The region today known as Iraq was once known as Mesopotamia,
which means “Land Between the Rivers,” and since that ancient
time the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers has been
renowned for its fecund soil and thriving farms. But now the
Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation seems to be returning to
desert [New Scientist]. Decades of war and mismanagement,
compounded by two years of drought, are wreaking havoc on Iraq’s
ecosystem, drying up riverbeds and marshes, turning arable land
into desert, killing trees and plants, and generally
transforming what was once the region’s most fertile area into a
wasteland…. “We’re talking about something that’s making the
breadbasket of Iraq look like the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma in the
early part of the 20th century” [Los Angeles Times], said Adam
L. Silverman, a social scientist with the U.S. military. It
hasn’t been scientifically proved that tank movements in the
desert have helped stir up the dust, as many Iraqi experts
believe. But other factors are not in dispu