Saddam spoiled an ancient Eden

QURNAH, Iraq — Of all Saddam Hussein’s crimes, the most enduring may be the salt-encrusted moonscape that was once Eden, where punishment by water diversion has put to death an ancient way of life.

He not only killed many thousands by artillery shelling, fire-bombing reed hamlets or summary execution to quell rebellion after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but dried up the heart of the Fertile Crescent.

Satellite photos and up-close inspection reveal an ecological calamity along the Tigris and Euphrates that scientists say is matched in scale only by the deforestation of Amazonia and the drying of the Aral Sea.

And now, environmental specialists say, unless massive resources are put urgently to work to reverse the damage Saddam caused, the cradle of civilization will be barren desert forever.

As a mocking symbol, a dead tree stands amid dusty trash by an abandoned hotel in Qurnah, where the rivers meet. Though probably less than a few centuries old, Iraqis insist it is Adam’s apple tree.

Angered by the 1991 uprising and eager to remove sanctuary, Saddam ordered a new river dug between the Tigris and Euphrates. This change withered lush marshes where the Madan — the Marsh Arabs — thrived for 5,000 years.

Then he be-gan a systematic purge. Troops set fire to bulrushes, poisoned some remaining watercourses, and lobbed mortar shells into recalcitrant settlements. By some estimates, up to a fifth of the half-million Madan died, but such figures are impossible to confirm. Almost all families fled their reed homes.

If no one can calculate the human cost, Marsh Arabs see the damage daily. Children die young from diseases that thrive in fetid channels where even dwindling herds of water buffalo won’t drink.

“We feel like we have lost our lives,” said Khassum al-Hamdani as he guided a visitor across the squandered paradise. “If something is not done soon, we will die along with the marshes.”

About 40,000 Madan are in Iranian refugee camps. More cling miserably to dried-out marsh. Mr. Hamdani has a job in nearby Basra, but most others float about Iraq, destitute and unhappy.

“This was beautiful, so beautiful,” he said, perched in a canoe in an isolated patch of water barely deep enough to bathe a buffalo.

Thick marshland teeming with life once covered 8,000 square miles — the size of Massachusetts. Now 97 percent of the main marshes are dry. Less than a third is left of eastern marshes that reach into Iran.

Rice paddies and fishing grounds are gone. The gray wolf, the smooth-coated otter, the honey badger have died out. Some birds are now extinct, and global migrations have been disrupted. When wind blows, blinding sandstorms strip off what topsoil remains.

The last holdout is a patch of fertile marsh with towering qasab reeds that straddles the Iraq-Iran border. It is called Majnoon, “crazy” in Arabic, because the oil beneath it often gurgles.

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