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