THE marshlands of Iraq, which Saddam Hussein tried to destroy, have made a remarkable recovery, according to evidence released yesterday by the United Nations.

Satellite pictures of the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Iraq revealed that, since the overthrow of Saddam two years ago, flood waters have reclaimed large areas of wetland.

The UN’s Environment Programme said that the marshlands now covered 37 per cent of the area that they occupied in the 1970s and had spread by about 10 per cent since 2002, when the UN gave warning that they could disappear altogether. The 9,000 sq km (3,475sq m) of permanent wetlands shrank to only 760 sq km in 2002. Today they cover almost 3,500 sq km.

“It is not often we have good news from Iraq but this report is very encouraging,” Hassan Janabi, an Iraqi environmental expert, said at a UN conference in Japan, where the findings were released. Iraq’s swamps have provided a fragile habitat for human beings, animals and plant life for at least 5,000 years. The area’s natural beauty is thought to have been the inspiration for the Bible’s description of the Garden of Eden and as recently as the 1950s, Wilfred Thesiger, the British traveller, recorded a thriving community of fishermen and reed gatherers in his book The Marsh Arabs.

But the marshes — near the Iranian border — became a hideout for deserters and bandits during Iraq’s war with Iran in the 1980s. After Shia Muslims led an uprising in 1991 against Saddam’s regime in southern Iraq, the authorities in Baghdad began building a network of canals and dykes to drain water from the marshes and tried to turn the area into desert.

“[It] was a major ecological and human disaster, robbing the Marsh Arabs of centuries-old culture and a way of life, as well as food in the form of fish and the most crucial natural resource, drinking water,” Klaus Toepfer, the UNEP executive director, said. But he gave warning that a full recovery would take many years.

While Saddam’s policies have been reversed, the area will always depend on a steady supply of water from Iraq’s two great rivers, which are threatened by dam-building in neighbouring Turkey and Syria.

Chassib al-Marsomi, who runs an organisation dedicated to restoring the marshes, said: “Of the 40 per cent of recovered marshlands I would say 10per cent was done in an organised manner and about 30 per cent by people who simply went out and destroyed Saddam’s dykes and earth barriers.”

He welcomed the UN’s findings but said that the region, one of the poorest in Iraq, desperately needed assistance to build schools and hospitals and provide basic services.

Many Marsh Arabs were forced into camps or resettled in the slums of Iraq’s southern cities. Mr al-Marsomi said: “Life is miserable for many people. The conditions they endure are prehistoric.”

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