He's witnessed its horrors and its rebirth: John Humphrys on the hope and despair in Basra

Travel a few hours south of Baghdad, Iraqis tell you, and according to local mythology you will come to the Garden of Eden. It is where the waters of the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet before they flow into the Persian Gulf. Ancient travellers who had journeyed across the hostile desert would have gazed in awe at this fertile valley; lush and green and welcoming, the cradle of humanity - or so they say. But travel a little further south and you will come to the modern city of Basra. If the Garden of Eden was paradise on earth, Basra is hell on earth. I have just made my second visit there in two years. I left feeling a mixture of gratitude, awe and despair. Enlarge The gratitude springs from the fact that I live somewhere else. It was wonderful after this assignment to be returning home to a city in which clean water... [read full story]