Iraq’s Garden of Eden now like a desert

To feed and cool his buffaloes, Mr Hashem Gassed must cross 10km of sunburnt land in southern Iraq, where drought is devastating swathes of the Mesopotamian Marshes.

HUWAIZAH MARSHES (Iraq)

The reputed home of the biblical Garden of Eden, Iraq’s swamplands have been battered by three years of drought and low rainfall, as well as reduced water flows along rivers and tributaries originating in neighbouring Turkey and Iran.

Vast expanses of the once lush Huwaizah Marshes, straddling the border with Iran, have been baked dry, their vegetation yellowing. Stretches of the Chibayish Marshes, which are popular with tourists, are suffering the same fate.

“The marshes are our livelihood – we used to fish here and our livestock could graze and drink,” said Mr Gassed, 35, from a hamlet near Huwaizah.

Southern Iraq’s marshlands were inscribed as a Unesco World Heritage site in 2016, both for their biodiversity and their ancient history. But now, beds of dry streams snake around the once verdant wetlands, and the area’s Um alNaaj lake has been reduced to puddles of muddy water among largely dry ground.