Iraq’s Garden of Eden now ‘like a desert’
HUWAIZAH MARSHES, Iraq: To feed and cool his buffaloes, Hashem Gassed must cross 10 kilometers (6 miles) of sunburnt land in southern Iraq, where drought is devastating swaths of the mythical Mesopotamian Marshes.
The reputed home of the biblical Garden of Eden, Iraq’s swamplands have been battered by three years of drought and low rainfall, as well as reduced water flows along rivers and tributaries originating in neighboring Turkey and Iran.