Nature: Braving Iraq
PBS aired this episode of Nature recently, and I watched it last night on my TiVo. It was excellent.
On the Euphrates River in Iraq is a wetlands known as the Mesopotamian Marshlands. They are home to the Marsh Arabs and lots of birds. In the 1990s, to eradicate the Marsh Arabs, Saddam Hussein built waterworks designed to diver the Euphrates and drain the marshes, leaving a desert.
After we toppled Saddam, Iraqis started toppling the waterworks and restoring the marshes. One Iraqi ex-patriot, Azzam Alwash, has started a conservation group to coordinate restoration of the marshes, and is making good progress. This is a documentary about the marshes and the restoration process. They have some discussion about shooting a documentary in a war zone, so there are a few asides about their security team and how their precautions affected their ability to film.