Environmental disaster in Iraq

Mohammad Rajja, Gono Biswabidyalay, Savar, Dhaka
The situation of Marsh Arabs could only be described as an environmental disaster. It is also suddenly a hot story because the US personnel, now in the marshes, are trying to save the land. While the key media have waken up, the ecological society continues to keep its stunning silence. That silence became glaring during former US President Bush's campaign against Saddam. The "unnoticed" story is not so much the dilemma of the Marsh Arabs due to a strange duplicity of the ecological movement. Over time, accessible settlement photos show the previously green marshes have turned dry brown. Thousands of marsh dwellers have also apparently been killed since 1991, and hundreds of thousands had to take shelter on the streets. The United Nations reports that the Madans are now a refugee population. As a direct consequence of the Third River Scheme that the UN completed, the 5,000-year-old culture of the Madan is in grave danger. The ecological damage done in Iraq is serious. It can be compared with the damage done to the Amazon rainforests. Only an extremely small part of the previous heaven survives close to the meeting point of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.