Activists in the Ahwazi region have circulated images of
what they call an environmental tragedy affecting the area.
The Ahwazi Arabs live in southern Iran. Activists in the
Ahwazi region have circulated images of what they call an environmental tragedy
affecting the area, including the Falahiyeh wetlands, which are vital for the
livelihood of thousands of Ahwazis.
Iranian officials claim that the environmental disaster
revealed by the photographs has been caused by high temperatures. These claims
have been refuted by Jassim Moramazi, a professor specialising in environmental
affairs, who insisted that high temperatures alone could not account for the
dead fish and the rising salinity of the water. “We don’t know exactly why
these fish have died,” he explained, “but we do know that they have started to
disappear since the oil companies initiated their projects in Ahwaz.”
He asserted that the demographic manipulation of the
environment is the reason for the dying fish, citing experts who say that fish
have the ability to live in such an environment unless it is devastated by
human intervention. The professor added that the oil companies have built
embankments in the marsh, creating swamps in the process. “These greedy firms
want to get oil at any cost. They have devastated the environment.”
Environment officials, he admitted, cannot stand up to these
companies. “The companies have their own agendas. And they pay no heed to the
calls for protecting the environment as they are backed strongly by the
regime.” Many fish and birds are destroyed, as well as livelihoods.
The search for oil is apparently taking place across a much
larger area than has been announced publically. This is approved by the
government in Tehran.
The international oil companies come to the oil-rich Ahwaz
with contracts under the new conditions offered by the Iranian government, even
though the region is already suffering from an environmental crisis because of
the steps taken by Tehran. These include the construction of dams on the
largest rivers in the region. The result is the desertification of one of the
largest agricultural areas in Iran. Sand storms now affect the region, and
toxic substances are commonplace, and are thought to be behind the deaths of
many Ahwazis.
“Under the Iranian regime’s deliberate concealment,” wrote
activist Yousef Azizi Benitorof on Facebook, “chemical contamination resulting
from oil leakage into the Howeyzeh Marshes west of Al-Ahwaz has caused hundreds
of thousands of birds and fish to die these past few days.”
The Howeyzeh Marshes are complex bodies of water that straddle
the border between Iraq and Iran. The marshes are fed by a branch of the River
Tigris in Iraq and a branch of the River Karkheh in Ahwaz. According to
Benitorof, “Masses of fish and migratory birds are now floating dead upon the
surface of the contaminated water. The foul smells emanating from the toxic
marshes have caused discontent among Ahwazi citizens, as Iranian authorities
have taken a stance of deliberate inaction regarding the issue.” This video,
posted by the BBC’s Persian, service shows birds taking their last breaths as
they are trapped in the murky water.
Chinese and Iranian oil companies involved in exploration in
the area pollute the water, land and environment through their use of toxic
substances that are banned internationally for such purposes. Medical tests on
local residents affected by acid rain reveal serious levels of toxicity.
The ecological disaster in Ahwaz has been caused by the
draining of the rivers and marshes, something in which the Iranian government
has been involved for two decades. Agriculture is now threatened in an area
which was one of the most productive in the Middle East prior to the Iran-Iraq
War during the eighties. The damming of the Rivers Karoon and Karkheh is
intended to divert 1.1 billion cubic metres towards the central area of Iran
around Isfahan.
That the government is deliberately aggravating the
environmental situation suggests that it is exploiting the situation to
displace the Arabs from their lands. The Arabs in the Ahwazi region are thus
facing an official policy of ethnic cleansing.
According to one Ahwazi environmental activist, who asked to
remain anonymous for fear of prosecution by Tehran, “For many years, Ahwazi
Arabs have lived in nightmarish conditions due to the Iranian regime
intentionally subjecting them to dire living conditions. Examples of such
crimes include, but are not limited to, the regime’s confiscation of Arab
civilians’ agricultural land, forced displacement of civilians from their
homes, and strategic draining of rivers essential to Ahwazi livelihood.”
Words alone, he continued, cannot fully describe the extent
to which such “insidious” actions by the regime have impacted catastrophically
on the ability of Ahwazi Arabs to sustain their lives. “This water- and
oil-rich region has been plundered relentlessly by the Iranian regime to the
detriment of Arab citizens who call the land home.”
Furthermore, he pointed out that the government’s policy of
demographic change in Ahwaz via the systematic displacement of the local Arab
population is ongoing. “The intentional pollution of the environment from
poorly maintained Iranian oil fields and chemical plants has made it impossible
to live in. Respiratory ailments and health epidemics among Ahwazi Arabs are
increasingly widespread. The careless actions of the Iranian regime continue to
erode Ahwazi Arabs’ ability to sustain their lives.”
What’s happening in Ahwaz, he concluded, is a complete
disaster requiring global action to prevent the Iranian regime from displacing
all of the local Arabs by force.
The Ahwaz region is rich in oil, gas and water but the
Ahwazi Arabs in suffer from difficult living conditions, not least because of
the deliberate policies by successive Iranian governments which increase
unemployment, marginalisation and ethnic discrimination.
Source: Middle East Monitor
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