War, Mismanagement and Climate Change: Iraq's Environment Pushed to the Brink

Jan 2, 2020 | Fanack
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Water has been Iraq’s lifeline since the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia and features prominently in millennia-old epics as well as contemporary poems. In recent decades, water has become the source and victim of conflicts, emerging as one of many environmental problems following years of war, violent insurgencies and gross mismanagement. From Saddam Hussein’s destruction of the unique marshlands ecosystems in southern Iraq during the war with Iran in the 1980s to the burning of croplands in Iraq’s greenbelt in 2019, environmental attacks and ongoing pollution are driving further degradation of the country’s valuable natural and cultural resources.