Mina Al-Qaisi
Seven years have passed since that day when Ruaa woke up at night from her nap with a sharp pain striking her chest, causing severe suffocation and extreme difficulty breathing, which prompted her to rush to the emergency room at Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad. However, she began to frequent that place repeatedly afterwards.
Ruaa Al-Qaisi was twenty-three years old when doctors diagnosed her with asthma. Today, she is entering her thirties and works as a fitness trainer. She says her illness was sudden without any prior warning, and it began to develop strangely without controlling its symptoms that exhausted her, as the amount of oxygen entering her blood is less than the average normal rate by thirty millimeters.
Ruaa continues: “I underwent many medical examinations that revealed to me the presence of inflammation in the respiratory system and a clear fragility towards my ability to withstand dust particles that enter with the air into the respiratory tract, when dust or sand storms occur.”
She adds, describing her condition with this chronic disease: “My arm has become full of needle pricks, there is no place for new holes, and I often think about quitting treatment, as the occurrence of storms frightens me and I often feel an unbearable headache with general emaciation in the body and severe cough that hinders me from living my life normally.”
Last summer, Baghdad was exposed to dozens of dust storms that colored its sky with a dense orange tint, limiting visibility and disrupting air flights, closing offices, schools, and public institutions. More than five thousand people were admitted to various hospitals and health centers for treatment, in less than three months.
There were multiple reasons that contributed to the formation of environmental degradation in Iraq as a whole, and Baghdad in particular, which are the same reasons that put Iraq in the ranks of the countries most affected by the global climate change crisis. Despite the amount of rain that fell in the current winter season, last summer’s drought and temperature rise to more than 50 degrees Celsius posed a serious threat to the country’s environmental future after a few years.
Environmental experts agree that the absence of vegetation cover, or what is called the green belt, in any city, is one of the main reasons for the occurrence of dust storms that occur weekly if not daily. According to them, Baghdad suffers from an almost complete decline in its vegetation cover, which has not seen any serious steps to re-establish or rehabilitate what remains of it since the seventies and eighties of the last century, and if there are initiatives, they are no more than poor attempts that did not yield real results.
Amir Ali Al-Hassoun, the spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Environment, attributes the basis of the problem to urban expansion at the expense of agricultural lands as a result of the chaos prevailing in the capital’s infrastructure, saying: “There is a close connection between the infrastructure of any country and its environment, and when harmony is absent between them, the result will be the deterioration we are experiencing today, and the state is responsible for creating this harmony.”
He adds, “More than 9 million people live in Baghdad, in the shadow of old infrastructure that has not witnessed a relative development that makes it bear this large number, so much so that it did not even consider the possibility of the exacerbation of the phenomenon of superstructure building that exceeded the limits drawn within the main housing plan, and spread until it reached non-residential agricultural lands that are supposed to be allocated for green belt projects.”
Al-Hassoun also points out that “the Iraqi Ministries of Environment and Agriculture have long formed committees consisting of local governments to develop agricultural investment plans, but they are always prevented from implementing them due to these plans colliding with the reality of agricultural land acquisition by influential parties and private sectors that refuse to understand.”
Environmental expert and activist Ahmed Saleh Neama explains the great loss of green belts in the capital Baghdad, saying: “The war on Iraq during the 1990s caused individuals to receive less of their fuel share, and homes in winter seasons became devoid of gas and oil, so they were forced to resort to cutting trees significantly and aggressively attacking them and then converting them into firewood for cooking and heating.”
He adds: “The successive governments after 2003 did not deliberately give the green belt the utmost importance, and therefore what happened was the result of accumulated neglect.”
In Neama’s opinion, “the voluntary afforestation campaigns that took place over the years by environmental organizations and activists are unplanned campaigns, and may fail if they do not seek help from individuals who have the precise specialization that would enable them to make the right choice for types of trees and plants capable of withstanding the harsh environmental conditions that characterize the city, and to scientifically familiarize themselves with methods of cultivation, sustainability, and care.”
Environmental researcher Khalid Suleiman says, “The process of planting green belts in the orbits surrounding Baghdad is not a sufficient solution to prevent dust storms from entering the depth of the city, because controlling internal pollution sources does not mean controlling external sources; represented by winds coming from western Iraq (Ramadi Governorate) as well as the border areas of neighboring countries.”
He explains, “These areas in recent years have become a main source of sandstorms due to their loss of vegetation cover and the decrease in the amount of rainfall in them for consecutive years, in addition to the presence of military operations by coalition forces and Iraqi forces and constant activity of military movements that led to soil erosion.”
For his part, the academic specializing in environmental pollution, Iyad Abdul Mohsen Ahmed, explains that “the open and barren lands inside Iraq extend from the triangle of the Turkish-Syrian border, with a strip in western Iraq, entering Syrian and Jordanian lands, reaching Basra.”
Ahmed supports Khalid’s words by saying: “The western areas adjacent to Iraq have unstable winds, and accordingly, Iraq does not need green belts within the governorates, but needs afforestation in all areas of western and southwestern Iraq, where areas adjacent to neighboring Arab countries.”
Environmental strategies expert Ramadan Hamza adds: “The winds that bring dust storms are divided into two parts, internal storms and external storms. External storms come from the Mauritanian desert and from the deserts of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and also come from the internal desert spread in the west and southwest of Iraq.”
Afaf Mohammed (Umm Mahmoud), 65 years old, a lady from Baghdad suffering from respiratory system sensitivity that includes the nose, ear, and throat, which is listed under seasonal allergies, says: “My allergy started at the age of four years, my mother noticed me when summer came and winds rose in the air, causing me a severe attack represented by sneezing, redness of the eyes, runny nose, swollen tonsils, and difficulty in inhaling air, and I would be absent from school for several days, spending them sleeping due to my extreme fatigue.”
Afaf adds, “This allergy accompanied me until reaching youth, but I didn’t feel at the time the urgent need to consult a specialist doctor, because the phenomenon of dust storms hitting cities was not very common in the sixties and seventies that I experienced, it was unfamiliar, and cases of being affected by it were few.”
She explains that the situation today is different, “We now witness the recurrence of those dust storms more than once within a single week, which necessitated my visit to the allergy center in the Atifiya area near Karkh Emergency, to diagnose my condition and provide treatment for it, after which I had to take consecutive doses of vaccine for six months to reduce the symptoms of the disease.”
Umm Mahmoud adds in a very sad tone, “I never forget the embarrassing situations that happened to me because of the allergy, especially that day when I was attending the wedding party of one of my friends in an open agricultural area, as soon as winds blew carrying with them a few particles of dust, my health deteriorated, so I was forced to cut the visit short and return home.”
She concludes her speech by saying: “The months of May, April, and September were and still are troubles for me, although I retired from work, I still refrain from leaving the house during that period, and if a yellow dust storm occurs, I quickly enter a state of alert, covering the ventilation outlets of doors and windows with pieces of cloth to prevent them from entering the house, and I wet a cotton gauze with warm water then place it inside a medical mask and wear it, to then start the process of cleaning the furniture from dust particles.”
“We are now in the midst of the disaster,” this is how Dr. Afaq Ibrahim Juma, a lecturer at the College of Agriculture at the University of Baghdad, began her speech when we opened the file of desertification and its negative impact on the environment with her.
The Iraqi researcher explains that “there are seven desert zones in Iraq, extending from the northwest to the southeast and west, and they are not desert but have become desertified, meaning that every desertified area can be treated and returned to what it was in the beginning, but the responsible authorities must join hands and cooperate among themselves because the result we look forward to requires state effort.”
Safaa Al-Dhafiri (25 years old) from Baghdad, who works in one of the Iraqi radio stations, says: “I suffer from bronchial sensitivity in addition to sinusitis, and this condition has symptoms similar to those of asthma to some extent, which started with me since adolescence until this day.”
Safaa says that if he has to go out of the house during dust, he resorts to wearing two or more health masks, to ensure that soil particles do not penetrate his bronchi.
Al-Dhafiri explains that he has a specialist doctor he has been consulting for many years, to obtain necessary treatments when suffocation cases occur to him, and confirms that this has negative psychological repercussions on him, and large financial costs due to the high prices of medicines for allergy and asthma patients.
Proposed Solutions
Amir Ali Al-Hassoun, the spokesman for the Ministry of Environment, emphasizes the importance of adopting vertical urban expansion of cities, which would contain the current population momentum and slow down urban sprawl, because this type of expansion requires much less land compared to horizontal expansion, so that residents do not have to violate the law and encroach on green spaces and cut trees and crops to build housing on them.
Al-Hassoun confirms that the year 2023 is the year of serious work to address climate changes, because the Iraqi Ministry of Environment is undertaking the implementation of the environmental adaptation plan for climate changes, which includes the establishment of new green belts around the capital Baghdad, a plan that has been launched and approved by the Council of Ministers and all government ministries are obliged to implement it each according to its role, with support from the United Nations, which is considered the assisting party to international agreements regarding strengthening local capacities and environmental institutions.
As for Ramadan Hamza, he explains the specifications of the green belt for the city of Baghdad, saying: “It must be tens of kilometers long, and about 100-200 meters wide, but at the beginning, a feasibility study must be conducted to determine wind directions and determine levels of desertification and its causes.”
Dr. Iyad Abdul Mohsen Ahmed explains that “the ideal time for planting green belts is the tenth month of each year, as this coincides with rainfall during subsequent months, and thus the environment will contribute to reducing the cost of irrigation, with the planting of plants resistant to harsh conditions, such as the neem tree, as it is resistant to the harshness of weather and soil, as well as the tamarisk tree, which is characterized by its strong roots and ready for planting anywhere, and when tamarisk grows it will not die, and its trees are characterized by their towering height, distinguished by being a wind and dust barrier, and also contribute to preserving the soil surface from erosion.”
He emphasizes the need to pay attention to completing a national belt project of about a thousand kilometers in length and three kilometers in width based on calculating 20 square meters for one tree.
Assuming that the success rate in tree planting is 70%, meaning the death of plants by 30%, the project needs more than 220 million trees of various types.
Ahmed stresses that “watering green belts inside Iraq does not need a lot of money, as Iraq can use artesian wells drilling, especially since it ranks first in the Arab world in terms of strategic groundwater reserves, and therefore it can use drip irrigation technology, and not waste water by traditional irrigation methods, as well as using electricity generation from solar and wind energy, to operate pumps and draw water from the ground.”
As for Dr. Afaq Ibrahim Juma, she finds that there is no need to wait for solving the water crisis before starting the belt establishment operations, because the solution lies in the optimal selection of the plant type in a scientific way that allows it to live for a long time and invest water more efficiently.
She explains that the Arabic Acacia tree is a drought-tolerant tree and does not need large amounts of water, in addition to the tamarisk plant, which is an evergreen tree that can reach a height of 18 meters and acts as a windbreak.
The same is true for the “Eucalyptus camaldulensis” tree, which is large and fast-growing, planted on both sides of roads to provide shade through its drooping leaves, in addition to the “Bombax” tree, which grows well in dry areas and has the ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions, and there are many like them such as palm, olive, lote, mulberry, and “bambar” which is a medicinal plant, according to Dr. Juma.
Ruaa Al-Shammari leaves her house every morning heading to the sports arena and begins training her students, running quickly with them in the running field and then stopping panting to drink water from the glass bottle she carries with her wherever she goes.
She says: “I left the medicine for my severe suffocation cases in the drawer of the closet a long time ago, and I hope it stays there forever, because I’m tired of accompanying it with me wherever I go.