The Marshes

Al Ahwar

The Marshes area is a cultural extension of the Sumerian civilization by more than seven thousand years. It is the largest ecosystem of its kind in the Middle East and West Asia and constitute two-thirds of southern Iraq. In the year 1975, director Kassem Hawal decided to make a film about the Iraqi Marshes. He then wrote the script, shot the film and completed a 45 minutes documentary. But in 1985 the Iraqi regime had begun to dry it, resulting in humanitarian, cultural, environmental and natural disasters in the area with the disappearance of tens of thousands of residents, air, water and soil pollution and the extinction of countless species of birds, plants and animals. The Government have also burned the original film material, luckily, Kassem kept a copy to share it with the world.