Seeking Security

Muhammed Fouad, a cattle rancher, was just two years into a venture to bring affordable milk to his hometown in Iraq’s Anbar province, when — seemingly overnight — the cows started dying. “We brought in veterinarians from Erbil, because [the cows] were OK and suddenly dying the next day."Muhammed Fouad, cattle rancher, Iraq“We brought in veterinarians from Erbil, because they were OK and suddenly dying the next day,” Fouad said in a phone call, through a translator.The initiative left him with $350,000 in damages. Fouad had to lay off his employees and sell his home to pay his debts to the project’s investors. He now works in construction in the city of Hit. Related: 'Drought has severely impacted livestock keepers' in Afghanistan Unprecedented drought — driven by climate change and exacerbated by upstream irrigation — is wreaking havoc on some of the world’s oldest river-fed farmlands in Iraq and Syria.A dry winter has pushed water levels on the Tigris and Euphrates to record lows, disrupting hydroelectric p