Look at this land. There is no water," farmer Ashur Mohamed Ahmood said last
Thursday as he checked his farm in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad,
Iraq


IRAQ DROUGHT CONTINUES AS SANDSTORMS WORSEN
July 13, 2009
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31890377/ns/weather/


BAGHDAD - Below-average rainfall and insufficient water in the Euphrates and
Tigris rivers have left Iraq bone dry for a second straight year, wrecking
swaths of farm land, threatening drinking water supplies and intensifying fierce
sandstorms that have coated the country in brown dust. The drought has dealt a
harsh blow to hopes that reductions in sectarian violence over the last year
would fuel an economic recovery. Instead, the government's budget suffered a
double-hit: Lower than expected oil prices have crimped revenues and the
scarcity of water will force Iraq to spend money to import most of the crops,
especially wheat and rice, to meet domestic demand. "Look at this land. There is
no water," said Ashur Mohamed Ahmood, slipping the tip of his black cane into
deep cracks in his parched field. He cautioned children not to run, fearing
their small bare feet would get stuck in the crevices crisscrossing the farm on
the outskirts of Baghdad. "Without water there are no plants. This is the
plant," he says, uprooting a weed and throwing it back to the ground.

Historically, Iraq has been one of the more fertile nations in the region,
thanks to the Tigris and Euphrates, which flow southeasterly through the entire
nation. But for a second year, cropland in the north and west is parched and
farmers in south and central Iraq are suffering from low water flows in both
rivers — a phenomenon caused in part by the construction of dams built in
neighboring Turkey and Syria. "Which country closed the water on us?" Ahmood
asked, reflecting the common belief among Iraqis that their country's neighbors
are responsible for their plight. "Let them open the water for us so we can live
here and water our plants." As farmers complain of their ruined crops, the
drought can be felt across the nation as gritty sandstorms lash Iraqis with
increased frequency this summer. Last week's storm left tree leaves and vehicles
coated with what looks like tan talcum powder.

Sandstorms hit more often A decline in acreage where plant roots once knitted
the soil has only increased the severity of sandstorms, which are blowing across
Iraq with increased frequency — nearly 20 so far this year. Two people died in
the eastern city of Kut, and hundreds of Iraqis complaining of respiratory
problems crowded emergency rooms across Iraq during the most recent three-day
sandstorm, which many said was the worst in memory. The storms often ground
commercial flights. They scuttled U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's scheduled trip
earlier this month from Baghdad to the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern
Iraq, where much of the country's wheat is grown. Adding to the farmers'
difficulties, the dwindling water supplies are suffering from high amounts of
salt. "The impact of the drought will continue for years to come unless there
will be huge efforts to bring in modern irrigation systems and abundant water to
drain areas affected with high levels of salinity," said Mahdi al-Qaisi,
undersecretary of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Desertification, especially in mid- and southern Iraq, has been accelerated by
people cutting down trees for firewood, underinvestment and the pounding the
land has taken from military vehicles and operations, he said. The severity of
the drought has resulted in a testy water dispute between Iraq and Turkey, which
has built five dams along the Euphrates upstream from where it enters western
Iraq. The quarrel recently cooled when Turkey agreed to release more water from
its dams. Aoun Thiab Abdullah, director of the Iraqi Water Resources Ministry's
national water resources center, said Iraq needs at least 500 cubic meters of
water a second to flow from the Euphrates — nearly twice the current level — so
that it can meet its needs in the south, especially in the areas where rice is
grown.

This year's grain harvest was forecast to be among the worst in a decade —
virtually unchanged from last year and down about 45 percent from a normal
year's harvest, according to Michael Shean at the U.S. Agriculture Department's
foreign agriculture service. Rice won't be harvested until October, but water
shortages earlier this year prompted Iraq to cut its rice crop in half in
central and southern provinces. Alewi al-Shimmari, a father of six in
Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad, used to grow rice on his entire 100-acre farm, but
the drought has left all but 12 acres useless for farming. "More than 50 percent
of families working as farmers left their villages and went to the city,"
al-Shimmari said. "Lands that once were green farms are now turned to desert."
U.S. State Department reconstruction teams in Anbar, an arid province in western
Iraq, are helping Iraqis to continue drawing water from depleted lakes and
ensure that water treatment plants can adequately treat the supply of drinking
water.

They say some lakes in Anbar Province are 9 to 12 yards lower this year compared
with last year. The water is so low that water intake pipes are exposed and
cannot suck the water up into treatment plants. What water can be drawn is heavy
with sediment. That coupled with increased salinity, sewage waste dumped into
the Euphrates and agricultural runoff is making it increasingly difficult for
water treatment plants to cleanse the supply of drinking water. Snakes add to
plight As if ongoing bombings and drought weren't enough, Hassan al-Asadi, a
member of the Dhi Qar provincial council in southern Iraq, said that a few
months ago, water snakes that had lost their natural habitat along the rivers
started to show up around houses near al-Chibaiysh marshland. "The snakes were
looking for food and dozens of people were bitten," he said, adding that for a
time, Iraqi soldiers and policemen were shooting about 70 wayward snakes a day.

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