A series of photos I took in the karbala region during work.

The photos start from the riverside location near Hindiya and go through the kheirat and jadwal gharbi farmlands to the desert farms beyond the najaf-karbala highway.

Starting off with the riverside.
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and finally... the excavators and dumper trucks move in to destroy the above eco-system. don't you love progress. (this is the water intake location and treatment plant for the new karbala grass roots refinery) + a new road along the river from hindiya - jadwal gharbi and the new gas fired power station downstream...
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please do refresh your view I just updated and corrected the links!

next I will post the "canal irrigated farmlands" further inland from the river. these are the kheirat and jadwal gharbi regions.

further inland from the river are the farms and villages of kheirat and jadwal gharbi.

our pipelines pass through these locations so we must document what we must destroy. (only kidding!)

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Finally... going 20km from the riverside takes us to a completely different environment. The desert. Here the weather is windier and colder than the riverside with dry air and little life...

but there is some life.

This is the location where the oil pipelines run, where the oil refinery is being built and where the new "Central Euphrates international airport", hotel, cargo/freezone will be built soon... ensures that it'll look even more alive in 4-5 years time.

so lets take a final look at how it is in 2010.

this is not my picture!
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found some shell fuses...
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the old "aggregates" work in the karbala desert on the ukhaidir road.
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the wild garlic and onions in the desert,
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the wild onions taken out of the sand. the desert has a lot of edible wild roots.
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illegal farms near the refinery.
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spot the ladybird. in the middle of the desert.
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all the desert farmers use drip irrigation.
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strange plant. in the ground
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and out of the ground... the secret to its green leaves is in its deep roots.
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the desert is nowadays farmed quite intensively, due to high prices for veggies.
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common shrubs that the sheep feed on
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Iraq's heidi and her flock. her grandfather came for a chat later on!
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Great photos! The environment by river reminds me a lot of South Texas. The Rio Grande River valley also has Palm trees but they are pretty rare now, having been destroyed to make room for agriculture.

When did you take these photos Sheytan ?

The river looks so dry in the first bunch of pics :(

pictures are from January / February 2010. The river is very low courtesy of Syria and Turkey. and is the prime reason why they cancelled the 1200MW thermal powerstation a couple of km downstream from where i was photographing.

^^ I read in the news that the flow volumes were recently increased. Do you know if this is true, or BS ?

yes its true. but only marginally.

ironically syria/turkey are increasing their farming use massively purely to export the produce to iraq.

if iraq wanted to reign them in. embargo their produce!!! that'll close down all their new farms. they have no other market but iraq

^^ why don't they do that? or do Syrians/Turks have alternate markets for their exports?

I'm extremely cynical of Turkey and Syria regarding the water issue. They sure wouldn't do anything like this when Saddam was in power :ohno:

Iraq must be much more assertive to secure its rights to the euphrates.

syria/turkey have no other market but iraq. turkey can't sell anything to europe (its a protected market) and syria's already saturated its other markets. their golden egg is iraq. and iraqis are dumb enough to buy their produce, when as a buyer they certainly have a LOT OF OTHER CHOICES that would sell their grandmothers to sell to Iraq...

I will look for it but I think Turkey is trying to get another IMF loan to build another dam.

interesting, thank you :)

^^indeed i know almost nothing about the wildlife in Iraq! and i sure haven't seen wild desert onions before :)

btw, I wonder where that white puppy is from.. sooo adorable !!

the puppy is from jadwal gharbi village in hindiya qadha'!