By Alaa Kouli //

The western edge of the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah is growing and as it does, it is expanding into terrain that includes date palms, farmland and villages that residents say have stood for generations.

Meanwhile municipal authorities say the new housing plots were drawn up before the orchards were ever established.

The argument has set off a dispute that has brought bulldozers into villages, residents into detention centres and competing ownership claims to local courts.

In Abu Shakka, 5 kilometres west of Nasiriyah, Abu Walid and seven other residents were released on bail in early August 2026 after the municipality accused them of threatening workers sent to clear the area.

The villagers say they were defending their orchards and farmland from demolition.

Abu Walid, 54, says municipal crews arrived with heavy machinery to uproot trees and demolish buildings. He alleges that some of that took place outside official working hours on purpose so that fewer residents would be there. The uprooted trees were then taken away, which makes it harder for villagers to properly document the destruction, he noted.

About a year ago, Abu Walid says more than 100 of his date palms were uprooted, along with pomegranate and “sidr”, or jujube, trees. Two houses were also demolished, he says.

This dispute actually dates back to 2021 when the Nasiriyah municipality allocated land to citizens. Some of the plots that were given out were in agricultural areas. As a result, residents complained to local authorities and the process was temporarily halted.

Abu Shakka resident Ahmed al-Moussawi says in July municipal authorities began another campaign to clear the orchards.

“We were surprised to see records showing land plots inside our orchards in the media,” al-Moussawi says. “When we found out, we objected to the governorate again as well as the agriculture directorate and the municipality.”

Villagers point to the age of their trees to bolster their argument. Al-Moussawi says the affected villages have more than 120,000 date palms, many of them between 15 and 20 years old.

A few kilometres away in the agricultural village of Zuhairiya, the conflict also extends to people’s homes.

Months ago, Mohammed Adnan and around 18 other villagers spent several days in detention following confrontations with other people who had property deeds for residential plots that seemed to also include village land and houses.

Zuhairiya is west of central Nasiriyah and has more than 500 homes. Residents say settlement there began in the 1930s. Around 2 million square meters nearby are planted with wheat and barley, while the village’s orchards boast over 3,000 date palms.

Large sections of those orchards were cleared last year so that citizens holding property deeds could take possession of their plots.

Adnan says the house where he was born and raised now stands on someone else’s land.

“My house is now considered an intrusion,” he complains. “Another citizen has a title deed for the land my house stands on.”

The deed holder periodically returns to survey the property, Adnan says, something that has led to disputes. Court involvement has failed to resolve the issue so far.

In 2020, Adnan says, municipal officials proposed giving villagers plots alongside the other beneficiaries in exchange for them making larger agricultural areas available for subdivision. But no final agreement was ever reached, he says, and the distribution proceeded anyway.

“We came away with nothing,” Adnan says. “It put us in confrontation with people who had received title deeds. More than 500 homes have been affected and today our fate is unknown.”

There’s been a lot of bureaucratic back and forth around the issue.

Committees formed in 2022 confirmed the presence of the orchards and recommended excluding them from the land distribution. Technical inspections recorded houses, orchards and date palms. Another municipal inspection recommended reconsidering the development plan and excluding some areas.

A 2022 document from the Dhi Qar agriculture directorate also called for agricultural areas covered by farming contracts to be excluded from subdivisions and treated as green zones.

Dhi Qar deputy governor Razzaq Kashish insists that many of the orchards were only established after plots were given out for subdivision.

Nasiriyah district administrator Laith al-Khafaji says responsibility for establishing the legal status of various piece of land rests with the relevant agencies.

Meanwhile Dhi Qar’s directorate of the environment says that clearing farmland or orchards without official approval is an environmental violation.

But all that doesn’t mean much to the locals. Villager Sayed Ahmed worries that bulldozers might arrive at his orchard any moment, destroying not just his remaining trees but maybe also his home.

“We should have been rewarded for reviving this land and making it productive,” he says. “Instead, we have become victims, watching machinery drive over what we planted and over our children’s future.”