Pipe dredge install#

Iraq's government and Kurdish farmers accuse Turkey, where the Tigris has its source, of withholding water in its dams, dramatically reducing the flow into Iraq.Īccording to Iraqi official statistics, the level of the Tigris entering Iraq has dropped to just 35 percent of its average over the past century.īaghdad regularly asks Ankara to release more water.īut Turkey's ambassador to Iraq, Ali Riza Guney, urged Iraq to 'use the available water more efficiently', tweeting in July that 'water is largely wasted in Iraq'. 'Before, the water was pouring in torrents,' he said, but over the last two or three years 'there is less water every day'. 'All our work, our agriculture, depends on it. 'Our life depends on the Tigris,' said farmer Pibo Hassan Dolmassa, 41, wearing a dusty coat, in the town of Faysh Khabur. The Tigris' journey through Iraq begins in the mountains of autonomous Kurdistan, near the borders of Turkey and Syria, where local people raise sheep and grow potatoes.

Pipe dredge install#

Iraqi Kurdish farmers install irrigation pipes on an agricultural land in the village of Bajid Kandala, situated on the banks of the Tigris river, some 50km west of the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk, on Feb. The Tigris, the lifeline connecting the storied cities of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, has been choked by dams, most of them upstream in Turkey, and falling rainfall.Īn AFP video journalist travelled along the river's 1,500-kilometre (900-mile) course through Iraq, from the rugged Kurdish north to the Gulf in the south, to document the ecological disaster that is forcing people to change their ancient way of life. Hellish summers see the mercury top a blistering 50 degrees Celsius - near the limit of human endurance - with frequent power cuts shutting down air-conditioning for millions.

Iraq may be oil-rich but the country is plagued by poverty after decades of war and by droughts and desertification.īattered by one natural disaster after another, it is one of the five countries most exposed to climate change, according to the UN.įrom April on, temperatures exceed 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and intense sandstorms often turn the sky orange, covering the country in a film of dust. Human activity and climate change have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where - with its twin river the Euphrates - it made Mesopotamia a cradle of civilization thousands of years ago. It was the river that is said to have watered the biblical Garden of Eden and helped give birth to civilization itself.