Razzaza Lake: Iraq's second largest lake drying up

Context: Iraq’s Razzaza Lake was once a tourist attraction known for its beautiful scenery and an abundance of fish that locals depended on.

• Now, dead fish litter its shores and the once-fertile lands around it have turned into a barren desert.

About Razzaza Lake

• Razzaza Lake, also known as Lake Milh, Arabic for Salt Lake, is located between Iraq’s governorates of Anbar and Karbala.
• It’s the second largest lake in Iraq and is part of a wide valley that includes the lakes of Habbaniyah, Tharthar and Bahr al-Najaf.
• The lake was constructed as a measure to control floods in the Euphrates and to be used as huge reservoir for irrigation purposes.

Drying Lake Razzaza

• In recent years, it has been affected not only by the water shortage but by drought, neglect and increased evaporation during Iraq’s hot summers.
• It has also been hit by pollution due to the diversion of sewage water into the lake and the theft of water quotas allocated to it.
• Razzaza Lake is the victim of a water crisis in Iraq, known as the “Land Between the Two Rivers”, the Tigris and the Euphrates.
• Upstream dams in Turkey, Syria and Iran have shrunk the rivers and their tributaries, seasonal rainfall has dropped.