Marsh Arabs and Human Rights - Iraq (YouTube videos and other sources)

1. YouTube - Marsh Arabs and Human Rights - Iraq
2. YouTube - Marsh Arabs - Iraq

3. Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: Marsh Arabs

Inhabitants of the vast marshlands in southern Iraq.

The Marsh Arabs lived in one of the great marsh areas of the world, a 20,000-square-mile (52,000 sq. km) area triangulated by Kut on the Tigris, alKifl on the Euphrates, and Basra on the Shatt al-Arab. A significant number may be non-Semitic in origin, perhaps descendants of the ancient Sumerians, although they have mixed with other peoples through time. Called Marsh Arabs by some owing to their language, social structures, and religion, others designate them Ma'dan to reflect that their way of life is dependent on the water buffalo. Nomads of the marshes, relying on a variety of canoes for transport, they follow buffalo herds as their desert counterparts follow camels or sheep. Most are cultivators, reed gatherers, or buffalo breeders. Traditionally they lived in villages in island settlements, on floating platforms, or on man-made reed islands. Today, their structures are of brick and concrete. Roads and causeways connect major settlements facilitating social improvements, especially in education and health.

4. Wikipedia:

Since 1991--After the First Gulf War (1991) Saddam Hussein aggressively revived a program to divert the flow of the Tigris River and the Euphrates River away from the marshes in retribution for a failed Shia uprising. This was done primarily to eliminate the food source(s) of the Marsh Arabs. The plan also systematically converted the wetlands into a desert, forcing the Marsh Arabs out of their settlements in the region. With the ending of a four year drought in 2003, and the breaching of dykes by local communities, the process has been reversed and the marshes have experienced a substantial rate of recovery. The permanent wetlands now cover more than 50% of 1970s levels[1]
The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and subsequent coalition and Iraqi efforts to restore the marshes have led to signs of their gradual revivification as water is restored to the former desert, but the ecosystem may take far longer to restore than it took to destroy. Only a few thousand of the nearly half million original inhabitants remain. Most of the rest that can be accounted for are refugees living in other Shia areas in Iraq, or have emigrated to Iran.

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