Iraq: small fry thrive as Al-Qaeda big fish flee

0 Comments | AFP, April, 2008

KHIDR, Iraq (AFP) — The Sunni Arab sheikh smiled happily as a torch in a darkened room lit up a water tank teeming with pin-sized larvae. Now that the Al-Qaeda big fish have fled, the carp small fry are thriving.

"Last year Al-Qaeda prevented us from doing any fish farming," said Sheikh Jaffar Hussein al-Massudi whose village of Khidr, about 60 kilometres (36 miles) south of Baghdad, is slap-bang in the middle of the so-called Triangle of Death near the major town of Iskandiriyah in Babil province.

"Now they're gone the ponds are being restored, the pumps serviced and the breeding programmes started again," said the sheikh after visiting hatcheries where eggs milked from females are fertilised, hatched into fry, reared to fingerlings and then stocked in dams fed by...