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At a time when we are witnessing environmental threat to the marshes, and the 30th anniversary of the Marsh Arab genocide and drought, it is worth shedding light on the relationship of the modern state with the Marsh Arabs since the beginning of the 20th century through an analytical look at the policies that shaped this relationship in several stages, The Marsh Arabs are an ethnic group in the delta of Mesopotamia characterized by a unique culture and history, which caused them to be subject to historical persecution whose features emerged after the First World War. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
Fishermen in a fishing boat
Ethnic Origins
Their ethnic origins remained unknown over the centuries, no special ethnic identity developed among the Marsh Arabs and they were considered an inferior race, Academic circles have speculated several hypotheses confirming their origins; according to genetic research, they were considered the population with the strongest connection to the ancient Sumerians, Popular tradition however considers them as a foreign group of unknown origin who arrived in the marshes when the rearing of water buffalo was introduced to the region, the British colonial ethnographers found it difficult to categorize some social customs of their’s and speculated that they may have originated in India, this belief was traditionally justified in society by the slave trade from India, while rumors also circulated among the neighboring tribes about their speculated persian origins, Ethnic origins were one of the main reasons for the extermination of the Marsh Arabs in the 90s, as the newspapers of the Baath Party indicated during the genocide, for the history of the slave trade from India during the Abbasid Empire era. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
The oral traditions of the Marsh people lack written codification, and they did not have a written record of their tribes until the ninth century, and the Sumerians lost their distinct ethnic identity by 1800 B.C. However, other scholars have noted that much of the Marsh Arab culture is in common with the Bedouin Arabs who came to the area after the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate, and therefore concluded that they also descend from this source. genetic research indicates that they are an ethnic mixture between the Bedouin Arabs, the ancient Sumerians and other races, and were described as a mixed race by numerous anthropologists, The Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl wrote:“In the veins of the Marsh Arabs their Sumerian blood is more than that in the veins of any other Arab tribe, and only the Marsh Arabs are the grandchildren of that ancient civilization.” The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
Over the centuries, the Indian slave trade was ignored after the Islamic rule of India, despite how it lasted for centuries. Iraq was one of the main destinations for the transfer of thousands of “jat” or “zott” people in Sindh and then the “sammas” dynasty to Iraq by a number of Arab rulers, most notably the campaign of Muhammad al-Qasim, genetic research confirms that South-Asian genes rise slightly and it doesn’t have a significant impact on the Ahwari culture, According to the modern definition of race, it is a social structure that is determined based on the rules set by society related to culture and common interests, although race depends in part on physical similarities within groups, it does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning, so culture naturally determines race. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
“Barbaric”
The orientalist Pietro Della Villa was the first to introduce the word “Ma’dan” as a reference to the distinguished people inhabiting the Mesopotamian delta, this word was used to reference the Marsh people to the western world in the 17th century.
“Ma’dan” is also a metaphor for roughness and is widely used in Iraq as an adjective for ignorance, brutality, and ugliness, the word can also be found in many popular and ancient eloquent poems, It was also said as the name of “an ugly bird with a beautiful voice”, This commonly used derogatory word shows how most people view Marsh Arabs as inferior and barbaric, and it’s a offensive word for the Marsh Arabs,This commonly used derogatory word shows how most people view Marsh Arabs as inferior and barbaric, and it’s an offensive word for the Marsh Arabs Wherever it says because of its history, Sibawayh believes that it is a metaphor for a man of low destiny, and al-Zamakhshari believes that it means austerity and roughness. Its oldest literary existence may have been on the tongue of al-Numan ibn al-Mundhir in the sixth century AD, before the advent of Islam as mentioned in the book “The Gathering of Proverbs” by Abu Hilal al-Askari. When he met Al-Nu’man bin Al-Mundhir, a man called Damrah said to him: “It is better to hear about the Ma’idi than to see him.” This is due to his strange appearance, And in the hadith of Umar ibn al-Khattab: “be rough and Tama’dad”, it was said to the son when he grows up. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
There are many words for The Marsh Arabs, some of them are new ones and all of them are offensive words, one of them is the word “Shroog” which means “those from the east” and it was used after The Ahwari Migration, In recent years the term “Shroog” has come to mean fearless or fierce and Pride by the Marsh Arabs themselves or even Southern Iraqis, but the majority of Iraqis still use “Ma’dan” to insult others. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
another word is “Barbara” which means “Barbarian/foreign” and this is name is for a group of Marsh Arabs who are using nets for fishing not Falleh (spear) and this name became popular for a while after the British colonial rule separated The Marsh Arabs for two groups, Ma’dan and Barbara. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
In one of the cases that mentioned the duality of the word, Al-Dawashi, an Iraqi student studying in America, was surprised by how the West romanticized the way of life of the Marsh Arabs as a kind of “primitive rifle.” He says: “In Iraq, the word ‘Ma’dan’ was a slur meaning ignorance, and when I was in Iraq, the College of Medicine described the marshes as a disease-ridden area of malaria.” In his conclusion and observations, anthropologist Henry Field said about the Marsh Arabs: “The distinction between metallic and non-metal is not specific and appears to be a nickname distinction instead of race.” At the same time, he reached the same conclusion that Franz Boas had already revolutionized American anthropology with, by arguing that race is determined not by biology but by environment and culture factors. According to some lesser-known stories, including one Islamic tradition, the word Ma’dan derives from the name Maad bin Adnan, whose people were characterized by having endured a hard life, other sources tell of a myth that the culture of the marshes was influenced by the arrival of British colonialism with Indian soldiers who would later integrate with the local people. This has since been disproven. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
The War on Water and The Slave Trade
Because of the unique ecology of reed forests and complex waterways, the marshes became a refuge for those fleeing slavery during the era of the Abbasid Caliphate. The early liberation movements from slavery had been headquartered in the marshes against the Abbasid Caliphate in 869 AD and grew to rule parts of southern Iraq for decades, by the same slaves brought to work in the fields of southern Iraq amidst the labyrinth of reeds. Fugitive communities throughout history around the world have sought refuge in wetlands much like the marshes, such as the Tofino people who fled to Lake Nukoi to escape the slave trade. Iraq’s Marshes have been no different for those who seek its refuge. Iraqi opponents called the marshes “our Sherwood Forest” after Shi’a insurgents began using the marshes as a base to hide from government forces. Saddam Hussein resented the Marsh Arabs especially, because they offered a unique form of asylum to those seeking refuge and aid in the marshes, and because of their participation in the 1991 Uprisings. These factors fueled a violent rhetoric of ethnic and sectarian supremacy that ultimately ended in the extermination of the marshes. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
The destruction of the marshes did not begin in 1991 or during the Iran-Iraq war, it began at least a century before then. The marshes were divided into two parts by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the largest part amounting to 70 percent of the total area in Iraq and the other amounting to nearly 30 percent of the total area in Iran. The demarcation of modern borders became the first form of drawing the relationship between them and the Iraqi state, which was on its way to independence. For thousands of years, the marshes emerged as a stateless region similar to what James Scott describes in his book”The Art of Not Being Governed”, The region was hydrologically and physically impenetrable, a natural haven for slaves, defectors, and fugitives – destroying the refuge of opposition rebels was one of the main reasons for draining the marshes. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
Displacement and National Development
The Marsh Arabs lived in relative isolation until World War I when increased trade and labor migration caused greater contact with the remaining community. However, during the emergence of the Iraqi state Marsh Arabs were considered to be a part of the “other” side of the nation. The marshes became known as the back garden of the state, where nowadays tourists would be hosted to polish the image of the government and generate economic growth, while toxic sewage was often dumped in and the water quota was constantly cut off. The educated went to Basra and Baghdad, where they were not given work, lived in poor neighbourhoods, and were persecuted by the police. As Wilfred Thesiger described in his book: The Marsh Arabs. ”As for the tribes’ gatherings, they inhabited the city of Thawra (Sadr City) in Baghdad, which for decades remained called the city of Al-Saraif. It is made up of houses destitute of infrastructure and isolated from the city.” The residents of the marshes began to migrate to it after the construction of the Kut Dam in 1939, and this was the beginning escalation of the waves of displacement from the Marshes that would follow, the city of Al-Thawra was later built with different engineering maps dedicated to the migration of villagers, which some architects described as an engineering disaster dedicated to the provisions of the government’s grip on the city. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
Fishermen in a fishing boat
Before the demarcation of the Iraqi borders by colonial Britain, the Marsh Arabs were classified as a distinct marginalized community, which had entered through the process of colonization and modernization of Iraq since the modernization schemes led by Britain in Iraq in the fifties and the introduction of methods that tighten the grip of the feudal system to end the local subsistence economy, Where the same tribal administration system used in Balochistan in South Asia, was introduced, Their environment has been a target of depletion to make way for infrastructural development such as the Nasiriyah Dam and the Rumaila oil field, the British-controlled Iraq Petroleum Company produced films and photos depicting the marshland as a “living reminder of the past.” This depiction of Ahwar and its people is adjacent to images of water infrastructure projects and oil refineries. The word “Ma’dan” was synonymous with “pre-modern”. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
By crossing over to the societies of other Arab tribes in the big cities, the Marsh Arabs were able to integrate in the most recent decades, in contrast to the division that prevented them from doing so by living in separate neighbourhoods and other marginal communities meant for the Marsh Arabs to be able to continue outside their land and prevent them from assimilation into the Arab city society. Cultural denial and integration into their surroundings caused the Ahwari culture to lose the bulk of its people’s identities, traditions, and their linguistic diversity, along with the targeted destruction of the Ahwari identity during various eras. Through developmental plans in education and modernization, our culture and its various aspects began to be associated with the past or pre-modern Iraq. The education and reconstruction systems were structured in a way that denied our oral and material culture and created a state of denial within our cultural identity. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
Environmental Genocide and the Plan to Destroy the Marshlands
The destruction of Iraq’s marshes and the extermination of its people has been described by NASA as “one of the largest environmental disasters in the world”. Most accounts, including the constitution of Iraq, attribute this dual genocide to Saddam Hussein’s campaign for sectarian domination and revenge against the Shi’a, especially after the crushing of the March 1991 Uprising, but in a paper published by the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, researchers gave a different assessment of what happened in the marshes and indicated that the destruction was, in fact, the intended outcome. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
The despair of war is more than just sectarian hostility, which is the same reason that led Saddam Hussein into multiple wars, playing the chords of war and protection. The plan was older than the Gulf War, British Mandate officials were the first to try to drain the Marshes. The government’s agricultural plans for the Marshes date back to the early ‘50s during the royal era. It included a large project that began in 1953 and was known as the Third River Project and was reduced to a facade in 1963 and ultimately revived in 1991, but Saddam Hussein in turn developed it carefully. Other scholars have argued that the developed drain plans began much earlier, namely since the Iran-Iraq war 1985, but the order of the destruction plan, the genocide had begun being carried out since the 21st of April 1992, Ali Hassan al-Majid, cousin of Saddam Hussein and head of the Anfal genocide campaign, supervised the creation of a hermetic cordon around the Marshes, the environment itself identified as an enemy to be overcome in the context of cracking down on insurgency. Later, the Iraqi constitution of 2005 shows how the Ahwari people’s experience of genocide and displacement was erased, no mention of the marginalization and dissolution of the political identity of the new group, the lack of legal recognition for the existence of the group, the genocide, or the cultural rights of Marsh Arabs. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
After nearly nine months of round-the-clock shifts, the Iraqi government officially announced the opening of the Saddam River (the Third River) on December 7, 1992, in the presence of Saddam Hussein himself, it was celebrated as a victory for Iraqi technical prowess. Extensive drainage resulting from the construction of the Third River was just the beginning of further draining the Marshes and depriving them of the Tigris and Euphrates waters. At least four other major drainage channels were completed in 1993 and 1994: the Qadisiyah River, the Umm al-Maarik River, the Al-Izz River (Al-Izdihar), and the Al-Izdi River. Many dams were built to prevent backflow and other dams were also raised. In addition, the Hammar and Al-Hawizeh extensions were extensively divided by dams, and by a few years the largest wetland ecosystem in West Asia had become an arid desert. The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
Completing the Destruction: Housing Plans for Forced Displacement
The authorities deprived the families who refused to move to their monthly food supplies distributed according to the ration card system introduced after the imposition of UN sanctions.
Exacerbating an already dire situation mainly because of the inaccessibility of the marshes, some of the people were not formally registered with government records and did not have the identification cards needed to register for their share of rations.
In April 1992 the Iraqi National Assembly approved a new housing program. According to the then-Iraqi Parliament Speaker Saadi Mahdi Salih, the government’s intention was to relocate several thousand marsh dwellers to homes constructed along the Basra-Qurna highway and other areas to bring about a demographic change. The housing plan was justified as, “to provide them with electricity, clean water, schools and medical care” and to, “make them good citizens.” When discussing whether the Marsh Arabs would be consulting on this forced relocation, the response was, “you will be given the choice to move or stay, whether we say it is mandatory or optional, is not important to them.” The parallel between the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs was not lost on the Speaker of Parliament, referring to the Kurds, “at that time we evacuated these people and put them in compounds and provided them with amenities, but for political reasons there was a dispute against us in the West regarding the people of the Marshes, the West should help us move their homes and build schools for them and improve their health conditions instead of providing criticism as America nearly wiped out the Native Americans from the face of the earth, and no one batted an eye.” The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state
The Marsh Arabs and their conflict with the Modern state