Shafaq News – Babil

For 66-year-old farmer Saad Hassan Mazher al-Shammari, known locally as Abu Younis, the land he once called his “green orchard” has become a cracked, lifeless expanse.

Sitting amid six dunams of parched soil in Iraq’s Babil province, Abu Younis recounted how his crops and livestock have all but vanished after the small river that irrigated his land dried up more than 35 days ago.

“I used to grow okra, alfalfa, barley… now there’s nothing,” he told Shafaq News, motioning to two frail cows standing under the withered shade of a dead tree. “I had eight cows. Only these two are left—and they are starving.”

In a desperate bid to save his land, Abu Younis drilled a 25-meter-deep well. But the water he found was briny and sulfurous—unsuitable for drinking, let alone farming.

His date palms, which once yielded two harvests per season, now produce barely 25 kilograms. “Have you ever seen crops die like this? It’s slow death,” he said.

Without a job, pension, unemployment benefits, or even sufficient food rations, Abu Younis said his family survives by the slimmest of margins. “Even the air coolers no longer work. The salt from the well water clogs them,” he said. “Where do I go? I have nothing but God.”

In al-Mujariya, one of the worst-hit farming districts in Hilla, dozens of families share Abu Younis’s plight. Once reliant on traditional irrigation, they now find themselves powerless in the face of climate change and vanishing water sources.