Oil Companies are polluting the Iraqi Marshlands and not saving them.
by Dr. Souad Al-Azzawi on 26-08-2015
Dr Jasmin Jawad is wondering: All of a sudden, the BBC Radio 4 broadcasting today Wednesday 26th of August at 10 h30 a programme on "how Saddam had used a chemical attack on the Marshes, in 1990s! Any one of you can tell WHY now? While Iraq is in turmoil? Turning a blind eye to what's on in Iraq now and keep feuding the minds in the West against still Saddam!
Thanks Dr Jasmin for bringing up this subject. Probably lots of people don’t know that the American Occupation’s mainstream propaganda never mentions that marshlands is dying again!!
The main reason is that there is not enough water to recharge them back. Also they never mention that main
The following article published in the economist, 1992 proves what I previously explained about the occupation's claims concerning the Marshlands of Iraq. This article proves that Iraq obtained the UN approval to build the Third River to save the fresh water and related ecosystems of Tigris and Euphrates after Turkey's GAP projects held most of the two rivers water. And that the US knew all these details. The stories about intentional drying of the Marshlands for political reasons are all lies fabricated to serve the occupation's interests in occupying Majnoon Giant Oil field in the middle of the Marshlands. And instead of recovering the Marshlands( as they claimed during the invasion of Iraq), Shell oil company now since 2011 has been using all fresh water for oil production and polluting the Marshlands.
Iraq builds 'Third River' project despite no-fly zone and the embargo. by Marcia Merry
November marks the third month of the no-fly zone in southern Iraq, imposed this summer by the United States, and sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council, that dictates no Iraqi planes are permitted to fly south of the 31 st parallel. The rationalization given by the United States for this policy of "industrial apartheid" and depopulation, includes broad accusations against Iraq, involving specific falsehoods about the hydrology of the region. Efforts to improve southern Iraq drainage, the U.S. government claims, have been threatening inhabitants of the marshlands by hurting fisheries and harming the environment. The charges against Iraq were detailed in a letter of July 30, from the special rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, addressed to the U.N. secretary general. In this document, no mention was made of the major hydrological problem aggravating the Iraqi marshlands, namely that Turkey has been holding back a large volume of the flow of the Euphrates River, by operation of the Kayban and Karakaya dams, and the filling of the huge reservoir behind the new Ataturk Dam. As the U.S. State Department is in a position to know very well, the waterworks projects in southern Iraq, running south from Baghdad, through Basra to the Persian Gulf, have been thoroughly studied and worked on for over 40 years, and are as sound as advanced hydrological engineering science can make them. (See "Mideast Water Development: Making the Desert Bloom," an interview with Dr. Munther Haddadin, former head of the Jordan River Authority, EIR. June 19,1992, pp. 7-12). Moreover, the history of water projects in the region of southern Mesopotamia, goes back centuries to ancient times and the famed "hanging gardens" of Babylon. In August, Iraq Minister for Foreign Affairs Muhammad Said AI-Sahhaf, submitted a document to the United Nations which reviewed the status of these water projects in the southern Tigris-Euphrates rivers region. The document, addressed to the secretary general, and intended for the Security Council, also protested and refuted U.S. charges that Iraq was violating the rights of people in southern Iraq, whom the U.S. called "Marsh Arabs."
8 Economics
Here we present excerpts from the recent Iraqi report. The map, which schematically shows segments of the Third River, was done by EIR base4 on maps from the U.S. State Department, and available in the Library of Congress.
Origin of the Third River project What is called the Third River project is technically referred to as the Main Outfall Drain (MOD), designed to move saline agriculture runoff to sea, and to minimize its pollution of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Also shown on the map is the route of the Tigris Straight Channel, which was built to improve river drainage, but was abandoned after the change in Iraq-Iran borders after 1988. The background of the Third River is as follows. "It is widely known that in the Tigris-Euphrates river basin, cultivation based on irrigation has been practiced for many centuries owing to the fact that rainfall is insufficient for agriculture. Because of continuous cultivation and the high salinity of the water of the Tigris and Euphrates, large quantities of salts accumulated on agricultural land and transformed it into land that is for the most part unfit for cultivation, particularly in the central I and southern areas ofIraq. "In order to restore the fertility of the soil and transform these areas into agriculturally productive land, it was necessary to devise a radical solution to the drainage problem. What is referred to as the Third River and is known in technical parlance as the Main Outfall Drain (MOD) project is the backbone of the solution to thiS problem. "The idea of the project, which is one oflong standing and began some 40 years ago, is to. collect high-salinity drainage water from agricultural enterprises in central and southern Iraq into one main drain and to channel it into the Arabian Gulf [Persian Gulf] without intermixture with any of Iraq's rivers or marshlands. "The issue of drainage in Iraq was first addressed in the framework of overall planning in the time of the monarchy by the American consultancy ,firm Tippet Appet Macarthy (TAMS) in 1952. Read more
EIR November 20, 1992
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problem of the marshland have started through the eighties when Turkey held the Euphrates and Tigris headwaters to fill Keban and Ataturk Huge Dams. During the Nineties, the construction of more water storing and diversion projects called the GAP projects in Turkey reduced the water release to Iraq’s two rivers to about half of the original annual water volumes. Please check the following article about how this problem have started.
To save what remains of the two rivers water quality due to this huge reduction, the Iraqi government decided to construct the third river project. This project were designed by an American Company when Iraq were under King Faisal Ruling in the fifties, or after signing the water shares protocol between Turkey and Iraq in 1947. According to this protocol Turkey informed Iraq about the water storing dams and infrastructure on the headwaters of Tigris and Euphrates.
Major function of the Third River is to isolate salty irrigation water from entering Tigris and Euphrates and save the Aquatic and floodplain ecosystems including more than 33 million date Palms forests.
The lay out of the Third River is between the two rivers. Starting from Ishaky north of Baghdad to carry all polluted drainage water from middle and south regions and discharge it to Khore Al Zubair estuary then to Arabic Gulf instead of Shatt al Arab waterway, which is brackish water (not very saline water) system. This way, the water quality of the two rivers and Shatt al Arab waterway and their ecosystems will be saved.
Since the water input to the Marshlands have been already decreasing due to Turkey’s GAP projects (20 dams, water tunnels, and hydro electrical power generation stations). No flood waves to recharge the Marshlands, further reduction in marshlands volume, areas, and water quality were taking place through the nineties of last century.
Diversion of agriculture drainage salty waters to the Third River instead of the Marshlands starting from 1995 cleared out the impacts of reducing Iraq’s water shares by Turkey on the whole basin including the marshlands. Without the usual two rivers annual flood waves, or the Third River, the Marshland anyway would have been going through gradual deterioration and reduction because it will turn into saline wetland with drastic change in its characteristics, ecosystem, and biodiversity.
So the whole story of marshlands the occupation’s media been repeating is exactly like the stories of Nuclear bomb and the WMD, George W. Bush created to invade and occupy Iraq to find them!!.
Now after all the money being spent by Iraq and other international agencies to get the marshlands back to its healthy status, they couldn’t do that due to lack of enough Fresh River water to flood the whole area many times. Yet, Shell Oil Company is extracting oil from Majnoon Giant Oilfield in the middle of the marshlands since 2011. They are producing oil through Injecting huge amount of water into the oil bearing strata’s. Water that should be used to recovers the Marshlands as they claim??. This injected water is polluting the Marshlands with Petroleum hazardous, toxic, and carcinogenic substances. These pollutants will effects the aquatic system and the population but the media is keeping quiet and turning their eyes and heads away to repeat the old occupation’s fabricated stories and lies. The people of the Marshlands are mostly uneducated and don’t know what’s been going on in their area. Some of them started complaining about the situation as you can see from the following reports.
| Some of the International Agencies are trying currently to put the Iraqi Marshlands under the international custody because it is part of the International Heritage !! In my opinion this is another International way to confiscate Majnoon Oil Fields, one of the largest oil production fields in the world which is underlying the Marshlands. |
Dr. Souad Al-Azzawi is associate Professor in Environmental Engineering, Geo environmental consultant. Former Vice President of Mamoun University for Scientific Affairs, Former Chairwoman of the Environmental Engineering Dept.of University of Baghdad. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal.
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