DAMASCUS: Syria’s worst drought in decades is taking a devastating toll on the agricultural region of Al-Nashabiyah east of Damascus.
Water reserves are down by more than 60 percent on previous years, levels in dams in March were lower than the past two years, and some areas have lost more than 70 percent of their groundwater reserves.
Farmer Mati Mohammed Nasser expects to lose his whole harvest of wheat, pears, plums and other fruit and vegetables. He usually picks about 200 kg of pears a year from trees he has raised from seedlings, but this year he will chop down the dead trees and use them for firewood.
He paid almost $2,000 to dig a deep well, but the water was only a couple of centimeters deep.
“What are we supposed to do with that?” he said. “We have lost hope. We sold everything we had and invested it into the land.”

Another farmer, Al-Nashabiyah’s deputy mayor Mahmoud Al-Hobeish, is $4,000 in debt. “People are asking for it and they know I cannot pay,” he said.