Once bustling with fishing boats anchored on the beach and unloading fish in the past, the coast of Shatt al-Arab in al-Faw in Basra, southern Iraq, has become a graveyard for rusted and abandoned fishing boats, and the city is faltering.
Fishermen say this is because they can no longer do business in the waters of neighboring countries as they used to.
Many in FAO have abandoned hunting and are looking for other jobs because of harassment by neighboring countries, they say.
For example, former fisherman Kadhim Hussein once owned at least 12 fishing boats and now has only two boats that are not fit for work.
The shortage of Iraqi water in the Shatt al-Arab and the lack of government support and harassment of neighboring countries have exacerbated the difficulties of Iraqi fishermen, forcing hundreds of them to leave FAO with their families and start looking for other occupations. Many fishermen no longer want to take risks at sea, selling their boats or leaving them to rust.
Fish is more available on the Kuwaiti and Iranian sides of the Shatt al-Arab, and the two sides prevent Iraqi fishermen from fishing in their territorial waters, and inform them that Iraq has no agreements with them in this regard.
Control of the Shatt al-Arab waterway was one of the main causes of the bitter and costly war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s. The border dispute has not yet been resolved.