The art of nature in Iraq’s marshes: Images of the occupation

In August 2003, Iraqi exile Zaid Kubra returned to Baghdad to restore and conserve the country’s marshes, once drained by Saddam Hussein, as the signature emblem for the new state. Under Kubra’s leadership Iraq’s marshes conservation initiative became the ‘success story of the war’. Photographic images of Iraq’s restored marshes were potent markers of this success, used by more than 75 news articles since 2003 to fuel special interest good news reportage. Through a comparative of occupation imagery with the Iraqi canon of literary and visual arts centring on the marshes, the article analyses how Iraqi exiles cultivated an occupation aesthetics of the marshes that deployed images of wetlands’ nature – its towering reeds and its soaring birds – to advance the occupation.