Weblog Entry - 07/17/2003: "For the Marsh Arabs"

Turns out the Marsh Arabs did it themselves - the day the U.S. troops entered Iraq, the marsh Arabs raced to the dams, blew them up and tore them down with their bare hands - later the army core of engineers joined them - to date 65% of the marshes restored - chalk up one for our side.
See newspaper article: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; page 35A; Sunday November 16, 2003;Second Part A, Nation and World Section, title: As Water Returns To Iraqi Marshlands, so does Life.

"(After the gulf war)...Shiite leaders hid in the marshes...welcomed and aided by Shiite Marsh Arabs..Hussein ordered the marshes drained...Tikrit and Fallujah Sunnis (were sent to do it). Before (that) Iraq's marshes were the Middle East's largest wetland, covering 7,500 square miles. By the late 1990's, satellite image indicated that less than 10% of Iraq's marshland had any water. What remained was miles of parched salty earth covered with clumps of scrub brush. (from a population of 300,000 in 1990) ...only 50,000 marsh arabs remained and that population dwindled every day."

The names of the heroes are given. Irrigation Department workers who watched the marsh's destruction in silent anguish under Saddam, raced back to work a few days after Hussein's government fell. Ali Shaheen, director of the Irrigation Dept ordered the gates blocking the Euphrates to be opened for the first time since 1991. He obtained Irrigation Dept bulldozers and smashed dams. He had no orders to return the rivers to the marshlands - he just knew.

After the gulf war, during the gassings and retaliation, Saddam gave bribes to many to look away. He told the uplanders, Syria and Turkey to take all the water they wanted regardless of the needs of the downland Marsh Arabs and their habitat. If Turkey and Syria are not stopped from the practice of non-rationed water usage, the Marshlands will never be fully restored.

The need to limit population growth, of course, is the root answer to all of these questions. The Middle East is the last of the idiot theoracies that refuse to accept the ecological facts of life. Unrestrained growth is cancer on the mother organism. Nations that do not grant freedom of reproductive choice, security and economic opportunity to women are Cannibal Civilizations and a threat to civil society. The Middle East is actually the Great Satan's Hell, breeding demons of hate.

So many had a stake in keeping the Saddam Hussein killers in power. The oil fields promised for France - the German loans ---- It seems the movement against the war (as well as the movement to end sanctions) was motivated by the desire of nation states to protect their economic interest. The suffering of the Iraqi people was not relevant to France or Germany. The support for a thug like Hussein fit in with the widespread anti-Jewish racism widely supported in Europe and Middle East mass culture. The slogan of the peace advocates should have been "No war allowed, as long as the oil keeps flowing to us".

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