After years of war and drought, Iraq's bumper crop is burning
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[June 20, 2019] By
Ahmed Aboulenein and Maha El Dahan
BAQUBA/NINEVEH PLAINS, Iraq (Reuters) -
Iraqi farmer Riyadh woke on May 13 to find his wheat crop ablaze. In his
fields in Diyala province, he found the remains of a mobile phone and
plastic bottle which he believes was an explosive device detonated in
the night to start the fire.
Riyadh and his neighbors in Sheikh Tami village put out the blaze and
saved most of his crop but hundreds of other farmers in Iraq have been
less fortunate since Islamic State urged its supporters to wage economic
warfare with fire.
Since the harvest began in April, crop fires have raged across Diyala,
Kirkuk, Nineveh and Salahuddin provinces while the government, battered
by years of war and corruption, has few resources to counter a new
hit-and-run insurgency.
The government in Baghdad is playing down the crisis, saying very few
fires have been started deliberately and only a fraction of the
country's farmland has been affected.
But officials in Iraq's breadbasket province Nineveh warned that if the
fires spread to storage sites, a quarter of this year's bumper harvest
could be at risk, potentially ending Iraq's dream of self-sufficiency
after years of disruption due to drought and Islamic State rule.
Iraq declared victory over Islamic State in December 2017 but the
militants have regrouped in the Hamrin mountain range which extends into
the northern provinces - an area described by officials as a "triangle
of death".
In recent weeks, IS has published detailed instructions online about how
to carry out hit-and-run operations and weaken the enemy by attrition -
without taking losses.
"It looks like it will be a hot summer that will burn the pockets of the
rejectionists and apostates, as well as their hearts," Islamic State
wrote in its al-Naba newspaper last month, referring to Shi'ite Muslims
and Sunnis who do not subscribe to its interpretation of Islam.
Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said last week that only about a 10th of
the fires were the result of sabotage, with the rest caused by
electrical faults, cigarette butts or faulty agricultural machinery.
He said just 40,000 donums (10,000 hectares) of wheat and barley had
been destroyed by fire nationwide, a tiny proportion of the estimated 13
million donums of cultivated land.
"We are following up on the issue but it must not be blown out of
proportion," he told a weekly news conference on June 11.
'INVISIBLE HANDS'
Figures cited by federal officials, however, don't tally with data given
by officials and farmers in 10 areas of Diyala, Nineveh and Salahuddin
provinces visited by Reuters. Based on their figures, at least 145,000
donums had gone up in flames in those areas alone by June 16.
The prime minister said there had been 262 fires nationwide this year,
but Salahuddin's civil defense chief told Reuters there were 267 fires
during May in that province. Officials in Diyala also said the federal
figures were too low.
In Nineveh, which accounts for almost half Iraq's cultivated land with 6
million donums devoted to grain, officials recorded 180 fires between
May 18 and June 11. By June 10, 65,000 donums of wheat and barley had
gone up in flames in the province, well above Baghdad's estimate for all
of Iraq.
"Some days we have 25 fires reported," Nineveh's agriculture chief
Duraid Hekmat told Reuters in his Mosul office.
During a 48-hour visit to Nineveh, Reuters witnessed five major fires
and thick black smoke regularly clouded the skies.
Nevertheless, Nineveh is still expected to produce 1.3 million tonnes of
grain this year, which would help it regain its status as the country's
breadbasket.
In the town of Alam in Salahuddin, council chairman Jassem Khalaf has
spent much of this year's harvest consoling distraught locals who have
lost a combined 250 hectares to fire.
On May 15, his entire 50 donums of land caught fire too, destroying an
estimated 60 tonnes of wheat that would have earned him 40 million Iraqi
dinars ($34,000).
"It went up in flames in a moment," he said, standing in his scorched
field of blackened crops holding a lone golden bushel.
Khalaf was adamant some of the fires were man-made and said they could
have been caused by Islamic State, also known as Daesh, or other groups.
"In the past we would hear of one field being burned once every few
years. This year, the situation is out of the ordinary," he said. "Maybe
there is short-circuiting, but there are also culprits and hidden
hands."
TALE OF MANY ARSONISTS
While scorching temperatures and tinder-dry fields in Iraq lead to fires
every year, local officials said there are far more than usual this
season and they're finding more evidence that blazes have been started
deliberately.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for burning hundreds of
hectares of farmland in Diyala, Kirkuk and Salahuddin provinces as well
as Syria. But it was impossible to determine how many fires had been
started by the militants.
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Iraqi farmers attempt to put out a fire that engulfed a wheat field
in the northern town of Bashiqa, east of Mosul, Iraq June 12, 2019.
Picture taken June 12, 2019. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari
The challenge for the government is even greater because some have taken
advantage of fires sparked by militants to start their own - to settle
scores or ethno-religious feuds, farmers said.
Some farmers accused Shi'ite militias of burning the land of Sunni
farmers they believe supported IS during their reign. They also said
some security forces were burning fields to flush out insurgents holed
up in farms.
Ali al-Hussaini, a spokesman for the mainly Shi'ite paramilitary groups
in northern Iraq, rejected the accusations and said they had helped many
times to put out fires in Diyala and Kirkuk.
"Terrorist Daesh media have repeatedly published footage of burning
wheat farms across Iraq and they have also claimed responsibility. Why
would we destroy our food? Won't all these wheat crops end up as bread
for our children to eat?" he said.
Army colonel Mohammed al-Jubouri, whose division is based between Kirkuk
and Tikrit, said almost all the intelligence and security force reports
and investigations had proved that the majority of fires were started by
Islamic State.
"Sometimes we set fires to deserted bush areas to make sure terrorists
will not use it as a hiding place but we never do this if it is close to
wheat farms or orchards," he told Reuters. "All accusations that the
army is recklessly setting fires are enemy propaganda."
Local officials said the kind of device discovered by Riyadh in his
burned fields in Diyala was an example of just one method being used to
start fires this year.
Riyadh, who declined to give his full name for fear of reprisals, shared
a photo of the device. Reuters could not independently verify the
authenticity of the evidence.
Local officials said magnifying glasses have been found in many scorched
fields in western Nineveh and south of Mosul. They said gunpowder had
been placed under the lenses in the hope it would ignite under prolonged
exposure to the sun.
"This gunpowder doesn't go in one direction, it goes into several
directions to spread into a wide fire," said Nineveh's agriculture chief
Hekmat.
Explosive devices have also been planted to target fire trucks as they
arrive to battle the flames. Two of the 53 fire engines serving Nineveh
province have been hit, stretching already meager resources, said
Colonel Hossam Khalil, chief of Nineveh's civil defense unit.
"It is not enough, but we are working with what we have," he told
Reuters.
SILO RISK
Hazem Jebbo, a farmer in the Christian town of Qaraqosh southeast of
Mosul, knows the blaze that destroyed most of his crops was not started
by Islamic State. He blames the authorities for negligence.
Jebbo, 63 fled in 2014 when Islamic State burned down his 100 olive
trees, used his chicken coop as a shooting range and dug tunnels beneath
his house. He returned to pick up the pieces in 2017. For two years
nothing grew due to drought but then the rain came and his crops
flourished.
But a bullet-riddled electricity pole in the middle of one field fell
over on May 31 and the live wire sparked a fire. The district's only
fire truck arrived swiftly but its water pump failed and Jebbo lost 122
donums, the bulk of his crops. Forty other farmers lost land that day as
the blaze spread.
Jebbo said he had begged the local authorities to fix the damaged pole
for more than a year. They did - an hour after the fire had died down.
"Let them hear me carefully," he said in tears in the charred remains of
his farm. "Their negligence burned hundreds of donums, led to these
losses."
In Nineveh, agriculture chief Hekmat said grain silos were now his
biggest concern, a worry shared by security experts.
"All our efforts are stored there. If something happens to these areas
it will be a catastrophe," he said.
Abdul Khalek Jassem, director of the Bazwaya silo in Nineveh, said they
had stationed security forces at the entrance of the silo, which can
hold up to 130,000 tonnes of wheat. The center has a single checkpoint
manned by a Shabak paramilitary force affiliated to Iranian-backed
Shi'ite militias.
Jassem reassured that all was under control, as thick black smoke rose
from a new blaze in the fields beyond the silo. The emergency services
took an hour to arrive and the fire had killed one person by the end of
the day.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Maha El Dahan; additional reporting
by Moayed Kenany and Ali Sultan; editing by David Clarke)
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