Effect of armed conflict on health of Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq

摘要

The systematic destruction of the economy, environment, and way of life of the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq is a largely neglected subject. For more than 5000 years, the Marsh Arabs were a flourishing population living in one of the largest wetland ecosystems in the world, but their numbers had decreased from an estimated 400 000 in the 1950s through to the end of the 1980s, to as few as 20000 by 2003, largely through forced migration after being persecuted by Saddam Hussein's violent regime.1"3 This Viewpoint draws attention to the legacy of armed conflict on the health of the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq where the AMAR International Charitable Foundation (AMAR) began providing health services and education in 1991, although AMAR was forced to diminish its work substantially by 1996, as a result of Saddam Hussein's repressive activities. In 2003, when AMAR fully returned to Iraq, the organisation's local staff found the Marshlands almost deserted of its former inhabitants.