The Glory River (Nahar al-Aaz), Glory Canal or Prosperity Canal is a shallow

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow un ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

about two kilometers wide built by

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...

in 1993 to redirect water flowing from the

Tigris The Tigris () is the easternmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, and empties into the ...

river into the

Euphrates The Euphrates () is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia ( ''the land between the rivers'') ...

, near their confluence at the

Shatt al-Arab The Shatt al-Arab ( ar, شط العرب, lit=River of the Arabs; fa, اروندرود, Arvand Rud, lit=Swift River) is a river of some in length that is formed at the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in the town of al-Qurnah in ...

. It helped cause an environmental and humanitarian disaster since it diverted natural water flow from the

Central Marshes The Central or Qurna Marshes are a large complex of wetlands in Iraq that, along with the Hawizeh and Hammar marshes, make up the Mesopotamian Marshes of the Tigris–Euphrates river system. Formerly covering an area of around 3000 square kilome ...

and effectively converted much of the wetlands into a desert. After the

First Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...

, Saddam Hussein aggressively revived a program to divert the flow of the Tigris and the

rivers away from the marshes in retribution for a failed Shia uprising in 1991. Draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes directly affected the

Marsh Arabs The Marsh Arabs ( ar, عرب الأهوار ''ʻArab al-Ahwār'' "Arabs of the Marshlands"), also referred to as the Maʻdān ( ar, معدان "dweller in the plains") or Shroog (Iraqi ar, شروق, "those from the east")—the latter two often ...

, forcing them to abandon the settlements in the region. Since the overthrow of Hussein in the

2003 invasion of Iraq The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...

, the marshland

ecoregion An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of l ...

has recovered substantially with the breaching of dikes by local communities.

References

{{coord, 31, 19, 25, N, 47, 20, 31, E, display=title Canals in Iraq Human rights abuses in Iraq Shatt al-Arab basin Wetlands of Iraq Tigris River Environmental issues in Iraq Canals opened in 1993

See also

References