After the overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in April 2003, local farmers throughout southern Iraq began to blow up dikes and earthen dams scattered across the former marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to try to replenish the region.

Once known for their biodiversity and cultural richness, more than 90 percent of all functioning marshes in Iraq's Maysan, Thi-Qar and Basra provinces were destroyed during the 1990s by extensive drainage programs implemented under the Saddam regime.

"If you can imagine Lake Ontario literally disappearing over the course of just a few years, that's the scale of ecological disaster that we're talking about," said Barry Warner, a wetland ecologist at the University in Waterloo in Canada.

Once known as "the cradle of Western civilization" and the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden, the Mesopotamian marshes at one time covered as many as 20,000 square kilometers along the border of modern-day Iraq and Iran. A permanent habitat for millions of birds and fish, the marshes also have sustained a human population for millennia.

The Ma'dan, or Marsh Arabs, lived for nearly 5,000 years on man-made islands and along the periphery of the marshes. Their population was estimated to have topped 500,000 in the 1970s.

Following the crushing of the Shia revolt at the end of the first Gulf War in 1990, the Baghdad regime raided and burned settlements throughout the marshlands, killing tens of thousands of Marsh Arabs who were hostile to Saddam's rule.

A systematic re-routing of water resources to irrigate agriculture in northern Iraq also served as a strategic move to obliterate the area's refuge for army deserters and Shia guerrillas.

Dana Graber Ladek, an Iraqi refugee specialist at the International Organization for Migration, estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 Marsh Arabs left their homes in Iraq and neighboring Iran.

"The majority of them were displaced to cities or villages rather than rural areas," Ladek said, naming Basra, Karbala and Baghdad as the largest sites of resettlement. Displaced Marsh Arabs struggled to integrate into these new communities, often facing unsupportive local authorities, she said.

"They are competing with local residents for jobs and in the schools, and are probably seen as a strain on the local resources," she added.

Political and environmental shifts
But as the regime in Iraq changed, so too did the environment. While there are varying assessments of the extent to which local residents have re-submerged the area since 2003, the United Nations Environmental Programme estimates that as much as 58 percent of the former Iraqi marshlands are now re-flooded.

The ecological improvements brought back many former residents to the marshlands. About 90,000 people have returned since the fall of Saddam, according to Azzam Alwash, director of Nature Iraq, an Iraq-based environmental nongovernmental organization, who performed a survey last year with the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources.

"In one area, Abu Subat village, which is very close to Chabaysh, the economic heart of the marshes, I myself was there in 2003 and there was not a single family. Today there is about 150 families in that area and there are about 6,000 water buffaloes," he said.

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, scientists funded by American, British, Canadian, Italian and Iraqi agencies have been working with Iraqi researchers to help restore the marshlands.

Field surveys conducted last year by Curtis Richardson, director of the Duke Wetlands Center, and Najah Hussain of the University of Basra, revealed a re-emergence of native macro-invertebrates, fish and birds in re-flooded areas.

Still, Richardson said he is concerned about the future availability of water for restoration, citing the growth of dams in neighboring Turkey, Syria and Iran. He also emphasized that the haphazard destruction of dikes and dams by local marsh residents does not guarantee the restoration of healthy ecosystems.

"Just because the areas are flooded, doesn't mean they're being restored," he explained. "In fact, a lot of areas are still diked, and putting water in there at 50 degrees centigrade results in pretty much creating salt pans."

Alwash echoed the call for ecological restraint: "Frankly, at this point and time, I don't think the marshes can support any more people, being what they are right now."

"We can't really overstress nature," he said. "We need to give nature healing time before we stress her for providing a living and food for more people."

Redirecting funds
Meanwhile, as control of more programs is being handed over to Iraqis, and security problems persist in certain areas, many international agencies are shifting away from direct engagement in social and economic affairs of the marshes.

For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development's Iraqi Marshlands Restoration Program was phased out at the end of 2006. The agency's support for marshland restoration now comes under the general jurisdiction of Inma, or "Growth", a new $343 million agribusiness program to be implemented throughout Iraq over the next three years.

Greater focus is being placed on ecological monitoring programs that pose fewer security risks, said Peter Reiss, who directed the now defunct marshlands restoration program.

The Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources and the provincial governorates of Maysan, Thi-Qar and Basra have declared the revitalization of the marshlands a priority, yet funding and security concerns also inhibit restoration efforts governed from within Iraq. The Marsh Arabs remain an isolated and underserved constituency, said Alwash.

Potable water and sewage services are in short supply in southern Iraq's most-populated cities, he said, and persistent fighting among militant groups enfeebles the reach of the provincial governments.

"The biggest issue facing the return of the people is the provision of services," he said.

But despite these conditions, the Marsh Arabs are returning, and for the first time in their lives, many are making a living by farming wheat, rice, and barley on the edge of the marshes.

On his most recent trips to the region, Richardson said he saw an increasing number of families returning to the Suq Al-Shuyukh and Al-Hammar marshes.

"If you could get these people stabilized, get them back into growing agriculture and doing work, they were better off than the people in the city," he noted.

While they may never return to their Garden of Eden status, the marshes are providing some food as well as some limited protection from the violence erupting in other parts of the country.

-- By Will Di Novi, Online NewsHour