Iraq · IQ

Birkat Umm al Hawsh

Birkat Umm al Hawsh is a wetland pool in Maysan Governorate, southern Iraq, sitting within the vast landscape of the Hawizeh Marsh — one of the great Mesopotamian wetlands and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This pool lies near the point where the Al-Kahla'a distributary carries water east from the Tigris toward the marsh, in an area of reed beds, open water, and deep permanent pools that have sustained Marsh Arab communities for millennia. Like its neighbor Birkat Umm An-Ni'aaj — the "beating heart" of Hawizeh — this pool is part of the marsh's northern permanent water bodies where depths can exceed six meters and dense reed forests surround open water. During wet years these pools swell with Tigris floodwater and seasonal rains; in drought years they shrink to cracked earth and brackish shallows, threatening the fish, waterbirds, and buffalo herds that depend on them. Visiting any part of this marshland means entering a landscape in crisis and in recovery: the Hawizeh has been repeatedly hit by severe drought and now faces pressure from oil exploration, yet after good rains the pools refill, birds return, and fishermen take out their reed boats once more.