Engineer Dreams of Restoring Iraqi Marshlands

His engineer father had a commute like no other, and young Azzam Alwash loved to tag along for the ride. Thirty-five years later, Alwash still remembers it with clarity: the wooden boat gliding through narrow watery passageways lined by beds of reeds towering 20 feet high while birds glided overhead and fish swam below. Then the sudden emergence into a bright, sprawling city of floating reed islands, each topped by a small hut. Everywhere children were playing and water buffalo were splashing about.

Satellite photos reveal the desiccation of the Iraqi marshlands. The large areas in red, top, denote wetlands in 1972; early construction work, center, begins to stop the flow of water into the area in 1990; little of the original wetland area remained, bottom, in 1997.

It was southern Iraq in the mid-1960s, and it was a world that is largely gone now. In a series of engineering feats the scope of which has only recently come to be understood by the rest of the world, Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, has destroyed the region's marshes and, with them, a way of life.

Years of systematic draining and water diversion have created a new landscape. "There isn't enough water coming in to keep the wildlife and vegetation alive," Alwash says. "Now it's just desert."

The devastation saddens Alwash, now 44, a civil engineer and ASCE member living in California, but it has also given him a goal he is determined to bring to fruition: When Hussein is no longer in power, Alwash says, the marshland of southern Iraq will be reborn.

"Is it going to go back to the pristine condition it was in? Obviously, that's not really possible," Alwash says. "We can never restore things to the way they were. Can we come close? That's what we're trying to do."

The marshes straddle the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the ancient region called Mesopotamia—the region that generations of American schoolchildren have been taught to regard as "the cradle of civilization." Some legends hold that the area was the inspiration for the biblical Garden of Eden; others maintain that it was the garden's actual location.

Eden Again is the working name of the restoration project being planned by Alwash and his wife, Suzie, a native Texan and marine geologist who is a professor at El Camino College. The couple recently hired a project manager, Michelle Stevens. The Iraq Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., has joined the undertaking as a sponsor and is providing staff support. People Alwash describes as international experts and world-class scientists have agreed to serve on a technical advisory committee. And Alwash's father, who now lives in the Washington, D.C., area, has provided invaluable help, marshaling his mnemonic resources to describe the area as it once was and providing clues that might help revitalize it.

That Hussein drained and destroyed a wetlands area slightly larger than the Florida Everglades is not disputed by the Iraqi government. What is in dispute, however, is why it was done.

Iraqi officials explain the work as a series of engineering projects designed to increase arable land for a hungry nation. In published accounts and interviews, they have described the project as one that will redeem useless land, much of it contaminated by salt, and turn it into productive farmland.

Alwash, along with many other Iraqis who have left their homeland and oppose Hussein, present a different explanation.

In the early 1990s, after the Gulf War, Alwash says, Shiite opposition groups rose up against the Iraqi government in the southern region, waging guerrilla warfare. "The marsh was used by the rebels to hide away from the control of the central government," he says. "I like to refer to it as our Sherwood Forest." Bands of marauding rebels would emerge at night, taking refuge by day in the labyrinth of reeds that government forces found impenetrable.

Finally, Alwash says, Hussein decided to crush the rebel forces by "using the environment as a weapon against them," and the draining of the marshlands began. It was achieved in about five years.

The Iraqi government's claim that the project was solely an agricultural one is "ludicrous," Alwash scoffs. "Any person who knows anything about soils and agriculture recognizes that the soils in the marshes are not conducive to agricultural uses," he says. "Besides, if it was for agriculture, why is it the current pictures don't show any agricultural production going on? Because it's not possible."

The wetlands destruction uprooted not just the rebels but an entire civilization of marsh dwellers, the Ma'dan people, whose floating reed cities Alwash had visited as a child with his father. "The marsh was embedded in their way of life," he says, and its disappearance drove them out.

The Ma'dan population has been estimated at 300,000 to 500,000, Alwash says. Of that number, perhaps 70,000 fled to refugee camps in Iran and 30,000 to other countries throughout the world. The rest are believed to have made their way to other areas of Iraq.

Alwash's involvement in the marshland restoration began by chance in 1994. He and Suzie were vacationing in London and attended a presentation there about the Iraqi marshes. Alwash was stunned by what he learned. "That was the first time I realized that the marshes were being drained," he says. But he didn't feel he could do anything about it: "At the time, I was involved in trying to build my career and get my family going."

Alwash is a principal of Pacific Soils Engineering, Inc., a geotechnical consulting firm based in Cypress, California, that targets the southern California market.

In 1997 he began working in earnest to devise a solution for the devastated environment and a way to turn that solution into reality.

"For the past five years I've been knocking on doors, trying to focus on the fact that the marshes have been drained," he says. "I've put my personal life in the service of the marshes."

Alwash left Iraq in 1978 for political reasons and has never returned. Now he feels the pull of his former homeland but is not sure how he'll ultimately respond to it. People ask him if he'll return. His answer "depends on what time they ask me, what day of the week they ask me," he says.

"I'd love to help Iraq. I'd love to be involved in rebuilding Iraq. However, I'm an American. I am a principal in a company, and I have a family."

If he didn't have those responsibilities, he says, "I'd do it in a heartbeat."

The transformation of lush marshland teeming with life into a barren desert was achieved by four major projects and many smaller ones, according to Alwash, who has compiled information from as many sources as he could find to try to piece the process together. "It's incredible what they did, from an engineering point of view," he says, "not to mention the cost."

The marshlands actually encompass three large marshes—Al Hawizeh, Al'Am¯arah, and Al Hammãr—which are fed mainly by the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. The thrust of Hussein's projects was to prevent water from flowing into the marshlands by diverting it via a network of canals and pipelines.

Here is how Alwash says it was done:

A 350-mile canal—the Saddam River, also known as the Third River— was dug to carry water from the central Euphrates agricultural region. The water is pumped under the Euphrates through a siphon system; from there the canal carries it around Al Hammãr and into the Persian Gulf. Alwash says this project at first probably was a beneficial scheme to keep polluted water from harming the wetlands but later took on the more sinister purpose of draining them.

South of the Saddam River and running parallel to it, a large pipeline, the Loyalty to the Leader Canal, was built. It, too, takes water from the Euphrates.

South of and parallel to those two structures, another canal, the Mother of Battles, was built. It removes vast quantities of water from the Euphrates and conveys it around Al Hamm¯ar to the Persian Gulf. Diversion of the water into the canal was accomplished by constructing a large dam across the Euphrates.

The Glory River, a mile and a quarter long, was constructed not far from the Tigris. "It's not a river per se," Alwash says. "It's a shallow canal with embankments on the side." The steep walls provided the hydraulic gradient necessary to keep the water moving. "It's designed to intercept whatever water flows in the area and take it away from [Al'Amãrah]," Alwash says. Then it dumps its contents into the Euphrates near its confluence with the Tigris. However, says Alwash, engineers discovered a problem with that plan.

"Because the area is so flat, the new water would flow backwards, up the river. So Saddam built a dam upstream of the Glory River outlet."

Today, according to observers, vast areas of the marsh are dry and crusted with salt. The reeds and grasses are dead. The birds that once lived there are gone, as are the millions of birds that would stop there to rest and refuel during migration. Commercial fishing in the Persian Gulf has suffered, Alwash says, because the fish can no longer swim upstream from the gulf to spawn.

For all intents and purposes, Alwash says, most of the marshland was dead by 1998. The 10 to 20 percent that remains is "in the throes of death," he says. The Al'Am¯arah and Al Hamm¯ar marshes took the most devastating hits; Al Hawizeh seems to be in somewhat better shape, and on that assumption Alwash pins his hopes.

While the four major canal and pipeline projects were being developed, two minor waterways were built as part of what Alwash calls a temporary dewatering system. One of them, the Crown of Battles River, is marked for a special fate. "It is my plan to use the Crown of Battles River to revitalize the Hawizeh marsh," he says.

Alwash and his supporters have what he calls rough plans. That's the best they can do for now. Solid, detailed design won't be possible until restoration teams actually get into the area and look around, he says. "All the information we have is based on remote sensing, and remote sensing by its very definition is not very accurate. We fully anticipate the need to revise."

The participants are holding a meeting this month in California to convene the team of advisers and prepare for the time when work can begin.

At that time, project planners will go to the marsh area to assess its condition. They will take soil and water samples. They will check all the assumptions they have been making from afar. They will rerun models to be sure their plans will work. Caution is imperative. "You need to be very, very careful about how you reintroduce water to an area," Alwash says.

When the scope of the work needed becomes clear, he will try to raise money—"probably in the hundreds of millions"—to finance it. He intends to ask Baghdad for some of it. "I'd like to see a government in Iraq that is interested in this program," he says. He will also seek money from private foundations and, possibly, the United States government.

Though seeing the marshland come back to life is his dream, Alwash harbors no illusions that his former countrymen feel the same way.

"The people of Iraq are worried about survival. The people of Iraq are worried about food tomorrow, medicine for their children today," he says. By the time a restoration effort can begin, "the problems in Iraq are going to be so huge that the environment is not going to be high on the priority list."

Still, there will be some support, he predicts: from the fishing industry in the gulf, which has seen its catch depleted as a result of the drainage; from wildlife and environmental activists; and from the hundreds of thousands of Ma'dan people. "They will demand its return to its previous state so they can go back home," he says.

And, he says, "people like me—who have seen the place in its glory— we dream about it."