Iraqi merchant Mohamed has never seen such a grim tourist season — years of drought have shrunken the majestic Lake Habbaniyah, keeping away the holidaymakers who once flocked there during the summer.
“The last two years, there was some activity, but now there’s no more water,” said 35-year-old Mohamed, asking to be identified by his first name only.
He laid out inflatable water floats, nets and shirts in front of his lakeside shop, but expected few if any customers.
Photo: AFP
“This year, it’s dry, dry,” Mohamed said, his shirt soaked in sweat in the inhospitable heat of nearly 50°C.
Shorelines at Habbaniyah, about 70km west of the capital, Baghdad, have receded by several dozen meters after four consecutive years of drought ravaged parts of the nation.
The UN ranks water-stressed Iraq as one of five nations most impacted by some effects of climate change.
When full, as it last was in 2020, the lake can hold up to 3.3 billion cubic meters of water, said Jamal Odeh Samir, director of water resources in Anbar Province, but now “the lake contains no more than 500 million cubic meters of water.”
Shops like Mohamed’s and holiday homes by the lake now sit empty in the height of summer. On the beach, stray dogs wander between unused umbrellas.
To get to the water, visitors must walk through foul-smelling mud that was once submerged under the lake surface.
The resort was created around the artificial lake in 1979, becoming a popular destination for tourists from across the Middle East in the following years.
Declining rainfall over the past four years and rising temperatures have hit Habbaniyah — alongside much of the rest of the nation — hard.
Baghdad blames upstream dam construction by Turkey on a staggering low water level in the Euphrates River, which feeds the lake and also runs through Syria.
“The strategic water reserves in Iraq are at their lowest point” in nearly a century, said Khaled Shamal, spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources.
Last week during a visit to Baghdad, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned that “rising temperatures plus the drought, and the fact that the loss of diversity is a reality, is a wake-up call for Iraq and for the world.”
Sada’a Saleh Mohamed, a local official overseeing finances at the Habbaniyah resort, said that “the lake has receded” and tourism has become “really very weak.”
“The lake has become a pond of stagnant water, unsuitable for consumption or for swimming,” he said.
When evening fell and temperatures dropped slightly, a few people finally arrived to barbecue on the beach.
Qassem Lafta came with his family from the nearby city of Fallujah.
“Before, we would come here and it was much better, the water was higher,” the 45-year-old merchant said.
He said he hoped authorities would revive the lake.
“It’s the only place where people from Anbar, southern Iraq and Baghdad can come to relax,” he said.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
RSS