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Photos: Middle East’s Fertile Crescent dries up as rains fail

Residents endure drought, decades of conflict and lower rainfall along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Children play ball games on the dried up riverbed of the Shatt al Mashkhab river
Children play in the dried-up riverbed of the Shatt al-Mashkhab river in Najaf, Iraq, on October 10, 2022. [Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]
Published On 14 Nov 2022

As world leaders meet in Egypt for a climate summit to address issues that include water and food supplies, many across Iraq and the broader Middle East are facing a crisis that could fuel more regional turmoil as communities fight over dwindling water resources.

“Climate change is a reality in Iraq,” the United Nations mission in the country said, adding that Iraq is the world’s fifth most vulnerable nation to the fallout from global warming due to rising temperatures, lower rainfall, salinity and dust storms.

Officials and water experts in Iraq said rains had come later and ended sooner in each of the past three years.

The country is part of the Fertile Crescent, a region sweeping from the Mediterranean to the Gulf where farming developed more than 10,000 years ago. Today, though, Iraq has become far less fertile as it’s been devastated by a triple blow of lower rainfall, decades of conflict and less water flowing through its two main rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.

“Desertification now threatens almost 40 percent of the area of our country – a country that was once one of the most fertile and productive in the region,” President Abdul Latif Rashid told the climate summit in Egypt last week.

In Turkey’s southeast, where the Tigris and Euphrates draw their waters, rainfall in the year to September was 29 percent below the average of the previous three decades, and it was even worse in 2021, data from Turkey’s meteorological agency showed.

Almost 90 percent of rain-fed crops, mostly wheat and barley, failed this season, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Iraq. Before 2020, Iraq could produce almost 5.5 million tonnes of wheat. Last year, the government received 2.1 million, the organisation’s representative in Iraq told the Reuters news agency.

Competition for water is now fuelling disputes and conflict among farming communities in southern Iraq, according to tribal leaders and Iraqi officials.

Standing by an almost-dry canal offshoot, tribal leader Maksad Rahim said he remembered when it was full of clear water and the landscape was green with trees. “Now there are so many sandstorms because there are no plants and trees to protect us,” he said.

Salt residue is seen on arid farmland in al-Muthanna Province, Iraq,
Salt encrusts arid farmland in al-Muthanna province as rising levels of salinity in the soil make large areas of Iraqi farmland useless. [Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]
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Ali Elwan, 56, and his son Abdul Amir Ali, 23, walk in the courtyard of Abbas Elwan's home.
Father and son visit the home of a relative who died by suicide after failing to find water despite digging well after well in the village of Al-Bu Hussain, which sits on the bank of a dried-up canal. [Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]
Haider Jalil, 10, grazes animals outside the family home.
A boy grazes animals outside his family's home in the village of Al-Bouzayyat, Iraq, which sits on the bank of a canal that has dried up. [Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]
A new canal is seen, which replaces one which has been in use since the nineteen fifties.
A new canal in the village of Al-Massa, Iraq, has replaced one that had been in use since the 1950s after the water level decreased. [ Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]
Salt residue is seen on arid farmland in al-Muthanna Province, Iraq
Salt residue coats arid farmland in Iraq's al-Muthanna province. Salt collects in soil when farmers irrigate it with saltwater or don't drain it properly. [Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]
Taha Yassin, 46, stands inside the deserted home of his neighbour.
A man stands inside the deserted home of his neighbours, one of many families who have left his village of Al-Bouzayyat, Iraq. [ Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]
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Kazem Hussain, 52, applies ointment to the legs of his niece.
A man applies ointment to the legs of his niece to treat a skin problem the family says is caused by contaminated water in Al Bu Ruwayyshid village, Iraq. [Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]
Haider Jalil, 10, fills a water tank from a truck outside his family home
Haider Jalil, 10, fills a water tank from a truck outside his family home in the village of Al-Bouzayyat, Iraq. [Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]
Cattle graze along the dried out bank of the Euphrates river
Cattle graze along the dried-out bank of the Euphrates river near Qere Qozaq, Syria, which is controlled by Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. [Orhan Qereman/Reuters]
Hikma Meteab, 48, and her daughter Ghufran Abbas, 3, pose for a photograph at their family home in the village of Al-Bu Hussain, Iraq
This woman was left a widow and her daughter fatherless in the village of Al-Bu Hussain after her husband died by suicide in August after attempts to find water for his parched farmlands failed. [Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]