BAGHDAD,
June 18 (IslamOnline.net) - More than two months into the end of the
U.S.-British invasion, Iraq is no longer the world’s first producer
and exporter of dates for the year which saw all of the country’s palm
trees fruitless.
Unfortunately,
the pollination of palm trees happened to be at the same time the U.S.
and British force launched their strikes on March 20 for three weeks,
putting all hopes for an abundant product, many depend on to make a
living, at a standstill.
“Most
of the date palms in the country missed the pollination due to the
aggression,” lamented Omar al-Jabori, owner of a farm in Arab Jabor,
on Tigris River in southern Baghdad.
The
production of dates in the village before the invasion was estimated at
20-30 tons. But this year’s output “is only expected to hardly meet
children’s needs or to be served as dessert for guests,” Jabori
said.
The
palm trees even bore the brunt of earlier wars the country have been
plagued with.
Iraq
had been amply endowed with an overall 40 million trees, which slipped
to 15 millions in the years following the Iraqi-Iranian war in the
1980s, the 1991 Second Gulf War and more than 12 years of ensuing
crippling sanctions.
“Because
of agricultural policies of the Saddam Hussein regime, the number even
slumped to 10 million,” said agricultural expert Fawzi Labdab.
The
U.S.-British invasion dealt the final devastating blow, leaving all of
the palm trees standing idle in a grim reminder of the repercussions of
the three-week invasion and yet another period of occupation feared by
many Iraqis to be indefinite in their oil-rich country.
Feeling
the pinch of widespread looting and thievery inflicting the country
since the occupation forces trundled into, palm farmers kept guarding
their farmlands. Looters used to cut the trees and dry them up for wood
which could be used in construction and other purposes.
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But
the tough conditions facing palm farming were just indicative of a
similar situation for other agricultural products.
The
sector suffers from shortage of water, pesticides and seeds, in addition
to the halt of cleaning up waterways with the Agriculture Ministry
employees vanishing into thin air when the U.S. forces declared the fall
of Baghdad and the ouster of Saddam Hussein on April 9.
More
than two months after, agriculture is far away from normal, as farmers
suffer from high prices and bad substances, adding to that the general
scenes of U.S. provocations, chaos and lawlessness to the bleak picture
in their occupied country.
