Nature

S29E04 Braving Iraq

Until the 1980s, Iraq’s Mesopotamian Marshes looked like a living Eden—many biblical scholars even believe this was the original Garden of Eden. Fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, this vast wetland spanned over 6,000 square miles and dominated southern Iraq. For 7,000 years, it was a thriving haven for wildlife and people alike, including the Ma’dan Tribes, or Marsh Arabs, who had lived there for generations. Then, in the 1990s, Saddam Hussein sought to destroy them—not through direct violence, but by wiping out the marshes that sustained them. He ordered massive canals to divert the rivers toward the Persian Gulf and built towering embankments to block water from flowing in. The lush green paradise, twice the size of the Everglades, withered to less than 10% of its former expanse, leaving behind a barren, cracked desert. The wildlife vanished, and the Marsh Arabs were forced from their ancestral home