When I went with Jack to Basra province in the south of Iraq to write the story about mines, of one of the big problems that people in that area face, I never expected to find a bigger problem, another battle with a different enemy that is more capable than mines which at least can't move. They have a battle with snakes.

Over the years people there had become experts in defusing mines that filled their farms but they could not deal with the snakes that killed them in their beds.

We spoke with two families. One man told me about his neighbor who was bitten by a snake and died after treatment in a medical center who couldn't do anything for her. And the other family lost the bread winner of the group of orphans leaving all twelve of them in the responsibility of a young woman who had lost a limb to a mine. He was also bitten by a snake.  

In Thi Qar province, a little to the north of Basra snakes are leaving their holes because of the drought in the marshes. The families said that tens of snakes attack their farms and they are obliged to guard their homes and animals day and night to protect them from the onslaught of yet another enemy. The medical centers in these areas also lack the simplest means to take care of those besieged people. There was no anti-venom.

No one asks after them. No one really cares.