“The sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’ And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number” (Revelation 9:14-16). “The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East” (Revelation 16:12).
Iran 954,000
Afghanistan 70,000
Pakistan 619,000 reserve 528,000
Iraq has an army of 273,000
Kazakhstan has an army of 65,000 reserve 237,000
India has an army of 1,414,000 reserve 1,155,000
China f 2,255,000 reserve 800,000
military force of 200,000, 000.
Dry run: "Trial Balloons" top 'delivery platform' for nuclear EMP attack. EMP is analogous to carpet bombing or an artillery barrage that causes massive random damage that is specifically difficult to predict, but reliably catastrophic in its macro-effects,".
A successful EMP attack on the U.S. will lead to a nationwide blackout of the electric power grid and a shutdown of critical infrastructure reliant on the grid, including, but not limited to, communications, transportation, food and water supply, and sanitation. 90% of the US population cannot survive the year that will follow.
Prophetically, The USA must be neutralized in order for the anti-Christ global Gentile empire to emerge.
An EMP is the most effective method to destroy the US population and leave the landmass and basic "non-electrical" infra-structure intact. Revelation 17:16.
Without the American economic engine, the world economy would quickly collapse and the global economy "digital", CBDC economy will be launched.
4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. REVELATION 18:4-5.
"And the ten horns which thou sawest in the beast: these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her with fire. They will take everything she has and leave her naked. They will eat her flesh and destroy her with fire". For she says in her heart, 'I sit a queen, and am no widow, and will in no way see mourning.' Weymouth New Testament She has freely glorified herself and revelled in luxury; equally freely administered torment to her, and woe. For in her heart she boasts, saying, 'I sit enthroned as Queen: no widow am I: I shall never know sorrow.' Revelation 17:16 /Revelation 18:7.
THIS NUCLEAR WEAPON WILL RESULT IN A GLOBAL CRY FOR WORLD PEACE AND PROVIDE THE FALSE PROPHET AND THE anti-CHRIST THE OPPORTUNITY TO ESTABLISH THEIR SHORT 3.5 YEAR EMPIRE ONLY TO BE DESTROYED AT THE RETURN OF MESSIAH, YESHUA.
The United States of America will suffer this death AFTER Believers have been removed from the earth at the Resurrection (rapture).
The SEVENTH GENTILE EMPIRE, (USA) will suffer at the hands of the anti-Christ once he has achieved his global leadership role.
ABSOLUTE BIBLICAL...WORD FOR WORD...
INDISPUTABLE PROOF:
Sheba, and Dorian, and the merchants of Tarshish were the great trading communities of the South, East, and West respectively (see on Ezekiel 27:15, 20, 22, 25).
The young lions thereof - i.e. Of Tarshish, not of the other communities (Keil) - were probably intended to represent, not the" authorities" of Tarshish, as Hitzig suggests, but its smaller tradesmen who were equally rapacious with its larger merchants.
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS ONE OF THESE "MERCHANTS"!
Mystery Babylon is described in the 18th chapter of the book of Revelation as follows:
"for this reason in one day her plagues will come, pestilence and mourning and famine and she will be burned up with fire for the YHWH Who judges her is strong and the king of the earth who committed acts of immorality and lived sensuously with her will weep and lament over her when they see the smoke of her burning standing at a distance because of the fear of her torment saying woe, woe the great city for in one hour your judgment has come".
And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over here because no one buys their cargoes any more, cargoes of gold and silver, precious stones, and pearls, and fine linen and purple and silk and scarlet and every kind of citron wood and every article made from very costly wood and bronze and iron and marble and cinnamon and spice and incense and perfume, fine flour and wheat and cattle and sheep and human lives.
And the fruit you long for has gone from you and all things that were luxurious and splendid have passed away from you and men will no longer fine them.
The merchants of these things who became rich from her will stand at a distance because of the fear of her torment weeping and morning saying woe, woe the great city she who was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, pearls for in one hour such great wealth has been laid waste.
And every shipmaster and every passenger and sailor and as many as make their living by the sea stood at a distance and were crying out as they say the great city and they threw dust on their heads and were crying out weeping and mourning saying woe the great city in which all who had ships at sea became rich by her wealth for in our hour she has been laid waste.
Rejoice over here o heaven and you saints and apostles’ and prophets because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.
And a strong angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea saying thus will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence and will not be found any longer.
And the sound of harpists and musicians and flute-players and trumpeters will not be heard in you any longer and no craftsman of any craft will be found in you any longer and the sound of a mill will not be heard in you any longer, your merchants were great men of the earth because all the nations were deceived by your sorcery.
And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have been slain on the earth.
RAPTURE: THOUGH THE VOICE IS HEARD by THE BELIEVERS who live AMONGST the INHABITANTS of the HARLOT ... THIS SAME "VOICE" OF YHWH IS HEAR BY ALL BELIEVERS ON EARTH.
4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. REVELATION 18:4-5.
5 for her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.’
"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every (unclean and hateful "bird", (responsible for the birth of and vast global expansion of "satellite Internet technical" broadcasts and communications of every evil inclination of carnal thought of the HUMAN HEART the world at large).
America is truly the "mother of harlots", having given birth to the idea of exchanging itself for the love of "Mammon" another name for Beelzebub. The United States of America is a nation who sold itself for the love of money). Revelation 18:2 / Revelation 17:5.
Mystery Babylon the Mother of Harlots IS a PROLIFIC GENTILE EMPIRE, a (NATION) of RENOWNED GLOBAL POLITICAL & COMMERCIAL TRADE INFLUENCE & REPUTATION) that MUST FAIL and FALL BEFORE the FINAL GENTILE EMPIRE of the "anti-CHRITS", (son of perdition) CAN SEIZE CONTROL of HUMANITY!!!
REVELATION 17:1-5 - The beast not the harlot is described as the one full of blasphemous names! THE BEAST IS THE FINAL "EIGHTH" GENTILE EMPIRE TO RULE HUMANITY.
The antichrist will be preceded by 7 kings or rulers. He will be the 8th king. He will also be "of" the 7th. will also be "of" the 7th.
“The sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’ And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number” (Revelation 9:14-16). “The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East” (Revelation 16:12).
Iran 954,000
Afghanistan 70,000
Pakistan 619,000 reserve 528,000
Iraq has an army of 273,000
Kazakhstan has an army of 65,000 reserve 237,000
India has an army of 1,414,000 reserve 1,155,000
China f 2,255,000 reserve 800,000
military force of 200,000, 000.
http://shoebat.com/2015/03/23/the-nile-and-the-euphrates-are-drying-up-both-rivers-are-in-the-news-and-both-rivers-are-in-the-bible-an-inevitable-famine-is-plaguing-the-muslim-world/
JUBAISH, Iraq — Throughout the marshes, the reed gatherers, standing on land they once floated over, cry out to visitors in a passing boat.
“Maaku mai!” they shout, holding up their rusty sickles. “There is no water!”
The Euphrates is drying up. Strangled by the water policies of Iraq’s neighbors, Turkey and Syria; a two-year drought; and years of misuse by Iraq and its farmers, the river is significantly smaller than it was just a few years ago. Some officials worry that it could soon be half of what it is now.
The shrinking of the Euphrates, a river so crucial to the birth of civilization that the Book of Revelation prophesied its drying up as a sign of the end times, has decimated farms along its banks, has left fishermen impoverished and has depleted riverside towns as farmers flee to the cities looking for work.
The Euphrates 2015
The poor suffer more acutely, but all strata of society are feeling the effects: sheiks, diplomats and even members of Parliament who retreat to their farms after weeks in Baghdad.
Along the river, rice and wheat fields have turned to baked dirt. Canals have dwindled to shallow streams, and fishing boats sit on dry land. Pumps meant to feed water treatment plants dangle pointlessly over brown puddles.
“The old men say it’s the worst they remember,” said Sayid Diyia, 34, a fisherman in Hindiya, sitting in a riverside cafe full of his idle colleagues. “I’m depending on God’s blessings.”
The drought is widespread in Iraq. The area sown with wheat and barley in the rain-fed north is down roughly 95 percent from the usual, and the date palm and citrus orchards of the east are parched. For two years rainfall has been far below normal, leaving the reservoirs dry, and American officials predict that wheat and barley output will be a little over half of what it was two years ago.
It is a crisis that threatens the roots of Iraq’s identity, not only as the land between two rivers but as a nation that was once the largest exporter of dates in the world, that once supplied German beer with barley and that takes patriotic pride in its expensive Anbar rice.
Now Iraq is importing more and more grain. Farmers along the Euphrates say, with anger and despair, that they may have to abandon Anbar rice for cheaper varieties.
Droughts are not rare in Iraq, though officials say they have been more frequent in recent years. But drought is only part of what is choking the Euphrates and its larger, healthier twin, the Tigris.
The most frequently cited culprits are the Turkish and Syrian governments. Iraq has plenty of water, but it is a downstream country. There are at least seven dams on the Euphrates in Turkey and Syria, according to Iraqi water officials, and with no treaties or agreements, the Iraqi government is reduced to begging its neighbors for water.
At a conference in Baghdad — where participants drank bottled water from Saudi Arabia, a country with a fraction of Iraq’s fresh water — officials spoke of disaster.
“We have a real thirst in Iraq,” said Ali Baban, the minister of planning. “Our agriculture is going to die, our cities are going to wilt, and no state can keep quiet in such a situation.”
Recently, the Water Ministry announced that Turkey had doubled the water flow into the Euphrates, salvaging the planting phase of the rice season in some areas.
That move increased water flow to about 60 percent of its average, just enough to cover half of the irrigation requirements for the summer rice season. Though Turkey has agreed to keep this up and even increase it, there is no commitment binding the country to do so.
With the Euphrates showing few signs of increasing health, bitterness over Iraq’s water threatens to be a source of tension for months or even years to come between Iraq and its neighbors. Many American, Turkish and even Iraqi officials, disregarding the accusations as election-year posturing, say the real problem lies in Iraq’s own deplorable water management policies.
“There used to be water everywhere,” said Abduredha Joda, 40, sitting in his reed hut on a dry, rocky plot of land outside Karbala. Mr. Joda, who describes his dire circumstances with a tired smile, grew up near Basra but fled to Baghdad when Saddam Hussein drained the great marshes of southern Iraq in retaliation for the 1991 Shiite uprising. He came to Karbala in 2004 to fish and raise water buffaloes in the lush wetlands there that remind him of his home.
“This year it’s just a desert,” he said.
Along the river, there is no shortage of resentment at the Turks and Syrians. But there is also resentment at the Americans, Kurds, Iranians and the Iraqi government, all of whom are blamed. Scarcity makes foes of everyone.
The Sunni areas upriver seem to have enough water, Mr. Joda observed, a comment heavy with implication.
Officials say nothing will improve if Iraq does not seriously address its own water policies and its history of flawed water management. Leaky canals and wasteful irrigation practices squander the water, and poor drainage leaves fields so salty from evaporated water that women and children dredge huge white mounds from sitting pools of runoff.
On a scorching morning in Diwaniya, Bashia Mohammed, 60, was working in a drainage pool by the highway gathering salt, her family’s only source of income now that its rice farm has dried up. But the dead farm was not the real crisis.
“There’s no water in the river that we drink from,” she said, referring to a channel that flows from the Euphrates. “It’s now totally dry, and it contains sewage water. They dig wells but sometimes the water just cuts out and we have to drink from the river. All my kids are sick because of the water.”
In the southeast, where the Euphrates nears the end of its 1,730-mile journey and mingles with the less salty waters of the Tigris before emptying into the Persian Gulf, the situation is grave. The marshes there that were intentionally reflooded in 2003, rescuing the ancient culture of the marsh Arabs, are drying up again. Sheep graze on land in the middle of the river.
The farmers, reed gatherers and buffalo herders keep working, but they say they cannot continue if the water stays like this.
“Next winter will be the final chance,” said Hashem Hilead Shehi, a 73-year-old farmer who lives in a bone-dry village west of the marshes. “If we are not able to plant, then all of the families will leave.”
Amir A. al-Obeidi, Mohammed Hussein and Abeer Mohammed contributed reporting.
Iran 954,000
Afghanistan 70,000
Pakistan 619,000 reserve 528,000
Iraq has an army of 273,000
Kazakhstan has an army of 65,000 reserve 237,000
India has an army of 1,414,000 reserve 1,155,000
China f 2,255,000 reserve 800,000
military force of 200,000, 000.
Dry run: "Trial Balloons" top 'delivery platform' for nuclear EMP attack. EMP is analogous to carpet bombing or an artillery barrage that causes massive random damage that is specifically difficult to predict, but reliably catastrophic in its macro-effects,".
A successful EMP attack on the U.S. will lead to a nationwide blackout of the electric power grid and a shutdown of critical infrastructure reliant on the grid, including, but not limited to, communications, transportation, food and water supply, and sanitation. 90% of the US population cannot survive the year that will follow.
Prophetically, The USA must be neutralized in order for the anti-Christ global Gentile empire to emerge.
An EMP is the most effective method to destroy the US population and leave the landmass and basic "non-electrical" infra-structure intact. Revelation 17:16.
Without the American economic engine, the world economy would quickly collapse and the global economy "digital", CBDC economy will be launched.
4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. REVELATION 18:4-5.
"And the ten horns which thou sawest in the beast: these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her with fire. They will take everything she has and leave her naked. They will eat her flesh and destroy her with fire". For she says in her heart, 'I sit a queen, and am no widow, and will in no way see mourning.' Weymouth New Testament She has freely glorified herself and revelled in luxury; equally freely administered torment to her, and woe. For in her heart she boasts, saying, 'I sit enthroned as Queen: no widow am I: I shall never know sorrow.' Revelation 17:16 /Revelation 18:7.
THIS NUCLEAR WEAPON WILL RESULT IN A GLOBAL CRY FOR WORLD PEACE AND PROVIDE THE FALSE PROPHET AND THE anti-CHRIST THE OPPORTUNITY TO ESTABLISH THEIR SHORT 3.5 YEAR EMPIRE ONLY TO BE DESTROYED AT THE RETURN OF MESSIAH, YESHUA.
The United States of America will suffer this death AFTER Believers have been removed from the earth at the Resurrection (rapture).
The SEVENTH GENTILE EMPIRE, (USA) will suffer at the hands of the anti-Christ once he has achieved his global leadership role.
ABSOLUTE BIBLICAL...WORD FOR WORD...
INDISPUTABLE PROOF:
Sheba, and Dorian, and the merchants of Tarshish were the great trading communities of the South, East, and West respectively (see on Ezekiel 27:15, 20, 22, 25).
The young lions thereof - i.e. Of Tarshish, not of the other communities (Keil) - were probably intended to represent, not the" authorities" of Tarshish, as Hitzig suggests, but its smaller tradesmen who were equally rapacious with its larger merchants.
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS ONE OF THESE "MERCHANTS"!
Mystery Babylon is described in the 18th chapter of the book of Revelation as follows:
"for this reason in one day her plagues will come, pestilence and mourning and famine and she will be burned up with fire for the YHWH Who judges her is strong and the king of the earth who committed acts of immorality and lived sensuously with her will weep and lament over her when they see the smoke of her burning standing at a distance because of the fear of her torment saying woe, woe the great city for in one hour your judgment has come".
And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over here because no one buys their cargoes any more, cargoes of gold and silver, precious stones, and pearls, and fine linen and purple and silk and scarlet and every kind of citron wood and every article made from very costly wood and bronze and iron and marble and cinnamon and spice and incense and perfume, fine flour and wheat and cattle and sheep and human lives.
And the fruit you long for has gone from you and all things that were luxurious and splendid have passed away from you and men will no longer fine them.
The merchants of these things who became rich from her will stand at a distance because of the fear of her torment weeping and morning saying woe, woe the great city she who was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, pearls for in one hour such great wealth has been laid waste.
And every shipmaster and every passenger and sailor and as many as make their living by the sea stood at a distance and were crying out as they say the great city and they threw dust on their heads and were crying out weeping and mourning saying woe the great city in which all who had ships at sea became rich by her wealth for in our hour she has been laid waste.
Rejoice over here o heaven and you saints and apostles’ and prophets because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.
And a strong angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea saying thus will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence and will not be found any longer.
And the sound of harpists and musicians and flute-players and trumpeters will not be heard in you any longer and no craftsman of any craft will be found in you any longer and the sound of a mill will not be heard in you any longer, your merchants were great men of the earth because all the nations were deceived by your sorcery.
And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have been slain on the earth.
RAPTURE: THOUGH THE VOICE IS HEARD by THE BELIEVERS who live AMONGST the INHABITANTS of the HARLOT ... THIS SAME "VOICE" OF YHWH IS HEAR BY ALL BELIEVERS ON EARTH.
4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. REVELATION 18:4-5.
5 for her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.’
"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every (unclean and hateful "bird", (responsible for the birth of and vast global expansion of "satellite Internet technical" broadcasts and communications of every evil inclination of carnal thought of the HUMAN HEART the world at large).
America is truly the "mother of harlots", having given birth to the idea of exchanging itself for the love of "Mammon" another name for Beelzebub. The United States of America is a nation who sold itself for the love of money). Revelation 18:2 / Revelation 17:5.
Mystery Babylon the Mother of Harlots IS a PROLIFIC GENTILE EMPIRE, a (NATION) of RENOWNED GLOBAL POLITICAL & COMMERCIAL TRADE INFLUENCE & REPUTATION) that MUST FAIL and FALL BEFORE the FINAL GENTILE EMPIRE of the "anti-CHRITS", (son of perdition) CAN SEIZE CONTROL of HUMANITY!!!
REVELATION 17:1-5 - The beast not the harlot is described as the one full of blasphemous names! THE BEAST IS THE FINAL "EIGHTH" GENTILE EMPIRE TO RULE HUMANITY.
The antichrist will be preceded by 7 kings or rulers. He will be the 8th king. He will also be "of" the 7th. will also be "of" the 7th.
“The sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’ And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number” (Revelation 9:14-16). “The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East” (Revelation 16:12).
Iran 954,000
Afghanistan 70,000
Pakistan 619,000 reserve 528,000
Iraq has an army of 273,000
Kazakhstan has an army of 65,000 reserve 237,000
India has an army of 1,414,000 reserve 1,155,000
China f 2,255,000 reserve 800,000
military force of 200,000, 000.
http://shoebat.com/2015/03/23/the-nile-and-the-euphrates-are-drying-up-both-rivers-are-in-the-news-and-both-rivers-are-in-the-bible-an-inevitable-famine-is-plaguing-the-muslim-world/
JUBAISH, Iraq — Throughout the marshes, the reed gatherers, standing on land they once floated over, cry out to visitors in a passing boat.
“Maaku mai!” they shout, holding up their rusty sickles. “There is no water!”
The Euphrates is drying up. Strangled by the water policies of Iraq’s neighbors, Turkey and Syria; a two-year drought; and years of misuse by Iraq and its farmers, the river is significantly smaller than it was just a few years ago. Some officials worry that it could soon be half of what it is now.
The shrinking of the Euphrates, a river so crucial to the birth of civilization that the Book of Revelation prophesied its drying up as a sign of the end times, has decimated farms along its banks, has left fishermen impoverished and has depleted riverside towns as farmers flee to the cities looking for work.
The Euphrates 2015
The poor suffer more acutely, but all strata of society are feeling the effects: sheiks, diplomats and even members of Parliament who retreat to their farms after weeks in Baghdad.
Along the river, rice and wheat fields have turned to baked dirt. Canals have dwindled to shallow streams, and fishing boats sit on dry land. Pumps meant to feed water treatment plants dangle pointlessly over brown puddles.
“The old men say it’s the worst they remember,” said Sayid Diyia, 34, a fisherman in Hindiya, sitting in a riverside cafe full of his idle colleagues. “I’m depending on God’s blessings.”
The drought is widespread in Iraq. The area sown with wheat and barley in the rain-fed north is down roughly 95 percent from the usual, and the date palm and citrus orchards of the east are parched. For two years rainfall has been far below normal, leaving the reservoirs dry, and American officials predict that wheat and barley output will be a little over half of what it was two years ago.
It is a crisis that threatens the roots of Iraq’s identity, not only as the land between two rivers but as a nation that was once the largest exporter of dates in the world, that once supplied German beer with barley and that takes patriotic pride in its expensive Anbar rice.
Now Iraq is importing more and more grain. Farmers along the Euphrates say, with anger and despair, that they may have to abandon Anbar rice for cheaper varieties.
Droughts are not rare in Iraq, though officials say they have been more frequent in recent years. But drought is only part of what is choking the Euphrates and its larger, healthier twin, the Tigris.
The most frequently cited culprits are the Turkish and Syrian governments. Iraq has plenty of water, but it is a downstream country. There are at least seven dams on the Euphrates in Turkey and Syria, according to Iraqi water officials, and with no treaties or agreements, the Iraqi government is reduced to begging its neighbors for water.
At a conference in Baghdad — where participants drank bottled water from Saudi Arabia, a country with a fraction of Iraq’s fresh water — officials spoke of disaster.
“We have a real thirst in Iraq,” said Ali Baban, the minister of planning. “Our agriculture is going to die, our cities are going to wilt, and no state can keep quiet in such a situation.”
Recently, the Water Ministry announced that Turkey had doubled the water flow into the Euphrates, salvaging the planting phase of the rice season in some areas.
That move increased water flow to about 60 percent of its average, just enough to cover half of the irrigation requirements for the summer rice season. Though Turkey has agreed to keep this up and even increase it, there is no commitment binding the country to do so.
With the Euphrates showing few signs of increasing health, bitterness over Iraq’s water threatens to be a source of tension for months or even years to come between Iraq and its neighbors. Many American, Turkish and even Iraqi officials, disregarding the accusations as election-year posturing, say the real problem lies in Iraq’s own deplorable water management policies.
“There used to be water everywhere,” said Abduredha Joda, 40, sitting in his reed hut on a dry, rocky plot of land outside Karbala. Mr. Joda, who describes his dire circumstances with a tired smile, grew up near Basra but fled to Baghdad when Saddam Hussein drained the great marshes of southern Iraq in retaliation for the 1991 Shiite uprising. He came to Karbala in 2004 to fish and raise water buffaloes in the lush wetlands there that remind him of his home.
“This year it’s just a desert,” he said.
Along the river, there is no shortage of resentment at the Turks and Syrians. But there is also resentment at the Americans, Kurds, Iranians and the Iraqi government, all of whom are blamed. Scarcity makes foes of everyone.
The Sunni areas upriver seem to have enough water, Mr. Joda observed, a comment heavy with implication.
Officials say nothing will improve if Iraq does not seriously address its own water policies and its history of flawed water management. Leaky canals and wasteful irrigation practices squander the water, and poor drainage leaves fields so salty from evaporated water that women and children dredge huge white mounds from sitting pools of runoff.
On a scorching morning in Diwaniya, Bashia Mohammed, 60, was working in a drainage pool by the highway gathering salt, her family’s only source of income now that its rice farm has dried up. But the dead farm was not the real crisis.
“There’s no water in the river that we drink from,” she said, referring to a channel that flows from the Euphrates. “It’s now totally dry, and it contains sewage water. They dig wells but sometimes the water just cuts out and we have to drink from the river. All my kids are sick because of the water.”
In the southeast, where the Euphrates nears the end of its 1,730-mile journey and mingles with the less salty waters of the Tigris before emptying into the Persian Gulf, the situation is grave. The marshes there that were intentionally reflooded in 2003, rescuing the ancient culture of the marsh Arabs, are drying up again. Sheep graze on land in the middle of the river.
The farmers, reed gatherers and buffalo herders keep working, but they say they cannot continue if the water stays like this.
“Next winter will be the final chance,” said Hashem Hilead Shehi, a 73-year-old farmer who lives in a bone-dry village west of the marshes. “If we are not able to plant, then all of the families will leave.”
Amir A. al-Obeidi, Mohammed Hussein and Abeer Mohammed contributed reporting.