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TANJAROO, IRAQ – The date of his birth is not
recorded, but he thinks it must be 1931. Muhammad
Jassem, who measures time by the length of his
shadow and the height of his crops, has been plowing
this field "since my first shave."
The little farm, nestled in the foothills of
northern Iraq's Qara Dagh mountain range, has
remained unchanged for generations. But behind Mr.
Jassem, less than 100 yards away, a strange new
mountain has formed. A towering inferno of smoking
garbage, about 100 feet high, it's the landfill for
the nearby city of Sulaymaniyah.
The landfill sat quietly for more than a decade, but
it began to swell and simmer after the 2003 war. A
procession of trucks dumps 500 to 600 tons of trash
a day. Bits break off and hurtle from its smoky
peaks into Mr. Jassem's farm.
"We fear that if the mountain catches fire, it could
swallow us," says Jassem, looking sadly at his wife,
Amina. "As long as this mountain is here, we are
doomed."
The burning mountain symbolizes Iraqi Kurdistan's
prosperity. After guerrillas from Iraq's northern
hills staged an uprising against Saddam Hussein in
1991, the US protected the region, making it one of
the safest spots in the country. Sulaymaniyah's
population grew to 630,000 from about 300,000 in
1990.
Today, factories make bricks, cinder blocks, cement,
and cigarettes. But the price of this growth is
environmental damage: Unregulated industries churn
toxins into the air, and the landfill leaks
chemicals into the Tanjaroo River, contaminating the
crops, the groundwater, and perhaps eventually
poisoning the aquifer for the entire region.
When the rest of Iraq begins to recover
economically, it will face the same problem as
Sulaymaniyah, but on a much larger scale. The UN
Environment Program estimates that there are about
300 environmental "hot spots" scattered around Iraq,
ranging from chemical spills to oil trench fires and
old sulphur mines. Right now, the Iraqi government
is cleaning up five sites, at a price tag of about
$5 million.
Jassem says he knows the mound is toxic. Before
garbage choked off his irrigation ditch, the black
syrup that oozes out of the mountain fouled its
water. After stray dogs drank from it, he would fish
their poisoned bodies from the ditch.
Most Iraqis are too busy worrying about car bombs
and assassinations to lose sleep over the state of
Iraq's ecosystem. "In the developed world, the
environment is a very important topic," says Hussam
Barzanji, director of Kurdistan Economic Development
Organization. "But here, people say that the needs
of the people are more pressing. They don't care
about protecting the environment."
Half the country does not have drinkable water;
annually, thousands of children die from diseases
borne by dirty water. If Iraq is to rebuild, say
experts, it will have to start looking after its air
and water now. "They have to be integrated," says
Amin Barzanji, an environmental engineer. "It's not
something you can ignore and say 'let's do it
later.'"
When Mr. Barzanji, a Kurd from Sulaymaniyah,
returned to his homeland early this year, he found a
mission: convincing fellow Kurds to clean up their
act. "I realized there were major environmental
problems in Kurdistan," he says earnestly. "The main
one is the groundwater. A guy washes his car, he
waters his garden - it's becoming like a symbol of
affluence. One guy gets a generator, and his
neighbor has to have one too. This is a problem in
all of Iraq."
Barzanji is trying to convince the mayor to invest
in a state-of-the-art landfill with an underground
lining. But last summer, when he gave a lecture at
Sulaymaniyah University on waste management,
officials from neighboring Kirkuk showed up; none
came from Sulaymaniyah.
Mayor, Qader Azez, says he's aware of the problem.
"This is one of our main concerns, that the garbage
is being thrown outside the city in a careless way,"
he says. But with 52 ongoing development projects,
and an annual budget of only $45 million, the
landfill is likely to remain a low priority.
At the landfill, atop a cinder block, four-year-old
Muhammad sits playing with a salvaged aluminum
knife. His father roots for scrap metal.
Muhammad has a cough from the smoke, but he likes
the landfill. His father says the cough is just a
cold; he doesn't know that burning plastic releases
dioxin, or that the greasy smoke they breathe all
day could hurt his son's lungs.
"Someone, somewhere, pays the price of development,"
says Barzanji. "In the short term, these people will
be paying the price. In the long term, everyone
will."
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/
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