Iraq's Marshlands: Resurrecting Eden

Scott Pelley Reports on the Restoration of Iraq's Marshlands

(CBS)  It turns out Saddam Hussein did possess a weapon of mass destruction and he used it in a slaughter that few have heard of until now: after the Gulf War in 1991, the dictator spent untold millions on this weapon, designed to exterminate an ancient civilization called the "Ma'dan," also known as the "Marsh Arabs."

They lived in Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, where many biblical scholars place the Garden of Eden. But if this was the place where man fell from grace, Saddam Hussein showed just how far man can fall.

In a spectacular feat of engineering, he used water in a strike against his own people that not even an atom bomb could match. Recently, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley journeyed there with an American engineer who is resurrecting this magical land that was turned to dust by Hussein's secret weapon.

Photos: A visit to the marshes of southern Iraq
Web Extra: Water World
Web Extra: An Ancient Craft
Nature Iraq

"We're now officially inside the marsh. And you can see the reeds getting denser and denser, taller and taller," Azzam Alwash told Pelley, as they were heading by boat deeper into the marshland.

Alwash grew up in the water world that the Greeks named Mesopotamia, the "land between two rivers."

"I gotta tell you, this is not like any part of Iraq I've ever seen before," Pelley noted, as they boated past thick, lush and green reeds rising out of the water.

"Right? I mean, when you say Iraq, it's a desert, right? It's burning oil," Alwash said. "It's magical, is what it is. This is magic."

It has been more than 30 years since Alwash pushed through the reeds with his father, who ran the irrigation office there. In 1978, he left to study in America and became a partner in an engineering firm.

"I achieved the American dream, Scott," Alwash proudly told Pelley.

"You'd been living in the United States for 25 years. You're an American citizen. You married an American woman. Your children are as American as they can be," Pelley noted.

"And I'm as American as can be," Alwash pointed out.

"Why did you imagine going back to Iraq after the life you had built?" Pelley asked.

"I realized at some point in time that money and success and the American dream is not everything. Working on passion, on something that drives you is everything," Alwash said.

His passion is a world where Mother Nature meets Father Time: it's the cradle of civilization outlined by the Tigris and Euphrates, the likely birthplace of agriculture, the written word and the wheel.

But once the ancients set civilization on its course, the Ma'dan stayed behind.

Their villages are primitive. They weave a life out of the reeds of the marsh. They bind them into homes, feed them to their water buffalo and burn them to bake their bread.

There's not much in the way of electricity, education or health care.

But elders, like Sahi Salay, told Pelley they did just fine until 1991, when they suffered their own kind of Holocaust. That was when the U.S. and its allies invaded southern Iraq to throw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.

The elder President Bush urged Iraqis to overthrow their dictator.

The Ma'dan and other Shiites in the south supported an uprising to topple Hussein's regime. The marshes, known for ages as a smuggler's paradise, turned out to be a perfect place for the rebels to hide, with their endless maze of waterways.

But in 1991, when the allies withdrew, the dictator turned Eden into hell.

"The United Nations Environmental Program called it the biggest engineered environmental disaster of the last century," Alwash explained.

Hussein tried to wipe out the Marsh Arabs by destroying their world. He built six canals to divert the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates out into the desert and the Persian Gulf.

In a five-year project 90 percent of the marshes were drained - an area of more than 3,000 square miles.

"As an engineer, I'm telling you, drying of the marshes is definitely not an easy task. It's a monumental engineering project," Alwash explained. "He put every piece of equipment available in Iraq under his control at the services of the projects needed to dry the marshes."

"Saddam was using water as a weapon?" Pelley asked.

"You know, the world was looking for weapons of mass destruction. And the evidence was right under its nose," Alwash.

[USAID-Iraq]

Marshlands - From the American people: Between 1991 and 2003 the Mesopotamian Marshlands, one of the largest wetland systems in the world, were nearly destroyed by Saddam Hussein?s regime. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) mobilized an Iraqi and international team in February 2004 to convene in Basrah, Iraq to design an action plan for the marshlands restoration program. The program, led by the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources (MOWR) in cooperation with USAID and other donors, worked to restore the marshland ecosystem through improved management and strategic re-flooding. Additionally, the program worked to provide social and economic assistance to Marsh Arabs including health, education, and rural development. Re-flooding efforts since 2003 have increased the marshlands from 1/10 to 1/3 of their original size, making the wetlands the largest in the Middle East. USAID expanded agriculture and agribusiness to diversify production, improve livestock and dairy production, and restock fish populations in the marshlands. Among these activities USAID established 72 demonstration farms and 30 alfalfa farms in the marshes to provide livestock feed and released more than 225,000 fish fingerlings to restock the local fish population.

[ramtackett]

Enjoyed the piece. Curious, Mr. Pelley, what your sources were for the following:

"Near the marshes, the Sumerians erected a temple at the city of Ur, known as a ziggurat. The Sumerians thought the marshes were so important they wrote a story about them."

[michigander62]

CBS 60 min why are you just hearing about this? Back in 1994 the rest of us knew this when Clinton was refusing to protect people who helped us prosacute the war in Iraq. Oh I forgot you left wing president was in office and you didn't want to hurt his game plans?????

[giorgia_eranio]

The important is that local communities will have their lives improved, and the New Eden team has been making great efforts to involve them in this difficult proces of merging traditions and a new life in the Marshes

[bubbadubba]

Great, another pork project in Iraq paid for with my tax money while people in the US suffer.
Great, just great.
When will it ever end?

[big_B41]

this (the story) wasn't about rewriting history or claiming that the marshes were in fact the "undisputed" birthplace of mankind... it was about a civilization and culture that existed in harmony in the marshes in a very inhospitable corner of the world... the people who live along the Mississippi and in NO... they are not living in harmony with anything... we channel and try and control the mighty river for our purposes... people build houses (with foundations) on areas that routinely flood when the river swells... we live with the river as long as it "behaves" and we control it... these people live with the marsh in harmony... they don't try and control it, rather they live with it. the sad part is, the culture of these people has been forever changed, even if the marshes are restored, the people have been changed by the outside world they were forced to live in and now they are bringing the outside world back to the marshes with them.

On it's face, this was a fascinating story, about a people and place" that 90% of the worlds population had no clue about, and it changes people perception of the Arab world (for the better).

[thesevenveils]

You can take man out of the cave but you can never take the cave out of the man.

[Turbidite]

This story is really old news for those of us that care to remember. Upper and Middle Iraq also suffered terrible droughts due to the damming of the rivers in Turkey. When Iraq complained to Turkey the gates were opened and flooded large areas of Iraq, towns and all. Israel is currently choking passage of water from Lake Tiberias, River Jordan and River Yarmuk to the West Bank Palestinians resulting in loss of arable land, crops, sanitation and increased disease. Take a look at the Google Earth images along the West Bank demarcation line to see the green, irrigated lands in Israel versus the sharp boundary of arid waste on the Palestinian side. See the video of B'aqa and the settlers tearing up Palestinian irigation lines while being protected bythe IDF (BBC video news). This terror weapon continues to be used against civil populations.

[Justice10K]

This is an example of the media wanting to put out a story as the truth without researching all the facts. You reference the Bible when you accept the Iraq Marshlands as being Eden and the cradle of civilization because it?s between two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. If you would read Genesis 2:10-14 you would see the river that flowed out of Eden parted into 4 heads: Pison, Gihon that comprised the whole land of Ethiopia (which is 1,000 miles from Iraq and across the Red Sea), Hiddekel and Euphrates. Based on the Bible, Iraq's Marshland can't be Eden. Also the Bible states that there were every type of fruit tree in the garden. The Iraq Marshlands does not appear conducive to growing a variety trees that are good for food.

[doctorj2u]

I wish Mr. Pelley had shown the same compassion towards his own citizens of the delta of the Mississippi River after Katrina when he reported we were beyond help as we struggled to re-create our lives and culture. Why are the Iraqis noble and we are disposable? No Scott, I have not forgotten your treason.

[maiingan]

The differences are that most of the homes destroyed by Katrina were below sea level; those that weren't were barely above it; the lands of the Marsh Arabs don't get hit by those hurricanes, and there's no tradition of building levees to support buildings below sea level - just those floating islands. These differences are important; people who keep trying to live below sea level, or even near it, in a delta subject to powerful hurricanes, whose land is sinking from tectonic forces (the Michoud Fault) as well as being starved for sediment, are just asking for trouble.