Saddam Hussein's campaigns to drain marshes and force population transfer
Draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes
A 1994 map of the Mesopotamian Marshes with the pink zones showing drained areas.
Date
1950s–2003
Location
Mesopotamian Marshes, Iraq
Motive
Land reclamation and reprisal for the Shi'ite insurrection in 1991
Organized by
Ba'athist Iraq
Outcome
90% of the marshlands disappeared by 2000
Desertification of over 7,500 square miles
200,000 Marsh Arabs displaced
The Mesopotamian Marshes were drained in Iraq and to a smaller degree in Iran between the 1950s and 1990s to clear large areas of the marshes in the Tigris-Euphrates river system. The marshes formerly covered an area of around 20,000 km2 (7,700 sq mi). The main sub-marshes, the Hawizeh, Central, and Hammar marshes, were drained at different times for different reasons.
In the 1990s, the marshes were drained for political motives, namely to force the Marsh Arabs out of the area and to punish them for their role in the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein's government.[1] However, the government's stated reasoning was to reclaim land for agriculture and exterminate breeding grounds for mosquitoes.[2] The displacement of more than 200,000 of the Ahwaris, and the associated state-sponsored campaign of violence against them, has led the United States and others to describe the draining of the marshes as ecocide or ethnic cleansing.[3][4][5]
The draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes has been described by the United Nations as a "tragic human and environmental catastrophe" on par with the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest[6] and by other observers as one of the worst environmental disasters of the 20th century.[7]
^The Iraqi Government Assault on the Marsh Arabs (PDF) (Report). Human Rights Watch. January 2003. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
^"Marsh Arabs". ICE Case Studies. January 2001. Retrieved 2018-06-20.
^"The Marsh Arabs of Iraq: Hussein's Lesser Known Victims". United States Institute of Peace. November 25, 2002.
^Nadeem A Kazmi, Sayyid (2000). "The Marshlands of Southern Iraq: A Very Humanitarian Dilemma" (PDF). III Jornadas de Medio Oriente. Retrieved 20 June 2018.
^Priestley, Cara (2021). ""We Won't Survive in a City. The Marshes are Our Life": An Analysis of Ecologically Induced Genocide in the Iraqi Marshes". Journal of Genocide Research. 23 (2): 279–301. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1792615. S2CID 225410094.
^Partow, Hassan (August 13, 2001). "UN ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME RELEASES REPORT ON DEMISE OF MESOPOTAMIAN MARSHLANDS" (Press release). Nairobi/Stockholm: United Nations. UN Environment Programme. Retrieved 2018-06-20.
^Hopkin, Michael (2005-02-21). "Reflooding bodes well for Iraqi marshes". News@nature. doi:10.1038/news050221-1. ISSN 1744-7933.
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Ba'athist Iraq