed the devastation for himself.
“I remembered water and green vegetation as far as the eye could see, but what I saw was nothing but desert, dust and the ruins of settlements,” he said.
Working with Curtis Richardson, an ecologist at Duke University, and receiving funding mainly from Italy (and at one time, from the US, Canada and Japan), Alwash dreams of making this into a tourist destination. Meanwhile, bombs are heard daily from Basra, Iraq, a city only 37 miles away. Many have left the project, fearing for their lives, but there have been some who have stayed, like Richardson.
“You do feel a little strange when you’re holding a pH monitor in your hand while everyone else is carrying a machine gun,” Richardson said. “Azzam is fighting a courageous battle, but he needs help.”
Help is coming from people like Broder Merkel of the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology. The German hydrogeologist has arrived to research sustainable oil production, among other things. Some of Iraq’s many oil reserves are underneath these wetlands.
“Maybe we can create incentives for the oil companies to contribute to the establishment of a nature reserve in return,” Alwash said.
For the sake of Eden, let’s hope so.
Photo by Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry via Wikimedia Commons.