Fall Of Eden.(rehabilitation needed for marshlands of southern Iraq)

Saleh Hantoush slides leathery fingers down the walls of his mudhif, a guesthouse made of reeds from the marshes of southern Iraq, and thinksback to better days. Hantoush, 56, and his family of 11 lived on fish and milk from their herd of water buffalo. But that all changed in the early 1990s when Saddam Hussein targeted the Madan, as the Shiite marsh dwellers are known, for resisting Baghdad. "He cut off our water and killed our crops," says Hantoush, his voice cracking with grief. "There was nothing left for our animals to eat." In 1992, Hantoush moved his family to a village near Basra and built another mudhif. But it sits on dry land, and Hantoush's family relies on handouts from the United Nations. "This house reminds me of our life in the marsh," he says. "It makes me very sad when I think about what was lost."

A decade ago, the lush marshlands of southern Iraq covered nearly 20,000 square kilometers near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They hosted hundreds of species of rare birds, mammals and fish. Some Biblical scholars say the marshes were the site of the Garden of Eden. Years of hostilities, though, have turned most of the marshes into desert. This week experts led by the U.S. Agency for International Development will convene in Iraq to study the problem. The stakes are high. Environmental experts say that if a big rehabilitation effort isn't begun soon, the marshes may be irretrievably lost. "A huge part of the marsh has been desertified," says geologist Suzie Alwash, cofounder of Eden Again, an environmental NGO based in Washington, D.C.

The marshlands used to be the largest wetlands in the Middle East. They supplied two thirds of the fish in Iraqi markets and 40 percent of the shrimp caught off the coast of Kuwait. Millions of birds migrating between the rivers of western Siberia and northeast Africa also wintered there. In the 1970s, Majeed Rasheed al Hilli, a biologist at Baghdad University, always made sure to take armed guards on field trips to the region for protection--against herds of wild boar. These days boar are rarely seen.

To Saddam Hussein, the marshes and its inhabitants were nothing but a threat. Shiite resistance groups used the maze of waterways and three- meter-tall reeds as cover for their covert operations. In 1991 Saddam struck with artillery, bombs and, by some accounts, napalm--killing thousands. Iraqi soldiers burned down reeds, and engineers built an elaborate system of canals to divert water from the marshes. The 565km- long Saddam River, cut ...