Here's an Iraqi Marsh Arab village in 1974:
[Photo: Nik Wheeler/CORBIS]
Saddam drained the marshes in the early '90s as a punishment for the Shi'ite inhabitants who'd risen up against him after the first Gulf War in expectation of help, which never came, from George Bush. Thousands were killed, the water poisoned, their huts burnt, and their way of life destroyed in what the UN in a 2001 report described as "one of the world's greatest environmental disasters".
Read here about efforts to restore the marshes to their former glory.
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