“When Saddam Hussein drained the Mesopotamian marshes in southern Iraq – said to be the site of the Garden of Eden – the UN called it the greatest engineered environmental disaster of the last century. Yet now, thanks to an Iraqi-born engineer, more than half of the 7,700 square-mile wetlands have been restored. Azzam Alwash, who returned to Iraq from the US after Hussein’s fall, has received a Goldman Environmental Prize – dubbed a “green Oscar” – for his ten-year project, and at the end of last month, the site was designated the country’s first national park”. (The Week)
If you haven’t read “The Marsh Arabs” by Sir Wifred Thesiger then you have missed a real treat. Thesiger was one of the great British adventurers, who loved the Marsh Arabs and their way of life. His writing is excellent and evocative.
It is nice to be able to comment on really good news, good news for the poor Marsh Arabs and also for the whole world.
“It is nice to be able to comment on really good news, good news for the poor Marsh Arabs and also for the whole world.”
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I’m sorry that I can’t write this in cuneiform to convey how equally nice it is to read your wonderful news. I can see from where I type my little statue of a Sumerian priest, wearing a skirt fashioned of marsh foliage. The Sumerians, the core creators of Mesopotamian civilization, were brilliant.
The horrible attacks on Iraq in 2003, the destruction of life and artifacts, and the residuals of those crimes kept me from reading news from Iraq. My loss because were it not for this post I might have missed this very good news indeed. Thanks.