But a more serious threat emerged in 1991, when Saddam Hussein's regime began building an extensive network of dykes and channels to take water away from the marsh area, which originally extended for almost 9,000 square kilometres.
Satellite images showed that by 2002, the area had shrunk to only 760 square kilometres; an estimated 70,000 people were forced into camps in Iran.
"The near-total destruction of the Iraqi marshlands under the regime of Saddam Hussein was a major ecological and human disaster, robbing the Marsh Arabs of a centuries-old culture and way of life as well as food in the form of fish and that most crucial of natural resources, drinking water," United Nations Environment Programme executive director Klaus Toepfer said in a statement.
Read the whole thing and then ask yourself "what's missing from this BBC article"?
There is absolutely no mention of the United States without whom none of this restoration of 70,000 peoples homes would have been possible. Not only did the US liberation of Iraq allow for the restoration but it has been mainly US efforts to restore the marshlands that have allowed Marsh Arabs to return to their homes.
It's called bias by omission.
UPDATE
Others noticed as well.
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