Climate change forces Iraqis to flee the rural south — but the cities aren't ready for them
But decades of U.S.-backed sanctions and war, combined with the weight of corruption and neglect, have left Basra’s infrastructure unable to adequately support the 2 millionOil powers Iraq’s economy, and Basra is at the heart of where most of it is produced, but little of that money seems to trickle down to its inhabitants. Swaths of the city lack streetlights or paved roads. In 2018, the water supply was so polluted that it became toxic.
Social media has been awash with photos showing water buffaloes lying dead on the cracked mudflats of southern Iraq’s dried-out marshlands, and Abu al-Khaseeb’s farm has been no exception. Many here have lost animals. “The ministries are neither serious nor fast. We’ve been discussing that dam since 2009,” said Dergham al-Ajwadi, deputy governor of Basra province.Figures compiled by the South Basra Environmental Directorate suggest that water degradation in the province cost Iraq $400 million in lost animals, palm trees and crops in 2018 alone.
“What do you expect from a man who has told his girls they can’t go to school anymore, a man who can’t even pay for an operation that his father really needs,” Ali said, in the sweltering old yellow-brick house his family shares with four others. In 2018, the governor of Basra province, Asaad Abdulameer al-Eidani, gained popularity by barring legal residency in the city without proof of homeownership. In the years since, his pronouncements have sounded a steady drumbeat of hostilityThat rhetoric has provided an escape valve of sorts for the city’s politicians, who are increasingly unpopular. A few years ago, huge demonstrations decrying corruption and unemployment were crushed with deadly force.
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