Marsh Arabs | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Until the middle 1990s, when the Iraqi government began extensive drainage works that destroyed much of their traditional homeland, the Marsh Arabs inhabited much of the area extending southward from Kut on the Tigris River and Hilla on the Euphrates River, to Basra on the Shatt al- ʿArab. The area is alternately desert and marsh and originally covered 52,000 square kilometers (20,000 square miles). In the rainy season (March–July), 10,400 square kilometers (4,000 square miles) would be completely inundated; during the rest of the year the area was part marsh, part lake, and part dry land, covered with reeds and bulrushes. The inhabitants of the area, all nominally Shiʿite Muslims, were members of a number of different tribes, notably the Albu Muhammad, the Bani Lam, the Albu Salih, the Bani ʿIsad, and the Bani Hashsham. Traditionally, villages were formed on small islands, with huts made of reeds; transport was by canoe or raft.

The only academic anthropological study of part of the region (published in 1962, based on research carried out in 1953) divides the inhabitants occupationally into cultivators (of rice, millet, wheat, barley, and vegetables), reed gatherers, and buffalo breeders; some of the larger tribes, especially the Albu Muhammad, had members in all three categories, buffalo breeding being the most socially prestigious. In 1947, when the population of Iraq was about 5 million, there were about 300,000 Marsh Arabs. Although the nation's population in 2001 was over 20 million, rural to urban migration has been a major feature of the last five decades, so there were probably no more than 600,000 Marsh Arabs as of 1990.

Traditionally, the marshes provided a place of refuge for those fleeing from conscription or from the tax collector. However, the system of air control introduced by the British mandatory authorities in the 1920s meant that recalcitrant tribes could be and were bombed for various acts of disobedience or for nonpayment of taxes. Increasingly, the inhabitants of the rural south settled in larger villages or left the area altogether.

In the autumn of 1967, a splinter group of the Iraq Communist Party (the ICP–General Command, led by ʿAziz al-Hajj) conducted a brief guerrilla campaign based in the marshes. After the uprisings in southern Iraq following Desert Storm in 1991, groups of rebels took refuge in the marshes, which caused the Iraqi regime to lay siege to the area. Movement in and out of the marshlands was forbidden, and two huge canals were constructed and a number of rivers diverted, deliberately draining the marshes to make them uninhabitable by their traditional population (because the water was a vital part of their way of life). Most of the population has fled to refugee camps across the Iranian border. It may be that the damage done so far is irreversible; in any case, if the new hydraulic works were to be abandoned immediately, it would take many years for the ecology of the area to recover.

Al-Bayati, Hamid. (1994) "Destruction of the Southern Marshes." In Iraq since the Gulf War: Prospects for Democracy, edited by Fran Hazelton. London: Zed Press, 141–146.

Maxwell, Gavin. (1957) People of the Reeds. New York: Harper.

Salim, S. M. (1962) Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta. London: Athlone Press.

Thesiger, Wilfred. ([1964] 1983) The Marsh Arabs. Reprint ed. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin.

Young, Gavin. (1977) Return to the Marshes: Life with the Marsh Arabs of Iraq. London: Collins.

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