Publisher’s Note: National Review has brought out Here, There & Everywhere: Collected Writings of Jay Nordlinger. You may order the book here. It has eight chapters — and we are making one piece per chapter available on NRO. We are doing this every Tuesday — hence, “Tuesdays with Jay”! The chapters are Society, Politics, People, The World, Cuba and China, Golf, Music, and Personal. For the pieces drawn from the first three chapters, go here, here, and here. And this week’s piece is from The World, originally published in the National Review of January 30, 2006.

When the United States and its allies went into Afghanistan and Iraq, they liberated about 56 million people. Those people had suffered under two of the most brutal regimes imaginable. A lot of people choke on that word, “liberated” — for others of us, it is entirely appropriate.

The scope of this achievement — the liberation — is almost too great to comprehend. Too many lives, communities, and situations are involved. But can we focus on merely one case — that of the “Marsh Arabs,” in southern Iraq? Saddam Hussein succeeded in destroying the environment in which they lived; he almost succeeded in destroying the people themselves. Now those marshes are coming back, and the people are coming back, too.

No matter whether we supported the Iraq War or opposed it, can’t we all rejoice in these results of the war? The answer is, of course, no.

The Mesopotamian Marshlands — home of the Marsh Arabs — exist at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Many have imagined this area the site of the Garden of Eden. Until the early 1990s, this “Eden” was the Middle East’s largest wetland, covering about 7,500 square miles. The Marsh Arabs — also known as the Madan — are among the oldest peoples on earth, dating back 5,000 years. They are a link to the Sumerians. For all these millennia, they have lived in their marshes, gliding in their skiffs, called “mashoofs,” and dwelling in their reed huts. They have subsisted on fish and water buffalo, chiefly. The British explorer Wilfred Thesiger made them famous in the 1960s, when he published his book The Marsh Arabs.

The marshes were always a mysterious place, a haven and hideout for rebels, bandits, dissenters. When the Shiites failed in their uprising against Saddam after the Persian Gulf War, many of them sought refuge in these marshes. And the local residents, hating the regime — like most Iraqis — sympathized with them. Saddam decided that the area and the people had to be eradicated.

What happened next is a picture of pure evil; it can scarcely be absorbed. In a massive push called the Third River Project, the regime created dams, dikes, and canals — and dried up the marshes. One new canal was called the Mother of All Battles River; there was also the Fidelity to the Leader Canal. With amazing speed, this vast wetland became a desert. The plants died, the animals died, water was nowhere. One newspaper report had residents saying that it was as though someone had pulled a plug. Saddam destroyed a full 90 percent of the Mesopotamian Marshlands, establishing a military zone in their place.

But there’s much, much more. The elimination of the marshes caused the people to starve, flee, or die — and Saddam did all he could to make sure they died. He poisoned the lagoons; he shelled villages; he set reedbeds ablaze; he imprisoned, tortured, and executed; and he attacked these Iraqis with WMD — with chemical weapons. He left no technique untried. In August 1993, a British writer and filmmaker, Michael Wood, said that the dictator’s “slow genocide of the Marsh Arabs is nearing its climax.” Yet it had not been so slow, really.

And the world knew. In March 1993, Time magazine wrote of a doomed people. Some of the most moving reporting of this period was done by Chris Hedges of the New York Times. (A decade later, he would become a shockingly vicious opponent of the Iraq War, condemning the United States as the real oppressor.) Officials of the Clinton State Department testified to Congress about exactly what the regime was doing. Vice President Gore was appalled by the ruin of the wetlands, and spoke out strongly about Iraq: “In the interests of regional peace and for the sake of human decency, [Saddam Hussein] must be removed from power. That is the policy of this administration. It is the policy I support. It is the policy I am personally committed to.” (That statement was made in 2000.) In 2001, the U.N. Environment Programme released satellite photos, showing brown where marshlands had been.

And then the war came. The second they could, what Marsh Arabs remained punctured dikes, knocked down sluice gates, and otherwise tried to undo Saddam’s project. Speaking of moving reporting, here is some by the New York Times’s James Glanz:

. . . when Mr. Hussein’s government fell in April 2003, villagers went to [a particular dike] and gouged holes in it using shovels, their bare hands and at least one piece of heavy equipment, a floating backhoe. Since then, something miraculous has occurred: reeds and cattails have sprouted up again; fish, snails and shrimp have returned to the waters; egrets and storks perch on the jagged remains of the walls, coolly surveying the territory as if they had never left.

Those mashoofs glided once more, and reed huts were built again. Desert was disappearing; wetlands were returning. Journalists from around the world collected expressions of gratitude and joy, and I offer a sampling: “The water is our life; it is a gift from God to have it back.” “Everyone is so happy; we are starting to live like we used to, not the way Saddam wanted us to live.” “[I am] like a person detained in prison who is set free.” “This war has brought two joys for us: the end of Saddam and the return of the water.” “This is what we call rebirth.” And here is a snippet from the Washington Post of April 14, 2003: “[Men of the Wafi tribe], Shiite Muslims, said they had been banned from observing their religion until last Friday, when their imam was free to preach for the first time in years, and gave a talk ‘thanking God and the coalition forces for giving us freedom,’ as the sheik put it.”

As soon as they could, the United States and its allies moved in to regenerate the marshlands and assist the people. The U.S. Agency for International Development and others are training Iraqis, equipping them — helping them help themselves. One prominent group is called Eden Again, and two of its guiding lights are Azzam Alwash and his wife, Suzie Alwash. Both are Ph.D.-holding environmental scientists. He is an Iraqi who grew up in Nasiriyah, the son of an irrigation engineer; she is a Texan.



Suzie Alwash reports that about 40 percent of the marshlands have been re-flooded. And about half of that has been revegetated: “It’s amazing, when you look at pictures of the place, from month to month, how fast this stuff is revived.” Some areas will never be revived, but the Mesopotamian Marshlands will again have a life. Another scientist — Thomas L. Crisman, a wetlands specialist at the University of Florida — says that he doesn’t like to use the word “restoration”: “You’re not God; you can’t put it back.” He prefers “rehabilitation,” arguing that, with time and smarts, reasonable goals can be obtained.

As with Iraq at large, not all has been well in the marshlands since Liberation Day. Numbering about 500,000 mid-century, the Marsh Arabs were maybe half as many by the time of the 1991 war. After Saddam’s depredations, those in the area dwindled to about 75,000; the others were dispersed or killed. According to Suzie Alwash, some 100,000 Marsh Arabs have returned since the liberation: from the towns, cities, and camps of their exile. (Some had gone to neighboring Iran.) Different Marsh Arabs want different things: Some want a more modern life, tired of the reeds; some want to farm, instead of coping with the fish and water buffalo. There are problems with the water: very salty, not as life-giving as it was. Turkey’s dams affect southern Iraq, and water politics are always sticky.

Yet this is a story to celebrate, if we have celebration in us. Those calling themselves liberals might take a particular interest. For decades, they’ve expressed intense concerns about wetlands: Practically the worst thing you can do in America is fill in a swamp. Saddam Hussein destroyed one of the world’s largest wetlands; the region has come back thanks to U.S.-led efforts. But George W. Bush as environmental hero is far too much to swallow. Last summer, the U.N. Environment Programme noted that the “fabled wetlands” are “home to rare and unique species like the Sacred Ibis, and a spawning ground for Gulf fisheries.” Bush as savior of the Sacred Ibis? Again, impossible to choke down.

And what about the human aspect of the liberation — the lives of people, in addition to the life of nature? (Of course, the two are closely linked, in this case.) Forgetting the value of human lives simply because they are human, liberals have always been reverential about ancient ways of living. (This is regardless of whether the people themselves wish to modernize.) Yet another reason to rejoice over what has taken place, one would think.

If Hollywood could calm down about George W. Bush — and accept any good from the Iraq War — they could make a wondrous movie about the Marsh Arabs. Imagine Liberation Day: the scene in which gaunt, bedraggled people go out, bare-handed, to tear at dikes and such, causing the waters to rush back. I can just hear the surging music — perhaps the opening pages of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

But there will be no music, from the worst of Bush’s critics. They sometimes claim that the invasion and occupation — what I have repeatedly called the liberation — has left Iraq worse off than before. They should look toward the Marsh Arabs. Indeed, they should look toward Iraq as a whole.

*       *       *

NR senior editor Jay Nordlinger’s new collection, a beautiful 528-page hardcover, is a must for your personal library, and also makes a great gift. We’re making Here, There & Everywhere available for the special low NRO Bookstore price of $21.95. You save $3, and shipping and handling is free. Click here to order. You can also have Jay’s signature and personal inscription, if you like. There is a box to make that request.

Here’s what Norman Podhoretz, the invaluable writer and editor, has to say about this wonderful and long-awaited new collection: “No matter the subject — and what subject has he not touched upon? — Jay Nordlinger writes like the great conversationalist he is. The easy informality of his style never fails to engage and delight, the wide-ranging cultivation it reflects never fails to enlighten, and the energy that propels it never fails to amaze.”