Iraq’s vast marshes, reborn after Saddam, are in peril again

In this Monday, Sept. 11, 2017 photo, the sun sets over an island paddock for water buffalo in the Chabaish marsh in Nasiriyah, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. Iraq’s southern marshes, a lush remnant of the cradle of civilization, were reborn after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein when residents dismantled dams he had built a decade earlier to drain the area in order to root out Shiite rebels. But now the largest wetlands in the Middle East are imperiled again, by government mismanagement and new upstream projects.(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)