Apr 30, 2003 By Alexandra Zavis Associated Press Writer 4 min read

QURNAH, Iraq (AP) – In the purported Garden of Eden, lifeless trees stand amid trash, patches of dry grass and salt-encrusted mud – the remnants of once-lush marshlands. For more than a decade, Saddam Hussein systematically destroyed the vast wetlands of southern Iraq – building dams and canals to drain the swamps, setting fire to the sea of reeds, and arresting and killing residents.

Those left behind hope Saddam’s fall heralds restoration of the devastated land to the paradise they remember – the one many scholars believe was the biblical Garden of Eden.

“By taking our marshes, he took half our happiness,” said Salih Karim Judran, a farmer and teacher living in a mud and grass village. The other half, also lost, Judran said, was security and democracy.

“The way to win over the south is to open the dams and flood the marshes,” Judran said.

The marshlands – home to rare species of boar and otter and a spawning ground for Persian Gulf fisheries – once extended 6,000 to 8,000 square miles across an area straddling the Iran-Iraq border.

Satellite studies conducted by the U.N. Environment Program show less than 400 square miles remain today.

Without urgent action, the U.N. agency warned in March, the entire wetland system could be gone in three to five years. An emergency release of water could stave off further deterioration, it said, but a long-term recovery plan is needed to bring back the scenes some marsh Arabs remember longingly.

When Judran’s father, Karim Judran, scans the desolate landscape, he recalls fields of wheat, rice and barley; orchards bursting with date palms, grapes and figs; and waters teeming with fish he remembers from his youth.

“It was beautiful,” the frail, white-bearded man says dreamily.

Watching it disappear was one of the greatest tragedies of his life.

“We were weak …. The regime was strong, and it was everywhere, so there was nothing we could do,” he said.

In the process, an ancient civilization is being wiped out.

Marsh Arabs are the 5,000-year-old heirs of the Sumerians, who invented the world’s first alphabet. Until recently, they maintained an ancient lifestyle, building dome-shaped reed houses on floating islands and navigating the swamps and rivers in bitumen-covered boats. They fished, raised buffalo and grew rice in the lush environment.

But during Iraq’s 1980-88 war with Iran, the marshlands became a launch pad for attacks by Iranian armed forces.

Iraqi army deserters and political opponents also hid among the reeds, causing Saddam’s government to accelerate a land reclamation project started decades earlier to drain saline waters from waterlogged farmlands to the north and west.

After Shiite Muslims launched an unsuccessful uprising in the area at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the project was extended to drain the marshes themselves.

Saddam’s regime bombed districts to clear out residents, then sent troops to secure the areas.

More than 30 dams were constructed, reducing the water level downstream and eliminating the seasonal floodwaters that nourished the marshes.

Tens of thousands of marsh Arabs were displaced, many ending up in Iranian refugee camps. Others now build their elegant reed homes in the sand on the outskirts of southern Iraqi villages and towns.

As the marshes declined, so did the small market town of Qurnah, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Elegant brick homes were left to crumble, and the tourists who once stood for snapshots in front of a tree representing the one from which Eve plucked the forbidden fruit stopped coming.

The biblical patriarch Abraham is said to have visited the site in 2000 B.C., and the tree was planted to commemorate that event, said Abbas Jabban, who used to manage the boarded-up hotel next to where it stands.

The original tree was transferred to a museum in Baghdad, he said. The dried-out one that now stands in its place was planted around 1920 and stayed alive until 1975. No one remembers what kind it was, but it never yielded any fruit, he said.

A few months ago, it toppled over and is now held up by a concrete base in a garden with anti-American graffiti on the walls. A small plaque identifying this as the site of the Garden of Eden was looted in the burst of lawlessness that followed Saddam’s fall.

Now that the war is over, Jabban has high hopes the river flowing gently past the hotel’s gardens will swell, and the tourists who once filled its rooms will return.

“There is nothing in this town except tourism,” said the tall, robed man. “Without the tourists, the place is dead.”

AP-ES-04-29-03 1604EDT