The group traveled up to hundreds of miles daily, sometimes under the protection of armed U.S. military guards, occasionally under hired local Iraqi guards in the region north of Basra. Often unarmed, the four scientists were led by the Assisting Marsh Arabs and Refugees (AMAR) international charitable foundation into the small villages in marsh areas. There, they made initial damage assessments by collecting soil and water samples, many of which are now being analyzed at Duke's Wetland Center.
"Saddam Hussein was a master 'brown field generator,'" said Richardson, referring to a term for environmental decimation. "He churned that country upside down. It looks like you let a child loose in a sand box with hand grenades."
Of the three remnant marsh areas, he found the Central Marsh to be in the worst shape. "It's just a complete dust bowl," he said. Locals had broken a Hussein-built drainage dike in one area in an effort to return some water, but "nothing was growing there yet," except for a few remaining desert plants, he added. In another recently re-flooded area, too much salt had been drawn out of the long-dry soils to support freshwater vegetation, and this area was now turning into a salt-flat
His group found the Hammar Marsh area, nearest Basra, to still have some remaining lush areas where some stately date palms are still in cultivation. But Richardson said Hussein, in his vendetta against the Marsh Arabs, "basically wiped out" the local date palm industry, once the world's largest exporter. The largest remaining wetland areas are the Haweizeh Marshes along Iraq's border with Iran. That's where Richardson and his colleagues reached a place where locals had reintroduced their traditional water buffalos and were seen fishing.
While Marsh Arab villages are beginning to be reconstituted in areas adjacent to the Haweizeh marsh
'"/>
Contact: Scottee Cantrell
scottee@duke.edu
919-613-8074
Duke University
18-Aug-2003