South

In Basrah, the row of war hero statues facing Iran on the other side of the Shat-Al-Arab is a daily reminder that the mainly Shia population is under constant surveillance from Baghdad. The Iran-Iraq war ended in an armistice years earlier, but the remnants are still omnipresent in the muddy waters of the Shat, where small fishing boats circumvent numerous ship wrecks deliberately left in place to prevent oil deliveries reaching the cost during the tanker war in the mid-80ies. Large date palm plantations were simply erased from the fertile soil as tanks rolled through and littered the grounds with shrapnel of artillery. Further North, a gigantic drainage project - called the "Saddam River" - was  intended to drain the marshes to bring the independent inhabitants under Baghdad's control.  This was the fate of the Iraqi majority.