A huge dust storm on Monday May 16, 2022 forced millions of Iraqis to change their way of life, after causing thousands of them to be hospitalized with cases of suffocation. Visibility has decreased sharply, leading to traffic accidents in different parts of the country. The Ministries of Education and Higher Education have been forced to suspend classes in schools and universities and seven central and southern governorates have stopped all activity in public establishments, with the exception of hospitals. Aviation authorities, meanwhile, postponed scheduled flights that day to and from international airports in Baghdad, Najaf and Suleimaniah until the dust, which left streaks everywhere, cleared.
An event that has become almost daily, repeated waves of dust hitting most regions of Iraq. The Ministry of the Environment estimates that Iraq would experience 272 storms to one, due to increased desertification after years of drought and lack of rain, and the failure of the state to put in place measures to save the plant cover, which is deteriorating from year to year.
Where is the strategic water policy?
According to experts, successive Iraqi governments have never taken diplomatic measures in the face of Turkey’s water management policy and its control of the supplies of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which have their source in Turkey, and on which it has built dams that threaten to dry them up. Governments have also ignored popular calls to take a stand against Iran, which has cut off the waterways of all tributaries flowing to Iraq through its territory. Moreover, no budget has been provided to complete the implementation of major strategic projects, nor even to set up green belts to protect cities from the invasion of sand.
As a result, sandstorms became a reality for most of the year, many water sources dried up, streams dried up, and bodies of water disappeared. Director-General of the Environment Ministry’s technical department, Issa Al-Fayyad, complains about the lack of financial allocations and water resources to curb dust storms, which he says will reach 300 storms a year by here at 2055.
15 billion trees to plant
To deal with it, the spokesman for the Minister of Agriculture, Hamid Al-Nayef, says that Iraq would need to plant at least 15 billion trees, with the decline of vegetation cover and the shrinking of cultivated areas. . Agricultural academic Salah Houssam believes that “Planting 5% of this number of trees would be enough in the western regions of the country, in order to stop the dust and improve the environment of the region”, on the condition of adopting a national program endowed with a fairly large public budget. Iraq ranks 181e world rank in terms of forest cover compared to the total area of the country, or 1.9% of its territory, a very low percentage, he says, for a country where two rivers flow.
Agricultural expert Loqman Mustafa notes that “the question of setting up a green belt would only be a luxury for a citizen who suffers from unemployment and poverty, because he thinks above all about ensuring his livelihood and having a roof over his head”.
An opinion shared by a group of street vendors in the city of Ramadi [centre de l’Irak], caught in a sandstorm that suddenly engulfed them. Hazem Fawzan does not believe in any public project promised by the State because, “if the project is carried out, it will be of poor quality, and the sums of money that have been spent in its execution or stolen in its name will have been wasted”. Farqad Idris says looking at the sky: “This dust is a wrath of God against us…” He adds, after a fit of coughing:
“God takes revenge on us because we let politicians rob us.”
In the market of the old town [de Kirkouk]Kamal Loqman parked his taxi by the side of the road: “We have spent our lives in the smoke of the oil fields and now in the dust of sandstorms.” He pulls up his mask and says ironically: “We were using it against coronavirus, and now against dust, and both are deadly viruses.”
Two watchwords: “preparation and adaptation”
Like many others, activist and researcher Youssef Al-Eshaiker believes that green belts around deserts are the best solution to stop the amplification of desertification and protect fertile agricultural land, in addition to landscape, humidify the atmosphere and produce oxygen.
As for sandstorms, he explains that it is a transboundary and transcontinental climatic, ecological and geological phenomenon. It occurs in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, then, like a giant wall, travels hundreds of kilometers without being able to be stopped by trees or green belts. It depends on the amount of rain falling in each season. “Because we do not control the amount of rain that falls on our deserts and those of neighboring countries, we cannot control dust storms or prevent them. As last winter we received the lowest amount of rain in forty years in Iraq and the region, it is not surprising that today we are exposed to more storms.”
So what solution to deal with sandstorms? Al-Eshaiker responds with two words, “preparation and adaptation”, by adopting early forecasting methods and determining the trajectories and severity of these storms, developing mechanisms for isolating homes, preparing hospitals and emergency services for suffocation cases and informing airports and travelers. We must also educate the public about driving during sandstorms and close the streets, highways and intersections most at risk.
Towards a “national green belt”?
Although desertification is part of Iraq’s 2015-2030 strategic plan, there is no indication, after seven years, that successive Iraqi governments have had a real desire to implement projects to combat this phenomenon. Specialists in political and economic affairs believe that other priorities have emerged.
During our research on the possibility of putting in place practical and implementable national plans to save Iraq from the imminent danger of desertification, we discovered that the former minister of water resources Hassan Al-Janabi had drawn up a project that he called “national green belt”calling it “first line of defense to resist the advancing sand and stop it west of the Euphrates”.
The entire Middle East affected
In addition to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, but also Iran, Kuwait and Syria experienced exceptional dust and sand storms.
With the neighboring Sahara and Arabian Desert, “sandstorms have always been part of the life of the region”, écrit The Economist. These dry and dusty winds even have a particular name depending on the country. “Favoured by seasonal winds”, these storms usually come “in late spring and summer” in the Middle East, writes Gulf Today.
However, these winds become “increasingly frequent and intense”, underlines the English-language Emirati daily, which suggests pell-mell as causes of the phenomenon overgrazing, deforestation and overuse of waterways.
Courrier International
The implementation of the project, expected to last between five and ten years, would be divided into stages, starting from the north of Mosul and extending to the south of Basra, over a length of approximately 1,000 kilometers and a width of 1 to 5 kilometers. The project would consist of a vegetation cover made up of trees and plants adapted to arid environments.
Al-Janabi estimates that his project would require the planting of 220 million trees, at a cost of over $1 billion, and various irrigation systems to cover the entire area, at an estimated cost of between $600 million and $1 billion. $5 billion. According to Al-Janabi, his project will effectively contribute to stopping the advance of sand and preventing it from reaching the entire Iraqi territory, protecting the fertility of the lands of Mesopotamia, raising the level of agricultural production, countering environmental degradation and to protect biodiversity, threatened by climate change and warming.
A project of 200 dams along the Tigris and Euphrates
Professor Marwan Mout’ab Al-Sayed has also drawn up a project which he believes could save Iraq from drought and desertification, spread greenery and prosperity to all its regions, and make a qualitative leap in terms of agriculture, as well as working to improve food and water security. His project is based on the construction of 200 small dams along the Tigris and Euphrates. This would allow better agricultural exploitation of the floodplains adjoining the two rivers.
According to him, these dams would also meet the requirements of rainwater harvesting in Iraq, since all the secondary rivers of Iraq discharge their waters into the Tigris and Euphrates, which would create “renewable, massive and inexhaustible water resources, collected in these dams all along the basins of the two rivers”. In addition, this project offers the possibility of taking water from these dams to send them to arid areas to cover the area of Iraq, including the regions of Al-Jazeera [nord-ouest de l’Irak] and the Western Desert, through irrigation networks.