The Mesopotamian marshes risk drying up due to drought and poor water resource management. The story of the activists fighting to prevent Iraq from losing its rivers.
The first time Salman Kharillah tasted the water of the Tigris river he was 15 years old. To avoid becoming the target of a militia, he had decided to leave school and find a job. Those were the years between 2005 and 2006, marked by high levels of violence among the troops who lorded it over Iraq. For Iraqi teenagers there were few alternatives: "You had to avoid getting killed on your way home from school, and if you weren't part of a militia you risked being kidnapped or forced to join one," he recalls. Shortly afterwards, Salman began working for the organisation Nature Iraq as a laboratory analysis assistant in Baghdad, and within a year he had become its head.
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Today, this thirty-year-old Iraqi works as coordinator of the advocacy campaign Save the Tigris and Iraqi marshes, launched in 2012 by numerous Iraqi organisations and supported by the non-governmental organisation Un ponte per…, with the aim of drawing international attention to Iraq's heritage and water resources. Every six months, Salman travels to the Mesopotamian marshes to check the water levels of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and taste their waters. "If I can't go regularly, I test the water in Baghdad," he says.
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When we meet him, it is a sweltering day at the end of June. By the first light of dawn, the temperature has already nearly touched 40 degrees. Baghdad is still drowsy, but a group of young activists is waiting for a minibus to arrive. They are between 17 and 29 years old and belong to various Iraqi civil society organisations. The group's destination is the Marshes Festival in Chibayish, a town 400 kilometres south of the capital, in the heart of the fertile crescent. "We're going to see our beautiful marshes and the consequences of dams on the environment and the local population," says Salman.
Among them are members of the Iraqi social forum, of Sport against violence and of the network of Iraqi activists built around the Iraqi civil society solidarity initiative. There are human rights lawyers, students from the faculties of languages and engineering. There are photographers, journalists, artists and filmmakers. Their goal? To defend water and the environment.
"Our politicians don't consider water a national priority," explains Ali Alkharhi, activist, founder of the Humat Dijlah association and expert on water issues. "On one hand we have a problem of internal management, such as the absence of modern irrigation methods and the waste of water in intensive farming. On the other hand there is a problem of weakness in international relations. 70 per cent of the water is controlled by Iran and Turkey. Our neighbours manage the dams and tributaries, redirecting them as a blackmail mechanism. The Iraqi government is so weak that it is unable to place the water issue as a priority on its international agenda," the activist explains.
The absence of water policies, drought and the construction of massive dams upstream — such as the Ilisu dam in Turkey and the Daryan dam in Iran — risk drastically reducing the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates. What is threatened, however, is not only the rivers but also the Mesopotamian marshes, inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage List alongside the Sumerian cities of Ur, Eridu and Uruk in 2016, thanks to campaigns by Iraqi activists. Without water, the marshes risk drying up and the Madaan, the local population of the Marsh Arabs, will be forced to migrate.
"Every year we lose 11 million cubic metres of water through evaporation. If we add global warming, soil salinity and the absence of water policies, within ten years the freshwater buffalo will be extinct and the Madaan will be forced to leave these lands," explains Jassim al-Asadi of the association Nature Iraq.
Ismaeel Dawood, Iraqi human rights activist and advocacy officer for Un ponte per…, shares the same view. "The problem is cultural. We should change irrigation methods, protect animals and plants and place water at the centre. If we lose the Mesopotamian marshes, we will be giving up a natural and cultural heritage that is unique in the world."
To draw attention to the water crisis in Iraq, last May environmental associations launched a viral campaign on Arab social networks with the hashtag Iraq without rivers. The next goal is a Mesopotamia water forum, scheduled for 5 to 7 April 2019 in Sulaymaniyah, in northern Iraq.
"Today, water is used as a political tool by Iran and Turkey against the Kurds, Syrians and us Iraqis. This water belongs to everyone. People need it to be used as an instrument of sustainable peace and not for political hegemony, which is the cause of future wars and conflicts," states Salman.