Once prized across the Middle East, Iraq's dates industry clings to hope of better days
Every year, come rain or shine, Hajji Hassem would cram his car full of boxes of Iraq’s finest dat…Every year, come rain or shine, Hajji Hassem would cram his car full of boxes of Iraq’s finest dates and embark on a three-day drive to Makkah in Saudi Arabia. There, he gifted the fruits to other joyful pilgrims undertaking hajj.
His most vivid memories, dating back to the 1980s, elicit a smile as he recounts road-tripping the almost 2,000km to the holy city. It was a time when the journey was deemed safe and Iraq’s world-renowned dates industry was thriving.
"The Saudis always used to ask us to bring dates from here, it was the best gift someone could take," said Hajji. "They thought it was a holy fruit."
Now 60, he owns a wholefoods fruit and vegetable shop in the heart of Fallujah's main bazaar. Much like his country, Hajji now finds himself weighed down by decades of turmoil.
His large frame forces him to pray on a chair rather than on the floor – the same chair he sits in sipping water, as he chronicles the golden years for Iraq’s 350 types of dates.
"All of the Arab countries knew in the 1980s and 1990s that Iraqi dates were the best," he says. Quality combined with quantity: a 28 kilogram box of dates would sell for less than $1 because the fruit was so readily available.
Even the American invaders who came in 2003 loved the dates. "Most bought the Zahdi types," says Hajji, referring to a dry kind of date. "They would just come in and stuff their pockets."
Years of sanctions, conflict and displacement, coupled with a precarious economy, culminated in a decline in the production and quality of the fruit. While global output of dates increased exponentially between 1978 and 2008, Iraq fell progressively behind.
In the 1990s the industry was affected by the sanctions imposed against Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.
In 2000, approximately one million metric tonnes of dates were produced – an increase of 748,900 tonnes from 1984, when fighting in the Iran-Iraq war was at its heaviest. The last 18 years, however, has seen a precipitous slump in Iraqi date production. By 2007, at the height of Iraq’s sectarian violence, it plummeted to only 350,000 tonnes annually.
