IRAQ. Chibaish. 2012. Women collect reeds in the Aluniyes Marsh. They have travelled from their homes near the Glory River where the marsh has not been re-established and so there are no reeds growing there. During the 1990s Saddam Hussein began a campaign to drain the great Mesopotamian Marshes to punish the Marsh Arabs for their uprising following the First Gulf War. By 2003 the marshes had been reduced to about ten percent of their former size before re-flooding restored them to about half of their former area.