The broad leaves and delicate purple flowers floating on the Euphrates look breathtaking — but they are suffocating the waterways of Iraq, celebrated as the “land of the two rivers.”
The water hyacinth, nicknamed the “Nile flower” in Iraq, is an invasive plant native to South America’s Amazon basin that has ravaged ecosystems across the world, from Sri Lanka to Nigeria.
The fast-spreading pest poses a special risk in Iraq, one of the world’s hottest countries that is already suffering from regular droughts and shrinking water resources due to overuse, pollution and upstream river dams.
Photo: AFP
The exotic flower was introduced to Iraq just two decades ago as a decorative plant, but now the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers are being choked by its rapid spread.
Its glossy leaves form a thick cover, absorbing up to 5 liters of water per plant per day and blocking sunlight and oxygen vital to the aquatic life below.
That has made the hyacinth a formidable floral foe for Iraq’s fishers, who sell hauls of river carp in local markets to those cooking masgouf, a national delicacy.
Because of the infestation, carp are dying and fishing nets get caught in the tangle of flat leaves, roots and flowers that also hampers boat travel.
“Our livelihoods are gone, all because of this Nile flower,” said Jallab al-Sharifi, a fisherman in the southern province of Dhi Qar who makes his living on the Euphrates.
Another fisherman east of Baghdad who works the Tigris said his haul had dropped by as much as half.
The hyacinths have also affected Iraqi farmers who already struggle with low water levels due to a series of dams built further upstream in Turkey and Iran.
The thick floating vegetation draws down water levels and clogs irrigation channels leading to agricultural fields.
“During this harvest, our vegetable sales in the local market were down by a third,” said Ahmed Yasser, a farmer in a village near Kut, east of Baghdad.
The hyacinth causes another type of pressure — a 100 square meter patch can weigh up to 5 tonnes, putting major strain on dilapidated riverside infrastructure, Iraqi officials warn.
In the village of al-Badaa, the thick columns of a brick bridge that once spanned a wide stretch of the Euphrates are now covered by hyacinths.
A dam further upstream encloses a swamp-like patch of land also covered by the plant.
If the flowers are not removed, “the bridge and dam of al-Badaa will collapse,” said Jalil al-Abboudi, the village sheikh.
“And if they collapse, the whole water supply system will collapse,” he said.
That would deprive vast regions — all the way to Iraq’s southernmost province of Basra — of the fragile water resources their ecosystems and economies rely on.
Iraq’s oil-dependent economy is already projected to shrink by nearly 10 percent this year, according to the World Bank.
A health crisis sparked by a shortage of safe drinking water in the south hospitalized about 100,000 people in 2018.
Locals blame authorities for what they say have been years of neglect and insufficient maintenance.
“The lack of action by the ministry of water resources, and the fact that there have been no renovations of infrastructure, caused an invasion that reached potable water reserves,” al-Abboudi said.
Saleh Hadi, head of research at Dhi Qar’s agriculture directorate, said that the ministry was well aware of the dangers and working hard to mitigate them.
“The ministry of water resources is working to combat this plant mechanically by uprooting it from irrigation channels,” he said.
The perennial predicament this year has been made even worse because of the COVId-19 pandemic.
Under normal conditions, Iraqi villagers along the banks of the Euphrates pluck out the plants by hand instead of using a chemical agent that would destroy the delicate ecosystem.
This year, a countrywide lockdown imposed to stem COVID-19 infections has allowed the hyacinth to spread mostly unhampered.
Some vigilantes are defying the curfew to fight the parasitic flower which they see as a bigger threat to their livelihoods than the pandemic.
While villagers are sneaking out to uproot the plants by hand, Mohammed Kuwaysh, an environmental activist and member of a farming cooperative, is thinking even bigger.
His collective raised about US$800 from local farmers to equip small speedboats to clear waterways by cutting hyacinths en masse.
“The government isn’t listening, which allowed this flower to spread like wildfire,” Kuwaysh said.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
RSS