Lacroix: The city of Basra .. Salty water, polluted and angry from power

The residents of the province of Basra have been suffering from a severe health and economic crisis after their running water has become salty and polluted in a sustainable manner, destroying thousands of hectares of farmland, the French daily La Croix said.

In a report to her private correspondent in the province, Noyi Benid, the situation has pushed the city's population, which is twice as poor as the rest of Iraq, to ​​protest and protest four months ago over the lack of public services and Baghdad's control over their water and oil resources.

Sale of livestock
The reporter described the story of Abbas Abdel-Saleh as an example of what the people of this province suffered from hardship and hardship. He was able, with his four hectares and his flock of thirty sheep and a few cows, to earn 25 million dinars a year, about 20,000 euros.

But now Abbas is looking sadly at his cracked, salt-drenched land, where he sees only some weeds. "In the past, everything here was green, I planted vegetables and animal feed, dates and apples," he said with a muffled voice.

"But this year I lost everything, nothing is growing here, I have three children to feed them, forcing me to sell my livestock." Even to feed these animals, Abdul Saleh did not find water bottles to be used to fill the ponds. Necessary, according to correspondence.

Water flow declined
The Shatt al-Arab River, which irrigates agricultural land in the province of Basra, is located at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, but salinity, according to correspondence, has increased by 20 times the highest average that should not exceed it, which is a record.

The flow of water to the two rivers has decreased by 40% during the last half century, which is considered a huge decline, which caused a rise in the proportion of salt water flowing from the Arabian Gulf to the Shatt al-Arab, which resulted in an environmental disaster, Exacerbated by an increase in population and therefore in water consumption.

According to the writer, the supply of water has declined due to the presence of 56 Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish dams built from the source of the two rivers until they reached their mouth in Basra.

Regulation of water sharing
In this connection, the agricultural engineer in the Directorate of Agriculture in Basra Ali Salem said that the problem stems from the mismanagement of water resources by the rulers who were punished on Iraq, as "the Tigris and Euphrates rivers cross eight Iraqi provinces before they arrived in Basra, Without regard to us in Basra. "

Ali Salem stressed that the matter requires that the government in Baghdad to regulate the sharing of water in a fair manner so that each province take its share of water.

These factors, exacerbated by increasingly drier summer, have given rise to despair among farmers in southern Iraq, leaving 4,000 of them displaced since the beginning of the year.

The agricultural and health crisis, according to correspondence, prompted protests in the province, which were suppressed by the authorities and killed 23 people and injured about 100.

The writer pointed out that the demonstrations in Basra showed for the first time a movement of citizens who publicly express their hostility to the Shiite political elite that claims to represent them, as she put it.

"They are grabbing our water and oil and they want us to remain silent," said Samir Ghalim al-Maliki, one of the organizers of the movement. "The corrupt Islamic political parties do not care about people like us," he said.