Iraqi marshlands believed to have been the biblical Garden of Eden could win extra protection as a World Heritage Site by 2011, the UN said last week. This should secure the future of south-west Asia’s largest wetland, protecting the unique habitat and wildlife, and the Marsh Arabs that live there.
The marshlands – which nestle in the “fertile crescent” of ancient Mesopotamia, where the world’s first civilisations emerged – were destroyed in the early 1990s by Saddam Hussein to punish the Marsh Arabs’ alleged treachery in the Iran-Iraq war. However, when Hussein’s regime fell in 2003, the Arabs destroyed dams to reflood the marshlands, and a…
