Human activity and climate change have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where—with its twin river the Euphrates—it made Mesopotamia a cradle of civilisation thousands of years ago
Buffaloes graze by wastewater pooling on the bed of the dried-up Diyala river which was a tributary of the Tigris, in the Al-Fadiliyah district east of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, on June 26, 2022. Iraq's drought reflects a decline in the level of waterways due to the lack of rain and lower flows from upstream neighboring countries Iran and Turkey. Image: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP
Baghdad, Iraq: It was the river that is said to have watered the biblical Garden of Eden and helped give birth to civilisation itself.
But today the Tigris is dying.
Human activity and climate change have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where —with its twin river the Euphrates—it made Mesopotamia a cradle of civilisation thousands of years ago.
Iraq may be oil-rich but the country is plagued by poverty after decades of war and by droughts and desertification.