Though Iraq was the Cradle of Civilization, a wet and fertile place, Americans are more accustomed to thinking of it as the endless desert they see in photographs and news clips. But even with the ongoing war, the United Nations today announced that it wants to try to put the fertile back in the Fertile Crescent, and revive dying Iraqi wetlands.
With water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers coming in, Iraqi wetlands had long been home to local wildlife and migrating birds, as well as many people called the Marsh Arabs who inhabited the land. But Saddam Hussein declared those people traitors in the 1990s and drained the area, shrinking wetlands by almost 92 percent.
