He talked about the Garden of Eden, Sumer and Babylon throughout history, but today the Tigris River is fighting death. Excessive human activity and climate change threaten to destroy a lifeline that is thousands of years old.
In this country of 42 million people, the source of civilization and agriculture, natural disasters are innumerable. Beginning in April, temperatures rise above 35 degrees Celsius and sandstorms follow, covering people, animals and cars in an orange film.
Then comes summer, the season of hell for Iraqis, when temperatures reach 50 degrees Celsius and power goes out due to increased grid pressure.
Today, Iraq has become one of the five most vulnerable countries in the world to the effects of climate change, according to the United Nations, with drought, reduced rainfall, high temperatures and accelerated desertification. This was influenced by the Tigris River with a decrease in the amount of rain, as well as dams built in Turkey, where the river originates. An AFP videographer roamed along the banks of the river, from the Iraqi source in the north to the sea in the south, to cover this disaster that forced residents to change their way of life.
“Water Runs Out”
The Iraqi journey along the Tigris begins in the mountains of Kurdistan at the crossroads of Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Here the inhabitants make a living by growing potatoes and raising sheep. On the Syrian border, close to the Turkish border, says Bebo Hassan Dolmasa, 41, from an agricultural village in the Fishkhabur region: “Our life depends on the Tiger. Our work and our agriculture depend on it. “If the water level drops, our agriculture and our entire region will suffer,” he added. “There is less water every day,” he explains. “There used to be water flowing in Seoul.”
Iraqi authorities and Kurdish farmers in Iraq accuse Turkey of shutting off water by keeping it in dams built on the stream before it reaches Iraq. Official statistics confirm this: the level of the Tigris River arriving from Turkey this year does not exceed 35 percent of the average amount that has flowed into Iraq over the past 100 years. The more water is held, the less flowing the river, which stretches for 1,500 kilometers, which the Tigris crosses before joining its twin, the Euphrates, and converges at the Shatt al-Arab, which flows into the Persian Gulf. This file is a source of tension.
Baghdad regularly asks Ankara to release more water. In response, Turkish Ambassador to Iraq Alireza Güney urged Iraqis in July to “better use the available water.” “Water in Iraq is being used on a massive scale,” he added on Twitter.
Experts even speak of reckless irrigation practices: as in the days of the Sumerians, Iraqi farmers continue to flood their fields to irrigate them, which leads to massive waste of water.
We will migrate because of the water.
In some places, the river looks like puddles of rainwater. Small reservoirs in the bed of the Diyala River are all that remains of a tributary of the Tigris River in central Iraq, without which nothing can be cultivated in the province.
Due to the drought this year, the authorities have halved the area under crops across the country. Since there is not enough water in Diyala, there will be no harvest. “We will have to give up farming, sell our livestock and see where we can go,” complains 42-year-old farmer Abu Mahdi.
“We were displaced because of the war (Iran and Iraq in the 1980s). Now we will migrate because of the water. Without water, we will be displaced and we will never be able to live in these areas.” Abu Mahdi continues: “I took out a loan to dig a well 30 meters deep, but it was a complete failure,” explaining that salt water cannot be used even for irrigation or for keeping animals. And by 2050, “a one degree Celsius increase in temperature and a 10% decrease in precipitation will result in a 20 percent decrease in available fresh water” in Iraq, according to what the World Bank warned at the end of 2021. .
The United Nations and several NGOs warned in June that water scarcity and issues with sustainable agriculture and food security are “major drivers of rural-to-urban migration” in Iraq.
According to a report released by the International Organization for Migration in August, by the end of March 2022, more than 3,300 families had been displaced due to “climatic factors” in ten of the country’s central and southern provinces.
“Sand deposits” and waste this summer
The Tigris River in Baghdad was so low that AFP filmed young people playing volleyball in the middle of the river. The water was barely up to the waist.
The Ministry of Water Resources attributes this to “sand deposits.” Because these sediments no longer drain south due to lack of water flow, they accumulate at the bottom of the Tigris and mix with sewage, making it difficult for river water to flow. Until recently, the government sent machines to pump stagnant sand from the riverbed, but due to a lack of resources, most of the pumps stopped working. Hajjar Hadi, a 28-year-old environmental activist, says there is a “lack of awareness” from the government and the public about the extent of the problem, noting that “Iraqis are feeling climate change in terms of rising temperatures, lower water levels, reduced rainfall and dust storms.”
The young woman studied life sciences at university and since 2015 has been working with the Iraqi non-governmental organization Green Climate, especially in the swamps, to protect the environment and support the most vulnerable people. “These dust storms do not come out of nowhere, but rather due to increased desertification and a lack of green space,” she added. She explains that “lack of water in neighboring countries exacerbates drought and hence desertification.”
saline soil
The last stop was Ras Al Bishah. There, on the borders of Iraq, Iran and Kuwait, the Shatt al-Arab flows into the bay. “Look at these palms, they’re thirsty. They need water. Shall I give them a drink from a cup?” said Mullah Adel Al-Rashed, a 65-year-old palm farmer. “The Tigris and Euphrates rivers have ended. There is no fresh water, there is no life. The river is salt water.
As the fresh water level dropped, sea water began to encroach on the Shatt al-Arab. The United Nations and farmers are pointing the finger at the impact of water salinity on soil and its implications for agriculture and crops. Mullah Adel Al-Rashed buys fresh water from cisterns so that he and his animals can drink. He says that even wild animals enter houses to get drinking water from residents. He adds wistfully: “My government does not provide me with water. I want water, I want to live, I want to farm like my grandfathers used to plant palm trees and get dates.”
water salinity
Naeem Haddad returns home barefoot on his boat after a day of fishing in the Shatt al-Arab. On the outskirts of Basra in the far south of Iraq, one of his five daughters meets him on the beach as he shows a bag full of fish.
“We dedicate our lives to hunting by inheritance,” says the 40-year-old man, noting that this is his only source of livelihood, which allows him to support his family of eight. “No state salary, no bonuses.” “We have salt water in the summer, and the sea water rises and reaches here,” Haddad continues. Salinity levels in the Shatt al-Arab, north of Basra, reached 6,800 parts per million, according to local authorities in early August. In principle, the salinity level in fresh water does not exceed one thousand parts per million, according to the American Institute of Geophysics, which defines the level of “moderately saline” water between three and 10 thousand parts per million. This led to the migration of some freshwater fish species very popular with fishermen from the Shatt al-Arab, leading to the introduction of other species normally found on the high seas. “If the waters recede, the catch will decrease and our livelihood will decrease,” Haddad says.