THE IRAQ CONFLICT: Can Saddam's desert be a Garden of Eden again?(News) From: The Independent (London, England) | Date: April 1, 2003| Author: | COPYRIGHT 2003 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

WHEN AZZAM Alwash was a boy he went duck-hunting with his father on the Mesopotamian marshes. They took an old wooden boat and rowed south from his home in Nasiriyah into one of the largest wetlands in the world - the land of the Marsh Arabs, which some believe is the origin of the story of the Garden of Eden.

This week, watching TV images of the battle for Nasiriyah from his new home in California, Alwash wonders at the different landscape. "I look at the pictures of the bridges over the Euphrates. All the land behind used to be endless bullrushes and reedbeds stretching for ...