Middle East’s Fertile Crescent dries up as water resources dwindle

Middle East’s Fertile Crescent dries up as water resources dwindle

DIWANIYA, Iraq- 

Abbas Elwan drilled well after well in a desperate bid to find water for his family's parched farmlands in southern Iraq. After yet another attempt failed in August, he took a gun from the kitchen of their mud house and slipped into the night.

Hikma Meteab found her husband's body the next day with a gunshot wound to the head in a dried-up irrigation canal near the barren land that once produced enough wheat and barley to sustain the extended Elwan family.