"The shortage of water can be ascribed to the shortage of rain
and snow at the main sources," the employee at the irrigation centre
said.
Many farmers say that they fear that the northern Kurdish-controlled
region of Iraq is facing a dry 2008. The mountains there, besides the
mountains of southwest Iran and southern Turkey, form a large source of
water for Iraq.
The government is doing little to help people over this crisis. "The
directorate is impotent and can give nothing to the farmers," the
irrigation centre employee said. "Hundreds of thousands of acres are
now desolate, and thousands of people jobless."
Most villagers work in farming, and now that farming no more sustains
people as it did, life there is badly hit. Agriculture in this area
kept Iraq supplied, and also produced enough for exports. But now
farmers sometimes have a hard time feeding themselves.
"The majority of our village farmers have quit and the rest will
follow," farmer Nasir Ibrahim told IPS. "This is because of obstacles
like security, displacement, water shortage, lack of seeds, and lack of
backing on the part of the ministry.
"Farming is our source of our living; it's our job. We used to live in
the village; we cannot live in the city to work in offices, even though
so many farmers have become policemen."
The degraded security situation in the province has left farmers with
the option only of selling their fruit and vegetables in smaller
markets, because accessing the central market has become too dangerous.
"Now, we sell in sub-markets on the outskirts of Baquba," local farmer
Aziz Helan told IPS. "So farmers are not obliged to go to the centre of
the city to sell their crops. But there is also less to sell because
very little is grown due to lack of water.
"One orchard that was producing 15-18 tonnes of oranges (per season)
during the 1990s now produces only 200-400 kilograms. One farm that
used to produce 40 tonnes of wheat now produces nothing."
In desperate search of water, some farmers have installed private water
pumps on the banks of the Diyala river which runs near Baquba.
"This big river passes on very low land, about 20 metres lower than the
city," the irrigation centre employee said. "All the sewage water leaks
into the river. Water from this river is no good now for irrigation
because of this pollution.
"I myself saw the sewage network of the public hospital of Baquba
directed into the river; it's too bad, and I do not think it will work
for farmers to use that water."
Iraq has started to import vegetables for the first time in its modern
history despite a rich agricultural heritage that reaches back 6,000
years. Aside from the direct consequences of a failed military
occupation, such as lack of security, fuel and electricity, U.S.
occupation authorities have installed a neo-liberal free market system
that has pushed Iraqi farmers out of competition as foreign goods flood
the markets. That in turn is hitting the local economy and increasing
unemployment.
Families are also suffering because the Iraqi diet relies heavily on
local vegetables, which have become expensive and difficult to obtain.
One consequence is that many local people have begun to plant their own
vegetable gardens to feed their families.
(*Ahmed, a correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close
collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on
Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East).
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